Cataclysm-dda: Rework Character Generation

[ifreund]

Issues with the current system

The current point-based character creation system encourages min-maxing by
taking negative traits or difficult scenarios for the purpose of getting more
points to build the strongest possible character. This is undesirable because
starting traits are largely flavor-oriented and should be used as an opportunity
for role play as opposed to min-maxing. The same is true for starting scenarios,
and perhaps to a somewhat lesser extend stats and skills.

Proposed solution

I propose hiding the point values of scenarios, professions, and traits from the
player. These point values would still be tracked internally to give a general
impression of how easy/hard the player's current selection would make the game.
Also, these starting options should be made completely freeform, albeit with a
clear message stating "This character is a god among mortals" or "This character
probably won't survive 5 minutes" according to the magnitude of the
positive/negative selections made.

As of yet I am undecided as to whether this same freeform system should be
applied to stats and skills as well. There is a good argument to me made that
they are no different than the rest of character generation, and that players
should be free to set them as high as they wish. However, I'm of the mind that
it would be realistic to impose an upper limit on total player stats/skills. I
don't think that allowing players to start with 20 points in every stat fits
within this project's focus on realism. Selecting less than this cap would still
be possible, and feedback would be given in terms of textual messages with the
underlying points hidden.

To sum up, the proposed changes are:

• Hide the point system used during character generation
• Give textual feedback regarding how difficult playing the character will be
• Make starting scenarios, professions, and traits totally freeform
• Cap stats at the value used by the current multi-pool system (38 total)
• Cap skills at some reasonable limit

[I-am-Erk]

Kevin's been suggesting this for as long as I've been a contributor at least and I continue to think it's a good idea.

We may want to have some rough calculation of "skill survival value", where certain skills and stats may contribute more to difficulty calculations than others, to keep the report accurate. High intelligence is not equally valued to high strength eg.

[ifreund]

We may want to have some rough calculation of "skill survival value", where certain skills and stats may contribute more to difficulty calculations than others, to keep the report accurate. High intelligence is not equally valued to high strength eg.

Those are my thoughts as well. My plan would be to keep the current point values internally as an initial approximation to start with, and then tweak things from there.

[I-am-Erk]

Actually it'd be more trouble but quite interesting to estimate a few different survival qualities. Like "combat", "crafting", and "character interactions".

[RobertoVGoulart]

With this system, skills and stats could be something that only your traits/profession gives, with no way to add more during character creation without picking related traits/professions.
This would give a soft cap for how much each skill/stat can be on character creation and would make whatever skills the survivor be based on it's "lore".
Another option would be giving a very small amount of points to allocate among skills/stats, something like 3 or 4.

[Night-Pryanik]

I'm vehemently opposed to the proposed ideas. I see nothing wrong in min-maxing. Why are you forbidding me in creating the character the way I like it? There's literally nothing stopping anyone from creating a complete roleplay character with no regards to any min-maxing by using freeform points pool.
The only way I'd be fine with proposed ideas is either creating a totally new points pool in addition to 3 existing ones (named something like "point-less pool") or reworking an existing freeform points pool.

[mrkybe]

Since this doesn't actually change how free-form works, could this 'difficulty estimation' just be added to the free-form picker?

[I-am-Erk]

I'm vehemently opposed to the proposed ideas. I see nothing wrong in min-maxing. Why are you forbidding me in creating the character the way I like it?

Who's stopping you from doing anything?

[Night-Pryanik]

I didn't mean "right now". I meant "when/if proposed changes will be implemented".

[KorGgenT]

the proposed implementation isn't going to stop you from building the same characters. they'll just shift how the points are presented to the player as difficulty levels.

[Night-Pryanik]

And yet I prefer to see exact numbers and not vague textual descriptions.

[I-am-Erk]

I don't think a preference to see numbers, especially when the numbers are arbitrarily assigned and not exact at all, is a reason to avoid reworking something like this. There's a solid argument for keeping numbers displayed, since they'd be something you could look up anyway, but it's pretty trivial overall. Is there anything else about the current system you're concerned enough about keeping to be so "vehement"?

[sayke]

The current system's points are an approximation but still extremely useful to get a sense for the rough magnitudes of impact traits are going to have in-game. They're also a familiar idiom for players and set up a relatively consistent default set of starting conditions.

The existing system works quite well, IMHO. Is "min-maxing" really such a huge problem that the points system needs to be overhauled? Saying "starting traits are largely flavor-oriented and should be used as an opportunity for role play as opposed to min-maxing" (emphasis added) suggests that you don't see min-maxing as fun, but I think many players do see it as a fun part of the game. I do. Has there been any significant player feedback complaining about having too much opportunity for min-maxing?

I play with several traits that are a fun (and not very min-maxed) combination: "PACKMULE", "SLOWREADER", "EAGLEEYED", "ADDICTIVE", "SQUEAMISH", "GLASSJAW", and "SLOWHEALER". Storage management is annoying hence packmule, slow reader and slow healer bring things closer to realistic settings, glassjaw makes headshots hurt more, and addictive/squeamish make those mechanics more intense and harder to work though. I use the default evacuee scenario.

I suspect that, without the points system incentivizing them, very few people (and basically no new people) would play the harder scenarios. If you want to encourage people to take "flavor-oriented" starting traits that have significant role-playing potential without trying to min-max, you could just tweak the point costs for them... Or you could just turn on the freeform points pool. That functionality already exists, but the current incentives work.

I appreciate the thought but in a situation where we have lots of serious issues that need lots of serious work, this seems like the perfect becoming the enemy of the good to me.

[Night-Pryanik]

Is there anything else about the current system you're concerned enough about keeping to be so "vehement"?

"You're-playing-it-wrong" rationale behind proposed changes is making me so vehement.

Min-max is bad, you're saying? Well, and I'm saying it's not. Let people create the strongest possible character if they want to. Those who want to create a roleplay character could use existing freeform points pool.

[I-am-Erk]

I'm not sure that 'min maxing is a bad way to play' is the thing to take home from a proposed system change. The trouble with systems built around minmaxing is that they are less accessible to new players, it's not a problem that affects people that know the system intimately. A system that focuses more clearly on what your character is going to find easy or hard makes character creation easier to get into, and provides a sliding scale of scenario type challenges for people. EG: "my third day playing a character with Impossible Combat Difficulty!". I think it's self-evident that this would be a positive change overall.

Absolutely no character you could presently create is more difficult to create under a system that judges character strength/weakness rather than point pools. However, a system like this would present more useful feedback to the player and, ultimately, encourage much more complex characters.

[Kelenius]

I'm not sure that 'min maxing is a bad way to play' is the thing to take home from a proposed system change.

??????

The current point-based character creation system encourages min-maxing by
taking negative traits or difficult scenarios for the purpose of getting more
points to build the strongest possible character. This is undesirable because
starting traits are largely flavor-oriented and should be used as an opportunity
for role play as opposed to min-maxing.

[I-am-Erk]

I didn't write that.

Edit: sent early. I didn't write that, but my point is that there's more to it than stopping minmaxing.

[kevingranade]

My take on this isn't that min-maxing is a bad way to go about assembling a challenging and interesting character to play, my issue with the current system and all variations of it is it's ludicrously imbalanced, and trying to tune it is a never ending tarpit of bikeshedding. It's not min-maxing that's wrong, min-maxing is a symptom of the system as a whole being broken.

