Berserk!

[Boston]

Just wanted to drop by and say that I fully support those who think the Berserk feature is broken and really improperly implemented. I agree with toothyp1cks about the unrealistic and frustrating nature of this behaviour state.

I got especially upset about it when I recently played a custom tribal scenario where I started out with a couple of tribesmen and very limited supplies. The game actually played out well and I managed to fight of most threats pretty good. Well, until my tribe started going berserk... And let me tell you the reasons of this:

* Someone watched outsiders die (well that's reasonable, could probably make people feel bad)
* Almost all my tribesmen felt they lived in an ugly environment. REALLY? If I choose to start the game as a tribe (which is an official feature introduced in the last patch) I don't expect my "tribe" to come from some kind of utopian super city with all the luxury items you can imagine. Still I had a lot of flowers etc. and in general I believe the environment for my tribemen was more pleasant than how most tribes with the same technology level would live in IRL.
* People was sleeping in the same room. Yeah, sure. I know this has been a basic characteristic that has been in the game for a long time. But well... If you look at most both recent and prehistoric tribes you will find something that's pretty common: Tribesmen do/did not have a separate room only for themselves. And guess what? It doesn't make them sad! Wierd? No, don't think so.
* Someone's dog got attacked by a cobra and died. Yes, this is a sad event. But I'm pretty sure the nature of this tragic loss still would not contribute to someone going nuts and trying to kill the whole tribe. No, there are many more important things to focus on.

I don't know, perhaps I could have prevented some of the above by tweaking the scenario settings (haven't been looking into those that much yet) and make the game behave a little more realistic. Though I realised I've perhapsed ranted more about the lack of adaptation for the "tribe" feature than the actual berserk mode. I still believe that the Berserk mode is a misaligned and strange behaviour for normal "colony" game play as well though.

Some basic ideas to improve the system:
* Perhaps keep the berserk mood but make it extremely unlikely that it will ever occur.
* Introduce more types of mental breaks, which are more likely. As some people have already suggested.
* Make tribal gameplay make sense (doesn't really belong to this thread though).
* Tweak the mood system to make a little more sense. For example look at the IRL scenarios toothyp1cks described and try to realise how ridiculous the current in-game mental/mood system is.
* Allow us to fine-tune a lot more settings when creating a scenario, then you can maybe keep the current Berserk mode for those who like it. If there just would be an easy way to make the mental break-downs to behave a bit more realistic.

It's a great game in general though, but this is to me a big issue which (for me) ruins much of the immersion and gameplay experience.

1) Having stuff stored on the floor, having stockpiles visible in general, makes an environment "ugly". Get weapons stored in racks, and move stockpiles out of common areas.

2) Just because someone/a group is "primitive" or in a tough spot doesn't mean they like to be dirty, or live in dirty environments. Clean up that dirt and blood.

3) I agree with you with regards to multiple people sleeping in the same room. In fact, it wasn't common for people outside of the very wealthy to get separate sleeping quarters until the 1800s/1900s. However, the more serious debuff is in the form of "disturbed sleep", as that one stacks for each pawn moving around.

4) It wasn't the dog dying that put the tribesperson over the edge. It was the dog dying on top of everything else: the stuff stored everywhere, the dirty living spaces, getting woken up multiple times at night by people moving around, etc.

[keylocke]

i like the new hide in my room mental breakdown.. also the beer binging..

i wish there's more soft mental breakdowns like : cuddle with my pet chinchilla and sleep in a fetal position mental breakdown or going on a chocolate binge while watching tv mental breakdown.

[taha]

Hi! I've just register here after playing some weeks, and i've seen this thread.
...snip...

To survive in hostile conditions, one must have certain "perks". Over-sensitive, weak, prone to illness or mental breakdowns, lazy, etc are more than sure some of the deal-breakers.

Your friend is living in a civilized place, but put him in a life or death situation. He suddenly upgrades from a mental pacient to a liability. (To be honest, he would be the first sent to face the raiders, barehanded and naked).

My point (and I guess also Tynan point) is that not everyone is mentally / physically fit for a rough and dangerous life as colonist / settler. My problem: in the current state of the game, no-one besides Psychopats and Cannibals are.

[jimutt]

I think it's quite clear that peoples opinions differ about how different things should affect the mood of our pawns. Personally I think I'll try to put together a rebalance mod which suits tribal gameplay better. Putting less weight on separate rooms, dirt etc. I still believe that the Berserk mental break need some modifications and rework but when it comes to general "mood modifiers" I guess it depends a lot on the player and what kind of backstory you've made up for your own characters and game.

