Believability is a worthwhile goal in any kind of fiction. I really hate fantasy armor with those gigantic shoulder pads and chainmail bikinis and all that. It doesn't add anything to the mechanical part of the game, and it makes the other parts impossible to take seriously. Just because there are space ships and wizards doesn't mean people should stop behaving like human beings.
I totally agree with what you're saying, it's just that to me, "kill a monster, gain a 'level'" is just as grating as "huge shoulder pads". Armor should act like armor actually works, gaining skill should work like gaining skill actually works. The question is how to accomplish that and keep it fun.
Cataclysm is not any good as a piece of interactive fiction or a remotely lifelike simulation.
This seems to be the crux of it. I don't consider DDA to be "mechanics based" at all. While it's status as a "lifelike" simulation is debatable (mostly because I'm not totally clear on what you mean, I'd certainly not call it "realistic" in general, but the definition of "lifelike" in my head matches up roughly), it is certainly an apocalypse simulator, if I had to come up with a two-word description of the game, that would be it.
Cataclysm is a game where you can duct tape three cars together to make an invincible supercar and macgyver up some nuclear hand grenades out of stuff you find lying around. I'm not saying that as criticism. Those are good features. Cataclysm is a better game for having them but they are not realistic in the least. I'm not sure why the DDA development team feels that player characters ought to be just as susceptible to cold weather as real people when they are clearly superhuman in so many other ways.
I'm very confused by this comment. There are specific avenues in the game to become literally superhuman, in fact you can render yourself nearly invulnerable to cold, but the baseline is very much human normal. Also the jump from "the vehicle construction system is unrealistic" to "the player shouldn't be susceptible to cold" is frankly bewildering. You seem to be implying that realism in a game is all-or-nothing, which is absurd.
Also I'd like a direct answer to the question of how to handle scenarios that are intrinsically time-intensive, is your answer really "just don't do that", or "make them shorter until they're fun"?
The second one. Though not necessarily shortened, just improved in some way until it's fun (or deep or challenging or whatever). Nothing should ever be added to a mechanics-focused that makes it worse as a mechanics-focused game, even if it's an improvement in other ways. Making the queen weaker than a knight results in Chess becoming a more realistic but overall much worse game.
Ok, given this I'm not sure there's a middle ground we can reach. My goal is to *depict* a scenario that spans a long duration of time without forcing the player to step through it, and your counter proposal is to change the scenario to not take a long time. Furthermore your position is that since you've categorized the game as "mechanics based", depicting those scenarios is "misguided".
How does your position apply to waiting and sleeping? I can mechanically see ways to eliminate them from most games, rather than running the game forward at an accelerated pace, but I can see it being desirable to go either way based on the game.
For example if the primary reason to wait or sleep is to trade hunger for MP or similar, give the player an ability to trade hunger for MP outside of combat.
If the only drawback of waiting is the chance of being interrupted by a monster, give the player an ability that recharges MP but has a chance of spawning monsters.
If there's no drawback to waiting, just have player MP reset once they're out of combat.
If your only consideration is mechanics, yes you should probably replace wait/sleep with one of these, but you're now thematically stating that the player is an inhuman automaton that needs neither rest nor sleep. This may or may not be what you want.
If you believe that your new rules for winter survival will make DDA deeper or more fun, then I have misunderstood you.
I'm giving the players options. Surviving Winter should be a challenge, and there are multiple ways to do that.
One is to acquire cold-weather gear sufficient to ward off the cold and play straight through Winter as normal, hunting and exploring etc...
One is to get a vehicle and head South to avoid the harsh weather. (far future feature).
One is to accumulate enough supplies that you don't have to hunt or explore to survive, and wait it out, possibly taking advantage of the time to work on skills, do crafting, etc.
Lots more I haven't thought of, but the players will.
My job is to implement features that let the player decide on a strategy and follow it with maximal fun and minimal tedium.
The reason why I said your change was being made with little regard for gameplay was because of your own words. You said that the game called for repetition due to thematic reasons and even described it as "tedium." I wouldn't expect you to couch the idea in those terms if your goal was a more mechanically solid game. It sounds like you're planning to add tedious and unfun parts to the game for realism's sake, and them letting the player skip those parts through automation.
Maybe you communicated poorly or maybe I misread, but it sounds like you want to want to add a bunch in a bunch of bloat knowing that it won't be fun.
Hmm, yes this in particular does look like a misunderstanding.
I've liked the concept of a "pure practice" system for a while, but until recently haven't come up with a set of mechanics that would make it fun. A naive approach where every action would have to play out manually would indeed be tedious in the extreme.
I didn't propose a naive approach though, I'm proposing a system where the time expenditure of the character is *managed* by the player in order to achieve the goal of increasing skills. For some reason you insist on focusing on the fact that virtual time is passing, like that in any way detracts from fun of the player.
If there's something un-fun in the game, and the game provides a better way to do it that's strictly better such that there's no reason for the player to do it the un-fun way, does it matter?
I'm not sure why the DDA development team feels that player characters ought to be just as susceptible to cold weather as real people when they are clearly superhuman in so many other ways.
Based on the wiki for DDA, it looks like the PC has to eat and drink to survive. A person could survive a lot longer without food and water in mild weather than they could with food and water but unprotected from extremely cold weather. So why does cold weather susceptibility seem inconsistent to you?
As far as duct taping cars and nuclear hand grenades go, I'd have to know more about the context. Can you please explain that part, Kevin?
There is a moderately elaborate procedural vehicle construction system that allows you to chop apart vehicles and reassemble them in more or less arbitrary configurations. The skill level, time and resource requirements to do so is ludicrously small, you can literally go from knowing nothing about the pertinent skills to building a basic car from scattered components in about a week. This is a conscious choice, since with the current framework provided by the game making it "realistic" would place vehicle building, and arguably some of its best content prohibitively far into the game.
I'm not so sure about the general crafting system, the time frames and resource requirements for that are for the most part reality-based, if not strictly realistic. The most unrealistic part of it is how quickly you can gain the skill necessary to do the crafting, but that's exactly what I'm addressing with my practice based skill advancement proposal.