The concept of "various traits are worth different numbers of points, either positive or negative, and adding those numbers together gives you a number that tells you how hard challenging that character is to play" is simply incoherent outside of an extremely constrained system which we don't have. All the skills are slightly different in value, all the stats are VERY different in value, and traits have shot-in-the-dark values, and to complicate things further, the actual values of all of these things actually depend on what other traits you have, so simply summing them together gives you an almost completely useless number.

The point of the proposed system is to flip things around such that you pick whatever traits you want (which includes stats and starting skills), and instead of having fixed numbers assigned to everything, the game does whatever it can to give you feedback about how survivable that makes your player.

One of the most obvious things is it immediately eliminates things like dump stats and dump traits. Take all the negative social traits? Go ahead, but that won't make your combat feedback budge since those traits are irrelevant for combat. If you want to make a character that is challenging to play, you're going to have to actually give them drawbacks in various categories instead of shuffling all your "points" from areas you don't care about to areas you do.

[ghost]

Recently, there was a Reddit post, where people were criticising the point cost of various professions, the crazy cat lady came up as being "ludicrously high cost" I think it costs 4 points or something.
The crazy cat lady comes with 1 points in skills, and 20 cats as starting pets.

How do you quantify the point cost of 20 cats? they dont particularly do much, but they are flavour, maybe you can kill them and eat them for some early food but thats a bit weird, maybe when NPCs can trade livestock and pets, they will have more value...

But still, people proceeded to debate and argue about what the "best cost" was for various professions such as that, and it can be entirely subjective - a lot of the professions lump skills together that would cost more to take individually, this is a quagmire of balancing as Kevin says.

Also , I've got the PR coming so that professions can start with vehicles too, what point cost would you give to a hatchback versus a helicopter?

I'm not particularly attached or opposed to this change, I just thought I'd add that as a way that points costs can be a rabbit hole of opinion about balance, I can see some benefits arising from doing away with this, but sure I can see the point of people who appreciate seeing numbers and the meta of working within constraints of the games systems.

[ashGlaw]

The point of the proposed system is to flip things around such that you pick whatever traits you want (which includes stats and starting skills), and instead of having fixed numbers assigned to everything, the game does whatever it can to give you feedback about how survivable that makes your player.

Thanks, Keven, now I get what you’re going for. Great clarify

[I-am-Erk]

So revisiting the primary topic: I think we should basically refine point cost to an array of different point values and an option to either add/subtract from the points total, or to multiply the points total. I'd suggest the categories be "combat", "toughness", "wilderness", "crafting", and "social".

Some things might impact both of these, like Dodge skill or points in strength would impact both Combat and Toughness. Some aspects would be a multiplier, like taking a profession that starts with a weapon and a high level in the melee skill associated with that weapon, or something like Quick traits that flat speed you up in all ways.

[shadowsapex]

I'd just like to say that without point cost minmaxing, plenty of people would still play challenge scenarios. it's ridiculous to think that almost no one would play challenge scenarios without points. people love challenging themselves in games

[Night-Pryanik]

min-maxing is a symptom of the system as a whole being broken.

So you're saying that literally TONS of games and points-based gaming rules systems (with inherent min-maxing) are broken?

How do you quantify the point cost of 20 cats?
what point cost would you give to a hatchback versus a helicopter?

Somehow? Somehow as we quantified all other things like starting gear, mutations, cbms etc? If people blaming profession in having a "ludicrously high cost", then it's a reason to balance the profession, not to hide points altogether.

In general I find all this points hiding idea pointless. We're not removing points system, we're just hiding it, right? We're hiding points from the player, but we still use the same points system to calculate so-called "combat difficulty" or how would you call it. And now we're giving player some vague textual feedback instead of exact numbers, both based on the same points system. What's the point in this? Hiding for the sake of hiding?

Okay, for the purpose of discussion let's presume the whole points-less character generation system is better than points-based one. Then let's enhance the existing freeform mode. Remove all indications of any points from this mode, and it's good. Make all the changes to this mode you need. Even make it a default mode, if you think that

The trouble with systems built around minmaxing is that they are less accessible to new players.

But please leave old points-based modes for those who, slightly rephrasing, "appreciate seeing numbers and [love] working within constraints of the games systems."

[shadowsapex]

hahaha. a system without points is pointless. get it? eheheh

Okay so well the point in it would be that in the current system, when a player selects their character's traits (generally speaking), they select them for the purpose of balancing their points and not for fleshing out their character, because they're obligated to take a certain number of negative traits for their positive traits. It's likely most of those negative traits they don't care about. This also leads to the problem of "free" negative traits. A player should pick a trait because they want to play it. They should pick it because it adds to the story of their character. I know i definitely find it hard to bond with a character whose traits I took mostly for minmaxing

[Night-Pryanik]

when a player selects their character's traits (generally speaking), they select them for the purpose of balancing their points and not for fleshing out their character, because they're obligated to take a certain number of negative traits for their positive traits. It's likely most of those negative traits they don't care about.

As I said several times - those who want to flesh out their characters while not being constrained by management of positive/negative points balance could use freeform mode.

A player should pick a trait because they want to play it. They should pick it because it adds to the story of their character.

Oh yeah? _Should_? Why's that? Why are you deciding for me what should _I_ do?
Maybe I want to create the most OP character in the world, and I don't care at all about their name, story, background and any other non-important matter which doesn't help to make them a little more OP.

[shadowsapex]

and you want truth teller, ugly, wool allergic, and trigger happy on said character? you're dying to play those traits?

Anyway, I'm saying in most cases players won't use freeform. That would be the reason to make the new semi-freeform system default. if that was so, most players would use it. and if they don't like it, I guess we'll switch back.

[Night-Pryanik]

and you want truth teller, ugly, wool allergic, and trigger happy on said character? you're dying to play those traits?

If they help me create the character I want, then why not?

[shadowsapex]

but they're completely pointless and irrelevant

[Kelenius]

I don't really see how fixing min-maxing by removing "min" part from it is any better than the current system. You'd be allowing people to make the same characters they can make now, except without negatives, and "your character is very strong" instead of the exact point cost. How is that better?

[ashGlaw]

Because the current point system doesn't give you much information about how strong or weak a character is, you’ve got to know what all the moving parts do yourself. This gives more feedback about how your selections are likely to effect gameplay in a variety of areas. The current numerical system gives much less info about how things might play

This idea is less about taking information away from players and more about swapping that info out for more something more useful and descriptive. Hell, we could still show the numbers, it’s just not the metric the proposed system would be judged by anymore

[I-am-Erk]

Night, you haven't raised a single concern that wouldn't be something just as playable under one of the proposed systems. Nothing is going to stop you from making the most OP character with the most irrelevantly negative traits you want, except the game will alert you to your character choice being OP. If that's what you want, then the feedback is either meaningless or desirable.

It is baffling to me that you take offense to the idea that traits are a thing people should be choosing because they think playing with that trait would be fun. What other metric do you think would be good? How is that a sentiment you could possibly argue with?

Kelenius, again, minmaxing isn't the principle focus here. It is a symptom of a system not working that well for what it is intended to do. If a repair job that makes the system work better doesn't make minmaxing any different, then fine, the end result of the system working better is still very desirable.

