I Call Bullsh*t

[Vlad0mi3r]

So just had an electrical fault in a power conduit that has no battery involved. The enhanced level of "sorry you can't have agency" is starting to get frustrating. Really frustrating.

Yes A18 unstable.

[Bozobub]

Yup.  "Loss of agency creep", to coin a phrase, seems to be accelerating.

[O Negative]

Being allowed to prevent anything bad from happening to you because of "agency" isn't good game design, in my opinion. Players should be faced with challenges; and yeah, some of them should be unavoidable.

Just as a reminder: "Only punish the player if they do something wrong" and "Punish the player if they do something wrong" are two completely different ideas.

[Bozobub]

Hurricanes that destroy mountains that cannot be prepared for *in any way* = loss of agency.

[Quazimojojojo]

Hurricanes that destroy mountains that cannot be prepared for *in any way* = loss of agency.

He patched that a couple of days ago. They can't destroy mountains or natural rock walls anymore, and do reduced damage to other things. Check it out

[TheMeInTeam]

Being allowed to prevent anything bad from happening to you because of "agency" isn't good game design, in my opinion. Players should be faced with challenges; and yeah, some of them should be unavoidable.

Just as a reminder: "Only punish the player if they do something wrong" and "Punish the player if they do something wrong" are two completely different ideas.

I counter claim you're wrong and provide equal rationale (for now none).

In the interest of discussion, please provide reasoning as to why removing agency makes a game better, how much lacking agency is "too much or too little", and how it actually improves the decision making process/experience of the player.

Arbitrarily equalizing skillful play with inconsistent pieces of non-agency does not appear to have coherent backing for inclusion in a game...just players who like skill equalization championing it so far.  Maybe there's something I'm missing.  This is an opportunity to show that.

[Mehni]

I call bullshit on this "agency" theme.

No, you can't prevent a Zzztt anymore. Boo-hoo. What you can prevent is a fire as a result of the Zzztt event, by not building a tinderbox base. The Zzztt event is on the same level as a mad animal event. No, you can't prevent local wildlife from going mad, but you can prevent dying to a squirrel.

And hey, nobody mentioned how the conduit now survives the explosion and you don't have to go hunting for the missing link. That didn't require skill, it was mostly an annoyance.

[freemapa]

Yeah. I also call bullshit on this "agency" theme.

RimWorld is not a crossword puzzle. It has a wonderfully large assortment of random events occuring all the time.

When it comes to "colony-killing" events, I agree that agency is important. No one wants to lose a game with no option of preventing it. But a Zzzt should not be a colony-killing event. Obviously, if you have two pawns and one is performing heart surgury on the other and a Zzzt occurs in the wall next to the operating table, colony death can occur, but this is just extreme bad luck. It's the same way that a pawn can walk through their own deadfall trap and chop off their own head. In fact, an entire colony could all walk through their own deadfall traps at the same time and chop off all their head's simultaneously! And what an amazing story that would be. You may not realize it... but it's specifically the lack of agency in RimWorld that makes all the interesting combination of random events occur.

It's funny how people complain about lack of agency when a random tribal raider avoids 10 rifle shots, walks right up to you, and bashes you with a club. But when a pawn with 1 skill in shooting headshots a tough looking pawn... well, suddenly lack of agency is great!

[Wintersdark]

I call bullshit on this "agency" theme.

No, you can't prevent a Zzztt anymore. Boo-hoo. What you can prevent is a fire as a result of the Zzztt event, by not building a tinderbox base. The Zzztt event is on the same level as a mad animal event. No, you can't prevent local wildlife from going mad, but you can prevent dying to a squirrel.

And hey, nobody mentioned how the conduit now survives the explosion and you don't have to go hunting for the missing link. That didn't require skill, it was mostly an annoyance.

Indeed.  I'm liking Zzzt! events a lot more now as they cause practically no damage.  If you've got adequate generation, there's not even power loss - no broken conduit. 

