Disease as Autumn-specific feature + Disease improvements

[The Noon Fish]

1 minute ago, Vargling said:

Oh, I'm sorry. 1 Flint is such a big deal, clearly a shovel is much more expensive than medicine requiring Salves and Phlegm. - Praise be to Water Balloons, burn the Heretic Flingomatic

???

but really, maybe just make a special flingo that requires a boss drop to stay fueled to temp cure disease

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

19 minutes ago, Ecu said:

Once they are diseased, actually diseased, if they are dug up you cannot replant them.  The only way you can avoid losing them is if they you notice right away when the character mentions it.  That requires that you are at the base before the disease fully takes hold and also happen to have gathered from it (at least, according to the wiki, as I have never had disease happen and be an issue).

Doesn't matter if your method is more difficult to maintain, to be completely honest.  The idea that current disease can cause you to lose all the plants, and with your disease you will lose none...the current one is a better system for doing what it was designed to do, which is getting you out there to gather new resources.  I personally think it would be great if during every Autumn after the first disease just affected all player planted plants of this type and forced you to completely start over them each year with NO method to save them.  As again, it create gameplay and inhibits you from just sticking around base.

Considering how quickly a year can go by, this would just make plants to be transplanted for those who don't know how it works basically pointless to transplant any plants at all OR would gulf up resources around the world a lot in one go. And for those who DO know how it works, if your mechanic was in place, players could simply dig up all the plants before autumn comes by and then replant them straight afterwards. Your mechanics are either way too punishing or way too exploitable, unfortunately.

20 minutes ago, The Noon Fish said:

 

ynot make a enemy/boss that can spread disease actively to cured plants when there are too many cured plants in one area? that way, the plants are still at a risk of being destroyed by the disease, but not by much?

This is something I was thinking about. Toadstool could be a good candidate, although he is only present in caves... wait... I've previously suggested for bosses to be both raid and "coming after you/your base" (you can raid them whilst you're at their explicit season, so like Dragonfly would be present at her arena during all of Summer, whilst at a certain point during the season, if not occupied by any disruptions, she would come over to base and act kind of like single player Dragonfly... of course health would need to be tuned and whatever else, but the idea could be great). If Toadstool works similarly, perhaps he could be cave Spring giant, which could be raided every Spring, but would be coming over to you at some point during the season to disease plants in your base or nearby plants if you're there. Just a thought.

17 minutes ago, Vargling said:

With my disease you will lose all of them and the items from them, unless you kill a boss that requires a team, and make a medicine, just to reset the timer before it happens again*

Please, quit trying. Your points are a joke.

Ewecus =/= boss. Just a mob that requires mob or player allies to kill much more easily. And @Ecu's points aren't a joke. He/she has some good points in response to yours and they are based on what I've read and comprehended, they're showing some decent understanding of game design.

13 minutes ago, Vargling said:

Yes, and it being destroyed is completely illogical and stupid. Go home.

 

You're beginning to get on my nerves because you're so persistent with your stupid points of "Oh, your base should be completely destroyed."

Here's an idea, mod out the Fling-O-Matic and try that. Your base should be completely destroyed, right? Go away, troll.

 

THIS DOES CAUSE DISEASE TO DO MORE DAMAGE, YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER MORON. IT MAKES IT AN ACTUAL MECHANIC BESIDES "WE'LL KILL YOUR PLANTS IN 7 DAYS USE 1 FLINT MUAHAHAH"

Hahahahahahah...! I'm getting... "nostalgia"

[Pyr0mrcow]

Yes to making disease only happen in Autumn, just to give more consistency to the mechanic. Not everyone memorizes long timers. Increasing commonness during the season in exchange sounds good.

...imo, current disease is pretty pointless. Personally never lost anything to it, cept on the first run after it was introduced because the group was keeping massive resource farms...and even then, we only lost a couple grass plants.
It's not hard at all to counter disease, particularly since it now only happens when people are nearby. And even then, if you don't want to deal with it? Twiggy trees. Find a source of tumbleweeds or grass geckos, and even if you have to make a trek for it, you can get extra items on the side or get the grass faster. Fillers? Make farms, or shroom planters, or just use a few spider nests, traps and a bird cage for eggs.

Moreso than keeping up supplies, the game is basically just saying "If you use certain items, I'll punish you for it, but here're these neat alternatives!".
Self-harvesting twigs and grass, or plants that try to commit suicide? You can ignore disease completely and be better off.
The mechanic needs more development to be relevant.

also i don't see why you guys are fighting so much when you're agreeing with eachother

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

1 minute ago, Pyr0mrcow said:

Yes to making disease only happen in Autumn, just to give more consistency to the mechanic. Not everyone memorizes long timers. Increasing commonness during the season in exchange sounds good.

