Complicating relationships / factions / thoughts - to address issues

[mumblemumble]

Theres a lot of talk here and there about issues with the relationship system, and also the faction system, of things like looks mattering so much, and how factions can be made best buddies with money, and recently comments over a17 where the price of a caravan was raised, compared to the old means, and how this compares to donating money to BUY relationship points to then ASK for a caravan.

These issues all stem from 1 issue in my opinion : both these systems are somewhat 1 dimensional.

There is no really situational aspect to any of the things which effect these things : A donation to a faction will make them just as happy the first time, as if you kill and cannibalize their caravan just for kicks, then release prisoners and pay them to be buddies again : something both unrealistic, and static.

I personally think something which would be useful to apply to factions, relationships, and thoughts, is perhaps modifiers, and thought types : similar to the treatment that was given to joy hobbies and drug resistances.

My idea is, certain thoughts, events in relationships, and to factions could have modifiers to others, so having a deep conversation with an ugly person might reduce the penalty of them being ugly, and a lover might be harder pressed to dislike their lover for petty things, and also include a sort of history aspect to things so history has an effect beyond just long expiring effects like deaths are now.

But regardless of my ideas, I think its a cause of concern going forward, that over-simplicity is causing problems themselves : You cannot add more complicated game-play to these aspects when the mechanics to do so are still so very simple which seems to be a problem slowly creeping up on rimworld for those 3 elements. And this is why you get for instance, a staggeringly ugly person who, even if he cured cancer, people would only mildly tolerate : which is a bit odd.

What do you guys think? Is there an issue with these mechanics being over simplistic, leading to these problems? How could we improve these things? What ideas or thoughts do you have? I know it would be a lot of work to change these things, but frankly my concern is these problems might keep growing further in the longer this is left.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about this.

[Toast]

Definitely agree that the system needs work. Right now it depends far too strongly on causing friction through traits that are both superficial (ugliness just should not matter at all in a survival situation) and static (pawns who've been in love and married for years will never, ever get over that facial scar or annoying voice their beloved spouse has, and every pawn has exactly the same standard of what is annoying). Human beings don't work like this. People who share a bond--through battle, mutual support, being in love, or just coming to be friends through the ordinary means--WILL stop caring about superficial crap like facial scars, and when pawns in Rimworld don't, it makes it harder to see them as believably human.

Responding to *behavior* rather than static traits is the direction I'd like to see the social system go in. The Abrasive and Kind traits already do this; they directly influence pawn behavior and thus will indirectly cause other pawns to like or dislike you based on what you have actually done to them. They also do not cause the ridiculous problem the superficial traits have where a really ugly wanderer joins, you immediately tell him to go punch a bear, and everyone in the colony is delighted for weeks because their "rival" who they never passed a single word with is dead. This exploit doesn't work with an Abrasive pawn because the behavior that the trait influences hasn't happened yet. This is how it should be.

There are traits that do this in a less direct way too--such as Teetotalers vs. addicts or Hard Working vs. Lazy. These represent fundamental differences in philosophy or lifestyle, and they influence pawn behavior too, and in a way that would believably cause friction in a survival situation.

So: more traits that influence behavior, more reactivity to behavior. Other than that I don't have concrete suggestions because, well, I'm not a programmer, and I don't know how best to implement such things.