[Kelenius]

Because the current point system doesn't give you much information about how strong or weak a character is, you’ve got to know what all the moving parts do yourself.

Can you explain how that's a bad thing? One of the defining features of roguelikes is learning from experience, mistakes, and character deaths. And, frankly, that's just how playing video games works -

This gives more feedback about how your selections are likely to effect gameplay in a variety of areas. The current numerical system gives much less info about how things might play. This idea is less about taking information away from players and more about swapping that info out for more something more useful and descriptive. Hell, we could still show the numbers, it’s just not the metric the proposed system would be judged by anymore

No. The current numerical system is giving no information about how things might play. Ability worth roughly corresponds with how powerful it is, but it's not meant to be used to measure its strength.

You're assuming here that the new system will be able to accurately gauge the strength level of any character. Character's strength is very circumstantial. You would need to not only correctly assess every trait, stat, skill, scenario, and profession, but also every possible combination, and you would still not be able to give an accurate answer due to the game's random nature. The same character in the same scenario can play very differently depending on starting conditions. It also greatly varies with playstyle, world settings, and mods in use. To add on top of that, the game is constantly changing, and this system will be an absolute pain to maintain for it to remain accurate. As a result, it will be providing the player with inaccurate information, and then it's better to give no information at all.

[Kelenius]

It is baffling to me that you take offense to the idea that traits are a thing people should be choosing because they think playing with that trait would be fun. What other metric do you think would be good? How is that a sentiment you could possibly argue with?

I want to address this point. In one of Stellaris' dev diaries or responces (I don't recall exactly where), a developer brought up an interesting idea in regards to why forcing the player to use sectors is preferable to allowing them to manage every planet manually - the player will, if given an option, make choices that are detrimental to their enjoyment of the game (for context, you could get a lot more juice out of manually managed planets, but manually managing a large empire is VERY tedious). Making freeform the default choice and allowing people to create overpowered characters without showing that this is not how the game is meant to be played will do exactly that. The default mode currently allows for "balanced" (using this term loosely) characters. If you enable freeform or change the settings, you can do anything you want - but that's okay, because it's not the default option, you have to specifically go for it, you know that you're making a character stronger than you're supposed to. Making that default is not good design.

Kelenius, again, minmaxing isn't the principle focus here. It is a symptom of a system not working that well for what it is intended to do. If a repair job that makes the system work better doesn't make minmaxing any different, then fine, the end result of the system working better is still very desirable.

Given that OP's "issues with the current system" only talks about how taking negative traits for points is min-maxing and is bad, that's all I have to work with. What is the focus? What are the problems with the current system? And how is the proposed system aiming to fix them?

[I-am-Erk]

It is baffling to me that you take offense to the idea that traits are a thing people should be choosing because they think playing with that trait would be fun. What other metric do you think would be good? How is that a sentiment you could possibly argue with?

I want to address this point. In one of Stellaris' dev diaries or responces (I don't recall exactly where), a developer brought up an interesting idea in regards to why forcing the player to use sectors is preferable to allowing them to manage every planet manually - the player will, if given an option, make choices that are detrimental to their enjoyment of the game (for context, you could get a lot more juice out of manually managed planets, but manually managing a large empire is VERY tedious).

I'm pretty sure you misunderstood the point there. I'm not saying players shouldn't be able to make choices that are deleterious to their characters. I'm saying that actively arguing that enjoyability is not an intrinsic good in a game is a pretty untenable position.

Given that OP's "issues with the current system" only talks about how taking negative traits for points is min-maxing and is bad, that's all I have to work with. What is the focus? What are the problems with the current system? And how is the proposed system aiming to fix them?

You could, and I do not say this flippantly, you could try reading the ongoing conversation in which Kevin and I have offered clarification and a lot more information on the goals and potential appearance of a different character generation system, instead of continually falling back on the original post as though it is biblical canon rather than a suggestion for discussion.

[Kelenius]

I'm not saying players shouldn't be able to make choices that are deleterious to their characters. I'm saying that actively arguing that enjoyability is not an intrinsic good in a game is a pretty untenable position.

I have no idea what you're referring to. I have said nothing to that effect.

You could, and I do not say this flippantly, you could try reading the ongoing conversation

Well, I'm glad you said you're not saying it flippantly, because I would have definitely thought that otherwise. Thank you for clarifying.

Regardless, I think you don't understand what I am taking an issue with. It's not about OP characters or negative traits - it's about setting boundaries. Allowing people to create any character they want, without limits, and making that the default option, is bad design, because players tend to pick "optimal" choices in the game, even if the "optimal" choice is detrimental to the enjoyment of the game; and the example I brought up is that in Stellaris, if the amount of non-sector planets you could have was unlimited, the players would attempt to manage every planet manually, because that's more "optimal" - and burn out, because it's very tedious, making the game boring for them - so a good design solution is to limit the amount of planets that can be managed directly. Sometimes, restriction of options available to the player is necessary to help them avoid falling into a similar pitfall. Currently, the default system doesn't allow you to immediately go ahead and start with 20 in every stat, 10 in every skill, and every positive trait. You can do it if you enable freeform or tweak settings, but the existence of default boundaries is a good guideline that helps direct the player to create a more balanced character that is more interesting to play.

[Night-Pryanik]

Night, you haven't raised a single concern that wouldn't be something just as playable under one of the proposed systems. Nothing is going to stop you from making the most OP character with the most irrelevantly negative traits you want, except the game will alert you to your character choice being OP.

I think there's a misunderstanding here. My concern is not in inability to create OP character with the new system. I fully understand that I would be able to create OP character no matter the chosen system because I know which combination of traits, stats and skills are most important, and neither points nor textual description can't affect their usefulness.

My concern is that someone is trying to forcibly make me create characters based solely on roleplay with almost no limits. I like current "exact numbers, rules and limits" system. I like micromanagement. I like shuffling numbers back and forth in pursuit of creating good character in constrained conditions. That's why I _never_ used freeform mode. It's like cheating to me.

[Night-Pryanik]

Because the current point system doesn't give you much information about how strong or weak a character is, you’ve got to know what all the moving parts do yourself. This gives more feedback about how your selections are likely to effect gameplay in a variety of areas. The current numerical system gives much less info about how things might play

What's stopping us from adding a bit of info in character creation menu? At the least we could/should add our design agreement (found only outside of the game) that 8 is the default, "average" human. Add that 20 in any statistic actually means demi-god level, and it's intended to be the absolute cap.
Increasing strength from 8 to 9 is increasing it by 1/20 = 5%. 9 strength character is 5% more stronger than a 8 strength one. There's ton of information here with these numbers. And we could add many other numerical info that could show how stat/trait/skill would affect gameplay. We have lots of information hidden under the hood that could be revealed to the player. And revealing it is way better (and easier too!) than creating a new system from scratch.
Textual feedback, on the other side, like "Your character is slightly more stronger than an average human" gives us more questions rather than answers. I don't know how vagueness like this could help player better understand how strong or weak his character.

[kevingranade]

So you're saying that literally TONS of games and points-based gaming rules systems (with inherent min-maxing) are broken?

Absolutely. In paper and pen systems you can't have anything more nuanced because the players have to evaluate things in their heads, which is a limitation of the whole genre that leads to extreme compromises like character points, xp levels, and hit points. Then computer-based RPGs come along and despite having the ability to discard these bad abstractions, they don't, and leave these endemic problems in place.