Although if you just want to get rid of the Berzerk break I put together a really quick Def edit which you can get here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729294240

As someone mentioned "Berzerk" is the only "Extreme" level mental break right now though. So I decided to replace it with the "psychotic daze" break for now.  Though my plans is to put together a larger more cotextual rebalance mod later on. Haven't been looking into Rimworld modding very much but I do work as a software developer so it really shouldn't be impossible. Just need some more of that precious time...

[SpaceDorf]

What I noticed in 14c that the animals don't seem too nuzzle my tribesmen.
I had a mixture of cats and timberwolves as pets which also had kids but none of of my Tribespeople got nuzzled.

I also noticed that in my 14c colony the outbreaks of berzerk/dazed states was a bit more often than in alpha13
Especially since I had about the same Colony Layout, enough food, seperate rooms, and a mostly dedicated cleaner.

Sure Randy E. did his thing but nothing I could not handle.  But still I had a breakdown about every other week.
This was really annoying.

Also the pain my Pawns feel from old scars is way to much, especially when we can't do shit about it in vanilla which really
irks me.  ( And don't tell me there are mods for this .. I do have them, exactly because of this )

[toothyp1cks]

I think we're getting off track.

My point isn't that the mental breaks themselves are unfun or unrealistic. It's the process that leads up to these mental breaks that causes the problems. I'm all in favour of a murder-suicide mechanic that might function similar to Berserk! (bonus points if gets up in the middle of the night and starts slitting throats) or gibbering loons getting naked and so forth - I want bigger, more disastrous mental breaks, if anything.

My problem with the system is that mental breaks are too frequent, too nonsensical, and too inconsequential.

1. frequency
Mental breaks happen, yes. But they don't happen overnight. They happen after being subjected to grinding stress day in, day out, for hundreds of days. 200 days or more, according to the US army. 400 according to the British army. That's how much active deployment it takes for a soldier to burn out and become useless as far as their studies are concerned. What Rimworld misses is that mental breaks are not a stress relief valve, they are the point at which stress overcomes ability to cope with stress which causes the person to become mentally ill. So a mental break happening after two days being stranded is patently ridiculous - and having the entire colony go berserk in stages so that you end up in a rolling berserk that never ends is worse, and it's not fun.

2. nonsensical
Covered in the OP, but basically although mental breaks have a superficial resemblance to real life, they do not capture the complexities of the situation and end up being way too comically abstract and plain frustrating.

3. inconsequential
As frustrating as mental breaks are, they don't even matter 99% of the time. Colonist goes berserk? Forbid the door leading to the room he's in and wait it out. Who cares, L O L. Only when the random number generator decides to fuck you over do they matter, and when that happens there's sweet fuck all you can do to rectify the situation. Mental breaks - or rather mental illness entire - needs a better system where the consequences are dire but you have real tools to address the situation. Instead of just having a berserk cycle, have colonists who break (after months of build up) become suicidal, or alcoholic, or any number of other interesting break-state options that will persist and be a problem for years to come. Minor maluses like irritability and so on that add stress to other colonists as the mental break builds would be cool too.

I will reiterate here: the breaks themselves are not necessarily the problem (though the berserk break ought to be replaced with something more interesting and realistic, like a murder suicide plot that causes the colonist to stockpile weapons and then try and kill anyone he's got social links with before offing himself over a course of days). It is the manner in which they occur.

[SpaceDorf]

Well said.
I fully support your points.

And my last post about the frequency of events should support this too,
since the flaws become even more obvious when small stress relievers go missing.

[noxLP]

Hi! I've just register here after playing some weeks, and i've seen this thread.
...snip...

To survive in hostile conditions, one must have certain "perks". Over-sensitive, weak, prone to illness or mental breakdowns, lazy, etc are more than sure some of the deal-breakers.

Your friend is living in a civilized place, but put him in a life or death situation. He suddenly upgrades from a mental pacient to a liability. (To be honest, he would be the first sent to face the raiders, barehanded and naked).

My point (and I guess also Tynan point) is that not everyone is mentally / physically fit for a rough and dangerous life as colonist / settler. My problem: in the current state of the game, no-one besides Psychopats and Cannibals are.

Well, my point with that wall of text was that EVEN in a civilized place, as you correctly call it, without hard and large dramas, just because of an accumulation of what could seem poor reasons if you separate them, psychotic breaks and other temporal and permanent mental problems provokes situations similar as those we see in the game (not berserk but similar, naked in front of other people, hide in room, no eating, no working), and well, of course my point was that i've seen it at first person too.

