PC Stamina, Health, Food, Water logic, or lack thereof

As I've expressed before: make as many gameplay-element optional (like stamina drain, food usage, death penalty etc)

BUT: anytime a user deactivates a default restriction to make it easier/more convenient, display a hardcoded watermark in the top left corner that says:

"BABY MODE"

(Everyone can set up the game as he likes, but If a user does not want to see that message, he must play with the default as intended..., everyone is happy then)

 
No, just standing there waiting for it to come back up is not good or smart gameplay. I never do that and I don’t have the problem the OP describes.
This is a classic git gud situation. It’s also one in which turning down the difficulty can help if necessary.
Click to expand...
To be fair if it's not fun it's not fun.

Games are supposed to be fun. Vik's suggestion would be fun.

 
Apples are fruit! Tomatoes are fruit. Apples are sweet. Therefor Tomatoes are sweet.
Click to expand...
Not how it works roland.

Having a gun ammo/dukes/food/building materials are all things you can stock up on.

On day 14 I usually have near endless ammo/food/building materials (dukes are now harder to get by but can be shached as well)

Stamina doesn'T work like this.

Back in the day medkits needed blood which you could remove from yourself making health one of those ressources you could stock up on.

But there is no way to do the same if I am not mistaken, Can I? Can I still get instant stamina from drinking goldenrod and so on?

If so my point is somewhat (not completely) mute. But I feel like this got removed as well. The only thing is coffee but that only increases staminaregen but if you are "blocked" due to heavy swing...

Again roland: there is a difference between rewarding challenges and punishing ones.

If I stock up on 14000 dukes I can get that AK with 6 mods on day 7. This is rewarding.

If I fall down in a seemingly stable concrete building for no reason without a warning, losing 70 hp and breaking my bone, that is punishing.

There is a difference Roland I am sorry.

 
To be fair if it's not fun it's not fun.
Games are supposed to be fun. Vik's suggestion would be fun.
Click to expand...
To be fair, it’s not fun for him. I think that combat is more fun with stamina management that actually is meaningful. I think the game is more fun if I can shift from weakness to strength. I’d be willing to try his suggestion to see if it was more fun for me but his whole philosophy reeks of “ I want zero consequences”.

First they said “stamina management makes sense for combat because it could create interesting situations if not managed well but it makes no sense for harvesting since the rock or tree isn’t going to attack back”

TFP complied.

Now (like a camel with its nose in the tent) they want to remove stamina management from combat. As far as I’m concerned they can mod their own bland Godmode-esque creative menu-ish style of zero consequence and zero strategy arcade game into existence.

That’s what these suggestions reek of— arcade game.

 
To be fair, it’s not fun for him. I think that combat is more fun with stamina management that actually is meaningful. I think the game is more fun if I can shift from weakness to strength. I’d be willing to try his suggestion to see if it was more fun for me but his whole philosophy reeks of “ I want zero consequences”.
Click to expand...
I want consequences.

I feel like sometimes you read my posts projecting your opinion of me into it.

Consequences are great. If I don't build a base, I should have the hardest hordenight ever.

That is a great consequence.

"You pressed a hard hit to get that zombie off you, now suffer for multiple seconds where you can't do a thing" is not.

I even said in my original argument "make swings slower, hit for less damage and use more food/water"

Those are consequences that mean something.

And if you already deal less damage and swing slower way before 0 it has even more consequences and a high stamina pool is even more important.

I give you an example:

TFPs disable backtracking while holding a weapon.

I say "make backtracking slower, but still possible because beeing handicapped like this feels unimmersive and unfun"

And you tell me that I want no consequences. And that I can simply switch the slots and backtrack again.

It is not the same. I want consequences. But fair ones that make sense and don't punish me. (there is a difference between punish and punish; killing me instantly with no way out is punishing, making a loud sound alarming zombies around me is also punishing but way more fair and managable)

 
Maybe slightly off topic, but no more than the rest of the replies.

