[1.0] RimWorld is being sucked dry of its flavour

Started by XeoNovaDan, July 07, 2018, 11:29:48 AM

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XeoNovaDan

Having seen the change log for the latest build, and also having recently finished a run, it's no secret that many unique characteristics of things in RimWorld are being axed, and it's been a growing concern in my eyes. Let's briefly outline what's changed so far which I believe warrants this thread, and this does include changes which have been reverted:

No more stat changes on apparel - While this has thankfully been partially reverted with armour affecting movement speed again, it's still disappointing to see that apparel such as parkas and power armour no longer having work speed penalties (something which could be attributed to their 'bulkiness'), and other larger apparel items no longer giving movement speed penalties (e.g. dusters). To a lesser degree, there's also the removal of the protection deviation between jackets and dusters, meaning that dusters are now decisively the superior apparel item to go for, rather than previously being situational (although dusters were still mostly superior due to their coverage, presence of blunt protection and heat insulation).

Normalisation of weapon cooldowns to 2 seconds - One of the most recent changes, and one I personally heavily disagree with. Each weapon feels kind of the same now, bar damage differences and costs; no more semi-unwieldy yet powerful longswords, or nimble knives, or anything in between. This is also a similar story for prostheses.

Generic renaming - The renaming of Some Challenge, Rough and Intense difficulties to Medium, Hard and 'Extra Hard', Pekoe to 'Tea', Gravel to 'Stony Soil'. Overall, everything just seems to be made more generic, and if anything, that's just somewhat tragic. Granted, this is a minor issue.

While I do understand that since 1.0 is going to be a 'To the masses' release where there will be an influx of new players, dare I say RimWorld's losing some of its flair and even appeal to us longer-term players - there is also the challenge of catering to the casual and hardcore at the same time. I personally think that the saying 'don't fix what isn't broken' fits very well in this situation.

I still very much enjoy RimWorld, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely sad from a hardcore player's perspective to see some of these changes happening. It'd be nice to see other thoughts on this too, perhaps adding to anything that I missed.

Mehni

I'll add that RimWorld has lost the "Western" part of the "Western/Sci-fi" feeling and a lot of its soul. I love the game ever since I saw it, and every alpha has introduced something great. They build on each other, and it's gotten better every time. But it also gets worse as it loses its focus with each new alpha.

RimWorld started as a colony manager. A pretty difficult, almost hardcore, colony manager. It was oriented on the survival of the colony as a whole, and the colony was a pretty tight group of misfits mostly struggling to survive through hardships. Nowadays that's not really believable anymore: We can build everything from medicine to TVs to grenades to bionics. Colonists can get a pretty comfortable life late-game.

Instead of being a colony manager, it's now rebranded as a "Story generator".

I see most of the changes (recent or otherwise) as an attempt to remove the most unbalanced game elements: Some of the worst strategies/elements get a buff and some of the best strategies/elements get a nerf. This makes sense from a game design perspective, but it's slowly eroding the sandbox part of the game and instead of encouraging more varied gameplay it's all normalised to remove the fun excesses.

The removal of excesses also means that, to achieve its goal as a "Story generator", it needs to pull out some pretty desperate Deus Ex Machina elements to still generate stories. For example, the Corpse Obsessions mental breaks or pets eating drugs or colonists breaking up and starting affairs like they're the stars of a soap opera. Those are funny the first time they happen, but they lose any type of credibility the fifth time and become an annoyance.

RimWorld in ~A15 was a really fun colony manager that generated stories on the side. RimWorld 1.0 falls flat as a full-fledged story-generator and the colony manager part of it suffers as a result.

Adamiks

Can't agree more. I get the whole appealing to new players, but, look at us, everyone here was just a new player once, yet, just the forum itself has so many active members. I've never seen a new player complain about the things that Tynan has changed (non-generic names, etc), either.

Anniebenlen

I disagree that the story telling elements are a bad thing.  There are plenty of city/colony builder games out there, it's refreshing to be playing a game with a different ambition.  And I really disagree with the idea that this game has no flavor.  It's certainly evolving, and in just the couple of months I've played I've seen some changes, but it's hardly what I would call a generic management game.

I understand that not everyone likes the same things as I do, of course. But I still find this game almost mezmerizing in it's execution. 

