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Messages - theultimatepumpkinpie

#1
General Discussion / Ideology needs some work
July 23, 2021, 03:35:33 PM
Okay so I've never used these forums before, and I apologize in advanced for this being a long post to start a discussion with but I have a lot to say and there's no better place to say it. Also, halfway through there is some spoilers about how to get the new ending but not the actual ending itself.

I love RimWorld both with and without mods, I have over 2,000 hours in it. Hell it's earned it's spot as my all time favorite game. I love role-playing with my colonies. Making unique backstories for some of them and future stories and what not. Hell I have a comic story boarded (I'm not happy with my art well enough to actually post any of it anywhere) about one of my colonists and a whole book's worth of headcanons for the archotechs (and the storytellers as archotechs). So you can imagine I was positively ecstatic for the new ideology dlc when it was announced.

When I first loaded it up I could tell it was really well thought out and covers all the bases you would expect. There's a lot of options and the auto generated descriptions are amazing. I spent an entire day just picking different memes to go with the archist structure (the Archotech worshiping  structure) just to see the different notions that would be associated with them. I love them all. (I also cheated to see the new ending and love the text for that too.) I can tell they put a lot of thought and time into making this but I don't think it was play tested enough or that the effects of the memes and precepts were balanced very well with the normal base game RimWorld because of my gameplay experience. While looking at all the options I could tell that some of the options would be OP of you cherry picked them and not go with a more roleplay inclined ideology which could easily make the game more difficult, and that's to be expected to a degree. But boy oh boy does some of them make the game way too difficult. My actual gameplay experience with it has been a nightmare so far.

Took me ages to decide on what to do first but after a lot of digging around in dev mode and with character editor I realized there wasn't hardly  any new content in the way of items or gameplay that wasn't just mood management from the ideologies besides the dryads and I wanted to do the new ending myself with a mostly unmodded save. (only thing I had was rimsaves and character editor for setting the colony up). So I made an archist structure with tree connection. Made them nudists and gave them high life for fun and made charity essential because I wanted them to be good people. And I plonked them down in a temperate forest in a warm climate so they wouldn't freeze to death. I went for well balanced pawns who all had one or two decent skills and passions but none of them had anything higher than a 7.

They all suck and I hate them. First event I get is a charity quest that I can't do because the people that visited us wanted beer that we don't have. Instant -8 mood debuff out of my control. Fine, base game RimWorld is hard and Randy is well, random. I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is that I can't build anything because they all scream bloody murder if I chop down some trees even though I purposefully DID NOT give them the 'prohibits tree cutting meme' and no amount of planting more trees makes them any happier. I had to make the initial building out of steel because we needed our starting wood to make food while we wait for the fiber corn to grown. But after a short while they are all having mental breaks constantly because of their shitty three tile bedrooms because there's no where to build more and nothing to build them out of. It  takes awhile to cut stone after all. The barracks they lived in before was worse because of them constantly interrupting each other's sleep.  They all keep complaining that there surrounding are ugly which doesn't make any sense because aren't they supposed to love nature? Oh yeah they  do love nature don't they. After all they get a mood debug for not seeing any trees in a long time WHILE THEY'RE SLEEPING.

Anyway, It didn't take long before we got a random event for our first gauranlen tree which is good because everyone suddenly wants one. Except they suck too because being connected to one only gets you a measly +3 mood buff and it takes FIVE HOURS A DAY to main it at only a 50% connection for it to produce and support dryads. I went for gaumakers so I could get more trees for the others but it takes 7 days to get a single pod, another like 5 to get  the actual dryad and your telling me I have to get three of those and wait even longer to get another pod which is a waste of time when I could just do a festival to get more except all of those keep failing because we can't build a good room to have them in because there's no materials and no space. Which gives them further mood debuffs and so begins the mental breaks.

Somehow we get to summer and everyone is hot and sweaty. So much so they keep having heat stroke so I have to put a passive cooler in the main big building that's fine, usual rimworld content, except we have nothing to fuel it with because all of the initial wood is gone and the fiber corn only yields two a piece so even though I planted 200 of the damn things we still barely have enough to keep everyone alive because of the passive cooler and the need to cook food. We've recruited a prisoner, got a quest to host a dude and a refuge quest for 3 more people. Can't  refuse it or they'll be sad but that's fine I need more workers because one of our best dudes now has to spend 5 hours a day pruning a tree that doesn't do anything at the moment. So now we have more mouths to feed nowhere enough beds and more people going on mental breaks because everyone is miserable. "I'm sweaty. I have an awful bedroom and the environment is unsightly and we had to chop trees to survive" but god forbid we actually care about planting more trees or planting flowers or feel good about not having to wear restricted clothing.