I've been playing Rimworld a lot lately and I have to say that it handles the challenge the right way.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Rimworld is an insanely challenging base builder. Its learning curve is beyond what human beings should be subjected to. You can't avoid death and destruction. Period. It is unfair, brutal and stupidly random. Just when you thought you got your defenses set, your enemies drop in the middle of your base and start tearing it apart. Just when you thought you had enough food to last a few weeks you get hit with a solar flare and it all rots in your freezer. And so on.

And yet after all is said and done and half of your colonists are dead or dying, your base lies in ruins and chances of recovery are slim, you don't think "this game design is a stupid, I quit", you think "where did I screw up and what should I have done differently" as you start your base from scratch.

 
THAT stamina management implementation isn't fun. Vik's sounds great.

Was just chatting with Haid'RGna about it and we think it's doable.

Now to just find an XML guru with free time... :)

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and Roland, you suffer from what Jax does... You see only on or off. You don't see "could be this way".

 
Maybe slightly off topic, but no more than the rest of the replies.
I've been playing Rimworld a lot lately and I have to say that it handles the challenge the right way.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Rimworld is an insanely challenging base builder. Its learning curve is beyond what human beings should be subjected to. You can't avoid death and destruction. Period. It is unfair, brutal and stupidly random. Just when you thought you got your defenses set, your enemies drop in the middle of your base and start tearing it apart. Just when you thought you had enough food to last a few weeks you get hit with a solar flare and it all rots in your freezer. And so on.

And yet after all is said and done and half of your colonists are dead or dying, your base lies in ruins and chances of recovery are slim, you don't think "this game design is a stupid, I quit", you think "where did I screw up and what should I have done differently" as you start your base from scratch.
Click to expand...
Play Dwarf Fortress casual!

 
Not how it works roland.Having a gun ammo/dukes/food/building materials are all things you can stock up on.

On day 14 I usually have near endless ammo/food/building materials (dukes are now harder to get by but can be shached as well)

Stamina doesn'T work like this.

Back in the day medkits needed blood which you could remove from yourself making health one of those ressources you could stock up on.

But there is no way to do the same if I am not mistaken, Can I? Can I still get instant stamina from drinking goldenrod and so on?

If so my point is somewhat (not completely) mute. But I feel like this got removed as well. The only thing is coffee but that only increases staminaregen but if you are "blocked" due to heavy swing...

Again roland: there is a difference between rewarding challenges and punishing ones.

If I stock up on 14000 dukes I can get that AK with 6 mods on day 7. This is rewarding.

If I fall down in a seemingly stable concrete building for no reason without a warning, losing 70 hp and breaking my bone, that is punishing.

There is a difference Roland I am sorry.
Click to expand...
It is how it works. You can stock up on stamina to the tune of 200 stamina points and huge gains in stamina regeneration and huge reductions in stamina costs. You struggle and survive in the game to earn the stockpile of stamina that makes you feel unstoppable. Some people will want to spend their points on this first and some will be fine with spending their points elsewhere and getting to the point of "fully loaded" stamina more gradually. But most would agree that in a game that is not Serious Sam, that takes longer than Day 1.

You don't rant and complain in the forums to try and get unstoppable stamina on day 1 in the game. You could've had the stockpile of stamina you desire by this time if you spent this amount of time in the game doing the rewarding activity of actually earning that stockpile.

Like I said, I am not plagued at all by standing around and waiting for minutes before chopping or mining or killing zombies. I have a strategy that helps me manage my stamina and it works well and it is fun. Yes, there are times when I mismanage and I have to wait--- for seconds. And I am never unable to move away and keep out of reach of zombies unless I encumbered myself to death or do something stupid that I blame myself for.

 
THAT stamina management implementation isn't fun. Vik's sounds great.
Was just chatting with Haid'RGna about it and we think it's doable.

