Structural Decay


dbmurph22

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I'm not sure if this has been discussed.  I promised I looked!

So in 2017 decay was introduced and you see that in the custom game settings with the spawn rates and such.  And of course the items get less viable as the days pass (lower condition). 

I believe it may add to the game and experience to have structural decay.  What I mean is that over time some buildings, caves, or other similar locations could becomes impassable or eliminated as time passes.  It doesn't have to be drastic, but it could add to the sandbox nature of the game and add some conjecture or extra risk management, plan b making.

I'm free to be totally off if this is a bad idea - or already proposed.  What do you think?

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That would be a hell lot of work. And probably bugfest too. Also rage generator when you loose item in burning house, and lack of this item end your long run.

Yes, witnessing your house in fire, or something like that is nice, but its like mechanic you can be killed by fallen limb. Instant rage quit for a lot of people.

Also it breaks that silent unique atmosphere, where everything is frozen in time.

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I really appreciate the response. However, you must have misunderstood some.  I probably didn't explain it well.

I'm not proposing the act of them falling down or on fire - not an "act" of decay, but just status and representative graphic.  Just at some point on some loading screen maybe on changing reasons or waking at some dawn there's an RNG that certain structures would be replaced by something similar to the burned out houses you see now.

The idea isn't about the danger proposed by getting collapsed on by a house or something, but the world would shrink or decay in some sense over time just as would be fitting in the quiet apocalypse and death of this world.

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I think a large aspect of this game is a strategy game with a lot of push your luck, risk vs reward elements.  That's a little bit what I'm going for.  But to really harness the push your luck the player probably needs a bit more info to make it a push your luck element rather than too RNG/accounting for all probabilities.  Maybe there could be some sort of indicator that a structure is "threatened".

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3 hours ago, Moll said:

Or you die in burning house. Amazing. Nope, not now at least.

Hi Moll, under my proposed idea, you can NEVER die from the structural decay directly.  It would just cause growing inaccessibility to structures in a semi-RNG status.  I like my later addition to reduce randomness that you would get some inkling (some indicator, either in the world or overtly in display) if a structure is threatened by such a thing.  Thanks for posting.

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6 hours ago, Fuarian said:

I've been requesting this for AGES. It's realistic, especially for Great Bear which is already in decay. Imagine if the Dam collapses, or a mine, or a tree bridge or some way of passing through somewhere. You'll have to find another way around.

It may be harder to make this happen in the rolling game state of the outside world, but I think it would be much easier for areas/structures that take a load screen.

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35 minutes ago, ManicManiac said:

Structural decay... my gosh, that would be a nightmare :D 
Can you imagine traversing the Raven Falls truss bridge, and have that thing collapse while you're trying to cross?  ugh...

 

:coffee::fire:

I think it's more of a "you crossed it, now when you go back to cross it again in 5 weeks it will be collapsed and you'll have to take the long way around." Stuff like that, unexpected stuff like that, would be AMAZING. Part of the issue with the game (for long term players) is that everything is so predictable. Not with this feature! I'd love it. Others certainly wouldn't. But some of us would.

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Heh, I loved the mental image of the creaking trestle collapsing underfoot.

But to be fair, I'm only thinking in terms of "status" of structures not that the actual collapsing would be happening in real time for any of it.  That would be very hard to implement.

Collapse of outside world structures (yes I know before I even suggested caves) is a big step and it's a pretty big strategic effect if transition zone structures are affected, too.

But, in my mind, the idea doesn't have to get that crazy. You could just have other structures start to die to make limiter of options. I think it's good strategy design.  Thanks for posting, survivors!

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I think this could only work if you had the ability to make repairs, perhaps with a hammer and some reclaimed wood. I had thought about this some time ago, but more around the lines of having to maintain beds and perhaps other things like stoves where the more degraded the less effective it was, in the case of stoves this would be the inability to use certain slots or have the thing fail overall, but beds would probably have to be fully usable but with degraded temperatures and perhaps a reduction in rest.

I don't think certain things like houses could ever be 100% unusable. If they did degrade it would simply reduce their effectiveness against outside weather conditions.

This would also work well if they were to implement a new skill called maintenance which would effect tool sharpening, item repair, and building maintenance.

Edited by Willy Pete
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Unless multi way possibilities among all regions, closing transition zones is not a good idea. Because some locations can be permanently closed for you, with no way to reach them.