WE can definitely do better, just because some people are fond of the particular way that the system is broken is no reason to keep it around.

We're not removing points system, we're just hiding it, right?

No, we're completely overhauling the points system in a way that's incompatible with exposing the raw numbers to the player, because we're going to want to have traits interact with each other, and saturate, and combine in unintuitive ways, and negate each other.

What's the point in this? Hiding for the sake of hiding?

The key point you seem to be missing here is that the existing system is wrong the vast majority of the time. The very fact that you can min-max a character in such a way that you can take all the traits you want without taking any negative traits you care about is direct proof that the system is broken. I get that you enjoy shuffling a bunch of pointless numbers around, it can be a fun mental exercise, but there is no incentive to keep it in the game, like with so many other things, you can go do the same thing in literally any other RPG, there is no need for us to be one more place to do it.

You'd be allowing people to make the same characters they can make now, except without negatives, and "your character is very strong" instead of the exact point cost. How is that better?

It's better because it's giving them better feedback about the impact of their choices. If they don't want a challenge, they can pile up positive traits and add stat points, and the game will tell them "this isn't going to be a challenge", if they want a challenge, they can add traits that make it a challenge.

One of the defining features of roguelikes is learning from experience, mistakes, and character deaths.
As a result, it will be providing the player with inaccurate information, and then it's better to give no information at all.

We will still have a freeform mode where you can "figure it out for yourself", what we don't want is a mode that is actively misleading about the "quality" of the character you're making. As for the new system also being misleading, the goal here is to make it provide better feedback and be easier to maintain. I think we can achieve that or I wouldn't be pushing for it.

Allowing people to create any character they want, without limits, and making that the default option
My concern is that someone is trying to forcibly make me create characters based solely on roleplay with almost no limits.

That's not the proposal at all, the proposal is that as people select traits they get feedback about how hard that is going to make the game, that is a limit. If someone wants a challenge, they're not going to make a character that gets evaluated as "OP combat monster" and be satisfied with that, they're going to want to tweak it down to where the game tells them it's going to be challenging.

Your comment is equivalent to saying that a "easy/difficult/hard" game setting is meaningless because there are no "limits" on which one you can select, but that's obviously untrue. This is a more nuanced system for selecting game difficulty.

I like micromanagement. I like shuffling numbers back and forth in pursuit of creating good character in constrained conditions.

This "minigame" is still going to exist, just with the feedback presented differently. If you want to try and make the strongest character you can without passing some threshold, that's absolutely something the proposed system does, it's just an attempt to do it with more meaningful thresholds.

[scorpion451]

I think it would be good to sum up what both sides are saying, because I'm seeing a lot of arguing at empty chairs here:

Thesis A: Some feel that a point-based system discourages creativity in favor of bland hyper-optimized characters based around selecting "correct" options based on inherently arbitrary point values. They feel that abandoning the points system entirely in favor of letting people pick whatever and however many +'s and -'s they want, and giving them a guesstimated challenge rating for that combination, would encourage more creativity and allow a more tuneable experience.

Thesis B Some feel that a point-based system encourages creativity by turning character creation itself into an interesting puzzle to be solved. The constraints of working within a point system means that a character resulting from minmaxing will often have unusual builds with many features that would normally be undesirable. They feel that abandoning the points system will result in bland, cookie-cutter characters based around selecting "correct" options, while retaining the same concept reskinned as challenge ratings instead of points.

I think picking the two arguments apart like this shows the real problem that neither system addresses: _there are "correct" options_

If there are correct options, there is no incentive for creativity in either character creation option. I'm trying not to go down a rabbit hole here about the edge of chaos, but the key thing is that you can have total unrestricted creativity or you can have a simple, easily balanced system- but the two are mutually antagonistic, and the most interesting systems lie in between the two extremes.

My suggested fix:
Eliminate the points, and focus on two-edged sword traits that are balanced against themselves. Let (and even design) them to fit together in odd ways that can mitigate or even benefit from other drawbacks, only weed out the most toxic of combos. Thus I not only can hypothetically play an agoraphobic book worm, I'll _want_ to for both the huge moral bonuses from reading indoors and the RP hook of a character who dreads their trips outside to hunt for the new reading material they feel hopeless without.

[Night-Pryanik]

the proposal is that as people select traits they get feedback about how hard that is going to make the game, that is a limit.

That means that if I discard textual feedback about how my game could be harder with my settings, then there's actually no limits at all?

This "minigame" is still going to exist

I don't get it. First you explicitly say we're not just hiding numbers, but removing the whole points altogether. And later you say I'd still be able to play "minigame" - by shuffling... what in particular?

[NickGrease]

I think part of the issue here is the proposal has very few and very broad brushstrokes. (Much more clarity now with Kevins comment) Nothing wrong with that in principle, but it leaves the finer details to each individuals imagination; expect the worst, hope for the best is a fairly common human trait.

The issue I have is more mechanical in nature, specifically "Noob vs Veteran".

Player A (Veteran)
Creates a new character using proposed (again mostly what I imagine it will be) system. Flavor text that describes difficulty(?) would read: OMG You're going to DIEEEEE - In reality, as a veteran it's unlikely you'll have much of an issue (Save for RNGesus).

Player B (Noob)
Creates a new character using proposed system. Flavor text that describes difficulty(?) would read: Rainbows and unicorns for as far as the eye can see - In reality, dead within the first five minutes.

I don't see how textual hints as to difficulty(?) will be any less of a quagmire with respect to trying to discern what makes an 'easy' start vs. a 'hard' start in relation to new players, when just about everything and anything can kill a new player.

Player A vs Player B flavor text is still going to be misleading a majority of the time. It would be neat (if technically possible) to link "time played" and/or "achievements" to the "difficulty calculation" - Played for 1000 hours - difficulty flavor text will lean more to the "slightly challenging <-> dead easy" range. Played 5 hours - difficulty flavor text will lean more to the"prepare to die...eee <-> you might get lucky" range.

[shadowsapex]

that doesn't really matter... difficulty of a build is static no matter player skill. we're not trying to foretell the future

[Night-Pryanik]

Eliminate the points, and focus on two-edged sword traits that are balanced against themselves. Let (and even design) them to fit together in odd ways that can mitigate or even benefit from other drawbacks, only weed out the most toxic of combos.

The number of combinations for list of traits we have at the moment is enormous. Even balancing all 2-combinations for all traits would require an immense amount of work. And what about 3-combinations? And what about scenarios? And what about professions?

[scorpion451]

This is what I'm saying- it is an exercise in futility to try to balance that way.

Balance the trait against itself- if it gives a large benefit, it gives a large downside. Don't worry about synergistic combos except in the most overwhelmingly ridiculous cases. They are a feature, not a bug, and if there's some specific way to negate a downside, well then there's a reason to play a deaf vegan bodybuilder or whatever. As long as deaf vegan bodybuilder isn't the only viable build, then it's not an issue.

[I-am-Erk]

I don't think forcing traits to come with a downside is a particularly good solution. It will still almost certainly lead to traits with unbalanced downsides that are therefore "correct", and it doesn't solve the core problem I think we're aiming to fix with this, which is that character creation is currently largely a test of how well you've read the wiki.

