Personally a very small change I'd love to see in the game is a toggle between Male and Female symbols. You can randomize a character until they have nice stats but now your Jenny is more of a Jeff and he's got the trait Pregnant, genders don't really have much meaning besides naming and character investment at the moment but when relationships come into play they'll be far more important.
I've decided that I'm going to revisit the characters based on the feedback I've gotten so far. I think their individuality should be a little more subtle and up to the player's imagination, as per what @salt1219 mentioned. As far as the survivors you start off with, I get the feeling that something much more substantial and interesting than the current system is in the works.
In my opinion a system that would serve the storytelling really well is one that would force the player to choose from a small roster of survivors, say 8 or 9, while escaping the ruined ship. Each character should still be completely random, but they should all have meaningful strengths and debilitating weaknesses. The reason for this: RimWorld is a survivor story, not an expedition. In an expedition, you would choose a diverse team composed of skilled and well-adjusted individuals, and the fun would come from the pure act of creation, discovery, and so on. Prison Architect isn't the best example because your staff is completely neutral, but that's a game that runs along these lines. Managing their relationships and satisfaction isn't an issue (except for the prisoners themselves, obviously).
In a survivor story much of the excitement comes from the tension between characters, and their inadequacies at performing the task at hand, such as scavenging, working together, dealing with harsh or dangerous environments, and any other tribulations. I'm blanking on a good game example, but the movie "Flight of the Phoenix" and the show "Lost" come to mind. Oooh, or "Battle Royale", one of my favorites.
So back to what I was saying, the current system in Rimworld allows the player to, in an obtuse way, build a roster of survivors that fit the needs and their plans of the player. I believe this is counter-intuitive for a survivor sim because as a player I always want the best outcome, so why would I ever choose anything but the best survivors? I would keep hitting that randomize button until my survivors are just the way I want them, and then start my world. What I suggested, where the AI storyteller chooses a small lineup to choose from would force the player to make tough decisions about the strengths and weaknesses of the colony, and then the resulting experience would snowball from their.
I believe this would lead to vastly different and interesting playthroughs. Maybe Classic Kassandra chooses a lineup that gets along really well, but is prone to more mental breakdowns. This would result in maybe a more stable colony during the calm points, but increased difficulty during raids.
Thanks for the response
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Topic: Detailed Character Ideas (Read 2221 times)