...imo, current disease is pretty pointless. Personally never lost anything to it, cept on the first run after it was introduced because the group was keeping massive resource farms...and even then, we only lost a couple grass plants.
It's not hard at all to counter disease, particularly since it now only happens when people are nearby. And even then, if you don't want to deal with it? Twiggy trees. Find a source of tumbleweeds or grass geckos, and even if you have to make a trek for it, you can get extra items on the side or get the grass faster. Fillers? Make farms, or shroom planters, or just use a few spider nests, traps and a bird cage for eggs.

Moreso than keeping up supplies, the game is basically just saying "If you use certain items, I'll punish you for it, but here're these neat alternatives!".
Self-harvesting twigs and grass, or plants that try to commit suicide? You can ignore disease completely and be better off.
The mechanic needs more development to be relevant.

also i don't see why you guys are fighting so much when you're agreeing with eachother

Idk how I feel about it being only active during autumn or starting from the second autumn, but you do have a good point on it being pretty easy to deal with. On top of that, players can simply make lureplant farms of something like grass and have it farther away from base and an ocuvigil with a flingomatic near center can easily keep a lot of it from some form of danger (lightning rod too, I guess).

[Ecu]

19 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Considering how quickly a year can go by, this would just make plants to be transplanted for those who don't know how it works basically pointless to transplant any plants at all OR would gulf up resources around the world a lot in one go. And for those who DO know how it works, if your mechanic was in place, players could simply dig up all the plants before autumn comes by and then replant them straight afterwards. Your mechanics are either way too punishing or way too exploitable, unfortunately.

From research I've done, it takes roughly 10 hours of straight playtime to get through a single year.  To add to this, a majority of servers are survival mode.  So, as a result it is actually rather common for servers to not even succeed in getting through their first year because people quit/die and the server resets.  I would say, from a design perspective, content should be really balanced around the idea that you only make it through one year.

I see my suggested mechanic though as a sort of reset, forcing those that do make it through to play by the new rules for the next year.  I would love to see such extended to other resources as well.  This would not only give some benefits to continuing to play on a server that has been running awhile (as resources would have mostly regenerated) as a new user, but also throw a wrench in the base of existing users.

As a solution to the exploit you mentioned, perhaps plants could have food-like decay, which would continue to decay while planted.  This wouldn't affect their ability to be used, but instead would act as a timer for said plants to become diseased.  Still possibly open to some exploiting by combining items of different levels of decay, though I don't think it would benefit people all that much.

19 minutes ago, EuedeAdodooedoe said:

Ewecus =/= boss. Just a mob that requires mob or player allies to kill much more easily. And @Ecu's points aren't a joke. He/she has some good points in response to yours and they are based on what I've read and comprehended, they're showing some decent understanding of game design.

I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate the praise.  I've been spending a lot of my free time over the past five years or so studying game mechanic and conceptual design as a personal hobby.  Mind you, I've not really done much with it beyond a simple Minecraft mod and suggestions here and there, but I cannot say it doesn't feel good to know someone notices.  So thanks! ^-^

[spiderdian]

2 hours ago, Vargling said:

Along with my other idea, the compost box, it would be an equivalent to Summer.

Now all seasons would have a specific weather that hinders your progress, but has a counter. - Heat and Fling-O-Matic, Snow and uhh.. Fire., (Winter needs more, really, Rain and Shelter, Disease and Compost.

As for improving Disease, you would need to port Poison from SW.

Rather than Disease killing your things, it gives Diseased <item> - Making tools and stuff with diseased supplies means they get 2/3 the durability. Eating diseased food gives 2/3 it's stats and poisons you (3 days, or cure.)

Digging up the crop will NOT fix Disease, simply giving a diseased Tuft/Sapling/Bush

As Autumn progresses and the temperature gradually drops in the last few days, if you don't keep warm (below normal temperature for extended periods of time) you'll catch a cold (1 day, or cure.)

Cures:

Cough Medicine (cures Cold + takes 1 day off Disease) - 1x Spider Gland, 1x Carrot, 4x Rocks - Carrot-flavoured cough medicine in a stone bottle - Lose 20 sanity when drinking it, due to the awful taste.

Cure-It-All - 1x Healing Salve, 1x Phlegm, 4x Rocks - Cure-It-All in a stone bottle. Can be put into a fling-o-matic to spray your supplies with it, curing disease (if in Warning period, or after.) or can be drunk to cure any poison, and restore 20 health, at the cost of 40 sanity. You're literally drinking Spiders mixed with Snot. Delicious.

Sprinkler - 1 Gear, 2 Electrical Doodads, 4 Marble - A Marble Sprinkler to keep your crops healthy - Waters crops, making them grow 1,5x as fast, and making Disease happen at half the rate.

Medicine Bomb - 1 Phlegm, 4 Mosquito Sacks - 4 Sacks of Snot to throw at your diseased plants.

Medicine Bombs cure diseased plants.

Water Bombs would now make your plants grow one stage when thrown at them, in the radius.

You can put Cure-It-All into the Sprinkler to make it shoot Medicine for 3 days. This will fix any WARNING PHASE plants, and will stop crops growing faster. Players won't get any benefit.

