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Author Topic: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?  (Read 3076 times)

Devin

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Human beings have their favorite things, but even a favorite gets old after a while.  What if Dwarves got less and less of a boost from things they saw and liked (the same old food, same old legendary dining room, same old artifact, etc...) over and over again in any given period of time? 

Fortresses might not be completely safe once basic food and drink production was set up anymore.  The need for novelty in the form of new types of food and drink and rooms and engravings and masterpieces could drive play in a way it isn't driven right now in the mid to late game with things being really too secure aside from major player mistakes and self-imposed risks and challenges.  I'd like other elements of challenge and uncertainty to exist in the mid to late game as well, but this seems like something that could make a good start.

As far as implementation goes perhaps each dwarf could have a queue of some length where each food/drink/room/item it gets a happy thought from is entered into the queue and the oldest popped off.  The queue is scanned for matches to the current new item and any matches reduce the strength of the happy thought produced.  The length of the queue controls how demanding of novelty the dwarves are.  The longer the queue the more variety they need before being happy with repeats.
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NJW2000

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2015, 10:26:12 am »

This sounds pretty good, but "lategame" can vary a fair bit for different players and forts, so maybe it should be based on boredom i.e. number of events happening? Just so your dwarves don't start wishing they had a new dining room a day after the zombie apocalypse destroys half the fort.
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Devin

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2015, 10:34:25 am »

Some kind of boredom metric is an interesting idea, although I'm not sure how to implement it.
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NJW2000

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2015, 10:45:24 am »

Well, a bad but simple one might involve, for example, counting the number of times the game self-paused? Counting fights? Counting messages with them, like your preference idea, decreasing in novelty each time they were repeated?

  This suggestion sems like it would be more to do with boring but stable forts than mid-to-late specifically. It would encourage either micromanagement or more "creative" play :P , which I think would be great. The search for novelty would be a great addition to the dwarven pyschosis psyche. The novelty would also mean tutrlers would have to poke their heads into the caverns for meat or aboveground for meat and veg once in a while, or face the resulting happiness losses, which would be fantastic.
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Dorsidwarf

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2015, 12:13:56 pm »

Simple - If a dwarf has no active negative thoughts, then it kicks in for him
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NJW2000

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2015, 12:16:17 pm »

Simple - If a dwarf has no active negative thoughts, then it kicks in for him
Thats - evil but brilliant.
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Devin

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2015, 01:11:53 pm »

Evil but brilliant indeed. 
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Devin

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2015, 01:13:33 pm »

> The search for novelty would be a great addition to the dwarven pyschosis psyche. The novelty would also mean tutrlers would have to poke their heads into the caverns for meat or aboveground for meat and veg once in a while, or face the resulting happiness losses, which would be fantastic.

This is the key point I think, well stated.
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helmacon

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #8 on: August 25, 2015, 05:09:27 pm »

You could have it trigger after the third siege. By the time you have survived 3 sieges you are either well enough established that no siege will move you, or far enough removed that no siege can get to you. Either way, its a good indicator that you need some more challenge.
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Devin

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2015, 12:41:34 am »

I'm not sure sieges are a good measure, since it's dependent on the world generation and fortress location whether they get any.  If there needs to be a trigger maybe have things get harder as population goes up.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2015, 11:42:35 pm »

It sounds like certain events should have both a baseline Happiness score, and a Novelty modifier which lowers the Happiness conferred by that event each successive time that it happens. Sure, when a new couple has their first baby, it makes sense that they'd be ecstatic. After the 20th time, though . . . you've really got to wonder.

Personality traits such as Curiosity, Tradition, and Excitement_Seeking should affect how quickly a dwarf doing one kind of job over & over gets the "felt stifled by the monotony of labor" thought. On the other hand, a dwarf physically separated from that exact same boring job, perhaps due to a stay in prison or hospital, should feel "glad to get back to the old grind", at least for a while.
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Witty

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #11 on: August 28, 2015, 08:34:36 pm »

Interesting idea, but I kinda assumed that the reintroduction of the fort economy (and all the needless complexities that entails) would be the "solution" for late game challenges (at least for a standard embark.)
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Devin

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #12 on: August 29, 2015, 06:46:56 pm »

I'm sure it'll help, but I suspect working economy is a ways off with this probably an easier thing to implement.  I also bet they'd work well together.  A need for novelty plus economy basically produces consumerism.
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MDFification

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2015, 08:24:43 pm »

I don't think this'd make a compelling challenge for me. Just fighting against my dwarves randomly deciding to be miserable by buying up random surplus foods and farming a million 1-tile plots for varied food doesn't really strike me as epic fantasy material.
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SixOfSpades

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Re: The Need for Novelty as a Solution to Mid to Late Game Challenge?
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2015, 11:14:31 pm »

The Tavern arc, with its potential for an influx of travelers bearing news, stories, and songs from outside the fort, should go a long way toward supplying at least residential-grade novelty. Also, one of the many possible [ahem] improvements to the menu interface [ahem] would be a way to sort your dwarves by certain traits, enabling you to house your more Excitement_seeking citizens closer to the dining hall that's been built around the gladiatorial area . . . while your more placid types are free to enjoy a more quiet dinner elsewhere.
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