My review: Rimworld - defense game with a good sandbox base builder (+ suggests)

[levgre]

So I have about 20-30 hours into RimWorld now.  There's a lot I like about it, but also a decent amount I don't like. 

The summation of my review is: base building in RW, while appearing to be the primary focus, is essentially a background from what is a base defense game.

Once you have an understanding of the base building mechanics, there is basically zero threat of defeat or even a major setback from base building mishaps.  The main threat will always be raiders.  This is persistent for each story teller and difficulty level.

I don't think this meshes with the design philosophy of the game, and what is presented to the player.  Base building does in fact dominate your time in between the short and intense raids.  The number of peaceful build options dwarfs the number of security build options. Thus you would think the base building would be the main challenge.

Suggestions to help fix this:

1. Make work assignments have more of a cost. The colonists have the stamina and efficiency of worker ants, which leads to there being little challenge for balancing resource production of food, building materials, so on.  Even a 78 year old can easily mine 14 hours, 7 days a week.  As long as they have some basic needs met, this 100 hour work week has little impact on their mental well being, and strangely zero impact on their physical energy or well being.  Give certain tasks a higher physical energy requirement, which will reward adding diversity to each worker's week, having a variety of entertainment options, etc.  Someone who researches or crafts all day might want to unwind with a physical activity like swimming.  Someone who mines all day might want to watch TV or attend a social gathering.

2. More distinct personalities between the characters.  I can essentially ignore most positive and negative traits and be fine.  The only ones that make a really big difference (sometimes annoyingly) is colonists who refuse to do 'dumb labor', 'violence', etc.  Why is every colonist a super light sleeper, and likes to sleep alone (other than with their romantic partner)?  These are people stranded in a vast wilderness on a strange world.  Some people could like the comfort of sleeping in the same room.  Just one small example.

3. More reward for catering to the colonists and making them happy.  As far as I know, there is little difference between 50% happiness and 90% happiness.  From that, there is little motivation to care or follow your colonists much.  Just give them a decent sized room, right temperature, and spam abstract statues throughout the base.  Have them like a larger variety of things, different decorations, favorite foods, so on.  Have their work output greatly depend to their happiness, so this investment of the player's attention and game resources is worth it.

4. Combat is incredibly harsh, demanding, and you lose or win the game by it.  The only real challenge I find in the game is figuring out a decent base defense to not have half my colonists taken out by frags, or my resources wasted by constantly replacing turrets.  I've seen mods that add more defensive options, which certainly helps.  Social alternatives to resolve raids would probably be better.  Why are these raiders so dead set on destroying the colony (or at least weakening it by taking a prisoner)? Historical the most common technique of violent career criminals is to take tributes for safety.  This tends to be the best risk-reward. They don't risk their own lives, and siphon off the hard work of the communities around them.

I could probably add more, but I think I put enough out there for one thread.  I think Rimworld is a pretty good game as is, but could be a great game with more polish and balance.

[Mufflamingo]

Pawn mood affects global work speed, this is good.

[Vaporisor]

Whay difficulty rating were you doing plays on?  One consideration for your review is that there is a niche of games that rimworld falls into where the purpose of the game is "fun"  The game actually intentionally tries to take out your base with disasters and combat.  In game engine has a minmax desired range of people it wants you to have. 

The bigger, better and more affluent your base is, the more challenge it will throw at you.

The other consideration to really maximize rimworld is to keep in mind that the game developer has put the focus on the pawns more than the base.  A small and tight knit community will mean each person has to work more, but is more stable and defendable.  Guys are supposed to be injured and killed making every loss and success more valuable.

Mood is interesting.  It would be not too bad if real happy had a perk, but if viewed in their perspective, they are working to their best when in a good mood as is.  Making a joyous colony is more about preventing depression and countering unforseen.  When your epic melee guy goes berserk, you will understand the purpose with having happy vs hard labour.

On labour, there actually is what you talk about with aging.  There are old age health effects considered and are seen in modifiers.  They may work long hours but do so much slower and less efficient.  Conciousness modifiers mean they tire out faster as well.

