Last updates push the player to "trick" the game

[Daguest]

Negative traits are exactly that.

Negative. I like it that way. Adds some variety even if it is annoying.
But I think pyromaniac for instance should be able to use flame weapons more effectively.

I have nothing against negative trait. But some of them tends to lead to ridiculous situation that are not anywhere close to reality, or plausible. Like the pyromaniac igniting fire while 5 persons are around extinguishing them as fast as he can make them. The 30+ year old chemical fascinated pawn who will basically die of OD/Luci addiction in less than a month, despite surviving a least a few years with his issue.
Then you have the whole unrealistic breaks, which was discussed over and over, like people going berserk fairly regularly, or going into mental break because they ate without table. Or funnier, becoming dazed/locked in room because they didn't reach food in time. Leading to the absurd situation of the pawn dazed in your foodstore, because he was hungry.

And on top of that, you have the extreme trait. Especially when stacked. Pessimistic+too smart for example. Or the good old convent child + sherif, usually with a very low art, so basically, they are good for nothing. And once in a while you have the Glitterworld surgeon+vat soldier, which is incapable of medicine, despite being a surgeon.

Or the frail+bad back (they can barely move with a parka), who will be downed by smoking a joint. I heard pawn with brain damage can die from a joint to (consciousness below 0).
And I didn't even start on the "incapable of hauling" who will still haul for whatever job he is doing.

As you can see, numerous examples of the absurd. They are common in the game nowadays, and while they are funny, they are not plausible in any way. So, not only they are ridiculous, but from a gameplay point of vue, they are an issue best avoided. So, why the player would use them ? They have no incentive by themselves. Why not discard them, usually in another absurd way (punching a bear naked, going in a caravan alone without food,...) ?

[magicbush]

Oh i totally agree with dead man's clothing it makes zero sense and people did that and still do without feeling bad lol. They are dead and dont need the clothes anymore. I was gone from this game for the last 6 months so missed a lot of patches, but this was the first thing I noticed I didn't like.

[snoodog]

If the the game does things you cant mitigate for then that really breaks the 4th wall. For example I had a single colonist and he got the plague on day 16. There was 0 ability to do anything, he died with 70 immunity on a silver bed so I don't think much would have saved him. Or of you get a raider with a survival/sniper rifle and 10+ shooting skill early on.  You just end up having to save scum or start over and it feels like you got no shot.

[b0rsuk]

Breaks the 4th wall ? In meatspace, poor people keep dying because they don't have access to medical care. Or simply have bad luck.

[Casazzo]

wearing dead mans Cloth, lol
craft your own stuff, much better and better to sell anyway.
i dont get the People that Strip 20 tribals and collect 30 items to sell for 300 silver lul.
i just craft 1 alpaca wool chair in 5 seconds to sell for 1000 silver.

and even it you Strip the clothes from living pawns before you kill them, the items still have lost durability etc-
no worth at all.
wearing it? lol
i wont even sell it, all gets burned. <80% durability <superior

^^ this.

But i agree, that the D(ead mans clothing) is unneeded. Just reduce the durability by random 10-50% and all is well. Less modifyers to watch for and programm mods for.

[PotatoeTater]

The idea of dead mans clothes are something that happens in real life, you might not feel bad about buying someone's clothes from their closet after they die, but now imagine you shoot someone to death and take their bullet riddled shirt and put it on... That is something most people don't take easy. Also the idea of killing someone as a prisoner vs when wounded on the ground goes with the fact that in battle if you finish off your opponent you have no real connection to them other than they attacked you, while if you haul someone injured inside, help patch them up, and then blow their head off, kind of leaves a different feeling in your head.

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Since a few updates, I've noticed several changes have slowly pushed myself (and others by reading reddit/forums) to "'trick" the game, in a very videogame fashion.

Whaaaaaat?

Example : striping a downed raiders so you don't have the "dead man cloth" penalty.

Nearly every real world country that incarcerates people strip them down for prison. Rimworld doesn't let you force-cloth them in a prison suit, but stripping them of their gear is standard procedure. It's not "avoiding" anything.

Also, killing him on the ground so you're not annoyed by the whole "kill a prisoner".

Finishing off an enemy is not an exploit. It's a decision. Also, prisoners of war are now considered "guilty" (i forget the exact in-game term) for a while after you capture them, allowing you to kill them without a negative mood penalty until it wears off.

Or let a drop pod pawn die because you don't want him to join.

Again, not an exploit, just a decision. You do not have to let them join. This is not considered cheating or anything like that.

Avoiding convent child/sheriff like the plague, kill pessimist/too smart on sight, and since the drugs update, chemical fascination.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but it's starting to sound like you are avoiding getting better at the game by reacting to things that don't line up with exactly what you want for your colony. That will always get you frustrated in a game like Rimworld. I don't recall the covenant child trait but sheriffs usually have very good combat skills. They can be very useful as a hunter/fighter in a larger colony. You may or may not want them in a smaller colony if you already have good fighters, but my point is that it's situational.

