'Social' is worse than ever.

Started by b0rsuk, September 23, 2018, 02:55:45 PM

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Serenity

Having more social interactions (and ones that use the social skill) would fit perfectly with it being so heavily advertised as a "story generator" though. Things like a pawn being able to break up a fight. Or helping other people with their mental issues.

bbqftw

Quote from: Limdood on September 24, 2018, 03:28:16 PM
Quote from: bbqftw on September 24, 2018, 03:18:59 PM
Quote from: Serenity on September 24, 2018, 10:03:35 AM
Quote from: bbqftw on September 23, 2018, 10:02:25 PM
A lot of things in this game are wealth traps. In fact it can be argued that a key aspect in a player's improvement is when they realize that you shouldn't aim for colony growth insomuch as maximizing your utility / wealth ratio.
Nope. Only a certain type of people play that way. It's not normal though

most players don't substantially improve, and it shows.
And most players are quite content to reach a point where the game is fun AND challenging...The moment i start playing like that "Easy way to beat merciless naked brutality" thread is the moment Rimworld loses ALL interest to me.  Why would i play a game where i can effortlessly beat the hardest mode?
well, even with all the tech I know, fists only NB/merciless, or violent incaps only would still be pretty challenging. Winnable with clean play and you will have to use every bit of game knowledge though.

vzoxz0

If there was some kind of negotiation with raiders, social skill would be way more useful. Imagine talking someone out of raiding you, or into letting you give them an offering instead? That'd be awesome.

Actarion

I agree with the social skill being mostly useless. Recruiting being a lot easier, i found my colonists with way lower social skill than ever.

"Orion" hospitality mod fix it a bit i guess... but, still.

I like where you'r going "vzoxz0" For those raid that wait before going on or siege. You could send a negociator ?
At thise point you can think about a bigger "moral thing" where the retreat treshold is higher than usual ?

lancar

Another weakness of the Social stat is that it also suffers from the same skill decay as every other skill.
As it's an intermittently used skill that simply cannot be focused on unless you constantly keep tons of prisoners it can never realistically pass beyond the 12-13 mark, passion or no. Any pawn that starts with a social score higher than that WILL fall to those lower numers eventually with no way to prevent it.

Murdo

A possible solution would be to have the every-day social interactions actually contribute more:
-Positive social interactions (conversations) give a small amount of social experience.
-Social skill impacts the frequency of social interactions, in addition to increasing the potential for a positive outcome.
-Positive social interactions contribute a small increase to general learning rate (capped per day) for all skills, as you would expect from discussions and knowledge transfer, as well as having a noticeable impact on skill decay for the same reason.

This would give players a strategic reason to group pawns together more often during the day, and benefits to reward players who go the route of a more stable and healthy social colony... as opposed to brutal min/maxing with hardships and booze (a la Stronghold). You would also have the option of pairing up (through zoning and tasking) your colony's resident Chatty Cathy with a new recruit with a 2 Social, which would "get them out of their shell" much more quickly.

I imagine some people would complain it was messing with their wealth starvation strategy.

fecalfrown

Quote from: Murdo on September 26, 2018, 01:07:22 PM
A possible solution would be to have the every-day social interactions actually contribute more:
-Positive social interactions (conversations) give a small amount of social experience.
-Social skill impacts the frequency of social interactions, in addition to increasing the potential for a positive outcome.
-Positive social interactions contribute a small increase to general learning rate (capped per day) for all skills, as you would expect from discussions and knowledge transfer, as well as having a noticeable impact on skill decay for the same reason.

This would give players a strategic reason to group pawns together more often during the day, and benefits to reward players who go the route of a more stable and healthy social colony... as opposed to brutal min/maxing with hardships and booze (a la Stronghold). You would also have the option of pairing up (through zoning and tasking) your colony's resident Chatty Cathy with a new recruit with a 2 Social, which would "get them out of their shell" much more quickly.

I imagine some people would complain it was messing with their wealth starvation strategy.

