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CleverRaven / Cataclysm-DDA

Cataclysm - Dark Days Ahead. A turn-based survival game set in a post-apocalyptic world.
http://cataclysmdda.org
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New default 91 days season length - discussion #25439

Closed Robik81 closed 5 years ago

Robik81 commented 6 years ago

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Default season length was abruptly changed in #25429 before any meaningful discussion could take place.

Describe the solution you'd like
This change has non-trivial consequences and I think it would be better to give people some time to think about it and post their opinions - and already merged and closed PR is probably not the best place for it.

Reasoning behind the change

Describe alternatives you've considered
Crying in the corner.

Additional context
Some points raised by people in the PR thread:

Inglonias commented 5 years ago

That's kind of a bizarre thing to do considering I've consistently said otherwise, but hey, feel free to ignore what I'm saying, and I'll do the same for you.

...Ah.

Ok, I uh... I drop my objections to this change, then.

latogato commented 5 years ago

Kevin, i try to turn my worries into (vague) questions about the future: 1) We have to wait for RL hours for something to happen? Reading and learning, breeding, farming etc. If not, what is your plan to skip the unwanted times? 2) Will the world size expanded to follow this change? Will be the cities huge and far from each others so we can loot enough food from them and walk to another city for a long time because it is far away? 3) If the world will be bigger, wouldn't it will decrease its variety? Just by the sizes it will be a long time to access other parts of the game. Wouldn't it be decrease the fun and increase the annoyance because the character can stuck in a place for a long time? 4) If the world size will not change, don't it will lower the immersion because the character could do astonish quantity of acts in a short time? Wouldn't it obsolete the long seasons because the player "win" before the next season? If not, how you plan to maintain the challenge in the game without artificially slows down the character progress?

Really the whole problem with this change we can't get a clear picture about the long term consequences.

CoroNaut commented 5 years ago

Keep the conversation sane guys, if you are all mean towards each other then we stop actually working to give opinions or facts about how to handle the actual issue at hand. If you disagree or have your own opinions to add, give reasonable reasons about it. For people who disagree, don't just say "no", please. It's basically ignoring someone without backing yourself up.

kevingranade commented 5 years ago

frustration that things have been scaled already to a 91 day seasons "before" it was a default.

This is one of the things this change attempts to address. The game has always been scaled for a 365-day year in that as features are added, the guidance has consistently been to, "make things take as long as they do IRL", and explicitly to not scale things based on season length, because the sole purpose of season length is to adjust how long the seasons are, nothing else. If players and/or developers think of season length as a generic time scaling factor, that is a misunderstanding that needs to be fixed, not a feature that needs to be implemented.

You cannot expect users to suddenly want to play one way when before they had options

This. Change. Does. Not. Remove. Options. The option that you think existed did not in fact exist.

Is perhaps a compromise to have a set restricted option such as 15, 30, and 90 day options?

That's not a compromise, that's a feature request, and it has been rejected already. Limiting the number of options reduces the amount of testing required to ensure it doesn't break things (hint, no one is going to test things using variable season lengths, so it doesn't matter how much testing effort is reduced), but it doesn't reduce the amount of code has to adjust based on season length, and it doesn't reduce the number of bug reports we would receive based on people using non-standard scaling.

We have to wait for RL hours for something to happen?

No

If not, what is your plan to skip the unwanted times?

Same as happens now when a character sleeps for ~8 hours at a time. The game goes into a fast execution mode where it doesn't do expensive screen drawing and is able to run the game forward very fast. This is not perfect yet and can use a lot more work, but that sort of thing is the basic idea.

Will the world size expanded to follow this change?

The plan was already for world size to expand, it has nothing to do with this change.

Will be the cities huge and far from each others so we can loot enough food from them and walk to another city for a long time because it is far away?

I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but yes cities will be far apart, and there will be reasons to travel between cities.

If the world will be bigger, wouldn't it will decrease its variety?

Just the opposite, a larger world gives more opportunities for adding interesting scenarios like travelling to a distant location in search of something special instead of cramming everything into a small area.