Now to just find an XML guru with free time... :)
Click to expand...
Excellent. Exactly what I suggested. :)

Oh, and Roland, you suffer from what Jax does... You see only on or off. You don't see "could be this way".
Click to expand...
Perhaps.... But don't be so sure you have me completely pegged. hahaha

 
It doesn't feel good when I run out of bullets. It's so punishing to have to sit and wait and not use my rifle until I can get more bullets in my inventory. TFP should introduce good game design by letting us fire our rifles even without bullets but just for less damage. Plus, to have to wait and repair a rifle that is broken is such a punishment-based design. Once rifles break and are out of bullets we should always be able to continuously fire them and at least do a little bit of ranged damage to zombies because anything other than that is UNFUN!
It feels so terrible when I'm out of Dukes and the trader is showing me all this stuff I want. When we are out of Dukes we should be able to still buy stuff from the trader if we want to so we don't have to wait until we get more Dukes. Maybe it is just low quality stuff but we should get it for free because waiting for stuff just sucks and games are meant to be fun.

Man, when I'm out of food it really is a tedious process to wait until I get more food before I can eat. If TFP knew what they were doing they would let us eat even when we are out of food. Maybe our fullness just goes up by a little bit but at least we can keep it moving up and have the rewarding feeling of seeing our max stamina increase all the time instead of having to wait to be able to do it until we have more food. To punish us by making us stop doing what we want to be doing and go out and either scavenge, or farm, or hunt is just an incredibly punishing design.

Come on Madmole! I'm a builder and I want to be able to constantly feel the fun and rewarding gameplay of building but sometimes I am out of materials and then I am forced to stop the gameplay I love. That is real bad game design. We should be able to continue to make blocks even when we have no materials left in our inventories. Why should I be punished to go spend tedious amounts of time gathering more materials when all I want to do is build. And don't tell me to use the creative menu. That is just a super mean thing to say on the forums. Maybe it could just take a bit longer to craft or maybe the blocks are weaker until you upgrade them later but to just make us stop crafting when we are depleted of mats sucks and if anyone tells me that I'm not playing right or should learn more about how to play they are just a spiteful troll and a TFP fanboi!

<looks around and sees all the Millennials nodding excitedly....>
Click to expand...
Best...post...ever..

 
My opinion:
Damage and swingspeed should coinside with stamina. (scaling and not instanced)

>75% full dm

>50% 3/4 dmg

>0% 1/4 dmg

0% 1/5 dmg and swingspeed and no heavy attack

This way even when you are out of stamina, you are not completely helpless and stamina perks do more than just "okay you can hit one more heavy swing before beeing useless"
Click to expand...
To be fair again this IS an interesting suggestion. But I'm not sure I would like it if it was implemented and it wouldn't stop posts by others who are NOT-VIK who would complain that zombies feel like damage sponges again because the reduced hit damage makes every battle drawn out and long. People would keep swinging and swinging and never take time to recover because they can just keep swinging and they wouldn't be appreciative that they could keep swinging they would want zombie hp reduced and be annoyed at the slower swing speed.

Proof: Instead of making it so that stone axes would just not work at all against gun safes TFP allowed them to chip away albeit very very slowly. They figured the safes would be things the player would find, realize they would need to come back to do once properly equipped, and think it cool that there were things in the world beyond their initial ability that they would have to remember to revisit once they were more powerful.

NOPE

People would sit in front of those safes for 10 minutes chipping away with their brown stone axes and then complaining on the forum that the stone axe was too weak and breaking into safes was UNFUN. Did a single person thank TFP for the rewarding experience of letting them do it if they wanted to but at a lower capacity instead of just making it impossible? No. When it was suggested that they wait to break into the safe until they had better equipment they sobbed that people were telling them it was their problem instead of the game design.

So, I think your idea has enough merit for Guppy to get a mod of it and I'll give it a try. But I have misgivings on how it will be received by others and for myself-- because I manage my stamina well I am rewarded with 100% dmg for every hit no matter how low my stamina bar is. I don't know how fun it would be for me to start doing 75% then 25% and then 20% and swing slower when through strategy I don't have to suffer that now.

And when it comes down to it you would still need to stop and rest to get back up to 100% dmg. Right now with a wooden club on day 1 I can put a zombie down in 3-5 hits while managing my stamina. With your method no matter how I manage it my dps will drop and 3-5 hits per zombie will change to a lot more.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
To be fair again this IS an interesting suggestion....
Click to expand...
Yeah. I agree. Not that hard to fix though: simply scale the stamina usage along with the damage output so you use less stamina when at low stamina.