Unless it was changed, I think chats do give a small amount of social bonus. That said, if both your first and second ideas were implemented, it could be incredibly hard to balance where your pawns could get caught up in a 'social tornado' raising all social levels at an exponential rate as they all feed off of each other. I like the third suggestion though.

I would personally change 3 things:

1) Social skill decay happens slower
2) Increase social skill per trade deal. (The more wealth exchanged in a trade, the more it increases)
3) High(er) social skill pawns perform an action similar to the "kind words" moodlet you get from Kind pawns. They would occasionally say kind words to fellow pawns, increasing their happiness for a set time.

Aside: Do high social pawns already insult/fight their enemies more than non-social pawns?

zizard

Quote from: cultist on September 23, 2018, 07:04:30 PM
Quote from: zizard on September 23, 2018, 06:00:37 PM
Part of being a good player is identifying useless skills and keeping them low to avoid unnecessary pawn wealth.
That's absurd. The game doesn't feature useless skills presented to the player as a trap they're supposed to learn to avoid. Perhaps the social skill is unbalanced or needs adjustment, but claiming it only exists to confuse and obstruct players makes no sense.

While improving in this game the main theme I noticed was figuring out all the noob traps. e.g. large stocks of supplies, beautiful / pretty pawns, loot in general, batteries, wood floors, bionics, family members, large colonies, livestock, IT GOES ON.

vzoxz0

I dislike skill decay in general, but in social it is particularly annoying.

PatrykSzczescie

I don't know if I had mentioned it before B19 was released but social skill should affect arresting pawns, who are less likely to turn berserk as the arresting pawn has high social skill.

Razzoriel

I'd love to see Social having more interactivity with prisoners.

BLACK_FR

Actually hardest possible difficulty should be hard for everyone, period. If it is not than something is wrong with difficulty not with the people who can easily beat it.

I start with no skills to add challenge. And I actually suffer quite a bit for the lack of social skill because of social fights. So it has some utility already.
But I think that it can be more interesting.
First of all there should be a way to get to 20 and to maintain skill at about 18 when frequently used. Now it's basically impossible.
Second of all you can add some mechanics that were proposed in this topic, like "kind words/harsh words".
I would also add suggestion that there should be some raids where raiders demand tribute to leave you alone. You can give them money or valuables or suffer their raid. And having pawn with social should reduce amount you have to give. What do you think about this idea?
Guide to mastery of the game - https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=46290
If you have idea how make merciless naked brutality run more challenging and fun - tell me

Limdood

Quote from: Shurp on September 24, 2018, 05:56:50 PM
Winning Rimworld is so *easy*:

1) Turn on Devmode
2) Turn on God Mode
3) Build ship
4) Load ship
5) Launch

See?  Note that I didn't say it was *fun*... and like you said, Limdood, that's the whole point, to create a challenge that's fun. 

Back to the OP, it sounds like he would enjoy more features which made use of the social skillset.  Other players have different priorities.  I wonder what mods are out there that might address this.

Hospitality mod is the big one. 

It makes social a strongly desired skill in my games.

Basically visitors need beds to sleep in, can be chatted with (to raise their mood and how much they liked visiting).  Visitors that really liked their visit will leave you gifts they had with them (amusingly, sometimes even the stuff you sold them) and can have their faction relations slightly boosted.  Conversely, visitors who hated their stay can negatively affect relations and will visit much less often.

Furthermore, you can "recruit" visiting pawns (at a faction relationship penalty) if enough pawns (based on your colony size) can schmooze them into friendship.  Small colonies need only one person to chat and get their relationship up to attempt to recruit...medium colonies can need 2-4, and large colonies i've seen 10 friends needed, which is unlikely to be achieved in one visit, even if you did have the social pawns.

So social can be used to indirectly gain gifts, improve faction relations, and directly recruit visitors, AND multiple social pawns have increased effect at recruiting visitors (which is really nice cuz you can inspect each visitor and pick only the best to attempt to recruit) with that mod.