And don't get me started on how worse the mood management can get. Why the hell does having a special role increase your expectations BY TWO WHOLE LEVELS. One level I could see but TWO?! How am I supposed to run a colony with two leaders and a specialist who all want luxurious accommodations when we're supposed to be nature loving tree people?!?! And it gets worse is you try to do the Archotech ending (mild spoilers ahead). Which is kinda stupid in a lot of ways and doesn't line up with the ideology trailer at all. The dungeoneering thing is completely optional and doesn't relate to the new ending AT ALL. If you want to do the new ending you need to sell wealthy bases to other factions. (No idea how that works if you have multiple bases turned on). Which why the hell would you do that if you have tree people? They would have to leave the dryads behind. Unless you left those people behind but wait isn't my colony suppose to also worship archotechs? Why would they leave behind one thing that's essential to their religion to seek out another especially when the trailer had them put together?

Ignore that, let's say you sell your first base. you start the second one with the same gear you started with which makes no sense but I'll allow it  because it's there to prevent cheesing the game and taking all the  wealth back out of it. Except now you have a mood debuff near the Archotech structure that takes up space on the middle your new map. Who the hell would want to live near it and buy that new base anyway??? But if you do sell it, you get another new base with an even worse mood debuff! It's mood debuffs all the way down. You mean I'm supposed to beat the game while having a level of expectations higher than sky high while having a constant minus 13 (If I recall correctly,) mood debuff on top of all the original struggles??? But what if you had a different ideology you say? I Tried to play a transhumanist high life colony with a crash landed start and that went quiet a bit better. Mind you I purposefully avoiding giving roles too soon and started with well suited colonists. But that's not the point. The later mood debuffs from the social roles and the Archotech structures still would have been completely crippling gameplay wise. And the important take away here? I couldn't roleplay the way I wanted to. The way that ya know the DLC was marketed.

And just for reference, this me playing it at the 'adventure story' difficulty. I'm one of those people that get angry at people complaining about the game being too hard at higher difficulties even though that's kinda the point of having higher difficulties and say they should just play at lower difficulties. But that's what I've been doing. The idea of trying to do the new ending with any sense of nuance in your ideology on even harder difficulties is just mind numbing. I was going to stream a whole play through of it but I'm glad I didn't because now I know that I simply couldn't.

I've watched a few videos and read some stuff on the community discord of other people's ideologies some people have colonies with crazy high moods all the time because it's easy to satisfy their requirements. Tree connection is easier in biomes with less trees (lol whut? That doesn't make any sense.) High life and open lovin' is super easy especially with an auto bong. Okay great but what if I don't want to do that? Make a torture pain cult and do some scarification ritual. Now they're happy, but Oh wait now your pawn is receiving constant debuffs to their working abilities (when small scars usually don't give that much pain in real life??) Oh you want a blind colony? I hope you don't want to construct anything ever because they won't be able to do it supposed 'psysense' be damned. Live underground with tunnelers? Well devilstrand hasn't changed so good luck growing material to make new clothes. Yes, I get that having different ideologies is meant to push you to have different lifestyles and stuff but the way it actually does, doesn't make any sense like tree people making houses out of stone and steel. And none of this is even touching on the fact that the original RimWorld scenerios don't go hand in hand with the ideology stuff at all. Yes you can create custom scenerios and enough people have talked about the need to make and change ideologies after the fact enough so that I won't but the point is still there.

When royalty came out and they kept adding to it it was weird and frustrating for modders but the way ideology was marketed it sounded like it would be much more finished and polished by the time it came out so it would be a great addition without all the inconveniences. And looking at the actual ideology system it seems like it but playing it? Feels like it's in beta or at least I'm dying hoping, pleading that it is because as is practically unplayable at least for me. No amount of cool roleplay based gameplay matter if you can't ya know actually use them to any degree of  efficiency. I've checking the steam workshop any chance I get to see if there any mods that tweak the new ideology stuff  because I just can't make a successful colony the way I want to. Which was kind of the whole point of the DLC to begin with.

I've been wanting to join the discussion and make suggestions and didn't want this to turn out like a review or a rant but that is kind how it turned out and I'm sorry for that but there's just so much about it that just doesn't work the way it should and I can't not say something and expect it to get better. I really love Rimworld and I'm grateful that the devs are still making content for it and ideology is a really cool concept  and I really wanted to like it. I really hope I can love what it becomes like I have in the past. But as is it actively punishes you making some of the weird funny colonies they promised and it really does need a lot of work still.


TLDR; I was so excited for this DLC and everything it had to offer. The core system is there and it's a cool idea with a lot of cool options but a lot of the precepts just don't work well with the vanilla gameplay in a logical way and overall I'm very frustrated and disheartened by it. It could be really good but it still needs a lot of work to balance it.