As for Too Smart, I LOVE that trait! It's one of the best. Increased skill learning speed for every single skill? Absolutely! I will even take a pyro if he has Too Smart!

Or the notorious "infestation spawn in the middle of your barn and kill all your animals, lol funny right ?", which is worth a topic by itself.

Infestations only occur inside mountains. Knowing this, you can build your animal and colonist sleeping zones elsewhere and avoid the insta-kill. It also helps to dig out large unused areas because that creates more places they can spawn that are not in sensitive areas. There are other things you can do to mitigate infestations, it just takes some learning. Personally I consider infestations one of the easiest types of events to handle. They are even less stressful to me than simple heatwaves and coldsnaps.

Auto-join pawn on rescue need a player input (this guy want to join, do you accept ?).

If you're thinking of this as the game forcing you to accept the pawn as a new colonist, don't. Think of it more as the pawn wants to join and tries to, simply by just staying around and helping out. You technically don't have to build him a room or give him medicine, but you can if you want. You could also tell your colonists to attack him, but, just like in real life, many of them probably don't want to just kill someone who is trying to join and help out.

Bad traits need an incentive to have them (too smart for example can be valuable, chemical fascination, pyromaniac, pessimist ? Not so much). The "can't do dumb labor" need some rework to, because I feel like that's half the pawns.

I'm not sure how to react to this. Negative traits should have an incentive to have them? No, then they'd be positive traits. There are some mixed value traits already. This one isn't so much a "you're wrong" as much as a "what you're asking for just isn't what the game is intended to be".

[Goo Poni]

I think the dead man's clothing is fine. Pawns automatically wearing the clothes of dead people because they're better is not fine. Same as pawns with phobias or philias. If you like the nighttime instead of the daytime and you're on 100% free time, why don't you reorient to a nocturnal sleep cycle and relax during the day? It is free time of course.

[Thyme]

Example : striping a downed raiders so you don't have the "dead man cloth" penalty.

Nearly every real world country that incarcerates people strip them down for prison. Rimworld doesn't let you force-cloth them in a prison suit, but stripping them of their gear is standard procedure. It's not "avoiding" anything.

I think you didn't get him. You decide to let a downed raider die. The looted clothes now have the D, which debuffs your colonists mood. Next time, you're smarter and strip him to avoid the D. Two minutes later, the pirate dies. Where's the difference? I say, you just tricked the AI (to gain an advantage).

[GiantSpaceHamster]

Example : striping a downed raiders so you don't have the "dead man cloth" penalty.

Nearly every real world country that incarcerates people strip them down for prison. Rimworld doesn't let you force-cloth them in a prison suit, but stripping them of their gear is standard procedure. It's not "avoiding" anything.

I think you didn't get him. You decide to let a downed raider die. The looted clothes now have the D, which debuffs your colonists mood. Next time, you're smarter and strip him to avoid the D. Two minutes later, the pirate dies. Where's the difference? I say, you just tricked the AI (to gain an advantage).

I did not misunderstand his point, I just disagree. As the player it can be easy to analyze things logically and whether the pawn died just before or just after the clothing was removed seems irrelevant, but as a human being, I think a lot of people would be weirded out by wearing clothing that someone else died in. Heck some people would be weirded out by wearing clothes that someone wore just before they died even if they didn't die in them, but I think Rimworld took a reasonable approach to this mechanism.

[b0rsuk]

"D" apparel is only a problem if you want to sell it. For helmets / armor vests, you put them on equipment racks and equip just before combat. Battles are over too fast for a small mood penalty to matter.

[Guilty Omelette]

I also hate events forcing colonists on us. Stop forcing us to accept colonists via events. Just. Stop.

[LordMunchkin]

Honestly, using the "meta" has always been a big part of this game going back to the beginning. I don't think that is ever going to change because doing so would make the game a tad bit easier and the hardcore crowd would riot. Or go back to playing DF. 

[Trylobyte]

Because games have rules you're always going to be able to cheese them somehow, as long as you understand those rules.  The idea of getting better at the game is to be less reliant on them and learn to play the game as intended, and then find even better and more creative ways to break things if you're so inclined.  Don't like the penalty for wearing dead peoples' gear?  Find ways to get your own, better quality, self-produced gear into the hands of your colonists so you don't need to rely on dead people for clothes, or find a way to off-set the penalty with some positive mood bonus if you absolutely have to.

Avoiding convent child/sheriff like the plague, kill pessimist/too smart on sight, and since the drugs update, chemical fascination.

I don't mean this as a personal attack, but it's starting to sound like you are avoiding getting better at the game by reacting to things that don't line up with exactly what you want for your colony. That will always get you frustrated in a game like Rimworld. I don't recall the covenant child trait but sheriffs usually have very good combat skills. They can be very useful as a hunter/fighter in a larger colony. You may or may not want them in a smaller colony if you already have good fighters, but my point is that it's situational.

Convent Child means they can't attack.  Sheriff removes almost every ability except attacking.  This is a near-worst-case scenario for random backgrounds, since the resulting pawn can barely do anything at all as the only skills they can possibly have are Animal and Art.