Just by the sizes it will be a long time to access other parts of the game. Wouldn't it be decrease the fun and increase the annoyance because the character can stuck in a place for a long time?

Before adjusting distance between cities, I plan on implementing auto-travel so that routine travel (e.g. following an already-cleared path) will be very short from the player point of view, but will still consume resources.

Really the whole problem with this change we can't get a clear picture about the long term consequences.

It took me a while but I get that now, from my point of view this is just one tiny piece of plans that are already in motion, so it didn't even seem worth comment.

The plans in general are to make the game world more and more expansive, but at the same time to add features to make managing things as easy or easier to achieve, like auto-travel, better food management, scheduled activities.

secretfire42 commented 5 years ago

Ok, that alleviates a lot of my concerns.

Squishums commented 5 years ago

I just don't feel like the game is in a state where making 90 the default -- or especially removal of the season length option -- is a good idea. The game is supposed to be in a state of feature freeze, and I respect that the intended design philosophy is supposed to be a 360 day year, but with the current state of the world, this represents a hard regression for the average player. Until changes to world scale are in place, you're either dead or an omnipotent god of life and death long before 90 days. Unless there are people committed to fixing these issues ASAP, how long are you willing to accept the game being in a worse state?

kevingranade commented 5 years ago

HOW is it in a worse state? Players can't reach Winter? That's not a release blocker. Many players won't benefit from using farming? Not a release blocker, Players might freeze to death because the transition from winter to spring is extended (this is a real issue, and recently someone found the root cause, I expect a fix soon).

Those are the only significant changes I can even think of that the default change causes. What else?

pingpong2011 commented 5 years ago

Oh, you think it's so easy to implement. How cute! One single world customization menu means tons of work to implement, tons of work to balance and tons of work to maintain, not to mean all kinds of issues with this. And all this for what? For the sake ungrateful users that complain most of the time on most of the changes?

Tons of work, perhaps. Balance? Are you kidding? That's what the refactor is for, that the result is 1:1 except we can change a value with breaking everything. "Tons of work to maintain." Literally the only reason this thread EXISTS is because many game mechanics are being rewritten against themselves to a different timescale, instead of an even basically functional interface. "Issues". Issues for you, because "it's different". "Ungrateful users". The game is having gameplay overhauls, at the cost of developer time, while immersion bugs or game-breaking bugs still exist. This is a problem for everyone.

20180910192901_1

http://dontstarve.wikia.com/wiki/World_Customization

There is an example of a way it's done well.

I skimmed through looking for mechanics based on time unit lengths,

calendar::season_length(), 1_days

So we have a functions and variables/constants/macros for times...

fac_food_supply_text(), NPC missions times, sickness and drug effects

Some stuff is hard coded for a "usable" context...

// TODO: More interesting rad scorch chance - base on season length? if( !x_in_y( 1.0 rads rads * time_since_last_actualize, 91_days ) ) { return; }

Introducing fixed code because hard-coding is being sought, instead of using existing timescales.

So far all I can see is a number of places where a function could replace a variable, and other places where hard-coded values could be replaced by functions or variables. Is there any place where there'd be a real problem instead of "I don't want to do it"?

Squishums commented 5 years ago

My concerns are mainly with the first and second points. I haven't had functional issues with the seasonal transitions. I feel like while this seems to be progress towards release from a project management perspective, it drastically reduces the variety of experiences for (particularly newer) players. If there are no time sinks available on a scale large enough to push players to experience new seasons, the world is going to feel a lot more static.

Is there no way this change can be delayed until after the framework for an increased world scale has been implemented? At least at that point, the issue can be band-aided by increasing inter-city travel time until alternative timesinks are added (potentially post-release).

Robik81 commented 5 years ago

The option that you think existed did not in fact exist.

There should not be option to change option that does not exist, or that is not supported.


Anyway... from Kevin's response, the answer to game pacing issues in longer seasons is to allow for faster progression in time via automation. This makes perfect sense, and things like

sounds great.

I just hope such features will eventually be implemented and the entire effort will not end with just changed default season length.

I plan to do a run with halved skill progression and halved evolution to see how the pacing feels.