You struggle with surviving and now you should worry about houses? Nah, maybe thinks like broken windows are understable, but repairng the walls? hell no.

I really doubt that devs are willing to put so much effort in this thing which means total remodding of game basics. (Even if its possible.)

Just no. 

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14 hours ago, Willy Pete said:

I think this could only work if you had the ability to make repairs, perhaps with a hammer and some reclaimed wood. I had thought about this some time ago, but more around the lines of having to maintain beds and perhaps other things like stoves where the more degraded the less effective it was, in the case of stoves this would be the inability to use certain slots or have the thing fail overall, but beds would probably have to be fully usable but with degraded temperatures and perhaps a reduction in rest.

I don't think certain things like houses could ever be 100% unusable. If they did degrade it would simply reduce their effectiveness against outside weather conditions.

This would also work well if they were to implement a new skill called maintenance which would effect tool sharpening, item repair, and building maintenance.

I think a lot of ideas work well with pairing countering-ideas like this but I'm not sure I really like this because it just makes it too complicated with too much busy work.  And it would be really difficult to implement given the variety of interior locations.  And a lot of reasons for it would be balancing (as a lot of joint ideas are), but the idea of the decay in the first place is to counter some of the later ease of play (such as when you get cooking 5, etc).  And it makes thematic sense as the days pile up.

 

10 hours ago, Moll said:

Unless multi way possibilities among all regions, closing transition zones is not a good idea. Because some locations can be permanently closed for you, with no way to reach them.

You struggle with surviving and now you should worry about houses? Nah, maybe thinks like broken windows are understable, but repairng the walls? hell no.

I really doubt that devs are willing to put so much effort in this thing which means total remodding of game basics. (Even if its possible.)

Just no. 

I think I agree with you about the transition zones after considering further.  I would suggest those would be immune to decay.

I think a lot of this is making it just too complicated.  The best version of a suggestion is usually the simplest version that takes its purest essence, the one that has the most gameplay return relative to its complexity, and is the one easiest to implement. 

I think structural decay and a ramp up of inaccessibility to locations adds gameplay value as time increases (and its possibility rests in your mind).  Some players are more nomadic but you shouldn't reward a certain playstyle drastically though.  Therefore, it wouldn't be happening immediately to hurt slower movers, but its possibility would still create some itching.  And it's not necessary that every structure or even most of the structures would be subject to it.  Lastly, all implementation takes a helluva lot of work.  But this would be reasonable.  Interior locations wouldn't have to be messed with at all because they couldn't be accessed.  The changes to the exterior of affected structures wouldn't even have to be drastic, just enough to create thematic sense for inaccessibility.  And for some structures that have templates or template features a template inaccessible effect could be created for all.  Remember they wouldn't be collapsing in real time.  But it's computed after certain loads and sometime when you visit a structure it could be in its new state.

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Guest jeffpeng

I could get behind this if it was mostly cosmetic, like an already inaccessible house slowly falling to ruins, the water tower in milton breaking down, blocking part (!) of the street, another part of the trestle breaking off while remaining passable,  mold setting in on furnature, etc etc. I think you could find tens if not a hundred or more instances in the game where you could add an element like that.

But actually making the game world partly inaccessible? I think that this not only wouldn't bode well with the existing player base, but it would also be a huge frustration to new players. I really like the idea from a thematic/lore standpoint, and in that regard it definitively holds merit, but from a pure gameplay perspective this is the kind of change that has the potential to kill a game.

I mean, just imagine .... it's your nth game, your first long one. You managed to get to 40 days, you are somewhat settled in. Then you recognise that your house, the Camp Office in Mystery Lake, is falling apart. After some consideration you decide to move to the Thompsons Crossing Community Hall in Pleasant Valley. You pack up your first round of things, get going but syke! the cave between Winding River and Pleasant Valley has collapsed. Well you can still get to PV via Coastal Highway, no problem. So you turn back, pass the ravine, pass the first trailer in CH, the second trailer in CH but syke! the bridge has fallen apart, so you need to get down to the road, and take the long way, run into a wolf because of that, and finally reach the Cave between CH and PV with half your leg torn off and a mild onset of irritation. You reach PV, but syke! the bridge in Thompsons Crossing has collapsed - so you need to get around that as well. You start mildly cursing mostly innocent things at the screen, try to take a shortcut and sprain your ankle.