Much of your addresses come from looking with a more traditional gameplay perspective.  Try a Randy Random map harder difficulty without turrets and not go for massive size.  Pawn personalities and the extent it isnt about turtle base really becomes more apparent.  Combat is very individual to maximize.  Moving each pawn like a piece on a chessboard.  Duck and cover tactics, strategic retreats, etc.  Mourn the dead ^.^

[ReZpawner]

 I urge you to play the game for more than 30 hours before assuming you know everything about it, since your review here is full of inaccuracies and errors. Also, if you feel that the game is too easy, try upping the difficulty. That's what it's there for.
There's just so much wrong about your review that I cannot give you over a generous 12% score in my review of your review.

EDIT: I think that if you took some time to actually play the game, perhaps even visit the forums and do some research, that you at one point will be able to create an acceptable review of this game - but as of now it requires a lot more work, as well as polish and balance.

[SuperCaffeineDude]

I think a review might be the wrong term for a feature request list   .

Yeah, the refusal to do dumb labour is a bit annoying, they should rather just suffer a mood penalty similar to the brawler using melee weapons. So a poncy artist might not like hauling being on his responsibility list, but he'll do it. Perhaps the same could be said for those morally incapable of violence, rather than incapable like a sex-slave (context wise).

The sleeping alone is meh, the mood penalty is pretty small, but I do find the pawns a bit demanding for space in general, especially given how furniture takes up space, space needs to be lit and at an appropriate temperature, and there being no z-axis.

The tribute stuff is something I really honestly feel is a missed trick, you can accept a fleeing wanderer into your ranks at the "expense" of being attacked (more food for my wargs), but that same dialog could host offers to pay pirates off, send food/medical-aid to your starving allies, etc, by accessing your resource pool to use as a bargaining chip.

[keylocke]

the negative traits do have a tendency to impact heavily if you played long enough that the mood buffs you get from starting a new colony have finally worn off. a year and up is usually when your too-smart, volatile, depressive, etc.. people starts doing a mental breakdown downward spiral along with social fights.

if you read some of the stories posted in this forum about their colonies succumbing to mental breakdowns, it's actually quite a common occurrence. (if you don't savescum, mod, or cheat) especially if you're playing on higher difficulties (challenge or extreme), and you recruit a lot of people with negative traits.

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though i sorta agree that at the heart of the game, it's essentially an RTS base defense game, especially since your population is usually kept artificially low by making recruitment such a pain that you are often forced to rely on constructing your "defense gauntlet" like a tower defense game..

the thing is : the fewer people you have in a colony and the longer you play and get wealthier, the more the game is gonna look like tower defense coz you will always be outnumbered and trying to avoid permanent injuries to your very few and precious pawns.

which is why players are often afraid of letting even a single pawn die or permanently injured coz replacing pawns with a new one means 1) waiting and hoping the RNG gods lets you capture someone worth recruiting, something that gets harder coz of pop cap.  2) you actually need to spend more time trying to recruit them, also gets harder coz of pop cap. 3) you need to spend more time trying to retrain the new recruits from scratch.

this is why people compensate for this lack of manpower by constructing traps and killboxes. and sniping from afar and mortars. basically anything that allows you to attack the enemies with minimal injuries/casualties.

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the original aim of the game is to let players "escape" via constructing a spaceship.

but the thing is : rimworld is such a friggin fun game to play that few people actually wants to "win" the game.

launching the spaceship is like pressing the eject button from fun. 

[levgre]

I urge you to play the game for more than 30 hours before assuming you know everything about it, since your review here is full of inaccuracies and errors. Also, if you feel that the game is too easy, try upping the difficulty. That's what it's there for.
There's just so much wrong about your review that I cannot give you over a generous 12% score in my review of your review.

EDIT: I think that if you took some time to actually play the game, perhaps even visit the forums and do some research, that you at one point will be able to create an acceptable review of this game - but as of now it requires a lot more work, as well as polish and balance.

I think your post violates the rules of the forum.

