I love Rimworld but this game's idea of "fun" is perpetually moody colonists doing stupid shit the moment one of their myriad needs aren't met. They have no chill, and no decorum, and YOU the player get to clean up their messes. In this universe, the role of God -- you -- is to be their magical space nanny, master planner, and babysitter.
That and the difficulty curve skyrockets the moment mechanoids or the bugs show up, and they always show up way. Too. Early. (At least now I can easily turn them off without having to make my own scenario)
I love this game but it is a frustration generator, not a story generator. And the way the creator gets about "storytelling" reminds me of how certain Hollywood directors simply can't shut up about the supposed "magic" of entertainment. Blegh.
edit- I also have a bone to pick with the way the creator ruthlessly works to eliminate anything that makes the game easier... whether its sappers that magically know exactly where to dig tunnels to get around your killbox, or artillery being gimped because it was a way to punch up a few classes with regards to some of scenarios, or turrets now ignoring prisoners/slaves turned hostile. It feels like the game that the creator wants and the game I want are dramatically different, and continuing to diverge.
> That and the difficulty curve skyrockets the moment mechanoids or the bugs show up, and they always show up way. Too. Early.
Bugs never show up if you just don't expose any overhead mountain. You trigger them, not the story teller.
As for mechanoids, the "trick" so to speak for them is to lean into the gear utility & melee. You can get insanity lances very early on with trading which are excellent defense against mechanoids. And similarly a couple pawns with shield belts and blunt weapons to get up and personal with the ranged mechanoids really neutralizes them. And that's without getting into psycasts.
The difficulty curve here comes from the sheer breadth of the game rather than just outright being hard. There's a lot to learn, but the game gives you lots of ways to handle challenges.
Also raid sizes are tied largely to your colony wealth, so keeping a humble & lean base is efficient. Your colonists expectations are also driven by wealth for that matter.
> They have no chill
They do when they're drunk & stoned :) Get a good drugs policy (auto-take on low mood & enough time between doses to avoid addictions) and you'll rarely remember that mental breaks are even a thing. Chocolate doesn't hurt either.
> artillery being gimped
Artillery was made more accurate to compensate, so it's a good defense against enemy mortor raids. Just lob a few volleys before they get set up and they'll abandon that notion and charge you instead.
I too gave up on this game, even though I really wanted to like it. I like the idea of it.
In my limited experience in gaming, we were reminded to periodically ask about game mechanics: "But does this make the game more fun?"
Simulating realism is cool, but reality is full of boring or unpleasant stuff. Why suffer that extra? "Oh no, it seems you cut your finger while making dinner. Now you have an infection! And since you didn't eat dinner, you are now faint and must lie down. You need a doctor! Oh no, you _were_ the doctor!"
For me RimWorld got tiresome and repetitive at some point because I just always drifted to doing the same things that annoyed me.
Most recent playthrough though I just plopped Nutrient paste dispenser. Suddenly no problems with food, getting it, preparing it.
New Biotech dlc also added great value. You can make your starting pawns sleepless. So no more fussing about bedrooms at the start plus much more productivity. Mechanitor can build ton of bots that do the hauling. It's really pleasant.
> I love Rimworld but this game's idea of "fun" is perpetually moody colonists doing stupid shit the moment one of their myriad needs aren't met.
Not exactly. They don't go crazy immediately. I think the 'eating without table' debuff is too harsh, but other than that... You can get away with ignoring basic pawn needs for quite a while. I want to see _you_ survive in an environment with tattered clothes, saying a friend (or pet) dying, and yes, eating raw meat without a table.
It's similar to Dwarf Fortress where tantrum spirals are a feature. Except in Dwarf Fortress things are way more deadly.
You can control the storyteller. Go with Chillax if you want more time (although that one could _still_ spawn mechanoids). Don't open ancient vaults, or go digging inside mountains if you don't want bugs.
Finishing the game is a bonus. Also now you can pack up and leave the map if it's too bad, we didn't have that option for a while.
It might be a feature but it shouldn't be. I can't believe the amount of people that are ok for seemingly perpetual firefighting. Maybe they've never worked a job where they had to do that (figuratively or literally), because it is fucking tiresome. (This is my same complaint with the new X-COMs, stop presenting me with shit sandwich choices all the time!)