Mehni

Quote from: Anniebenlen on July 07, 2018, 12:23:53 PM
I disagree that the story telling elements are a bad thing.

They aren't; they're just repetitive and their usage is so cheap it doesn't feel like they come from an intelligent AI-driven storyteller. I was watching a twitch stream yesterday and saw six corpse obsessions in the course of two hours.

Telling the same story over and over again isn't how you captivate an audience.

Jibbles

Quote from: XeoNovaDan on July 07, 2018, 11:29:48 AM

No more stat changes on apparel - While this has thankfully been partially reverted with armour affecting movement speed again, it's still disappointing to see that apparel such as parkas and power armour no longer having work speed penalties (something which could be attributed to their 'bulkiness'), and other larger apparel items no longer giving movement speed penalties (e.g. dusters). To a lesser degree, there's also the removal of the protection deviation between jackets and dusters, meaning that dusters are now decisively the superior apparel item to go for, rather than previously being situational (although dusters were still mostly superior due to their coverage, presence of blunt protection and heat insulation).

Yeah, figured this would disappoint some players.  Tho I always disliked the older way since day 1.  Going through stats, filtering the bills, all the effects of it came off overly complex for something that should be simple. Just seemed tedious to me really if I had any care about it. I was hoping for an update on managing outfits tho.  I always wanted to efficiently change out their clothing/gear to prepare for battle. Think of having a locker that contains helmet, vest and whatnot and they can change at a click.  Or they could at least get to it in time if you changed their assigned outfits.  Now it takes a ridiculous amount of time to change gear (for what reason?)  So I'll let them wear what they want as I've done in previous versions, and I guess they'll continue to grow plants and go cloud-watching in power armor.

Quote from: Mehni on July 07, 2018, 11:48:17 AM

RimWorld started as a colony manager. A pretty difficult, almost hardcore, colony manager. It was oriented on the survival of the colony as a whole, and the colony was a pretty tight group of misfits mostly struggling to survive through hardships. Nowadays that's not really believable anymore: We can build everything from medicine to TVs to grenades to bionics. Colonists can get a pretty comfortable life late-game.

The progression to endgame was always too short IMO.  Farming/Greenhouse for example. The progression for that is mainly on pawn skills, blah. Honestly there should be more work into it.  I do appreciate that we get to craft bionics and stuff now. I would like to see new content items only obtainable in quests..Stuff like vanometric power cell is interesting. See, I mainly stick around for base-building. Like to make it cute if I can and build whatever I'm allowed. (not to be confused with base-building difficulty).  The stories keep it somewhat interesting but there's not much surprise when it's always raining shit on you.  Caravan in hopes for bionics was just wasn't a great experience even if everything went according to planned. 

IndustryStandard

Quote from: Mehni on July 07, 2018, 12:31:47 PM
Quote from: Anniebenlen on July 07, 2018, 12:23:53 PM
I disagree that the story telling elements are a bad thing.

They aren't; they're just repetitive and their usage is so cheap it doesn't feel like they come from an intelligent AI-driven storyteller. I was watching a twitch stream yesterday and saw six corpse obsessions in the course of two hours.

Telling the same story over and over again isn't how you captivate an audience.

That's always been Rimworld stories, it isn't directly the stories the game has, it's the stories that come from players creative enough to take what is being created for them and make something out of it.

Of course saying something like "We had 3 prison breaks because of a psychic beacon in the last week." doesn't sound good, it sounds boring. Put that story in the hands of someone having fun and we get names, details and the results of actions, which tend to be unique and far more interesting to read.

OP provides an incredibly weak list of reasons that this game is losing flavor imo too. Using generic difficult modes so it isn't confusing on the differences between them isn't losing flavor.

Oblitus

Quote from: IndustryStandard on July 07, 2018, 12:40:19 PM
Of course saying something like "We had 3 prison breaks because of a psychic beacon in the last week." doesn't sound good, it sounds boring. Put that story in the hands of someone having fun and we get names, details and the results of actions, which tend to be unique and far more interesting to read.
And that's the problem. It can be good for someone who needs a draft for a story. A decent writer can make a story based on game events. But it is not fun to play. It sounds boring and it feels totally lame when happens.