And I play on the hardest difficulty and do random biomes and characters. 

Also to say 30 hours is not a sufficient amount of time to play the game is a good way to alienate gamers at large.  Not everyone is going to put 50-100 hours into a game before they make a judgement, nor should they.

[ReZpawner]

No, the rules are about personal attacks - I'm attacking what I view as a very inaccurate review of the game, which completely misunderstands the type of game, and assumes it's a game which it isn't. Basing a review on fallacies is incredibly damaging, both for the game, and to game reviewers as a group. Coming into a game community and suggesting changes based on 30 hours of playtime is also incredibly arrogant.

[Vaporisor]

His view was quite accurate.  It was accurate from a different playstyle.  So what if it is a misunderstanding.   It is one that other players have so suggestions can be very valid.  It helps ensure that the game is understandable from more peeps.  Nice barracks is a good idea.  Tiredness  and joy?  Why not performance affecting?

[levgre]

the negative traits do have a tendency to impact heavily if you played long enough that the mood buffs you get from starting a new colony have finally worn off. a year and up is usually when your too-smart, volatile, depressive, etc.. people starts doing a mental breakdown downward spiral along with social fights.

if you read some of the stories posted in this forum about their colonies succumbing to mental breakdowns, it's actually quite a common occurrence. (if you don't savescum, mod, or cheat) especially if you're playing on higher difficulties (challenge or extreme), and you recruit a lot of people with negative traits.

True colonists get more needy after those new colony bonuses are gone but you have such a wealth of resources and skills that you should be able to meet their needs pretty easily.

I do get soft breakdowns on occasion on extreme, more from unusual stuff like being ill or passing by corpses (I could avoid the corpse problem if I really tried by limiting areas).  But I've never had a hard breakdown/berserk after I knew what I was doing.

I'm aware that some people look for very extreme maps, very cold ones with few animals to hunt, no growing period, etc.  I watched someone doing this on twitch and they actually had to make the tough decision to butcher the pet dog for food rather than starve.   I think tough decisions like that, choosing between two negative consequences because you don't have the resources to avoid both, should be commonplace on extreme difficulty regardless of biome. 

Although I typically just do above average difficulty in games, not the hardest. I don't like a 'too' punishing playstyle like extreme wants to be according to the description.  I have a pretty high tolerance for punishment, rogue-likes are one my favorite genres.  But for example in 'Faster Than Light' don't like piloting the weakest ships on hard difficulty, because you feel so helpless at times.

[Vaporisor]

To have that is a more difficult one am sure since it relates to core game mechanics.  The game can throw all the sicknesses and flares at you it wants, and a stable base only gets hindered.  In some ways, the differing biomes are a second level of difficulty outside of the storyteller.

The only way really to address is to have AI improvements to counter the mega killboxes.  That makes defences more base wide and more value to the people.  It also makes a person consider capping population of every expansion is a weak point. 

Turrets and automated security then is support.  It makes the scale of the game limited by the players ability more than being a turret defence.  The most run I have is the randy random and only building turrets to support my pawns later game after everything else is up and running stable.

Family members in raids does change the game.  That is a heck of a mood penalty.  More looking at the disasters I think might really be the best direction to make it more management, less turret.  Example is say earthquakes?  More internal squabbling?  Mechanic driven over difficulty scaling has lots of room for zero sum development.

[keylocke]

i don't think killboxing is a problem anyways. the problem is that players try to avoid combat coz recruiting replacements for the dead or permanently injured colonists is such a pain in the arse.

hence, killbox and other exploitative strategies are developed by players for long games. unlike people in very cold ice sheets or very hot extreme deserts.. coz for people playing in extreme biomes, the entire map is like a temperature-based killbox.

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however, having a high population cap and being relatively sure that players have a good chance of capturing and recruiting prisoners after battles would encourage players to be more aggressive rather than defensive.

it would also encourage more drama, since the players won't feel compelled to give their precious pawns a "plot armor" via savescumming. haha..

it allows players to mourn their dead and move on..