> or go digging inside mountains if you don't want bugs.
The alternative here is to get constantly shelled by invaders because all your shit is outside. I hope you have some reinforced barrels handy!
> I want to see _you_ survive in an environment with tattered clothes, saying a friend (or pet) dying, and yes, eating raw meat without a table.
Evidently none of the colonists were ever involved in scouting... everyone knows that losing your shit is the fastest way to die in a survival situation. Much as there is a "Low expectations" buff that blunts these effects at the beginning, there needs to be "I've Learned To Live With It" or "Shrugs Shoulders" buff that takes over as the game gets going on.
Also if the dude really hates raw meat that much, he should go build himself a campfire... nothing outs useless fatalism faster than not being able to do basic things for oneself. Someone teach these offworlders some fuckin self-care!
>Evidently none of the colonists were ever involved in scouting... everyone knows that losing your shit is the fastest way to die in a survival situation.
I guess it depends on the character back stories but at least in the default scenario you're shipwrecked when the FTL starship you're on breaks up (or whatever its fate was, been a while since I played rimworld)... which implies that they're used to the comforts an interstellar civilisation can provide.
I too would be somewhat irate if I went from glitterworld comforts to scrabbling around in the mud
> The alternative here is to get constantly shelled by invaders because all your shit is outside. I hope you have some reinforced barrels handy!
My go-to siege defense was to send a couple pawns with rifles to intercept the enemies the moment they appeared on the map, picking them off at range and from behind cover. By the time the raiders' supplies and artillery were ready, they would have no good defenders left, so my pawns could clean up pretty quickly. This approach required micromanagement, but consistently kept my base from taking much damage.
Once upon a time, tricking the attackers into using the wrong mortars was also possible, although I never tried it and haven't played in a year or two, so that might have changed.
> Also if the dude really hates raw meat that much, he should go build himself a campfire... nothing outs useless fatalism faster than not being able to do basic things for oneself. Someone teach these offworlders some fuckin self-care!
Ok, this is where we see eye to eye.
If a colonist just hates something and has the means to avoid it, it should just do so. But then we run into how campfires and the cooking skill are balanced, but in general I agree.
I have put 600 hours into the game. I have never completed it without cheating, and then only to see what the end looked like - which did not inspire me to change my approach to the game.
The joy of Rimworld is in the failure, or in succeeding for a time against the odds. Maybe the author could provide options to make the game easier, to attract another segment of the game market, but the way it currently works is much more attractive to myself.
> I want to see _you_ survive in an environment with tattered clothes, saying a friend (or pet) dying, and yes, eating raw meat without a table
I mean, I wouldn't but...I'm also not literally designed to populate a world sold to people for entertainment purposes. At least, not that I'm aware of, and if I was, they did not do a very good job.
> I love Rimworld but this game's idea of "fun" is perpetually moody colonists doing stupid shit the moment one of their myriad needs aren't met. They have no chill, and no decorum, and YOU the player get to clean up their messes.
I've seen "Parenting Simulator" touted as an alternate title.
For me, I just installed a bunch of mods containing all kinds of arguably overpowered turrets so my colonists are almost always safe. I guess that removes pretty much half of the difficulties from the game, but I still find the game really enjoyable to play, even more so than balanced vanilla.
I don't really get the complaints about Rimworld's difficulty. There is a variety of difficulty settings, which can even be adjusted during the game. There is also the option to turn off Mechanoids and/or Bugs.
There's no shame in adjusting the settings of a single-player game to your own liking.
There's one that generates favorable events, another one that generates problems, another one that's random, another one that increases difficulty over time.
Usually I do Pheobe Chillax, but sometimes I will switch it up with the default storyteller if Phoebe isn't throwing anything interesting my way. But, with her, when it rains it pours, and the story arc of "coming back from the brink of annihilation" gets tiresome.
Same. I recommend anyone to play this game only with Randy random. It will actually prepare you for things. You will fail a whole lot more long played games if you don't know what you're doing if you're consistently thrown relaxing games. But if you play with Randy random you'll lose quick and you'll learn quick.
Enemy scaling depends on wealth of your colony. It felt inadequate on one playthrough when my amazimg artist made a bunch of glorious emerald sculptures.