So, in a situation like the one the colonists have to endure, that problems SHOULD be much more common that in our civilized cities and countries, that's without speaking about specific, personal perks or personalities, just statistically so to speak. Specific perks and personalities obviously should influence in all this, and i think it does now, right? I'm not really sure. And that's of course speaking about people accustomed to live in civilized places, tribes should be different as they are accustomed to other things, and of course speaking of reality since some arguments given in this thread were that it's not realistic, not speaking about game balancing that as you can see in my last paragraph, i agree berserk state is too much common, it's just annoying.

[SpaceDorf]

@noxLP
You could have made your conclusion more pointed out .. I only understood it on my second read.

For further support of mental breaks being to comman and comparison with real live :

3 out of 5 every 10 days would be between 60% and 70% percent of the total population.
lets say despite of the given living conditions ( and some 2nd and 3rd world countries have it worse than most colonies )

four billion people would go berzerk/mental every two weeks.  ..

well <"insert end-of-world scenario here"> for comparison.

Thats worse than Lost or Walking Dead.

[noxLP]

@noxLP
You could have made your conclusion more pointed out .. I only understood it on my second read.

For further support of mental breaks being to comman and comparison with real live :

3 out of 5 every 10 days would be between 60% and 70% percent of the total population.
lets say despite of the given living conditions ( and some 2nd and 3rd world countries have it worse than most colonies )

four billion people would go berzerk/mental every two weeks.  ..

well <"insert end-of-world scenario here"> for comparison.

Thats worse than Lost or Walking Dead.

Well, i'm not a native english speaker, and you know how people in internet tend to just don't believe you, so i wanted to state that i lived it irl myself
But basically i think we agree, mental breaks themselves are not that unrealistic, they are just too much common and many times the player just lack a way to prevent them.

[SpaceDorf]

yeah, english is not my native language either.
and I meant pointing out more in an optical way.
Your actual point came at the end of a long paragraph in a short sentence with no optical distinction.

On the RL accounts of mental breakdowns, lets not go there

[b0rsuk]

The way it is currently worded does make it look ridiculous sometimes.

[Shurp]

What would actually be helpful is if the "Reason" was the largest negative mood debuff, that way you could tell what was actually driving your colonists crazy.

Reason: bonded animal died

[Simba]

Just wanted to stop by and give my two cents on this particular subject in the game. Just some background; I have quite literally never made a forum account for any game ever but I got into this game when I got tired of searching for hardcore survival games after finally getting bored of don't starve, and decided to try this one skeptically as it is still in alpha. I quickly realized, as other players I'm sure can agree to as well, that this game has immense potential for what it is on the surface - a bunch of pegs with heads on them hovering around. The mechanics are subtly designed so that quite literally anything is possible in any given map, and the modding possibilities are endless, further pushing the games future potential. That being said I really wanted to contribute to the development path of this game in any way possible even as a lowly forum poster complaining about frustrating mechanics, so let's get into it.

The most interesting aspect about this game imo is "pawns". Each has their own quirks and story so that they are humanized just enough where things like defending the colony from waves of enemies holds much more gravity than just dragging a box over units and b clicking the pirates. I think its clear at this point that survival games are few and definitely not few and far between on steam, but as most of us can probably attest to they are mostly quite awful. What makes rimworld different, as the Cassandra Classic and Randy Random (what a dick) can attest to, is the unique story that is told with each different pawn, colony, and game. From what I've seen and read the game creator shares this vision and wants this particular survival experience to be much less cut and dry then build shelter, get food, defend yourselves, make people happy. That being said I think the "mood" and "breakdown" mechanics do need to be addressed.

I believe both splits of opinion on this discussion have valid points. However I also believe the whole realistic or not argument is moot because the biggest issue with the current mood system is that it very drastically stifles the story telling potential that an improved system could accentuate in the game. I believe the OP is on to something very close to what should be the actual system. To start, I think the OP's system is just a more in depth version of what the current system attempts to emulate. When your pawn/pawns first land on the colony they have mood modifiers "new colony optimism" or "low expectations" to balance out the starting hardships of getting a working colony on its feet. In addition, marriages, parties, having bonded pets and some good old fashioned lovin' provide these mood boosters as well that make the hardships of life just a little bit more bearable. Thats the good part. The bad part is when these aforementioned parties and marriages balance out the psychological disstress that comes with having friends and family brutally die in combat, fellow colonists accidentally getting shot in the back of the head by friends and family during combat, harvesting innocent prisoners' organs before mercilessly executing them, the colonist having to eat their friends during a toxic fallout when food is scarce, or more morally gray issues some colonists may disagree upon like harvesting the organs of an innocent visitor to save one of the vital colonists, and the list goes on.