Damage is still based on battery amount, so a batteryless system (or one with just a single battery) creates a very small amount of damage, basically just a small fire.  I'd already adapted to a "multiple small unconnected grids" approach to base electrical systems, so any given subsystem only has 1-2 batteries.  A Zzzt, then, only affects that area and ultimately is just a small fire, nothing more.

There is, then, IMHO more agency now than there was previously.  If you have a balanced power production system and not too many batteries, Zzzt is more annoyance than serious problem.  You can better prepare for it, and it's less likely to be actually destructive.

I had a Zzzt! today when defending against a raid: one that happened just as the raiders arrived at my defenses, between the (single) battery and my turrets.  Lost power for all of a second or so.  In A17, this would have lead to a fight without my turrets at all.

Tornadoes?  They're very uncommon, often do absolutely nothing, and if they DO hit your base, they tend to not do an amazing amount of damage if you've got a relatively sturdy base.  Bad times for Tribals in a wood base, mind you. 

They CAN kill pawns, but it's only a danger if the tornado spawns basically right on top of one (so you can't get away), and while I've never had a pawn get caught in a tornado, I've seen many rabbits survive as one cut through my snowhare barn in the previous build.

There's a lot of hand waving here, but I don't see many instances of really serious issues vs. people afraid of the potential, even when extraordinarily unlikely.

And ultimately, when things going horribly wrong is basically relegated to extraordinarily bad luck... That's when you can get the best stories.  If that's utterly unacceptable to you, then permadeath mode isn't for you, and just save-scum the stupid-bad luck away.

[O Negative]

Being allowed to prevent anything bad from happening to you because of "agency" isn't good game design, in my opinion.

I counter claim you're wrong and provide equal rationale (for now none).

In the interest of discussion, please provide reasoning as to why removing agency makes a game better, how much lacking agency is "too much or too little", and how it actually improves the decision making process/experience of the player.

...Maybe there's something I'm missing.  This is an opportunity to show that.

To start, I'll take note of your condescending tone, and throw it in the garbage where it belongs.

To answer your questions:
1) "Agency" is a word you like to use a lot, and I'm kind of sick of reading it at this point. Adding an event to the game which you can't avoid doesn't hurt the game in any way. Why? Well, to start,  because you can disable it in the scenario editor, which is a core game feature. It's the player's choice to have an aspect of "inevitably" in the game, should they so desire it. Secondly, there are plenty of really good games out there with challenging events which you simply can't avoid. XCOM2, for instance, has an unavoidable mission where you're downed by a UFO and you have to make HUGE risks which almost guarantee the loss of a good soldier or two. As upsetting as losing those units can be, it adds a layer of depth to the campaign you've played.

2) Player decision making should matter. To keep it simple, at least some of the events should be avoidable or easily fended off, given that the player makes the right decisions. Other than that, everything is fair game in my eyes. Especially because, yes I'm referring to this a second time, you can disable any event you don't like in the scenario editor which is a core RimWorld feature.

3) Having a sense of potential "inevitably" in the game reduces how comfortable a RimWorld player is, no matter how "wealthy" they are. The fact that a meteor could strike, pods could crash and explode, or a tornado could rip through at any time; Those all make a player stay on their toes when it comes to managing their resources. That alone effects a player's decisions greatly, and in an interesting way. It's the difference between, "Hey, I can sell all these extra components so I can afford this thing I want." and "Hey, I probably shouldn't sell all these extra components, I should save some just in case a tornado rips through my base." That exact situation isn't going to apply to every player, obviously. But, hopefully that gives you an idea of where I'm coming from.

Oh, and that thing that you might be missing? I just wanted to remind you that there is a scenario editor which allows you to disable events you don't like, and that it's a core RimWorld feature. I thought that might be it

[Vlad0mi3r]

I call bullshit on this "agency" theme.

No, you can't prevent a Zzztt anymore. Boo-hoo. What you can prevent is a fire as a result of the Zzztt event, by not building a tinderbox base. The Zzztt event is on the same level as a mad animal event. No, you can't prevent local wildlife from going mad, but you can prevent dying to a squirrel.