The only problem I have with this kind of game though is that time flies by really quickly for me with it. I think it's been 10 minutes while it's actually been an hour; next time I look at the clock it's 3am.
I only have this with games like RimWorld or SimCity (city builders, simulators) and it's actually the main reason why I play them so little. They're too "just one more thing".
Agreed. I don't play RimWorld that often anymore (though that's about to change again as I'm about to get the new Biotech DLC), but when I do, I go out of my way to clear my whole weekend of any obligations just so I can immerse myself in the game for a couple of days.
I have the same problem. I play it a lot less than some other games simply because it is so addictive.
My pitch to people is “if you ever wanted to play a game where your colony’s economy can be built around farming illegal drugs and turning prisoners into hats, then this is the game for you!”
If you like RimWorld, I recommend checking out Stardeus.
The feel is very similar to Rimworld, but the setting is that you're a spaceship's AI system, and you have a bunch of humans in stasis. The goal is to find a habitable planet for them to colonize.
Was released last month and is still in Early Access, but it's definitely in a playable state.
The asteroid fields are brutal, build your ship like an onion with thick walls ;-)
Heavily recommended to any management-sim fans. It takes the best mechanics from games like The Sims, Factorio and Dwarf Fortress without watering them down or limiting the modding community. The price is on the steep side, but the developer is great and works with the community plus releases native builds for Mac, Linux and Windows.
My partner and I have our own copies of base game and both expansions. Worth every penny.
We've both sunk uncountable hours (actually we started way back in alpha 15 with a pirated copy so steam hours doesn't mean much) and done many campaigns with many mod loadouts. Yet to actually "beat" the game (it's not really the kind you "beat" though, it's very sandboxy). So entertainment/$ is astronomical.
My big problem is starting a base, playing it for 10-20 hours, and then feeling guilty for trying to push my luck any further. It's very easy to end up in situations that seem too cruel to continue.
For me it's more like playing it for a few hours, then thinking why I am waisting my time improving a virtual base instead of improving my life or my skills
On the one hand, if you’re gonna spend your energy managing infrastructure and repeatedly fixing technical debt you might as well get paid for it. On the other, at least this way you don’t have to deal with personality clashes and stupid ‘culture’ bs.
It's basically what someone commented earlier on another front page post. Software engineers aren't paid to write software. They're paid to deal with everything else that gets in the way of them writing the software.
The point isn't that anyone could do it, but that many of those who can already willingly program for free in many scenarios. Thus, they aren't paid big bucks for the ability to write software, but to deal with the BS of writing software in a company.
A few people here have talked about indie mobile app development as an approach that's working for them, just making and selling small utility apps on Google Play or the Apple App Store.
As someone who has played loads of roguey games (ADOM, ToME, CDDA, etc), I found Qud to be pretty miserable. I just don’t think it is possible to play it without watching or reading long tutorials from other people.
If you're interested in playing a new game in this genre, I've been developing a city builder game over the last year, heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Rim World, Cities: Skylines, Sim City, etc.
My game will have more granular demand (not just vague "you need more commercial zones"). The player will see the interior of buildings and will be able to watch their sims live their lives.
Im working on getting version 0.2 release by Q1 2023. The game is isometric now! Working on releasing a new vlog to show it off.
I developed a new path finding algorithm to build big cities. Here's an old version of the game path finding 1,000,000 units to their own unique destinations:
I like it but I never got around to adopting the mindset of “your colonists are disposable, just roll with it if (when) something terrible happens to them.” I think my issue is I treat these types of games (X-COM is another example) as RPGs and get too attached to the characters.
You don't have to play with that mindset, though "attachment leads to suffering" is a valuable mantra for this game. I play fairly risk-averse and I'm willing to save-scum to avoid the death or even grievous injury of a favorite pawn (pets not cattle, if you will). There's really no wrong way to play.
That style works particularly well with the nobility expansion.
That's my issue as well. I spend enormous time playing something like single colonist on the north pole. It never ends well. Sometimes some stupid bear one-shots me through all defenses, sometimes raiders are getting stronger and stronger until they just overcome me and my pack of huskies. It was a time spent well, but I don't play anymore because I like something like WoW when you can't really lose forever. That's not the case with rimworld (unless you're restoring old saves which I don't like) and it's even designed to kill from what I understand. For example I'll spend lot of time building my perfect castle. Not necessarily with defenses but with art and stuff like that. That pushes cost of my colony higher and causes stronger raiders. Playing on peaceful is not interesting either.