For all of the possible complex situations that can arise with the current mechanics of the game, and again I'm still astonished at the wide range of these situations with such a seemingly simple game in alpha, the effects of theses situations on the pawns are decidedly linear. It seems people are focusing on the fact that yes, a pawn eating their husband (sorry for the macabre situations) can be made up with some beers and a giant marble statued filled rec room with a billiard table. And yes, it is annoying when the scientist/cook with a combined shooting and melee skill of 3 goes berserk because he ate without a table and attacks the psychopath front lining captured and reformed pirate with a giant sword and power armor. But whats more important is the story that can be told of your starting rich colonist that makes it singlehandedly through a tough winter, fends off waves of pirates alone all the while keeping stable enough to use her social skills to convince others to join her. The possibilities and options improving the mood mechanics are so incredibly vast, so I'll try to keep this at least kind of brief and let the rest fall to your imaginations.

Implementing this "bucket style" stress system has many merits. I wanna reiterate the OP's points and maybe go a bit more in depth with them to show all of the possibilities. Firstly having a system like this opens up many more quirks and attributes to each pawn to personalize them even further. This, like I mentioned, has the added effect of creating even more humanized pawns increasing the gravity of each action they have to do as well as how devastating it would be if they finally pass. People that make it past tough passings of spouses or whatever it may be could develop a stronger and more stable psyche. These mentally strong pawns can lead and guide those who may not be strong themselves. There's no reason your starting rich solo colonist who singlehandedly got the colony off the ground should have the same exact chance of giving up on survival and becoming distressed as the newly added wandering glitter world chef, who if not for his ability to make a sandwich would immediately be kicked out of the colony. They would become leaders, and the support that the rest of the colony relies on for hope and guidance. That way, when your starting pawn/pawns tragically pass, the colony has lost more than just the three guys with the highest shooting skill. Pawns who have made it through tough times with their head up will continue to persevere, while the the softer and weaker colonists will not. This is realistic, and adds more depth to each individual pawn.

Secondly, as the OP mentioned, mental health is a deeply complicated and intricate aspect of human life, and it feels like an accessory on the sidelines in the current state of the game. It can't be overstated the importance that this system could have on the stories being told by each game. The newly made widow who takes a walk in the middle of the night to take some time to contemplate when suddenly a pirate raid comes and she's isolated. The glitter world socialite who on the surface is loves making small talk with visitors and benevolently turning new recruits who has inner demons from not knowing what the point of it all is who only finds solace in a fellow colonist with the same struggles. Like I said it feels like I can type for hours at all the possibilities but i'll leave the rest to your imaginations. The point is these are the possibilities, the reality is send them to drink beer build a big room with carpet and a TV.

Third, think of any good survivalesque TV show (the walking dead comes to mind). There are struggles with reasons to continue on, morality issues of killing, those who are more tolerant of harsh conditions and those who need comfort, etc. These are all possible stories that can be told  that open up countless possibilities. There's a reason pirates exist in the game, none of them care about the morality issues of raiding, killing, and kidnapping. Adding quirks like this to the mood system can also color the way you handle your colony. Benevolent colonies are going to have troublemakers who see survival of the fittest as black and white. And pirate colonies would have misfits who think their methods of survival are a touch too brutal. But I'm straying a bit too far from the current discussion with future possibilities so I'll refocus on the mood.

The point is the situations and complications that can arise within the game are dramatic, life threatening, and diverse while the mood system is quite linear. The mood bar shows this as it can go up or down, up is good down is bad. As I said before I have read a lot of posts and tried to get an idea of the game creator's vision, and it seems one of the problems with this whole idea is that it may be a bit more complicated than we're making it out to be to actually implement this. So I want to open up the rest of the discussion to maybe some ideas that could make this system a reality without it being too intricate to implement, and if not just stress the merits a system that this could have so that maybe something like this shows up a little higher on the roadmap to the games progress than many other lesser tweaks.

[SpaceDorf]

3) I agree with you with regards to multiple people sleeping in the same room. In fact, it wasn't common for people outside of the very wealthy to get separate sleeping quarters until the 1800s/1900s. However, the more serious debuff is in the form of "disturbed sleep", as that one stacks for each pawn moving around.

Oh, I noticed for myself you can avoid the disturbed sleep debuff in a large sleeping area by placing the beds far anough apart
I have not figured out the best distance yet, but I think 4 tiles is enough to not disturb the sleeper.