And hey, nobody mentioned how the conduit now survives the explosion and you don't have to go hunting for the missing link. That didn't require skill, it was mostly an annoyance.

Thanks for your opinion. Nice keyboard warrior work with the "Boo-hoo" bit as well. You know the old saying "would you say that if you were in front of the person your talking too". Well maybe one day we will cross paths and we can play lets find out, we both know thats not likely to happen, cross paths that is.

No you can't prevent dying to a squirrel there are events that could lead you to dying to a squirrel attack. Before you could self tend dying from an infection from a squirrel bite was a risk. Now I used the word agency in the hopes it would be easier for everyone to understand the idea.

I know things are changing, I am also aware of the methods for dealing with Zzzt events, minimisation of damage etc. Now what this change does is not just remove "agency" but in order to avoid it there would be substantial changes in base building style. I can build a colony without conduit thats fine but I do not think it adds anything to the game.

In fact I preferred the old conduit blow it was closer to a real failure of an electrical system (A large scale failure). Houses burn down due to electrical fires in faulty systems. Thats why safety switches are required by law in some countries.

The reason I call bullshit is it feels like primary school, where one kid cannot work out how to behave so the whole class gets punished. So a smaller punishment but it now effects everyone.

Now I am not talking about cyclones, Drop pods landing on colonists, Meteorites hitting your huge base, Wild animal attacks, Lightning strikes on colonists and animals, Drug Binge breaks even though your colonist is "Full of joy", Volcanic winter combined with cold snap. The list goes on. Now do not stark carrying on about all these bits as thats not why I mentioned them. I mentioned them because if I said "I understand and enjoy some of the no agency events" some obviously would not get it.

I hope this clarifies my position.

[TheMeInTeam]

I call bullshit on this "agency" theme.

No, you can't prevent a Zzztt anymore. Boo-hoo. What you can prevent is a fire as a result of the Zzztt event, by not building a tinderbox base. The Zzztt event is on the same level as a mad animal event. No, you can't prevent local wildlife from going mad, but you can prevent dying to a squirrel.

And hey, nobody mentioned how the conduit now survives the explosion and you don't have to go hunting for the missing link. That didn't require skill, it was mostly an annoyance.

Didn't you just give hard evidence that this particular case has agency though :p?  That's what I was asking when I quoted the earlier argument.  If conduits did serious damage with zzzt and there was no answer, it WOULD be broken.  Only a few mechanics actually fit that profile, and those that do *are* detrimental to the game.

Anyway you gave clear reasoning why this is not the same thing as dying to cargo pod drops for example.

[Ser Kitteh]

The whole issue with Zztt would save a lot of typing if vanilla had fuses or something.

The idea of building seperate power grids can help negate that, but again, we have fuses IRL to absolutely negate that issue. Switching on/off switches needs to be automated if the game sticks to its refuse of putting in fuses.

[gipothegip]

In terms of agency, I'm fine with limiting it under the condition that it adds meaningful decision making and strategic value.

In terms of the new zzzt event, I'm not bothered by it. Fire safety, and being prepared to put out fires helps. Furthermore I feel the current zzzt event is nerfed for those of us using batteries.

Overall though, you can design your base in way to mitigate the damages and be prepared for it. So I don't think zzzt events are that bad.

[Yoshida Keiji]

Why is all this thread not in A18 Unstable? Where's Callahan?

The new Zzztt is too lame, like said earlier, the old one was more fun as we had to re-connect the power lines. Now it was reduced to no threat at all.

...and the Tornado version 3.0 is tremendously lame...




What are people going to do now? A killbox for Tornados? Torna-box?

Making it bounce back on stone walls made it so weak that if you are in Large Hills, just making a wall to connect two hills could simply bounce it back to the map borders...all this because of the "Agency" bullshit...

If people didn't like the Tornado version 1.0... you should have just rolled back to Base Builder difficulty (with Tornado version 3.0) and let the fun for everybody else.