As for how exactly such a system would work, it would probably work as I suggested above but was lost in the background noise of resistance to change. Instead of a vague "points" category trying to measure the equivalence of starting with 20 pet cats versus starting with a 10% bonus to action points, we'd have trait usefulness split into several categories and roughly weighted on those categories, making it much easier to determine the balance of widely different things.

I don't get it. First you explicitly say we're not just hiding numbers, but removing the whole points altogether.

When did anyone say this would involve removing points altogether? My first reply to you was that if your concern was largely about keeping points forward facing, not to worry too much because there's a pretty good argument for keeping the points explicit in the creator. Obviously you'd need some means to judge the weight of various traits in order to guess the character's power level, there would still be a points system.

[Kelenius]

How are you going to guarantee that the system is accurate? How are you going to maintain that accuracy when the game changes? Just look at the evolution of Slow Healer or Sensory Dulling over the last year. This system is going to put a huge burden on anyone making new changes to the game. And it's going to grow in complexity as the game grows as well. Adding a new trait or profession becomes difficult because you need to balance it against everything that already exists. Any serious balance change needs you need to go look at all costs and rebalance them.

[Night-Pryanik]

core problem [..] which is that character creation is currently largely a test of how well you've read the wiki.

If this is a core problem, then maybe just add useful and/or missing information from the wiki, from the code etc directly to the character creation menu UI?

[I-am-Erk]

Night, I can't tell if you're joking here or not. The proposal in question literally is to "add useful and/or missing information ... directly to the character creation menu UI". that is the goal.

How are you going to guarantee that the system is accurate?

No one plans to make any guarantees. Overall, though, the system would be kept up to date in the same way everything else in the game is kept up to date. By keeping trait powers to discrete categories it would at least be possible to have some internal consistency, rather than trying to compare wildly different traits as if they're equivalent. Currently we have a system that has just as many "guarantees of accuracy" but has no way to be normalized.

[I-am-Erk]

On a different note, I don't think there's much winning via ongoing resistance to change to be had here. Is it possible we could actually start discussing the topic, instead of "no no, do not want"? At present we have a handful of somewhat vague implementation ideas, and the conversation is getting derailed by reiterative complaints about things that have already been responded to, that do not further the actual objective of trying to decide how a system would look, and that are confused because they're responses to attempts to work out a system as though such as system was already at the PR phase. I don't think there's much more to add by a reaffirmation of not liking the idea of Things Being Different, but until a general discussion about how things could look is complete, that's literally all this is.

[Night-Pryanik]

Night, I can't tell if you're joking here or not. The proposal in question literally is to "add useful and/or missing information ... directly to the character creation menu UI". that is the goal.

We already have vague information in character creation menu which should be replaced with explicit numerical info.

I suggest replacing "more resistant to diseases and poisons" with "+X to disease resistance, +Y to poisons resistance". Not "actions that require brute force more effective", but "+Z to chance to pry open doors and crates" and the like.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got the impression that proposed changes suggest right the opposite - replacing exact numbers with vague descriptions.

[Kelenius]

No one plans to make any guarantees. Overall, though, the system would be kept up to date in the same way everything else in the game is kept up to date. By keeping trait powers to discrete categories it would at least be possible to have some internal consistency, rather than trying to compare wildly different traits as if they're equivalent. Currently we have a system that has just as many "guarantees of accuracy" but has no way to be normalized.

Adding categories would make it even more complex to create and maintain.

The current system is not making any claims to accuracy. The new system would. Which puts higher expectations and demands on it.

On a different note, I don't think there's much winning via ongoing resistance to change to be had here. Is it possible we could actually start discussing the topic, instead of "no no, do not want"?

A proposition is made, and people are disagreeing. It's valid criticism. There's no reason to dismiss it like that.

At present we have a handful of somewhat vague implementation ideas, and the conversation is getting derailed by reiterative complaints about things that have already been responded to, that do not further the actual objective of trying to decide how a system would look, and that are confused because they're responses to attempts to work out a system as though such as system was already at the PR phase.

If it's concrete enough to be proposed, it's concrete enough to be criticized. You can't just ignore criticism by saying that your idea is too vague to criticize.

I don't think there's much more to add by a reaffirmation of not liking the idea of Things Being Different, but until a general discussion about how things could look is complete, that's literally all this is.

No, there are quite a few specific ideas that have been brought up, and people have responded to these specific ideas, you're just ignoring it and dismissing it as general complaints.

[I-am-Erk]

Night, I can't tell if you're joking here or not. The proposal in question literally is to "add useful and/or missing information ... directly to the character creation menu UI". that is the goal.

We already have vague information in character creation menu which should be replaced with explicit numerical info.

I suggest replacing "more resistant to diseases and poisons" with "+X to disease resistance, +Y to poisons resistance". Not "actions that require brute force more effective", but "+Z to chance to pry open doors and crates" and the like.

That is not any more useful information than what's currently provided. How often do I need disease resistance? Is failing to pry open a crate something that happens often enough that I need an improved chance to pry it?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've got the impression that proposed changes suggest right the opposite - replacing exact numbers with vague descriptions.

That was one part of the original suggestion, but I've told you like twice and Kevin has said the same at least once that it's not a necessary part nor even agreed upon as desirable. I don't think anyone minds the idea of number values also being more clear. The goal is to provide clearer feedback about what kind of character you're making, and the exact minutiae for how to do that are what we're trying to discuss.

[KorGgenT]

so how are we going to do the trait synergies? would the traits have some kind of member that's just "if this trait then combat -1"? or do you suppose there might actually be some way the game could calculate this

[Night-Pryanik]

That is not any more useful information than what's currently provided. How often do I need disease resistance? Is failing to pry open a crate something that happens often enough that I need an improved chance to pry it?

Your own words:

I don't think anyone minds the idea of number values also being more clear.

I guess many people (me included) might find this information more useful in numerical form rather than in vague description form.
Also, these are only two examples, and strength affects many other things that are not presented even in textual form.

The goal is to provide clearer feedback about what kind of character you're making, and the exact minutiae for how to do that are what we're trying to discuss.

We can argue on definition of "clearer feedback" term, but I can at least agree that more feedback is always more desirable.

[ifreund]

Looking into the code leads me to believe that I could do the initial implementation at least while keeping the current point-based system as an option without undue effort.

I suggest replacing "more resistant to diseases and poisons" with "+X to disease resistance, +Y to poisons resistance". Not "actions that require brute force more effective", but "+Z to chance to pry open doors and crates" and the like.

I don't take issue with making exact numbers visible where they are concrete as in this example. The issue I have is with point values being displayed that are not a result of direct quantification. Furthermore, the current point values are not an effective measure of traits/skills/stats/professions as these can and do impact vastly different areas of the game. I think that a category based system as @I-am-Erk has outline would be the way to go here.

The reason I think that these still arbitrary but now more specific point values should be abstracted away into textual feedback is that the points themselves do not represent a precisely quantifiable impact as strength has in your example. Instead, the point values of traits merely estimate the impact a trait will have on various areas of the game.

[scorpion451]

it doesn't solve the core problem I think we're aiming to fix with this, which is that character creation is currently largely a test of how well you've read the wiki.

Instead of a vague "points" category trying to measure the equivalence of starting with 20 pet cats versus starting with a 10% bonus to action points, we'd have trait usefulness split into several categories and roughly weighted on those categories, making it much easier to determine the balance of widely different things.

