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[Angle]

An Idea I had a while ago, was that during character creation, you would go and plot out the course your character took during life up until the game started. so for example, what kind of schools they went to, what decisions they made, what jobs they had, etc. And from that it would generate they're starting traits.

[amjh]

Which do you think is more important in the game: balance, or fun? It isn't a multiplayer game, so in my opinion it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. If a change would allow few who wish to break the game balance to do so, but gives many more players the ability to make characters they find fun, would it be worth it? If a player likes min/maxing, would it hurt the game to allow it for him as a side effect?

[G-Flex]

Which do you think is more important in the game: balance, or fun? It isn't a multiplayer game, so in my opinion it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. If a change would allow few who wish to break the game balance to do so, but gives many more players the ability to make characters they find fun, would it be worth it? If a player likes min/maxing, would it hurt the game to allow it for him as a side effect?

Sometimes, yes, it does hurt. As a player of a single-player game, that situation causes me to intentionally limit myself along very arbitrary lines, and I don't like having to judge for myself whether or not a character I'm choosing is "broken"; that shouldn't be a decision left up to the player.

[GlyphGryph]

I've got to say, I absolutely LOVE the static world. Happening across an area I've been with another character is always great fun, and it makes for amazingly awesome multiplayer play a la the ssh server. I've honestly never understood the problems people have with this mechanic. *shrug*

Then again, I find the whole bionics thing to be a bit silly and not fun, and have pretty much avoided them completely, and only dipped into mutations once or twice. Different strokes, ya'know.

An Idea I had a while ago, was that during character creation, you would go and plot out the course your character took during life up until the game started. so for example, what kind of schools they went to, what decisions they made, what jobs they had, etc. And from that it would generate they're starting traits.

Sort of like the way LCS does it?

[G-Flex]

I've got to say, I absolutely LOVE the static world. Happening across an area I've been with another character is always great fun, and it makes for amazingly awesome multiplayer play a la the ssh server. I've honestly never understood the problems people have with this mechanic. *shrug*

Did you read my post? I feel I adequately explained it.

[Whales]

An Idea I had a while ago, was that during character creation, you would go and plot out the course your character took during life up until the game started. so for example, what kind of schools they went to, what decisions they made, what jobs they had, etc. And from that it would generate they're starting traits.

I am personally not a fan of this.  It turns character creation into a guessing game, and generally feels like a long and boring process when I just want to start playing.  I find it to detract from LCS, ADOM, and other games that use it.  Like always, my opinion may be swayed by a convincing demo.

Which do you think is more important in the game: balance, or fun? It isn't a multiplayer game, so in my opinion it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. If a change would allow few who wish to break the game balance to do so, but gives many more players the ability to make characters they find fun, would it be worth it? If a player likes min/maxing, would it hurt the game to allow it for him as a side effect?

I feel as though it is the job of a game designer to balance the game for the player.  Generally, players want to do well/achieve success in a game, have fun with a game, and often be able to use the game as a platform for creativity (which can take many forms--character design, gameplay strategy, etc).  If the game is set up in such a fashion that to achieve optimal success means to limit yourself in creativity, that detracts from the overall fun of the game, and it becomes an exercise in rote performance of "that which is best."
It's also worth nothing that Cataclysm can be played as a kind of multiplayer game, on an SSH or telnet server.  This was never an intentional design feature--just a happy side effect of how the persistant map works--but I don't want to limit or preclude future development in this area just yet.  If a player wants to min/max or break the game balance, it's easy enough to edit the code and compile at home.


Regarding the persistant world:
Meta-gameplay is definitely an intended feature.  Factions are slowly getting fleshed out, and personally I think it will be great fun to play two different characters on opposite sides of a conflict, or to have your second character seek to avenge the first's death.  I also think it's awesome to find trails of carnage, to stumble upon old stashes, etc., especially on a shared world (SSH or telnet server).
There's no win condition(s) yet, but they are vaguely planned, and they'll be somewhat epic in scope.  Long-term survival will become much more difficult once NPCs are reinstated, and winning the game will almost certainly require the efforts of several consecutive characters.
Besides, if you don't like the persistant world, it's easy enough to delete the save directory when you die.

[G-Flex]

Meta-gameplay is definitely an intended feature.  Factions are slowly getting fleshed out, and personally I think it will be great fun to play two different characters on opposite sides of a conflict, or to have your second character seek to avenge the first's death.  I also think it's awesome to find trails of carnage, to stumble upon old stashes, etc., especially on a shared world (SSH or telnet server).

I agree with regard to shared worlds, but when I'm just playing by myself... why should my second character effectively know everything my first character did? If I'm playing two characters on either sides of a conflict, that's great, except the second one, by virtue of out-of-character knowledge, magically knows everything that first character did and where all his stuff is. I really would only enjoy this kind of feature if I'm doing it on a shared world or my gameplay otherwise doesn't get screwed up by player knowledge that the player rightfully should not have. Also, former-character stashes can be disconcertingly useful, since that character was the only actual survivor, making his stash pretty much the best resource a new character could stumble upon.

There's no win condition(s) yet, but they are vaguely planned, and they'll be somewhat epic in scope.  Long-term survival will become much more difficult once NPCs are reinstated, and winning the game will almost certainly require the efforts of several consecutive characters.
Besides, if you don't like the persistant world, it's easy enough to delete the save directory when you die.