On your way back you already take the changed terrain into consideration but syke! The way from Cinder Mills down to the Log Sort is blocked by a boulder that has come lose. You detour over the Abandoned Lookout, have a few private minutes with a bear you didn't plan for, and arrive back at The Camp Office two days later, by that time seriously sore and in need of a moving company. On your second trip back to PV you don't even bother with SYKE! the bridge at the dam having fallen apart and spraining your ankle because of that, but take it like a grown up. Also that SYKE! the cave in the Ravine, in which you scheduled your stay for the night has collapsed doesn't really hurt you anymore. The cold never bothered you anyways!

You repeat this trek one more time to get all your things from the Camp Office. Upon finally arriving at the community hall, about two weeks after first recognising your home falling, you SYKE! notice first signs of the building undergoing serious decay. Your next action will probably be to find the nearest bear, hug him intimately and then thoroughly uninstall the game after leaving a big thumbs up on Steam to recommend this amazing gaming experience to other people.

Now tell me this isn't the darkest timeline.


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Edited by jeffpeng
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5 hours ago, jeffpeng said:

I could get behind this if it was mostly cosmetic, like an already inaccessible house slowly falling to ruins, the water tower in milton breaking down, blocking part (!) of the street, another part of the trestle breaking off while remaining passable,  mold setting in on furnature, etc etc. I think you could find tens if not a hundred or more instances in the game where you could add an element like that.

But actually making the game world partly inaccessible? I think that this not only wouldn't bode well with the existing player base, but it would also be a huge frustration to new players. I really like the idea from a thematic/lore standpoint, and in that regard it definitively holds merit, but from a pure gameplay perspective this is the kind of change that has the potential to kill a game.

I mean, just imagine .... it's your nth game, your first long one. You managed to get to 40 days, you are somewhat settled in. Then you recognise that your house, the Camp Office in Mystery Lake, is falling apart. After some consideration you decide to move to the Thompsons Crossing Community Hall in Pleasant Valley. You pack up your first round of things, get going but syke! the cave between Winding River and Pleasant Valley has collapsed. Well you can still get to PV via Coastal Highway, no problem. So you turn back, pass the ravine, pass the first trailer in CH, the second trailer in CH but syke! the bridge has fallen apart, so you need to get down to the road, and take the long way, run into a wolf because of that, and finally reach the Cave between CH and PV with half your leg torn off and a mild onset of irritation. You reach PV, but syke! the bridge in Thompsons Crossing has collapsed - so you need to get around that as well. You start mildly cursing mostly innocent things at the screen, try to take a shortcut and sprain your ankle.

On your way back you already take the changed terrain into consideration but syke! The way from Cinder Mills down to the Log Sort is blocked by a boulder that has come lose. You detour over the Abandoned Lookout, have a few private minutes with a bear you didn't plan for, and arrive back at The Camp Office two days later, by that time seriously sore and in need of a moving company. On your second trip back to PV you don't even bother with SYKE! the bridge at the dam having fallen apart and spraining your ankle because of that, but take it like a grown up. Also that SYKE! the cave in the Ravine, in which you scheduled your stay for the night has collapsed doesn't really hurt you anymore. The cold never bothered you anyways!

You repeat this trek one more time to get all your things from the Camp Office. Upon finally arriving at the community hall, about two weeks after first recognising your home falling, you SYKE! notice first signs of the building undergoing serious decay. Your next action will probably be to find the nearest bear, hug him intimately and then thoroughly uninstall the game after leaving a big thumbs up on Steam to recommend this amazing gaming experience to other people.

Now tell me this isn't the darkest timeli

Thanks for the post Jeff!  I enjoyed reading it.   And thanks for interacting with the idea.

A few things.  First, I had said that transition areas wouldn't be subject to it, so in your story the first bit with Winding River wouldn't have happened or any other proposed situation that you're blocked from a region.  Also you listed numerous exterior structures like bridges that became impassable and while that falls under the umbrella of though in the headline of the thread, that's also not what I propose (it would be really hard to implement as well).  I'm mainly proposing interior loading areas that are not transition zones.  I guess maybe non-loading caves or fishing huts, but not necessarily.  No bridges.  No roads or logs.  No boulders or walking paths.