What I'm trying to suggest is that this is looking at things backwards, if you want to move the system away from cookie-cutter minmaxed builds.

A lot of the mutations are great templates for what I'm talking about- ursine vision, rapid metabolism, electroreceptors, light bones... they're the weird-shaped legos. The simple rectangular legos are all well and good, but it's when you combine them with each other and a bunch of the funny-shaped ones that you get the really interesting builds. They're not always the correct lego, but they're the lego that's correct for what I want to build at that moment.

[ifreund]

@KorGgenT a json example of how i see a new category-based point system being defined. Using the categories "combat", "toughness", "survival", "crafting", and "social" as an example:

"points": {
    "melee": 1,
    "social": -1
}

with fields that are not present being set to 0.

This system would obviously require significant json work to implement well, but I feel like the benefits outweigh the costs.

Also note that the sum or average of the point values could be used to estimate a singular point cost for use in the current system.

[ifreund]

I could also see having an option to display the estimate point values of the proposed category-based system. Something like combat score: 13, social score: 2 combined with unrestricted choice of traits would achieve my core goals as well.

[Kelenius]

The problem is, it's complicated.

How much combat points is Glass Jaw worth?

What if your character has 4 strength?

What if your character has 20 strength?

What if your character has 8 dodge and 14 dex?

What if your character has the worst healing trait?

What if your character starts with an army helmet?

What if your character also has Fragile?

What if your scenario is Surrounded?

What if it's any combination of the factors above?

...now repeat this process for every trait. Do you see the issue?

[I-am-Erk]

so how are we going to do the trait synergies? would the traits have some kind of member that's just "if this trait then combat -1"? or do you suppose there might actually be some way the game could calculate this

I think for starters a flat number bonus and in some cases a multiplier would work. Like, Quick would perhaps be +1 combat but also 1.1x combat, so it would boost the relative effectiveness of the other combat traits and abilities you have. Later on, we could maybe have group lists that would help with synergy determination, but I'm not sure we need that kind of granularity

[I-am-Erk]

The problem is, it's complicated.

How much combat points is Glass Jaw worth?

None, it's a tougness trait. I'd say for starters it would be worth its current point value, but in toughness score instead of nonspecific points.

What if your character has 4 strength?

The answer for everything you listed is "the same". Those things may themselves boost or lower your toughness total. We're not trying to create perfect granular simulation here, but just recognizing that glass jaw is a trait that impacts your durability and have that feed back to a "total durability" score is a big help.

[ifreund]

The problem is, it's complicated.

That's the point of categories, the current system fails to accurately represent the relative value of traits because they are complicated.

[I-am-Erk]

The biggest thing I'm wondering about is if the categories I suggested are too general or not. Those were "combat", "toughness", "wilderness", "crafting", "social". I think the last three are pretty reasonable since they encompass large swaths of the game that are somewhat discrete from each other, but the first two may be a bit vague for how important fighting and not dying are. We also might want a catch-all category like "utility" for stuff that doesn't fall easily anywhere else, eg. being a good driver

[Kelenius]

the current system fails to accurately represent the relative value of traits

This keeps being brought up. The current system is making no claims of accuracy. Prices of traits are just a limit of how much you can get. There's no indication anywhere that 10 points should give you the same amount of power no matter how you spend them.

Showing how strong your character would be during chargen sounds like a good idea, but it's impossible to measure accurately, and the proposed idea is going to appear more accurate than it really is. Giving misleading information is worse than not giving any at all - after all, the player should realize that if they pick a trait that makes the character tougher, they become tougher.

[KorGgenT]

i suppose we could jsonize categories fairly easily

[ifreund]

The biggest thing I'm wondering about is if the categories I suggested are too general or not. Those were "combat", "toughness", "wilderness", "crafting", "social". I think the last three are pretty reasonable since they encompass large swaths of the game that are somewhat discrete from each other, but the first two may be a bit vague for how important fighting and not dying are. We also might want a catch-all category like "utility" for stuff that doesn't fall easily anywhere else, eg. being a good driver

I'd suggest melee, ranged, survival, crafting, social. I feel like toughness is kind of included in melee and that ranged combat is a distinct enough that it should be separated out. In my opinion, survival could be used as a catchall utility category, including wilderness survival as well as other miscellaneous things that contribute to living through the cataclysm.

[KorGgenT]

melee, ranged, survival, crafting, social

yeah i definitely like that, but i think if we jsonize it i could add a magic category for magiclysm, and we could make an addition later on without too much code if what we decide is lacking somewhere.

[ifreund]

yeah i definitely like that, but i think if we jsonize it i could add a magic category for magiclysm, and we could make an addition later on without too much code if what we decide is lacking somewhere.

When I finally get around to starting an implementation I'll try to keep it as generic as possible for you. Hopefully categories can be added with json alone, though I'm not entirely sure how that would work out with the UI.

[I-am-Erk]

Hm, having them jsonized is a cool idea though since it would make it possible to adjust things in JSON later if the categories we come up with don't work well

[Funguss]

After skimming through this almighty beast I've got to say I find the idea really exciting. I find it really hard to stop myself from power gaming but I love to RP. Striking a balance is always tough. However, a system where the game makes a _judgement_ about my choices would help massively. I can see why that might really freak a lot of people out, especially as there's going to be people out there who will be bragging over their latest 'victory' while dumping on anyone who isn't as hardcore as them. But so what? We can probably keep both systems. Either have an explicit point cost for old style or tally up all the points and smush them into one if there's nothing already set.

Anyone who wants to take a crack at this might as well and then show us the results. If it works it works, if not we can improve it. If it's not salvageable we'll learn from it. Arguing over whether to try something new or not is the big waste of time, really. Thanks for taking the plunge, ifreund! :1st_place_medal:

[Amoebka]

I feel like the proposed system of categories is incredibly naive and doesn't really achieve anything meaningful.
Anyone can already tell that picking "martial arts training" makes them better at melee while picking "imperceptible healer" makes them less tough. The system will simply restate the obvious. These facts should be (and largely already are) obvious from names and descriptions of individual traits alone.
What isn't obvious to newer players is the relative value of traits from different categories. Does being good at melee but bad at toughness make the game easier or harder overall? The new system doesn't tell you that. In order to be useful, the assessment should weight all traits from all categories against each other and give the overall character strength evaluation. Which is exactly what the current system of points does. Having unspent points makes the game harder overall, going into negatives with the freeform option makes the game easier overall. Clear and simple.
The only issue I see is outdated/misjudged point values on some traits. Still, having even an innacurate total evaluation is better than not having one at all.

[Funguss]

Does being good at melee but bad at toughness make the game easier or harder overall? The new system doesn't tell you that.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that when we haven't even seen an implementation of the proposed system yet. In my head I see the categories as giving you feedback about how easy/hard it will be (changing colours of text with a sentence like "You should stay away from melee at all costs" or "You're so social you could own this broken world"). Furthermore, having a description of the categories somewhere in chargen with the impact they'll have on gameplay and how easy/hard you'll find it will probably clear all that up.

Having unspent points makes the game harder overall, going into negatives with the freeform option makes the game easier overall. Clear and simple.

That's grossly oversimplifying it, which is precisely the problem with the current system. There are a host of traits and skills that will have barely any impact on difficulty at all, e.g. driving, ugly, truth teller. This is what Kevin was talking about with dump traits and stats.

