PC Brainstorm - new buff system

toores

toores

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IMO one of the most exciting features revealed so far is the new buff system (BS - haha). I see lots of potential and gameplay depth there.

I'd like to hear what you guys think could be done with the new system.

To start off, i try to come up with some examples:

*radiation resistance seems like an obvious one - finally the hazmat suit is useful

*how about "overeating" buff that makes you slower for when your fullness >100. (yeah, i played some kingdom come)

*hangover buff when you keep pushing your stamina with beer, one after another

*i'm imagining that armours will also have negative effects. Like metal armour makes you noisier and slower then leather for example

*decreased chance of infection and bleeding depending on the armour

*wet clothes get cold and heavy to the point where it would be beneficial to remove clothing before swimming if not in hot climate.

*"burnt" debuff. You already can catch a fire and we have aloe cream in the game. Maybe it could lead to fever... Maybe you also could get burnt by the sun...

*a bear trap that breaks a leg and also makes any entity rooted to a spot until someone releases the trap by interacting with it

*"light & fast" buff when unequipping your backpack gets implemented. You drop you backpack and are left with only your toolbelt, but you run much faster.

*"living dead" buff. Cover yourself with zombie guts to become undetected by zombies for a time. (dying light)

Feel free to unleash your great ideas here!

(or expand and criticise on others')

 
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Not sure I agree with all of those ideas.

Been playing games since the 80's and far too often I see developers make the same mistake over and over.

Sacrificing game play for "realism".

It's NEVER a good idea and the real trick to making a hit game is finding a good balance.

Do you really think having to take off you clothes every time you go in water adds to game play?

Some of those ideas are good [though ripping off other games] but I'm not sure they will make the game more fun. That's always my question.

"Is this going to increase game play?" or "Will it be more fun?"

 
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Not sure I agree with all of those ideas.
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I'm not saying any of them need to be in the game. Just trying to start the discussion. I actually agree with you in the matter of gameplay going first. So let me step back and maybe concentrate on one idea that would make sense in my opinion.

Since you mentioned it, i'll go with the wet condition.

Most of the ideas in the OP were just rushed out. And of course taking clothing off every time you swim is overdoing it. (i even said in the OP that it would not effect you much in hot weather) But i think, cold survival could be much more deadly. Freezing is more urgent threat then hunger, thirst or many other things.

IMO it would be reasonable that in SNOW biome you should either:

a. avoid getting wet

b. build campfire to dry and warm up if you have to get wet (since it's easy enough to build campfire)

c. swap clothes for dry ones

7 Days to manage buffs
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7 days of whining sound much better?

I'm not trying to pick a fight here, but at least say what specific thing you don't like. Or how you would improve it. Or what you'd like to see there instead. Surely you're not thinking there wont be any additional buffs now that there is a better system for it?!

 
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The problem is that fun can't be universally defined. For those whose fun is derived from puzzling out how best to survive no matter what threats may come their way, lots of buffs and penalties make for a very rewarding and fun experience. There are some mods that already ramp up the survival complexity by differentiating between types of wounds and what you must do in order to treat them and that make the benefits and penalties of nutritional choices a larger factor.

One will call these additions more tedium and others will call them fun.

TFP has to decide what type of game they want and then give players the ability to go less and more complex from there.

 
TFP has to decide what type of game they want and then give players the ability to go less and more complex from there.
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And they've done a good job of it so far. At least, that's my opinion. :p

 
1) I would like an entangle round for my shotgun!

Maybe 5-10 seconds entangled.

Should be somewhat expensive to craft or hard to find.

If you fire it at a doorway it will entangle the first thing that comes through it. (Edit: maybe just firing at the floor would be easier.)

2) Some skill needed for flying the gyro copter.

If you fly with no skills you will most likely crash.

As you go up in skill the copter becomes more responsive.

Its needed to keep the feeling that the game is over once you find one.

Perhaps needing a mechanical part every time you take off to simulate the wear and tear of it.

3) Also a flare gun to have light at night for awhile or start something on fire...

 
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I think any of the buffs should have a solid gameplay purpose, and not just be there to increase realism. (As I've said before, if this were a real zombie apocalypse, you'd be a zombie.)

Metal armor slowing you down and making you noisier, for example, is a good tradeoff for the increased protection (especially since you can get top-level armor within the first few weeks.) Players that want to tank their way through a horde use that type of armor, and players that want to sneak use leather. Maybe the negative effect of metal armor decreases as skill goes up, and the protective effect of leather goes up with skill.

A bigger negative effect of alcohol might also be a good balancing change. Right now there isn't much reason to not use it. A lot. Maybe the initial effect is that you get drunk and can't aim very well, and that wears off over time.

I see most of this as more fine tuning of game balance. I can't think of anything really significant (to me) at the moment.

 
I still wish something like "terraria" contents added into 7d2d will be a very huge plus into the gameplay.