Of course it's easy; it's effectively optional, but "options" only go so far. For one, something being optional doesn't render moot any questions about good design, and furthermore, as you just stated yourself, even if the feature is optional it still affects how you'll develop the game. I personally wouldn't want the game to be designed using consecutive-characters as a necessary or influential aspect, because I simply don't think it's fun to be spoiled by out-of-character knowledge about the randomly-generated world when starting a game, but the only way around that is either playing on a shared world or nixing the persistent world altogether. As long as it's plausible to play and succeed at the game using one character, I'll be happy.

[GlyphGryph]

To be honest, G, I've never actually managed to learn much from coming across a previous character's stash beyond the fact that the local area is pretty looted and it's time to move on. I mean, I know its a possibility, but I've honestly never been tempted to use meta-knowledge. The advantage is, to be honest, minimal - it's not like getting everything you need just with your starting map is difficult. Downloading a world map from the labs seems to blow any meta-advantage out of the water in this case, at least.

Though to be honest I've only stumbled across familiar territory once or twice and even noticed. And it enhanced the little stories I make for my characters as I go along rather than breaking the immersion. Maybe I've just got a worse memory than you, though. But finding previous character stashes just doesn't seem like anywhere close to a big enough boon to even purposely think about, especially with how rare it is to end up in the same place, unless you've gotten to the point where you have made dozens of characters in the same world.

What I think WOULD be nice is if we had the option to create an instance for our character or choose to use a persistant world, sort of have a proper menu for it, or even the ability to choose the world we play in (hell, even toggle certain features!). I imagine that sort of stuff is a ways out, but I do look forward to the day where it's in.

[Whales]

The only issue there is that it breaks multiplayer compatibility; again, not an intended or central feature, but one I'd like to avoid breaking if possible.

I agree that I'd like to have this kind of thing available at some point.  Possible solutions include build-time options to remove the world management option if compiling for a server, or possibly a stand-alone "world editor" tool to handle these kind of things and more.

[Flying Dice]

The issue I have with the persistant world is the fact that the past five characters I've created have all spawned in the same town, three within one area and two within another, so that if I opened up the map I instantly recognized certain features. This meant that for every character past the first or second, the entire town was looted out, and I had the choice of going to an old stash or trying to make a cross-wilderness trip with no weapons beyond what were in the starting basement.


Yes, I know I can delete the save, but the point is that if there is going to be a persistant world, there needs to be a mechanism that prevents this sort of repeat spawning, because it seriously interferes with immersion.

[Mechanoid]

I am personally not a fan of [character generation based off of a questionaire].

Assuming the game does nothing to notify you of what the consequences of your actions will be, i'm in agreement with this because it calls back to the dark days of point-and-click adventure games where "Developer Logic" was a mysterious and arcane thing, but had to be used to figure out puzzles given to you; because apparently that one item you missed 4 screens ago was needed on this specific screen, but you can't go back to get it.

In fact anything that gives the player starting equipment can fall into this too, if you don't explicitly state that "Being a police officer lets you start with a gun and ammo for it" and that "Starting as a bar tender gives you alcohol, but no rags or scissors to make molotovs with"

Yes, I know I can delete the save, but the point is that if there is going to be a persistant world, there needs to be a mechanism that prevents this sort of repeat spawning, because it seriously interferes with immersion.

This would seem easy to fix by having the game generate the map with a series of pre-set spawn points that will be randomly selected and then disabled when they're used; until all the spawn points have been used, at which point they're all re-enabled and it goes through the list again.

[Flying Dice]

I am personally not a fan of [character generation based off of a questionaire].

Assuming the game does nothing to notify you of what the consequences of your actions will be, i'm in agreement with this because it calls back to the dark days of point-and-click adventure games where "Developer Logic" was a mysterious and arcane thing, but had to be used to figure out puzzles given to you; because apparently that one item you missed 4 screens ago was needed on this specific screen, but you can't go back to get it.

In fact anything that gives the player starting equipment can fall into this too, if you don't explicitly state that "Being a police officer lets you start with a gun and ammo for it" and that "Starting as a bar tender gives you alcohol, but no rags or scissors to make molotovs with"

Yes, I know I can delete the save, but the point is that if there is going to be a persistant world, there needs to be a mechanism that prevents this sort of repeat spawning, because it seriously interferes with immersion.

This would seem easy to fix by having the game generate the map with a series of pre-set spawn points that will be randomly selected and then disabled when they're used; until all the spawn points have been used, at which point they're all re-enabled and it goes through the list again.

That's exactly the sort of thing I mean. 

Also, I was tooling around a bit on my cheesed character (very high dodge from necromancer abuse), blowing up gas stations and killing the hordes that show up to investigate, when something happened. AFAIK this isn't an effect of the gas pumps exploding, as they had blown up several minutes ago and were just blazing away. Pic for reference; I was in the center of those concretic rings, about midway between the fire and the zombie.




Has Whales secretly implemented random artillery strikes or something? 

[Aklyon]

That reminds me of what happens when you walk around with active nuke in hand.

[SirAaronIII]

Landmines? Nah, landmines don't all explode at the same time and they're smaller.

[Whales]

Very weird, Flying Dice, I've never seen that bug before.  Those are definitely gas pump style explosions.  If you have any guess as to what might have caused it--anything out of the ordinary--please let me know.

Mechanoid, I agree with you 100% about the "developer logic" thing and strive to make this kind of stuff as transparent as possible (I admit that this could use work in several areas).  This was the reason why I recently added the information on the Stats screen of character creation, telling you the exact effects of 10 Str vs. 9 Str; requiring the player to open up a wiki or pull out their calculator to find out their carry weight is silly when the game could just be transparent about its inner workings.  Similarly, professions would be 100% specific about what they offer the player.