 
2zzxeq.jpg
 
[...]
Click to expand...
Agreed... but I feel (and maybe I have too high of an opinion of myself) that my suggestions are based less on what I would find fun and more a general baseline of gamedesign.

For example I was one of the first to state that traders were op, even though I LOVED playing as a trader who got everything he needed in a day long tour across the country scouting every traders inventory.

I try to make it the best game based on general ideas in gamedevelopment and not about "what would I find fun"?

I would find it fun if explosive weapons would be far more relevant... but I also understand that voxelgames complicate this matter a lot.

And with the stoneaxe:

I like that TFPs try and make the players happy, and I am certainly one who hits that stupid safe for 10 minutes, because I never want to visit that certain POI again, BUT from a game standpoint, making it possible to loot early with more work incentivises players because the loot is just that good. (AK day 1 is more than worth it to sit there for 10 minutes)

But if there is no weapon in the safe, you feel robbed.

So just from a gamedev standpoint, removing the possibility would be better.

I don't know how it would impact playerchoice and fun and opinion of the playebase, because it already is a feature and removing it is not always great.

But yeah it is always a problem when removing/changing an existing feature.

 
Sometimes they are actually warranted. Today is such a day.
Click to expand...
Dammit Roland Im SUPPOSED to be troll/bitter Jax now a days.

I can only throw my 2 cents in. Ive played 17.2 until day 14 (i always play new vanillas so im familiar with new mechanics) and I had issues with stamina day one only, and that was easily fixed. Perk up, dont power swing, time your shots and bob and weave. Do NOT run while swinging. At least not until you perk up.

Its often a bitter pill to swallow but in this case the only advice IS to git gud. Stamina in 17.0 sure i can see the complaints but in 17.2? Now we are just nitpicking.

 
- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and Roland, you suffer from what Jax does... You see only on or off. You don't see "could be this way".
Click to expand...
One day when I actually care Ill ask you what this means. Ravenhearst is literally a mod full of "could be this ways".

I thought you were the XML guru dude. Write it up. It would actually be a great addition to what Roland is doing for his mod.

 
To be fair again this IS an interesting suggestion. But I'm not sure I would like it if it was implemented and it wouldn't stop posts by others who are NOT-VIK who would complain that zombies feel like damage sponges again because the reduced hit damage makes every battle drawn out and long. People would keep swinging and swinging and never take time to recover because they can just keep swinging and they wouldn't be appreciative that they could keep swinging they would want zombie hp reduced and be annoyed at the slower swing speed.
Click to expand...
Agree that it could be an interesting change - for some people - and agree that if it is done, it will be Stamina Wars II: Revenge of the Pickaxe. Especially since, in theory, the decrease in damage would affect gathering as well - less damage per swing = less resources per swing = people will now feel like they have to micromanage to stamina to maintain above 75% at all times when doing p. much anything.

"Inside of five seconds, I'm running slower and I'm tired of having to stop every five seconds to wait to get back that 25% stamina to run at top speed again. It's stupid I can't use my whole stamina bar at the same speed."

"Gathering from rocks/trees/etc takes so long now if I don't keep my stamina over 75%. This has ruined base building."

 
Agree that it could be an interesting change - for some people - and agree that if it is done, it will be Stamina Wars II: Revenge of the Pickaxe. Especially since, in theory, the decrease in damage would affect gathering as well - less damage per swing = less resources per swing = people will now feel like they have to micromanage to stamina to maintain above 75% at all times when doing p. much anything.
"Inside of five seconds, I'm running slower and I'm tired of having to stop every five seconds to wait to get back that 25% stamina to run at top speed again. It's stupid I can't use my whole stamina bar at the same speed."

"Gathering from rocks/trees/etc takes so long now if I don't keep my stamina over 75%. This has ruined base building."
Click to expand...
Isn't this the behavior we see with the Near Death Buff? It reduces the player's ability to less than full strength and do we have people thanking TFP that at least they can go out and do some stuff but with less ability? No, we have people going AFK for 30 minutes to get an episode of The Tick in before coming back to play at full strength again.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top