In addition, conceptually with my feeling on the rate and prevalence of decay it would be incredibly long odds to get the kind of repeated stymie type of chain of events that you draw out here.  That said, in the 1/100000 odds universe it did happen that would be quite a story!  But again, encountering the decay repeatedly (even under the way I actually do propose) to the amount of sequence you allude to would be very long odds.  But sure, it could contribute to your demise, but like all things in TLD, the idea is that it will be an element to your possible demise and play into your decision making.  It wouldn't be dosed as a type of sole RNG killer.

Also, the impact for newer players would be not high given that newer players don't tend to live too too long for the other reasons in the game and the structural decay rate would only begin to have an impact beyond a smaller one later in the game after some days have passed.  Thanks again for posting.

 

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Thematically I also quite like the idea of interior man made locations falling to irreversible decay as well.  Some have worried that such a mechanic would disrupt the "frozen in time" appeal to the game, which I wholly agree with.  I love that aspect.  However, I feel like there are multiple themes in the game.  One is the frozen in time feeling and another is the transience of humanity and the resilience of nature.  I quite like that the things that would be dying would be artificial structures.  Exterior locations would be untouched so the frozen in time feeling would still be there for this, but you get the passing of humanity with the structures slowly dying off.

One note on the mechanic as I see it.  As the game begins I foresee there being a table of possible interior loading structures that could be affected.  Every 3-5 days the table would be rolled (for the whole world) and one structure would get marked.  If that structure had not been previously marked, it now has some sort of threatened status the player could know about if they entered the structure.  This is to prevent having surprise inaccessibility, which I don't think would be a good mechanic.  Losing all your stuff by RNG is not fun - it's more fun if you did but knew it was risky.   If a building gets repeated marks it could be inaccessible.  Two rolls to inaccessibility would be the minimum.  Certain structures could take more rolls to move them from threatened to inaccessible.

Thanks for reading! 

(Edit: Inaccessibility would affect the game, but structures being "threatened" would obviously play an underestimated larger role given player decisions would very much hinge on some of this information - even with the possibility that a structure would be in this state for quite some time without actually getting rolled/rolled enough times to progress further!)

 

Edited by dbmurph22
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9 hours ago, dbmurph22 said:

"level geometry"

What I think he's referring to is the general map layout and how everything connects (ie HRV > MT > ML > PV > TM, etc). The main fear I'm seeing is that of certain transit areas being blocked off by decay which I wholeheartedly disagree with and I believe that is the alteration I'm guessing he's referring to.

I wouldn't mind seeing manmade structures becoming less effective over a massive amount of time (ie 1% of condition loss for a house over the course of 100 days), but natural formations (ie caves and other transit zones) should not degrade. I'd be willing to deal with a house becoming less effective at keeping the cold out, but anything other than that is a no-go from me.

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Region connecting areas should not be affected.  I've said this before but I think maybe people are working off each other instead of my clarification (ie @Moll now responding to @jeffpengs story, though I just clarified as quickly as I could for that reason).   I agree it's too large of an impact.

Non-transition caves were in the "middle" for me, but I think it's good they should not be affected.  As I discussed earlier thematically, the dying of man made structures only makes more thematic sense, and preserving the caves falls in line with that (even the loading/non-loading nontransition ones)

Thanks for the suggestion, but a 1% loss over a massive amount of time simply is too granular and not worth the work to implement.   First you have a repeated condition loss% update and then the amount of days it would take to actually have a change would not be worth the work to implement if it did happen.  I think you're maybe considering how to add more realism without too much alteration.

I don't think to avoid things that are altering for only altering reasons is great.  Does it add gameplay value and fit into/enchance the IP?  That's the question. And balancing.  I do think if it was in the game, the rate at which it impacts the game shouldn't be excessively drastic.  But it would have a real role in what's happening, especially eventually - just not a primary driver.  See what I said about the possible rate, above.

Appreciate all the posting in this thread. If you would read the posts in detail before responding, it would be much appreciated.  That way we can avoid as much repeated clarifications of misperceptions as possible.  I'm not here to stand guard on an idea and if you watch throughout the thread, I've evolved my idea of it - with everyone's input.  I have not much interest in being right, but just driven by the idea and principles of a good experience of the game.  I'm open to debunking, with good reasons.

I may start streaming a playthrough soon and I might implement this.  It wouldn't be too difficult to do manually as it is.  Cheers, everyone.

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