View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008763 | Valley 1 | Balance Issue | Jul 4, 2012 4:57 am | Jul 9, 2012 2:23 am | |
| Reporter | Pyrrhic | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | reopened | ||
| Product Version | 1.109 | ||||
| Summary | 0008763: Changing citybuilding difficulty changes nothing (instantly) | ||||
| Description | Currently, whatever the citybuilding difficulty is set to, residents' temperaments stay the same. In effect, this means that the citybuilding difficulty only affects the temperament of characters you rescue - meaning that if you change the citybuilding difficulty but don't rescue any new survivors, the game isn't going to be any easier or harder. (A)One possibility: Residents in effect have 5 temperaments, one for each difficulty. For game-mechanics purposes, consider a character's temperament when they are rescued (or when the world/continent is first generated) to be their 'default' temperament. If that temperament exists at another difficulty level, then they will have the same temperament in that difficulty level. If not, they'll be given a random temperament which is available in that difficulty level. Pros: The game instantly becomes easier and harder with difficulty changes. Cons: If you change this difficulty level a lot, you'll probably get less attached to characters. Example: If Ayesha Bond is *always* romantic temperament, it's easier for a player's imagination to run with that: "Oh, that Ayesha Bond is so romantic"; imagining how their voice, etc must sound; and thereby making the characters more alive for the player. If Ayesha's temperament keeps changing with difficulty levels, she seems more like an unreal set of data points that keep changing. "Ok, Ayesha has gone from romantic to...introverted? Hm." Futhermore, having everyone's temperament change could make character-management very confusing. If you're just starting to figure out how to win over Sensitive characters, having everyone's temperament change will require learning how to win over an entirely new set of temperaments, which could feel frustrating and unfun. (B) Other options would include keeping temperaments constant, but changing difficulty in other ways: * Temperaments are the same in name, but become easier/harder to manage as the difficulty is decreased/increased. That said, there should still remain some similarities across all difficulty levels (there should be something intrinsic to managing a Romantic character, no matter the difficulty level). * Make temperaments relate not so much to difficulty, but instead to what motivates a character. Let's say a certain temperament makes a character like Paintbrushes, be especially saddened when a glyphbearer dies, and recover energy more quickly. With an increase in difficulty, Paintbrushes would increase their mood not as much; make them even sadder when a glyphbearer dies; and recover energy not quite as quickly. (...I think I just rephrased my first bullet point. Ah well.) Note that this change would make the current "certain temperaments for certain difficulty levels" system obsolete, as all temperaments would become easier/harder with difficulty change. * (This is probably already in the works) Have citybuilding difficulty affect things other than temperament. One pretty obvious example would be to have difficulty affect how much food everyone eats. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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I dislike A), but B) could work. (I dislike A) for the reasons you gave, namely that it means your survivors have the worst moodswings ever.) For B), I wouldn't want the food consumption to change, but having all temperaments available and instead have each temperament have a different scale of effect sounds better (since I'm currently averse to going away from District because I want all the temperaments.) I'd prefer to wait to see the "missions" you can send survivors on, since that'll be the main bit I'd argue should be affected by citybuilding difficulty. (The only other thing that could reasonably be affected (which I would like to see) is survivor rescue difficulty; give each temperament a "modifier" which increases in scale on higher citybuilding difficulty. (Things like Quiet temperaments hiding deeper so the mission is longer, Careless temperaments moving faster and running "ahead" a little bit, Curious getting themselves into places with more enemies or trickier terrain, etc.) |
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Regarding temperament, it's working as intended. Having someone's temperament just shift around willy nilly would be kind of odd. But yes, this is not the sole thing the difficulty is going to change. |
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Yeah, temperaments shifting randomly would be odd. I was thinking of suggesting that players always have the same temperament, it just be given a better or worse name as difficulty changed (reflecting the difficulty of managing it); so a character who had a 'Depressed' temperament in normal difficulty would be called 'calm' at the lowest difficulty, and 'Completely disillusioned' at the highest difficulty. But that idea would have been very silly, and probably unfeasible, too - coming up with 5 different ways to describe the same attitude, and ranking them in terms of how challenging they sounded. xD Simply keeping the same temperament-name while changing the mechanics behind it would be much more sober. Ben, it looks like none of the difficulties have all of the temperaments - District just has the most. The release notes say that there's 29 different temperaments, and District has 16. I would still prefer that all of the difficulties have all of the temperaments, difficulty just changing how hard they are to manage; currently, seeing other difficulties have different temperaments just makes me want to keep changing the difficulty, in order to diversify my population's temperaments. |
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All difficulties have all moods, which is what it really boils down to. The temperament is really just one set of variables that gets plugged into mood, so not seeing them all doesn't really affect much except not seeing the names that go with (aside from the actual numerical difficulty or ease of each one). |
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It's partially a matter of how the player sees it: certain temperaments only being available with certain difficulties could make it feel like each citybuilding difficulty is another 1/5th of the citybuilding game, and cycling through all of them being necessary in order to experience the full range of temperaments. There's also still the matter of the difficulty, in one way, being static if temperaments have the same effects across all difficulty levels. Even when citybuilding difficulty affects other dynamics, a new player who tries the hardest citybuilding difficulty, finds it too tough, and switches to the easiest one - is still going to be stuck with the same, challenging-temperament characters. Granted, one way for them to get around this would be to just start a new game. But what if they've progressed a fair amount into the game, when they finally figure that these temperaments are too hard to manage? Would they have to lose all of their progress* for the chance to fully experience a different difficulty? *: or wait until they reached a new continent, which isn't as severe - but then, the new continent's initial characters are difficulty-set all over again. |
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Tentatively re-opening the topic, as difficulty-associated temperaments still makes the citybuilding difficulty semi-unchanging, and possibly makes players feel like they're missing out on gameplay from other citybuilding difficulties. |
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I think citybuilding difficulty should affect the "danger" levels of missions more, but not affect mood at all. |
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^ Maybe it's scheduled to (or already does), I don't know. I'm inclined against this, though; I'd rather have to work harder to reach a pretty good success chance for a certain mission, than to work just as hard, only to see the best-possible success rates get lower and lower. I get the impression that while it'd be ideal for each temperament to have 5 levels of difficulty, it'd be very hard to program, and/or require a major reworking of character-mood calculations. Or maybe it wouldn't be so difficult? If each temperament is a set of variables, why not adjust those variables in a favorable/unfavorable way as the difficulty changes accordingly? That doesn't seem like it would be too difficult. To use a very simple example: Every time the player sets the difficulty one stage easier, positive variables will be made one number more positive, and negative variables will be made one number less negative. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 4, 2012 4:57 am | Pyrrhic | New Issue | |
| Jul 4, 2012 7:30 am | BenMiff | Note Added: 0026298 | |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0026301 | |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:03 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => no change required |
| Jul 4, 2012 8:51 am | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026302 | |
| Jul 4, 2012 9:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0026303 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 7:59 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026350 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:02 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Edited: 0026350 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:03 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Edited: 0026350 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:05 pm | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026351 | |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:05 pm | Pyrrhic | Status | closed => feedback |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:05 pm | Pyrrhic | Resolution | no change required => reopened |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:36 pm | Pyrrhic | Resolution | reopened => open |
| Jul 5, 2012 8:36 pm | Pyrrhic | Resolution | open => reopened |
| Jul 8, 2012 9:44 pm | jruderman | Note Added: 0026542 | |
| Jul 9, 2012 2:23 am | Pyrrhic | Note Added: 0026550 | |
| Jul 9, 2012 2:23 am | Pyrrhic | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