In terraria basically we just need to powerup our toons to manage survive the area with bosses to encounter, i mean this kind of contents may be added in 7d2d to enrich the fun instead of waiting for each 7 days till die.

Special events trigger and boss stage are the best bit for survival game in a plain world.

 
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I'd like to see the buffs currently implemented tweaked to be more friendly. The temp system is a prime example, the coat on and off mini-game needs help. I don't mind new buffs as long as the game remains fun. Don't want to get into an extreme micro-management situations, oh my goodness a vitamin deficiency buff just came on, eat some blueberries soon or you will keel over, or you are not wearing a hat in the snow zone, your ears are frozen and you cannot hear until you warm up. New buffs need to be well thought out or be able to turn them off.

 
The problem is that fun can't be universally defined.
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While that is true, some games in each genre are universaly more engaging that others for various reasons.

It's NEVER a good idea and the real trick to making a hit game is finding a good balance.
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Definitely. I enjoy realism immensely in these kinds of games but you can't blindly sacrifice gameplay for realism - for example as much as someone loves realism and immersive survival etc, being able to only carry half a block of cement in his inventory (which would be over 50kg), would end up being a chore and none, *none* would enjoy it.

Btw, keep me up to speed - what exactly is that new BS? Just new buffs/debuffs? What changes in vanilla gameplay? Or does it only offer new modding oppotunities?

 
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Btw, keep me up to speed - what exactly is that new BS? Just new buffs/debuffs? What changes in vanilla gameplay? Or does it only offer new modding oppotunities?
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You'd have to read up on A17 forums. Basically it's reworked buff system that expands the possibilities of buffs. I'm sure there will be more vanilla buffs added and some old buffs reworked (like temp) to make mores sense. But it also adds vast possibilities for modders as well.

The conversation started with this post:

We're much more quiet for A17 because a lot of the changes going in are system changes that let game features talk to each other, until the new content is created in XML for the new setup, there just isn't much to show. (That and I need to get into the UI bits on it and clean them up)


The reason some things got overhauled was because I was tasked with redesigning the item modifiers, progression/skills, buffs then making them all able to touch each other.

The overhaul process (Items):

What happened is that in A17 we were bringing in a better loot loop in that even as a level 1 you'll be able to find a full gun instead of part of one. It won't have very good stats but will likely come with a mod or attachment of some sort. Removing a mod has a chance to break the weapon where an attachment can be put in and taken out at will. This changed the items to only really need 6 tiers. The tiny variations in value weren't fun and were pure vertical progression.

This required us to be able to still use a system similar to the old one that would allow modification of values. Like the parts mods also will modify values on the item they live in. Adding this in required me to build a new central class to process the modifier values.

The overhaul process (Ranged Weapons):

Ranged weapons have always felt wrong to me. The crosshair spread didn't represent the cone of fire and on top of that the FOV/resolution would change accuracy. I implemented the same fire cone code that I put in for the turrets. With that the new events/effects allowed us to set up things like clip size, fire rate, accuracy kickback as well as many other things. You can basically simulate just about any weapon now via xml values.

The overhaul process (Progression):

With the new system we wanted to be able to have chunkier skills and perks and less of the incremental gains. With that we wanted to be able to punish the player through their progression stats via illnesses and injuries to keep things interesting. While testing I noticed the skills system made tons of garbage and we don't want that so I went in and redid it to be lightweight and to not make garbage to clean up.

The overhaul process (Buffs):

Finally the buffs, these guys have timers. Similar to progression, very similar. So I designed a system that was nearly identical to the new progression system. This keeps it lightweight, only storing the timer and a pointer to the single instance of that buff so there is only ever one instance of the heavy data needed. With the buffs we found that actions also needed fired off for particle effects so I started adding an action system. Also at the same time it was discovered that there would need to be requirements to keep buffs from firing something too often or to clean up after itself on login/logout. The need for this kind of cleanup added the need for "events" these started out as simply onBuffStart, onBuffUpdate, and onBuffEnd so we could do a few things but has now grown to include everything from gaining xp to placing a block.

The overhaul process(Overall):

So basically the needs of each area added to the effect system I initially put together for just the items, then as each system was worked on, instead of shoe-horning it in and causing even more garbage in ram, I instead opted to redesign them from the ground up knowing exactly how they'll be used at this point in our development. I left it as open as possible so we can expand in any way we want/need with little or no code support.

So, sometimes you hit a point where you have to tear things down. Oganically growing code becomes very unwieldy the longer it exists and sometimes a rewrite is needed to encompass all the other features that came along after it.

/data_dump
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I'd love if we could have a perc or a stat dependant of my discovered map percentage. Like the more map I discovered, the more expefience I get (when 100% map discovered, we gain double experience). Or travel speed. Or something. It would be an incentive to explore.

 
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