Madman666

Feels same for me as well. Many flavor things were redone, often for worse, like automatic weapons becoming standartised two-shot boring slow hitters. They might be more effective this way, but it just feels meh. And with those same-ish cooldowns, as to avoid some cunning player from hiding his pawn too fast, avoiding a crippling shot to the brain he needs to get for it to be a dramatic story.

While 1.0 has a lot of good changes and larSyn's artwork is absolutely fabulous, feels much less fun with the game artificially adjusted to have more chances to make you suffer for either not microing something like kitchen cleaning, or for using turrets instead of your squishy everwhining colonists.

Kirby23590

#9
Quote from: XeoNovaDan on July 07, 2018, 11:29:48 AM
Normalisation of weapon cooldowns to 2 seconds - One of the most recent changes, and one I personally heavily disagree with. Each weapon feels kind of the same now, bar damage differences and costs; no more semi-unwieldy yet powerful longswords, or nimble knives, or anything in between.

I think i agree with this one.

In other games, There are the quick hitting weapons for DPS but low damage. And heavy hitting weapons for damage but are very slow.

I think the knife should have it's attack cooldown to 1.6 or 1.8 seconds but it's damage in the middle of the road since it's quick.

I think hurts the melee weapons more as the gladii (plural for gladius) gets overshadowed by the longsword since everyone is gonna ditch it.

Heck everyone might just stick with boring modern call of dootie shootie guns. They are interesting as the Machine pistol beats bolt-action at short range but is counter-able.

Also might as well be everyone in Dark souls 3 PVP running around with those LKS and Longswords and claymores but
rimworld is a single-player c'mon!

Quote from: XeoNovaDan on July 07, 2018, 11:29:48 AM
Generic renaming - The renaming of Some Challenge, Rough and Intense difficulties to Medium, Hard and 'Extra Hard', Pekoe to 'Tea', Gravel to 'Stony Soil'. Overall, everything just seems to be made more generic, and if anything, that's just somewhat tragic. Granted, this is a minor issue.

While the difficulty doesn't concern me.

I think stony soil doesn't fit overall, gravel is fine after all. I don't use pekoe at all ingame.

Now theres going to be an argument about megasloths and the name megatherium.

I don't know if the players of the minecraft community will be happy if gravel in minecraft is renamed into "stony sand" or anything. It will end up in confusion.



Now don't get me wrong. I still love this game since i bought it when it came out in steam and played the heck alot of it with 991 hours in that game. I can get around these stuff but some changes can turn me off at curtain points, as i like the nerf to curtain things like killboxes and turrets in general and buff to blunt melee weapon's ability to have a chance to stun.

I don't get some stuff at all like nerfing the shotgun's damage in B18 to situational to not even worth it or curtain things like removing silver melee weapons. ( They exist in real-life! ) They are better as blunt weapons but middle of the road but somewhat better in DPS than uranium if it works.

it might be opinion but at least i need some thoughts thrown in or other stuff i'm missing. Kind of sad honestly. :(

One "happy family" in the rims...
Custom font made by Marnador.



Serenity

The parka thing is weird. Parkas always had their niche in arctic biomes where you truly needed the insulation. I never used them anywhere else. Now there is no real penalty to have a parka in just normal winter.

At least the glitterworld medicine renaming was quickly reverted

ashaffee

This thread is 100% garbage trash. The developers said over and over not to draw conclusions on an unstable build. He stated that his to do list on updates is far longer than the amount of input he is getting where he can't keep up. The game you are seeing now isn't anything like the final product will be. To speculate that the game is being sucked dry of flavor at this point is like walking into a restaurant and sampling a half uncooked meal and telling the chief he doesn't know how to cook.


Half the updates he does are just reaction based. He does something to the game and see if the community responds positive or negative. Even if that change wasn't even slightly intended to be put into the game.

Greep

#12
Eh, I think the oldschool players will just mod flavor things they like back in xD  Once it hits 1.0 and mods are more stable I'm going to get back my megatherium and xerigium ;)

I do think there is a bit too much of an emphasis on nerfing OP strategies.  As a single player game, it is not exactly a requirement and this is just something Tynan prefers.  My stance has always even been that adding difficulties was a mistake to begin with as it forced a certain kind of player into killing their own joy when always playing on higher difficulties by using silly tactics that completely eliminate any threat.  Looking at many games that had seriously off balance (e.g. combat in elder scrolls games) I mostly didn't enjoy them because of a lack of substance rather than actual balance.  Swing sword x100 or swing bigger more enchanted sword x2 isn't exactly gamechanging.