Anyone can already tell that picking "martial arts training" makes them better at melee while picking "imperceptible healer" makes them less tough.

Have you played with imperceptible healer? It's actually a lot of fun. It doesn't make you less tough per se, it makes every wound have a long term cost, making future conflicts more dangerous. You're hesitant to go toe-to-toe with a zombie because it could cost you your life tomorrow, or in a week. I would include that in the survival category more than toughness, along with melee. It also makes your ranged capabilities that much more important, so I'd have an increased overall difficulty modifier based on your ranged difficulty. It significantly changes the game, hence why it has an 8 point cost. I'd like to take some health modifying traits along with it, but the current system means I have to go freeform or change the amount of points I can allocate and I don't really want to do either of those.

I feel like the proposed system of categories is incredibly naive and doesn't really achieve anything meaningful.

Please do try to calm down about this. I understand that the proposed system can feel like an attack on the way you play the game but that's not the intention here. your hostility to the change may indeed put someone off working on it, but in a very negative way. On top of this, ifreund has stated that keeping the current system as well is no big deal, code wise. This is a change that will be going ahead by someone at some point, so fighting it at this point in this way can only have detrimental effects.

[kevingranade]

What isn't obvious to newer players is the relative value of traits from different categories.
Which is exactly what the current system of points does.

You missed the part where I pointed out it does this incorrectly. That is a deeply intractable, and possibly impossible, problem. Instead the proposed system would refrain from feeding the player known incorrect information.

Still, having even an innacurate total evaluation is better than not having one at all.

It's absolutely not, bad feedback is worse than no feedback.

[KurzedMetal]

Current system is abusable, and IMO, "min-maxing" in this system is just another word for "abusing". What is the point of having a point system that it is hard to maintain it balanced and if everyone will just abuse it? Make "min-maxers" feel better because they are abusing it in the boundaries of a flawed system?

I think the proposed fussy strong/weak character without any kind of specific points will be simpler to maintain, the player can be more creative with the characters they play and it will probably easier for new players to get into char creation (not having zillion of numbers everywhere simply things).

The game is pretty much single player, a lot of players do save scumming, there's no online scoring, there's rarely any kind of bragging rights for feats anywhere. What's the point of having point limitations? Why not let the player decide themselves what is too much power for them? People that wants to minmax don't need a point system, they can measure the value of the traits themselves and pick similar con/pros if they still want to go that approach instead of relying on devs putting a number for them.

Right now, if anyone ask me "I've spent X points in traits, evaluate my character strength" it will mean nothing to me (it could be between super weak to super strong depending on where they spend it), what is the point of having such a system if is not accurate or representative? Scrapping the whole system is a better idea like it's proposed here is a good idea.

[Aluminumfoil]

What about having a handful of fully fleshed out, ready-to-play benchmark characters at each "competency" level, which the player could then modify in a freeform manner to help players who are interested in such things keep their character at the intended level of challenge?

For example:

Powerful Characters: these archetypes are drawn from the top 10% of survivors. They have the range and depth of abilities that make them likely to survive and prosper. Characters based on them have a good chance at coming out on top of challenge scenarios and are likely to have a relatively easy time in non-challenge scenarios - although they aren't without their weaknesses.

• the Athletic Mechanic
• the Army Engineer
• the Combat Medic

Competent Characters: these archetypes represent the bulk of characters competent enough to have survived the initial events of the Cataclysm. They are effective at the sort of tasks expected of the average competent adult, and have one or two stand-out abilities that will help them survive. Characters based on them have a good chance of surviving non-challenge scenarios, but may struggle in challenge scenarios.

• the Brawler
• the Nurse
• the Police Officer

Challenge Characters: these archetypes represent characters who have only gotten this far by pure luck or the kindness (or nefarious designs) of strangers. Although they were valuable members of society while society existed, they have no great strengths for surviving the apocalypse. Characters based on them can eventually overcome their weaknesses if they're lucky and careful, but are unlikely to survive challenge scenarios.

• the Unathletic Student
• the Stay-at-home Mom/Dad
• the Elementary Educator

Each archetype character having a full set of stats, advantages, disadvantages, and skills reflecting the totality of their character, down to hobbies and near universal abilities like 2-point competence in cooking and driving, etc.

[CrankyUnicorn]

I agree specially in the part of the TRAITS limit. I see a lot of abuse on converting "Negative Traits" into overpowered characters in "Let's Plays". I think that you should not get points from "Negative Traits" at all since in a way it breaks the game a bit. About Positive Traits hum it should be more limited also. I like the pool system but I would suggest randomize the positive traits available. Example divide the "Positive Traits" into Tiers and allow x of each Tier making it impossible to pick only the finest in a character. I think for player that want versatility just let the "Free form".

[kevingranade]

This issue has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/profession-point-costs/23788/2

[hexagonrecursion]

kevingranade commented on Feb 10
My take on this isn't that min-maxing is a bad way to go about assembling a challenging and interesting character to play, my issue with the current system and all variations of it is it's ludicrously imbalanced, and trying to tune it is a never ending tarpit of bikeshedding. It's not min-maxing that's wrong, min-maxing is a symptom of the system as a whole being broken.

The concept of "various traits are worth different numbers of points, either positive or negative, and adding those numbers together gives you a number that tells you how hard challenging that character is to play" is simply incoherent outside of an extremely constrained system which we don't have. All the skills are slightly different in value, all the stats are VERY different in value, and traits have shot-in-the-dark values, and to complicate things further, the actual values of all of these things actually depend on what other traits you have, so simply summing them together gives you an almost completely useless number.

The point of the proposed system is to flip things around such that you pick whatever traits you want (which includes stats and starting skills), and instead of having fixed numbers assigned to everything, the game does whatever it can to give you feedback about how survivable that makes your player.

One of the most obvious things is it immediately eliminates things like dump stats and dump traits. Take all the negative social traits? Go ahead, but that won't make your combat feedback budge since those traits are irrelevant for combat. If you want to make a character that is challenging to play, you're going to have to actually give them drawbacks in various categories instead of shuffling all your "points" from areas you don't care about to areas you do.

I think I get it. You are proposing a paradigm shift. Right now char gen is a game mechanic, one can play it. One can take negative traits and dump stats to get points to buy other stats and positive traits. You are proposing to demote it to a tunable difficulty setting. There are many mechanics in cdda that appeal to players who like making trade-offs and min-maxing, but your opinion is that char gen should not be one of them.

[TobalJackson]

What I can say about this after having read this entire thread is this:

Every character I've made in this game has been with through the "default" system (multiple pools) since I've always assumed this as the intended (suggested, balanced, etc) way to create your character.

Implicit in my choosing this is the assumption that this choice balances the games' difficulty (tuned through scenario and profession).

Right now my characters almost always start with all 12 points of negative and positive traits (far/near sighted, lactose intolerance, truth teller, trigger happy && quick, light step, parkour expert, etc) simply because I want these positive traits and have take on the negative ones as the cost.

I don't particularly want my character to be near sighted and far sighted, or any of the other negative traits, but I take these options because the point cost of the positive traits forces me to.

I know that I could cheat this and change some settings around to create a godly character, but I'm operating under the assumption that the devs have enforced these pluses and minuses around a "balanced" difficulty playthrough.