I play this way too. I have my core colonists who were my starting crew and folks who enter relationships with them. If I lose one of my core pawns, I tend abandon the colony and restart the game unless it's something suitably epic. This tends to work out fine for me because the beginning to middle phase of the game is by far my favorite. My playthroughs tend to be themed and not based on traditional "beat the game" mechanics. One play through I may be focused on trying to get my archotech cult all uploaded into computer minds and having everything in my base automated with bots. Another I may go tribal of medieval play through where I use mods to remove the sci-fi elements of the game and just have an old fashioned war between factions. The possibilities are endless with this game and the mod ecosystem.
you might like Crusader Kings 3. More focused in its role playing (ruler and family instead of colony). Lots of highs and lows when your ruler accomplishes something great or falls to ruin but you should be attached to your ruler and family to do well so maybe more in line with how you feel like you want to approach these sorts of role playing games.
That's what makes Rimworld great! It's honestly not challenging at all if you are willing to be the right amount of sociopathic. But actually being nice to the little guys makes it more interesting- obviously harder too, but that's where the magic comes from.
I used to watch a YouTuber doing a video series on RimWorld, he was able to "tell" a really good story that was happening in his world [1].
I want to someday start playing it, right now I'm not because: I rather play on the console laying on the couch, I'm working to much to invest in the game. It seems to have a step learning curve.
The learning curve is not as steep as you might think from watching youtubers.
The game adapts to how well you're doing, so as they advance quickly because of their experience their challenges will escalate in difficulty as well. As a newcomer you'll advance slower so won't face as many obstacles as soon as you've seen them happen.
I mean, you'll still lose your first colony. And the next 10 after that. But each time you learn a bit more.
Yes, unfortunately the "learning" mostly consists of learning cheesy meta tactics like "kill boxes" which I find very immersion-breaking. E.g. kill boxes only work because the enemy AI is ridiculously stupid and seeing them all walk to their death with open eyes makes them feel like brainless zombies.
Also experienced RimWorld players will say things like "No, my colonists won't get chairs because those only increase Comfort by a few percent throughout the day - and that's not worth the increase in colony wealth."
Once you have "learned" RimWorld you are no longer playing a colony simulator because all the cheesy meta tactics you use make it impossible to think you are dealing with a real colony.
Ah, Cambiar the Cannibal! 10/10 would absolutely recommend this playthrough series, especially as chill/background audio. Super enjoyable and you don't have to be 100% tuned in to keep up. I often have this on while doing chores.
Wow, I just listened to a few episodes while baking. This Cambiar is surviving in the Arctic wasteland by eating the corpses of all the misfortunate humans that keep wandering into the area. (He doesn't even have to actively kill most of them; the exposure is typically enough to do them in.)
He's preserving their bodies by keeping them stockpiled outside in the below-zero weather and every time he eats an (uncooked, presumably still frozen solid) meal, he gets a boost to his mood! Because he has the cannibal trait so it gives him a happy thought!
In retrospect, maybe not the best show to listen to while baking pies! :)
Rimworld is great. Almost 2,000 hours in and I am still learning and evolving my gameplay.
Some people play hardcore/survival mode with hundreds of combat-related mods, others play it as a version of Stardew Valley. It is totally up to you how you want your game to be.
I've seen I think a single one of the RimWorld endings and honestly "beating the game" is so not interesting to me at this point after hundreds of hours played.
Starting up new colonies and getting established to the point of "yeah I can handle all the raids thrown at me at this point" is when I move on to start a new colony with a new religion/race/theme. Actually going from "solidly established colony" to "you win!" credits is I think the weakest part of RimWorld, although I haven't tried being a nomad yet which has what sounds like a way more interesting path all the way through to the victory screen.
Yes, and one of the victory conditions is to make it to a far away tile to hitch a ride with a ship. Well suited for a nomadic play style.
It's supposed to be a pretty solid way to play as you're never that worried about raids and are consistently hitting up ancient dangers for high-end gear.
One of the self-imposed play styles I've seen in youtube playthroughs is more of a band of mercenaries or bandits. They go from one settlement to another raiding the bases there and only survive on what they can steal. They basically ignore the colony management and base building aspects of the game and focus on building a team of absolute combat monsters all addicted to luciferium.