Regarding armor/clothes stuff, honestly I never really noticed it pre-1.0, I just wore whatever and never took it off  ::)  The effects were just so tiny.

@ashafee, Xeo's an uberfan as well so I don't think he's all like "1.0 unstable sucks, Rimworld is dead to me"  We're just yacking :)

Quote from: Mehni on July 07, 2018, 11:48:17 AM

Instead of being a colony manager, it's now rebranded as a "Story generator".


As someone who's played since almost the beginning, it actually was originally branded as a story generator, and then sort of went in the extreme dwarf fortress colony direction for a while at about alpha 6.  I hadn't even built a ship in like 4 years since 1.0  ::)
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Oblitus

#13
Quote from: XeoNovaDan on July 07, 2018, 11:29:48 AM
No more stat changes on apparel - While this has thankfully been partially reverted with armour affecting movement speed again, it's still disappointing to see that apparel such as parkas and power armour no longer having work speed penalties (something which could be attributed to their 'bulkiness')
Actually, this one is good. What people do IRL in winter? They only wear warm apparel when they are going out. But in Rimworld, you either suffer work speed penalty all the time or just ignore warm clothes for pawns which are not working outside. And winter already gives more than enough penalties for outside work.

Power armor work penalty is questionable. If it is a POWER armor, it should also give a bonus for carried weight and manual work like mining then, not penalties. And, again, pawn that doing a job where power armor only weights them down they should be able to get out of it while working. Now even without the penalty, PA feels like it was in F:NV - nominally mobile coffin, the armored duster is the way to go.

Quote from: Greep on July 07, 2018, 02:25:46 PM
I don't think he's all like "1.0 unstable sucks, Rimworld is dead to me"  We're just yacking :)
Sure, as long as it stays moddable we can always fix it. We always had, so nothing really changes.

XeoNovaDan

#14
Quote from: Mehni on July 07, 2018, 11:48:17 AM
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I agree, definitely! There's definitely the feeling that half of RimWorld has all but been thrown off the wayside (the Sci-Fi/Western part). Regarding romance, while I haven't experienced too much of what you've described, it's definitely a pain when colonists keep trying to hit on somebody who's already happily married - though this isn't the same type of concern as what this thread's about.

Quote from: IndustryStandard on July 07, 2018, 12:40:19 PM
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Admittedly this is a culmination of smaller things, and this is subjective, but if one somewhat long-term player has this opinion, then I'm pretty sure others out there would too. Difficulty labelling is indeed one of the more minor things, but something like the standardisation of cooldowns, predators no longer hunting humans (recently reverted) and so on is definitely something more significant.

Quote from: Madman666 on July 07, 2018, 01:30:37 PM
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Yeah, it's unfortunate for legitimate players to also suffer the consequences of changes to help combat exploits. IIRC though, the main reason for the two-shotting with the AR and CR was so that they didn't have high AP for their old damage amounts - still also a change that I agree is a bit 'meh' though, and personally would've preferred the alternative of just a high AP for the damage amount.

Quote from: Kirby23590 on July 07, 2018, 01:38:49 PM
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Mocking aside, yeah, it definitely sucks that many weapons have had their niches removed (e.g. the gladius being faster than the longsword, making it better for weaker melee pawns). I remember the megasloth fiasco but eventually accepted the megatherium's sealed fate.

Quote from: ashaffee on July 07, 2018, 02:14:49 PM
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You're right that this isn't an end product. However, seeing the trend with the recent updates isn't exactly difficult to spot, and it's definitely plausible that all of this builds up to a direction change: an emphasis on storytelling, but also removing depth from the gameplay. And yes, the title is somewhat hyperbole, but the point isn't too far from this.

It's better to bring something like this up in good timing since this is ultimately just extra feedback, but isn't really super experience-driven so it doesn't quite fit in the main 1.0 unstable thread.

Quote from: Greep on July 07, 2018, 02:25:46 PM
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Yep, already working on a mod that reverts many of 1.0's changes - currently on hold though to see how the rest of unstable unfolds. Regarding the strategy nerfing and such, Mehni worded that one perfectly. :)