Oh, by the way, players who use things like StatThroughSkillls or add bunch of points to distribute should not complaint about being demigods too fast as they are complicit in that. I hope all people who raised this issue are playing with somewhat standard settings in this regard.

nexusmrsep commented 5 years ago

There is one important thing @SunshineDistillery spotted, that would certainly do a great job to untie this knot of season mentality, and that thing being true callendar including:

Lack of true callendar did it's job convincing people to expect elastic season lengths. Introduce true callendar, let it sit in and you'll get a proper mindset eventually.

SunshineDistillery commented 5 years ago

I don't care about season adjustments, but I really dislike the idea of auto-anything. Auto-crafting, Auto-farming, and the like should be pushed onto NPCs. That would also give players a reason to build bases and transition from survival to long term faction goals. Auto travel would be better handled as something in game, like teleporters in a lab finale that connect to another linked teleporter 4 or 5 map tiles away, allowing to cover long distances quickly. Or maybe refitting a subway train or something.

Basically, instead of just getting an option to skip content, you should have a goal to build or find something that rewards convenience. For example, I consider building a water purifier the milestone where a character graduates from hobo to real survivor.

Auto eating and drinking from your inventory while crafting would be a cool option though.

pingpong2011 commented 5 years ago

An in-universe "auto-travel" would be interesting: join an NPC caravan that stops every so often to gather a bit or set up camp. You'd just wait and the game would take care of itself around you. A lot more sensible and far less immersion breaking than skipping over the game. Auto-farming equipment for NPCs to manage themselves would ease binding all the intelligence itself.

jesseking commented 5 years ago

The plan to move to 365 day years seems fine in the overall abstract. I will kind of miss the ability to scale seasons personally, but I'll survive.

I'm a little concerned about the effect it may end up having on the overall pace of the game - there's already a fairly large amount of time dedicated to very static time sink activities (reading, dehydrating, vehicle construction/repair), and I'm somewhat concerned that these will be dramatically expanded to fill the huge amount of new time in a year.

The management for these static activities is already a bit frustrating, as they often involve walking through an interminable series of (potentially important) interruption and warning messages, and once your local inventory becomes substantial (as it usually does), it can already take quite a bit of real time to resolve a read or sleep action. My current games tend to get up to nearly 1sec/min to resolve time spanning actions, which is painfully slow - so if we're expected to spin by 4x as much time in fast resolution, that will need to be optimized substantially.

Tatterdemalian commented 5 years ago

My question is, why does a shorter season mandate some kind of time dialation? The Cataclysm could very well have altered the momentum of the entire planet, accelerating the precession of its axis of rotation and making it wobble like the solar system's most ponderous top. This could easily shorten the seasons to a mere two weeks, without altering the length of a day, or the length of a year (though the actual time the Earth takes to complete an orbit of the sun would be less relevant if the axis is moving around faster than once every several millenia).

As for scaling spoilage and farm times, this can be attributed to Earth's native life forms, the bears and the bees and the microbes that cause spoilage, being evolved to follow the seasons rather than actual time. When's the last time a moose read a calendar, after all? Drastically shortened seasons would provoke drastically increased activity in all life forms native to Earth, in all kinds of ways.

paulenka-aleh commented 5 years ago

My question is, why does a shorter season mandate some kind of time dialation? The Cataclysm could very well have altered the momentum of the entire planet, accelerating the precession of its axis of rotation and making it wobble like the solar system's most ponderous top.

Serms unlikely: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_Laws

The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

But if it has happened somehow, I don't think all on earth like crafting, construction, reading, learning, spoilage, farming and breading would scale to it. That's, btw, exactly how it is going to work as per Kevin's statements made.

Furthermore, such a sudden change in climate might render some plants and animals completely extinct IRL.

jesseking commented 5 years ago

:D I think that with interdimensional portals opening up all over the place and spewing forth alien materials and life forms, it is safe to say that this will be categorized as a mass-extinction event, even putting aside any shifts to the climate.