It seems as though the changes proposed will do away with the default mode of enforcing the points constraint, and instead give the player feedback that will indicate whether or not their chosen build will make for an easy, difficult, challenging, nightmarish, etc playthrough.

If this change were implemented such that the "baseline" difficulty I'm accustomed to playing were exactly reimplemented with the description conveying such, then despite having the "under-the-hood" point assignment restrictions lifted or relaxed, I could still build my character in pretty much the exact same way such that the advertised difficulty matched what is currently enforced under the default multiple-pool character creation.

What I see as the potential benefit of this change is in allowing for the difficulty to be tuned across the character creation pages (scenario, profession, stats, traits, skills) rather than the point pools being more or less exclusive to themselves.

It's my understanding that the other Points options (single pool, freeform) allow this to some degree (I've never tried them) but that this new system becoming default would in a sense "softly" enforce the multiple pools restriction of character traits by indicating resulting difficulty with the freedom of "freeform"'s mechanic of assigning player pluses and minuses.

If I'm seeing the implementation correctly, I can see myself having the freedom to create much more interesting characters while staying within the bounds of what is still a "challenging" playthrough.

I think the perceived problem with the default character creation is essentially how I personally go about creating my character; I stay with the default since I'm under the assumption that the character creation pages are each balanced with each other and within themselves. Due to this, I tend to min-max while staying constrained by the points which results largely in the same character every time (with respect to traits and stats), varying mostly in starting scenario and profession.

If I'm envisioning this proposed change correctly, I'd likely be creating wildly different characters, going off of the interplay of difficulty modifications resulting from changes to each of the character creation tabs rather than constraining my character to having only different scenario and profession for each playthrough.

I think the one point brought up by those against this change is valid: namely how to correctly gauge the impact of each character scenario/profession/stat/trait/skill/items spawned with/starting location such that the displayed difficulty is more or less indicative of true game difficulty, and of a "baseline" difficulty.

On the other hand, this might be simpler than anyone's assuming.

In either case if that problem could be more or less solved, I'm for this proposed change since I think I'd be making more interesting characters.

[Balgamtr]

I don't think character generation has anything to do with min-maxing at all. Most of the players ( at least from what I see) roleplaying using default point system/debug/freeform anyways.

From my point of view seeing actual points in stats serves as a good measurement of character instead of vague flavor text. You can start any roguelike game with a stat system and within 1-2 hours you can pretty much understand which numbers mean what and how well your character does a giving action. I see nothing wrong with that. If you're assuming random player with no gaming history suddenly gonna start playing cataclysm and get confused with the current point system that's making changes for %1.

Also for experienced players, I don't even think character selection has anything to do with balance issues and/or min-maxing. You can start with default 8/8/8/8 character without and traits or skills, find a working vehicle, find a soldier site, run over soldiers get a weapon, crash a lab door, kill turret at night, get unlimited ammo. This alone trivializes %95 of content if you're not roleplaying. Takes 1 or 2 days max.

[anothersimulacrum]

From my point of view seeing actual points in stats serves as a good measurement of character instead of vague flavor text.

I strongly disagree with this, because that flavor text would be provided by a much better system than the incredibly arbitrary systems that points are.

One point in driving, and one point in dodging are hugely, incredibly different in value to your character, but they still cost the same. If that flavor text is provided by the same system, yes it's worthless. But as has been discussed in this thread, the idea is to add some better/different systems for evaluating these.

I don't even think character selection has anything to do with balance issues and/or min-maxing. You can start with default 8/8/8/8 character without and traits or skills, find a working vehicle, find a soldier site, run over soldiers get a weapon, crash a lab door, kill turret at night, get unlimited ammo. This alone trivializes %95 of content if you're not roleplaying. Takes 1 or 2 days max.

I don't think we should be catering to people trying not to have fun :P
Sure, there may be a specific way to play the game that makes it so you can totally ignore your starting position, but for most of the ways to play the game, it's simply not true that your start has no impact. And even if that _is_ your plan, unless you've chosen a nice safe start, it _does_ matter what your starting character is.

I don't think character generation has anything to do with min-maxing at all. Most of the players ( at least from what I see) roleplaying using default point system/debug/freeform anyways.

I've had a different experience.

[Hulkninja]

So, will the old points based system be removed entirely, or will this new system replace it as the default one, without removing it?

I'd love to at least be able to choose. Obviously a significant minority of the players don't want to be forced to play the game with this new system. I'm not 100% sure where I stand on this, but if I try it out and don't enjoy it as much as the old one, I'd at least want to have the option to revert, without also having to downgrade to an earlier release...

And what exactly do you (@anothersimulacrum) mean by:

I don't think we should be catering to people trying not to have fun :P

Fun is entirely subjective. Nobody plays the game trying not to have fun. Surely you don't mean to imply that if someone is enjoying the game in a way that wouldn't be enjoyable to you, then they're doing it wrong?

[anothersimulacrum]

That was mostly-jokey, but what I meant was that if people found that playing that way was making the game less fun (e.g. "95% of the content being trivialized"), then they shouldn't do it.

The old points system would be removed entirely, because it just doesn't really do anything we want from a point system. It does a bad job of providing feedback, it does a bad job of creating interesting characters, it just incentivizes creating characters with the same-ish set of traits again and again because that's how you get the points you want to do other things with the character.

[dissociativity]

to be fair, a difficulty option right at the start that is always indicated somewhere in the status bar (to name and shame) that decides how many points you're allotted could be an option, or simply making strength and combat based positive traits, skills and stats cost more earlier than non-combat related.

Actually it just occured to me, could traits start requiring stats both in the positive and negative?
you can only have fragile if your strength is below 9, so you can only benefit from the points if you're already limited there.
You cannot have parkour expert with dexterity below 10? no deft below 8 dex? no fast learner below int 10? no near/far sighted with perception above 10?, no truth teller with perception and/or int above 10?

These are obviously arbitrary numbers but you get the idea, people want certain traits, including negative traits, if there's limitations on stats to reach said traits, they'd think again.
If intelligence unlocks traits that str based chars would take beforehand, people would be less likely to use it as a dump stat and it's inherently more useful.

Perhaps this should also be expanded to some professions, no doctor is going to have low int, soldiers are required to pass certain standards to be soldiers in the first place, ect, ect.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions. Please do not \'bump\' or comment on this issue unless you are actively working on it. Stale issues, and stale issues that are closed are still considered.

[kevingranade]

This issue has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/what-are-proficiencies-trying-to-model/24808/8

[glimpsebeyond]

As a new player I feel that both pool options encourage min/maxing to an uncomfortable level. This is a pretty difficult game in some ways and I keep dying, so naturally I want to build the strongest character possible to have a better chance at making it through the early game for once. When I found out stats/traits are more difficult to get through gameplay than skills I stopped taking skills. Multi-pool forces me to take skills so I stopped using it. Seeing that negative traits give bonus points makes me want to take as many as I can manage for no reason other than more power. 8 point starting scenarios make the others feel worthless, so I'm compelled to take Really Bad Day and reroll 30 times until I luckily survive once.

Inspired by this thread I created my most recent character in freeform, took everything I would expect an average human to have, then added some additional run-specific attributes fitting a bionic athlete. There was no temptation to pump attributes that didn't make sense in context despite having as many points as I want. I got to make the character I wanted without having to jump through a bunch of hoops. So far this is the most fun I've had yet.