Wanna lead a team of misogynistic cannibals? You can.
Wanna be a mad scientist that extracts the brain of his prisoners to create deadly robots? You can.
Wanna build a village of drug-friendly pacifists? You can.
What's fantastic about this game is how many things are optional. You don't have to care about climbing the ladder of the empire if you don't want to. You don't need to build the space ship. You don't need to go to war with your neighbors.
Two big "flaws". The AI can sometimes throw at you problems that are too hard, like enemies to strong as it not always estimate correctly your strength, which brings me to the biggest flaw of the game: combat.
Your characters can literally throw themselves into enemy fire and need a lot of micromanagement for combat. Worse, the combat model is such that a guy in a power armor can be defeated by tribesmen with bows and arrows, that's because projectiles and armor isn't really simulated entirely.
An extension called "combat extended" attempts to remedy this, but I find it has its own problems.
That's me being pedantic, the game is incredible, go for if the idea of building your own base and story is attractive to you.
I got this on steam, started with the tutorial, and after a few minutes couldn't imagine getting any enjoyment out of playing this. What am I missing? The level of micro-management seems so high, and simple actions seem to require clicking through like 4 sub menus.
For me the fun is getting a colony to a self sustaining state where I don't have to micro manage it. Then grabbing two colonists and go off exploring, trading etc.
I would say in general you’re able to automate most things using the ticket system for production and work priorities. Unless you’re really trying to min/max, you don’t really need to micromanage. Military action is generally very manual though (for your pawns anyway, you can automate smaller military problems with turrets).
I didn't particulary find RimWorld to be very fun, but I did end up enjoying Oxygen Not Included, which is a side-scrolling 2d colony management sim that's a bit less serious and way more quirky.
I found Oxygen Not Included engrossing, but I had to cut myself off when I realized I kept spending each evening in the same mental state as when I firefight production outages.
All these games are fun until I hit something akin "make sure your colonists cant take a route from toilet thats not trough lavratory, otherwise they wont clean up their hands if they happen to choose that route". For gods sake if they clean hands 100% of times when passing lavratory, making them 100% of times go to lavratory after toilet should be an option too..
Its just feels like instead of playing the game I must combat it.
The lavatory thing is easy to workaround, at least. One entrance, and as many sinks as you have toilets. You can have a large bathroom, rooms with a bathroom attached, etc. As long as there's one way out and the sinks are there.
Much more annoying are the suits (and now, gas masks). If you are not careful with settings they will drop them elsewhere, or will enter the perfectly breathable base with suits still on.
>I drew some inspiration from Prison Architect. Moreso from its own inspiration, Dwarf Fortress.
>We don't share any tools. Chris at IV has his own tech foundation; I built this one on Unity.
>But they do look somewhat similar; that's my fault. I'm not a good enough artist to come up with a really good original look. There are only so many ways to render characters on a tiny grid without using animations.
>I hope the differences between the game will be enough for people to look past the aesthetic similarities. And if I get some funding at some point I can get an artist to help develop a more unique look.
>I do think the similarities are skin-deep. In gameplay the game resembles DF much more than PA.
The reality is the simple graphics is what allows you to keep things very easily distinguishable as you zoom out to a great distance. Additionally, they required less time to create.
Last, the other point of keeping things as relatively abstracted icons is that it forces players to tell the story in their mind and create emotion from there, where the player fills in the blanks themselves.
Tynan explained somewhere that this is due to design constraints. There aren't many ways to draw top-down, small and light on detail but clearly visible humanoids.
Another generic post about an extremely well-known colony simulator, with a title downplaying the significance. Both RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress are genre-defining cultural phenomenons. It's like posting Linux and making it sound like something unknown. What's going on?
In that game, if I get raided, then I try to capture as many as possible. If they have crappy skills, I'll just harvest their organs and turn their skin into leather to make sand bags. If they have good skills, I'll feed them the leftover human meat from the organ harvesting until I eventually convince them to join my cause.
The Biotech expansion only recently came out I guess if you want to be charitable. But this doesn't mention that, either, it just links the homepage...