Along those lines, I'd like to see the climate become harsher year over year in the game, just for challenge and RP purposes, with colder winters/hotter summers, the eventual re-introduction of acid rain storms, and so on. It'd be nice to see the climate evolve along with other threats.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 2:08 AM ixi notifications@github.com wrote:

My question is, why does a shorter season mandate some kind of time dialation? The Cataclysm could very well have altered the momentum of the entire planet, accelerating the precession of its axis of rotation and making it wobble like the solar system's most ponderous top. Serms unlikely: https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_Laws The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

But if it has happened somehow, I don't think all on earth like crafting, construction, reading, learning, spoilage, farming and breading would scale to it. That's, btw, exactly how it is going to work as per Kevin's statements made.

Furthermore, such a sudden change in climate might render some plants and animals completely extinct IRL.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/25439#issuecomment-421241520, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIl3iRyZ8Poe9_77wKpaFGtuOzjTRVa4ks5ua0fUgaJpZM4Wfw6s .

Kelenius commented 5 years ago

On the plus side, we won't need to worry about climate change for any foreseeable future.

FulcrumA commented 5 years ago

It'd be nice to see the climate evolve along with other threats.

Only if it can be disabled and the speed of progression of it adjustable with no connection to other things. Otherwise certain types of games and scenarios (especially ones without access to certain materials like full innawoods games) would be just disrupted.

I am not sure if portals opening up would have direct effect on climate, anyway. I wouldn't mind some late-game content though when there's particular structure/enemy responsible for it that can be destroyed so the climate can be affected through gameplay. But this whole conversation goes kinda out of scope of this ticket.

jesseking commented 5 years ago

I recall reading in the lore somewhere that some of the portals were belching out vast plumes of acidic crap and so on, and definitely transforming the environment in various inhospitable ways. Dunno if that was retconned out.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 12:59 PM FulcrumA notifications@github.com wrote:

It'd be nice to see the climate evolve along with other threats. Only if it can be disabled and the speed of progression of it adjustable with no connection to other things. Otherwise certain types of games and scenarios (especially ones without access to certain materials like full innawoods games) would be just disrupted.

I am not sure if portals opening up would have direct effect on climate, anyway. I wouldn't mind some late-game content though when there's particular structure/enemy responsible for it that can be destroyed so the climate can be affected through gameplay. But this whole conversation goes kinda out of scope of this ticket.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/25439#issuecomment-421421227, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIl3iSeLs31L7DnX16XQsBzVcncmRWAKks5ua-B3gaJpZM4Wfw6s .

Phenomphear commented 5 years ago

I've read most of the discussion here, a little late to the party and all, but, I am a new and recent player who is very much interested in the development of this game as I love playing it. I thought maybe the perspective of a new player may help. Although I must admit, something I am having a hard time grasping is just how deeply the season length affects the game. Especially with the Construction Scaling option.

My current understanding is allowing this to be variable requires a ton of upkeep and maintenance and "can" cause all kinds of strange issues.

The suggested solutions and the developers intent are to correct this by introducing a true to life calendar for the game to run its simulations and calculations on, weather, seasons, all that jazz. And it seems most of the features are designed already for this.

From a new player perspective, this sounds like a great idea. I'm already confused about the season length option, and even more so now, and having it preset and not having to worry about how it may affect my game if I happen to live more then 2 weeks is a relief to me. Giving me, a new player such a dangerous option that's not an option (if I'm understanding Kevin's post about it never being intended) that has dramatic effects on the gameplay is not a good idea. Remember though, this is only the opinion of a user and I'm not picking sides.

I just want to make sure I get the true and correct CDDA experience when I start a new game, so this being preset and not changeable is no big deal to me, but, I am only 1 person, and others opinions may vary.

I also 2nd that using "days" "weeks" "months" and "years" that actually match the season length makes sense for spoilage other UI stuff. Displaying spoils in 1 season, but my season is 14 days makes it all weird.

kevingranade commented 5 years ago

This is just meandering at this point.

SilearFlare commented 5 years ago

The game has always been scaled for a 365-day year in

no it wasn't what the hell are you smoking

l29ah commented 5 years ago

It is as easy to produce tons of flour from cattails in winter as it is in other seasons (in fact even easier since starch doesn't spoil as fast). No need to prepare anything but a few rags and cookware.