[Occupational Upgrade] A way to kill ONI

[BlueLance]

@Saturnus Correct me If i am wrong, when you say passive stat increase do you mean like the old system? I have been moving house and a little behind on the last 4/5 days of stuff.

Also I have to agree with both sides of the coin, personally I love the challenge, Always have and always will, currently I am trying to come up with a design I like for farms of all kinds. But I feel the game is constricting the number of uses a dupe has. Having specialised dupes is great, but only being able to have 3 dupes fully specialised in digging for example after so long is tiring. My army of mining dupes in Exo suits is now slow and it hurts my poor wee soul because by the time the day ends some of them have done a good job and the others are the guys smoking cigarettes next to the explosive barrels, just highlighting the problem.

What would be nice is if there was a "Training" program designed to make dupes more "Athletic" etc. Maybe make it that a dupe cann only gain x amount of stats. Or that a dupe has a level and you choose how to spend it. Sure it would be a bit of micro management but at least it is in a way that benefits all players and allows them to morph dupes to their needs.

[Oozinator]

47 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

Sure it would be a bit of micro management but at least it is in a way that benefits all players and allows them to morph dupes to their needs.

Not, when it would be a room, where you can't set priority. Dupes go only there, when idle (prio 0 active). There could be different training machines, books for example, to "wake" new interests, or a treadmill, for athletics.

[BlueLance]

1 hour ago, Oozinator said:

Not, when it would be a room, where you can't set priority. Dupes go only there, when idle (prio 0 active). There could be different training machines, books for example, to "wake" new interests, or a treadmill, for athletics.

That is what i was meaning, Like you can Assign a treadmill to a dupe if they have 1 level up. but a dupe will never go onto this treadmill through their own choice (Otherwise they would randomyl use it no doubt and waste the level.)

[Oozinator]

Just now, BlueLance said:

(Otherwise they would randomyl use it no doubt and waste the level.)

Neural Vacillator adds a random option too and it's not bad. A bit like gambling. On one side you have to lower workforce, to get them to prio (0), on the other side you need them, to do work and expand.
When players would lock them down (to force idle), they could refuse to use the room. Some malus, when they don't worked in "their job", for x cycles, or met no other dupes. Player could use door restrictions, to force social interaction, but not the job doing stuff.
When a digger collects xp while digging, it could be "a coin" to invest in a room machine" when leveled up. Alert message "ready to gamble" or similar. ^^

[Lifegrow]

6 hours ago, Saturnus said:

@Lifegrow Correct me if I'm wrong but you didn't actually play the preview until the current revision, right? You know the ones that only had priorities 1-5 and *1-*5, and no skill or stat increase at all, and strict job boundaries?

If so then your experience of the preview is naturally completely different because reverting to the old 1-9 priorities, giving a wide job task variation and having passive stat increase on top of job stat increases changes the game completely. From a frustrating mess where everything was slow as molasses and with awkward job boundaries, where miners would only dig, architects would only build etc meaning that everyone just stood around watching while the gofers and couriers where overworked like mad trying to keep up. 

Yeah, like a sensible bearded oaf, I waited for a couple of hotfixes before taking the plunge   However as you know - I stream this game, so I get all the gossip on the bugs/derps and quirks of the various builds - and i'm well aware of how broken the jobs system was beforehand, i.e. resetting of learned skills if you changed jobs etc. I do follow this game closely, I just didn't really have the time to play if anything.

That being said - when playing a pre-release, expecting a fluid experience is a bit of a non-starter - you're opting in to see the content early at the risk of experiencing disappointment. My comment was more directed at those who play 20 mins of a preview build then come out screaming "FU KLEI, YOU RUINED MY GAME, WTF!!! YUDODIS?"

You know what I mean i'm sure.

Either way, on the flip side - i'm very excited to see if/what changes will be made to the release from the current build. Don't know about you, but lag is very much back in the game, as is overlay freezing and dupe mis-behaviour (stuck in loops, refusing to work, etc). To me, these are all way more important issues if they've been inadvertently reintroduced.

Have many of you played a colony past 100 cycles yet? Have you played a colony with more than 10 dupes and clicked an airlock to change settings? There are many issues with the current state truth be told  

[thewreckedangle]

(a bit off topic, but seriously, @Lifegrow i just spent a fair few minutes trying to work out what a "fuklei" might be.. )

 

[Lifegrow]

Just now, thewreckedangle said:

(a bit off topic, but seriously, @Lifegrow i just spent a fair few minutes trying to work out what a "fuklei" might be.. )

 

 It's a sound heard across Canada when the ONI staff get called in to fix an "emergency tube-related incident"....

[AileTheAlien]

Am I still allowed to think that mandatory jobs ruin player freedom, and mandatory hats ruin the visual differentiation of my dupes, while simultaneously ruining the visual aesthetic of retro-future space-people. Or, alternately stated,

"FU GODDUM HATZ"

[Oozinator]

3 hours ago, AileTheAlien said:

Am I still allowed to think ..

Thinking is completely ok, i think!
Wearing hoop earrings not!

[Tallaaron76]

Now I was trained in game design, the fact that I hold a BS in Game Design and Art not with standing... 

First off, I am very aware that this is early access, and that things change with every implementation and I also subscribe to many early access games to hopefully help point out things both as a player and a designer to help the game progress in a positive way. 

Each update... 

- I make a new game to see what changes early game might see

- I look at old save games to see what changes happened to better understand things.

- I decide if it is worth saying something after viewing what others have said. (Until recently the answer had been no.)

 

Being trained in game design, I truly understand what these designers/coders are going through. At the same time, as a player I look at the reaction of fun and interest by others. So please understand that I say this out of concern and love for the game, but not only coming from a players point of view but also a designers point of view.

When I first saw the introduction of the timed updated, it spoke to me that the company felt like it was spinning it's wheels, not getting much done or at least within the time table they were after. This had some concerns for me... And while I watched, I see some of them have been confirmed.

As we all know, the more complex something is, the harder it is to fix. Each update has been force feeding more and more content, with cute little cartoons to express to the players what the designers were trying to come across with. in a perfect world, this would be amazing! The problem is two fold, the first one is the more complex something is, the harder it is to debug. The second issue is that you cannot please everyone every time. The bar on pleasing everyone has been wavering back and forth between the hardcore and the easy going players. Until this finds a medium point, we may see a lot more unbalanced updates. Add this to the new content displacing or altering the balances far beyond what they all ready do (yes, things have been re-balanced again...) 

From a designer stand point, I understand where they are shooting for. As a player, I feel they should slow down their introduction of new mechanics for a little balancing. Balance what they have and then add more. Now there are many extras that could be added that would not bother balance too much. The tubes did not change things big time, the fire pole was a nice addition, cutting all the carry weight and mineral output seriously on top of everything else? Possibly a big mistake.

I am going to keep trying to help this game be its best, I want it to be great. Right now I think they stepped forward on somethings but backwards on others. 

If people wish to say this is good or bad, please look at an old base and start a new one. It will greatly alter your points of view with two different view points. 

I can only speak for myself, I will keep playing and hope it gets better... But waiting 30+ cycles just to have a dupe level up might kill my interest for a while since it is the only way I can break out of the shell imposed by the new system to finally get to the resources I need to survive. As it stands, the only way I survive is by not bringing in new dupes (not what the game design team wanted) and surviving off of minor plants and plants that are growing naturally so I have time to research (since that takes forever once again). Once I get enough research done this might change, but I do not see that happening as at this point I need to keep a priority on keeping my dupes a live. 

 

I hope you all have fun and luck in your own games.