Disease would become much more common, completely ravaging your supplies if you don't keep the Sprinkler fuelled, and Medicine on hand. However, your plants won't die, you'll just get poisoned. A lot, until you fix it with Medicine Bombs.

The Warning Phase would now have a proper visual indication, where the plant begins to wilt and starts to have an aura of flies.

Disease would not happen during the first Autumn.

I'd say I'm totally against messing with Autumn's mechanics/gimmicks. It's supposed to be the Late-Joiner friendly season, and not mentioning the gradually increasing Hound waves and Bearger(Most destructive one out of the 3).

Considering to port something out of the same franchise as a key for your suggestion is not the best start, you know.

It would be a nice twist to have Diseased crafted items making you poisoned/, but I'm pretty sure that would involve re-coding the way crafting components work(they would need to consider the state and durability of each individual item, unless the crockpot already works that way and they just need a tweaking work). and since this still isn't a thing after 4 YEARS of DS, I doubt this will ever come to be in-game.

Not sure whether or not you know this, but when Disease was first introduced, some stuff got a diseased version of their loot, like the Twiggy trees(The old ones, yes...those) and Grass Tufts.

I wonder why they decided to change the loot to plain Rot or even nothing, and didn't even come up with these after the Improved Disease update(ANR Up-1).

 

Uh.....So....You're suggesting Freezing? lel.

Having a/so many cure(s) to disease seems pretty pointless, since losing your entire farm is a consequence of you removing these resources from their natural places and don't even bothering to take care of them later on. You either smartly evolve or dumbly lose, no in-between with fancy gadgets.

I think that's a nice graphical touch. Better than that rather anticlimactic poof it currently has.

Diseases don't happen until the second half of the first seasonal cycle(autumn-winter-spring-summer)

 

PS: I love ur responses, random guy with that mighty albert einstein profile pics

[Pyr0mrcow]

7 hours ago, spiderdian said:

It would be a nice twist to have Diseased crafted items making you poisoned/, but I'm pretty sure that would involve re-coding the way crafting components work(they would need to consider the state and durability of each individual item, unless the crockpot already works that way and they just need a tweaking work)

Well...crockpots do account for the freshness of ingredients when calculating the freshness of the result item, so it'd be a matter of adding a similar tag.
Rather than Shipwrecked poison, maybe add an overlay of little purple dots over the resulting item and have it damage health/sanity when consumed?

[Electroely]

I agree with Ecu. Disease is meant to destroy your farms, but not in the same way wildfires do.

Think of it this way: Each part of the game makes you play the game a different way.

Winter: Forces you to gather enough resources / go out of your base for resources as for farms don't regrow, and hunting would be necessary since vegetables and fruit don't regrow either.

Spring: The rain is meant to limit how many items you can equip at a time, since for the most part you're forced to hold an umbrella, wear an eyebrella or a raincoat. Like that, you can't take 1 kind of equipment for granted.

Summer: The wildfires are meant to limit your base size based on available resources, as for without wildfires, you can EASILY make a megabase and you won't have to work half as hard as you have to now to maintain it.

With all of these, it seems that throughout the whole year you can stay in your base as long as it's protected, right? Well, that's what disease was made for. What you're suggesting, Vargling, is to make disease a copy of wildfires, but what really disease it meant to do is slowly (or quickly, depending on you're vigilance) wipe out your farms and cause you to go out and explore the world (or maybe the caves) to replace farmables lost by disease.

Disease pretty much balances a few things. For instance, if you want a "disease proof farm", you'd need to separate the farmables, right? Well, i'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to maintain THAT many flingomatics. It also makes the game more fun, because, as stated by Ecu, you're not supposed to live forever. There should be a time in which you die, either because the world's out of resources, or you do a major screwup. That's the reason giant attacks were made. And hound attacks. If you're gunna ignore this whole post and just say "use 2 flint to protect ur base 2expensive5me" well tell me, how are you supposed to watch your base 24/7? aren't you going to run out of food? you are. and right at that moment, when you're out getting food, will the disease strike one plant or two, and they're gone. If you just ignore it and continue living in your base, eventually the whole farm will be destroyed, forcing you to get out more. It all makes the game more fun. As Ecu stated many times, Klei has it's reasons for making disease partially unpreventable. Just accept the fact that this suggestion will never be accepted and stop being so hostile.

 

[Pyr0mrcow]

Thing is...it really doesn't stop that playstyle. Disease strikes when players are around, so unless you miss it on the edge of your screen, you'll catch it...even moreso with multiple people. Even if you don't, it's not too hard to stop beforehand. You can reset the disease timer.
If anything, this seems like it's doing more to promote a player or two to take up the job of base caretaker and rarely leave the base. It was happening even before disease, and it's more common now; someone that knows about all this, usually a Wickerbottom, tends to stay behind and keep food cooking and farms growing and birds eating and all that. Also tends to be the same person doing the base layout.
Disease actually had the opposite effect of what it was promoted for. Though, I do sorta like that player roles are being promoted.