I bought RimWorld year ago, but looking on its' silly graphics and cannot make myself to download and start to play it. I have no problem with ONI, because its'silliness is a part of gameplay. I am really glad that Factorio received a graphics boost before 1.0 release.
I found this storyteller thing incredibly difficult to understand when first i heard about this game. But it turns out it's basically just a difficulty level and isn't interesting at all.
Not really ... it's more of an event scheduler that gives you challenges and positive events and some padding in between so you can recover after negative events.
They also have different scales for what types of events come when. For example, Casandra Classic aims for you to have 5 colonists. If you have less, you’ll get more opportunities to recruit. If you have more, raids get more violent and your colonists die easier.
The story teller is a very advanced and configurable difficulty scaling system that enables different styles of play. Mods even add in new story tellers to change the game focus entirely.
The number of events / enemies are just knobs on the difficulty scale you can turn to create difficulty, and if you go too far back off. Lots of RPGs do the same thing, if an area is too easy increase enemies, if area is too hard decrease enemies, you can tune other stats too but fundamentally it's not really that different. The idea is to tune it so that the player feels like they are at the exact ideal power level, having a challenge but not frustratingly hard and not too easy either.
Roguelikes with random events have easy mode the same way, if they think you're falling behind the curve you're given events and powerups, they decrease if they think you're doing well. Because events are random this is easy to tune for the ideal difficulty.
I think most people respond much better to the idea of "storyteller" than "scaling difficulty" though, so it's an important innovation at least in terms of framing.
one could argue that the storyteller is just a different facet of the difficulty scaling system.
different narrators are more difficult than others.
As far as the whole 'intelligent AI' thing. Eh, not really. It's a (small) set of conditions that determines the timing of the next event, the difficulty/magnitude of the event, and whether or not the event will be positive/negative/neutral; plenty of games have had such systems without marketing them as 'intelligent AI storytellers'.
The game is great though. I've sunk way too many hours into it.
Left 4 Dead used a similar system and it was branded as a "AI storyteller"
It would basically look at what your team was doing. If a member decided to just go solo and do their own thing the AI would throw some mob that required a teammate to get rid of. If the team started having too many difficulties it would tone down the number of zombies and their placement. Etc
Think of "AI" as "game AI", not "machine learning". We have called NPC behavior "AI" in games even when they were simple decision trees.
Except for the garbage-collection, single threaded code is extremely common across all "simulation" games. Too many interdependencies makes it difficult to parallelize.
Dwarf Fortress was looking into offload fluid computation to other cores, not sure if it was done.
I personally have not had a lot of performance issues with the base RimWorld game after a patch that was released targeting performance a year or two ago. Much more often it’s a poorly optimized mod that causes issues.
I don’t often play very far into the insane late endgame though (200+ colonists/raiders on the map at once etc). I could easily see it being a problem at that point.
I think the key difference to me (as someone who enjoys both) is that Rimworld is more interesting from a moment to moment standpoint, the sheer depth of simulation in Dwarf Fortress produces far more memorable events.
Put another way, I don't remember any specific events in Rimworld, but I'm more than happy to tell you about the dwarf who pathologically elected to engrave the walls of the fortress exclusively with depictions of a particularly delicious piece of cheese he ate.
I have read about a dwarf that engraved pictures of rats (and just rats) on a particular room. Turns out he disliked the noble the bedroom belonged to, and that noble was afraid of rats.
Greedy bustards hiked price in regional currencies (28% in my case) right before I decided to buy a dlc! Even Factorio (legendary for no sale policy) haven't hiked yet. Great game btw.
That and the difficulty curve skyrockets the moment mechanoids or the bugs show up, and they always show up way. Too. Early. (At least now I can easily turn them off without having to make my own scenario)
I love this game but it is a frustration generator, not a story generator. And the way the creator gets about "storytelling" reminds me of how certain Hollywood directors simply can't shut up about the supposed "magic" of entertainment. Blegh.
edit- I also have a bone to pick with the way the creator ruthlessly works to eliminate anything that makes the game easier... whether its sappers that magically know exactly where to dig tunnels to get around your killbox, or artillery being gimped because it was a way to punch up a few classes with regards to some of scenarios, or turrets now ignoring prisoners/slaves turned hostile. It feels like the game that the creator wants and the game I want are dramatically different, and continuing to diverge.