Thoughts on character creation

rather than selecting between just male and female where they have the same attributes, can we choose between fitness level, height, age, body composition

male and female don't necessarily need a difference (proceed with differences at your own risk)

choose fat stores thin/average/obese and implement a body weight metric. thin can consume less calories for some tasks (and metabolism), but is at a long term disadvantage due to less fat+muscle stores. obese requires more energy to do tasks and metabolism, but has larger weight stored so more difficult to die from frailty. obese may lose weight through survival and may be considered easier in some ways but a hindrance to survival in others. on an aside this may affect clothing selection.

choose fitness level fit/average/sedentary. this can basically be a easy/normal/hard mode selection

choose muscle composition. higher muscle comp can carry more, run further faster etc but requires more calories for metabolism

height short/average/tall. tall would cost more calories but maybe walk/run slightly faster?

i would love to play as an obese unfit short guy and role play George Costanza

I always try to looking at the mechanics of the game from the point of view of the programmer. That is, "How many programming hours is this feature/tweak going to take?" and "Is this feature worth the amount of hours?"

While I believe it would be great to have more options for which characters to play in the game, as of right now there are only two areas of interest worth having more of: voice acting and starting skill ranks. With those two things you can represent a LOT of different character types.

Voice acting (which is good but surprises a person sometimes with a sudden outburst of observant dialog) currently covers adult male and adult female. In developmental psychology, there are many life stages: prenatal (conception to birth), infancy and toddlerhood (birth to 3 years), early childhood (3 to 6 years), middle childhood (6 to 11 years), adolescence (11 to about 20 years), emerging and young adulthood (20 to 40 years), middle adulthood (40 to 65 years), and late adulthood (65 years and older). With exceptional rare instances, individuals under the age of 11 would, frankly, be at a significant disadvantage in the Long Dark and are just not suitable for player characters. The current protagonists would probably fall into young or middle adulthood, as they appear to be in their late 30's or early 40's. I believe that is a very solid age for this sort of simulator. However, it would rock if the developers added an adolescent range (13 to 15 years) for Hatchet fans and other "coming of age" survival scenarios, as well as an older range (55 to 60 years) for those who have known individuals who lived on their own in the wilds well into their 80's and 90's even. This would require 4 additional voice actors, tripling the current voice actor pool. Once NPCs are added and story mode is developed, this will also add the burden of more, age appropriate, reactions from NPCs to the protagonist.

The second area, starting skill ranks, is best represented as the protagonist's occupation prior to the start of the adventure. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) the thousands of individual jobs identified by the government can be placed into 22 broad occupational fields. Add a few not on the list to round it out, such as military and student (for adolescent protagonists and college students like me!), and you are well on your way. Each background would adjust the starting skill ranks of the character in each of the skills in the game, as well as perhaps provide a few minor mechanical benefits, such as starting gear, starting knowledge of how to craft certain items, and unique combat, skill, and social abilities.

Basically, you would get to choose one of six "characters" and one of 24+ occupational background making for a more diverse array of characters. However, much like the idea of "difficulty sliders" the more customization you give players for their character, the more balance issues you will run into. For that reason, I would be a fan of giving plays loads of cosmetic game options, like different voices, as opposed to different starting ranks.

thats quite the reply but youre getting pretty complicated with amount of work required imo while not adding a lot to gameplay. Things should still be easy enough to be able to just start up the game and click 5 selections and start playing, now youre trying to compete with skyrim for character development with 22 races and 7 age choices which is quite a bit for a game that looks a step above minecraft

In the long-run, your character doesn't really matter. It is the player and the mechanics of the game that will win out. What you are talking about with adjustable sliders or character traits would have, what, maybe a 5-10% variance on certain attributes or abilities? It is mechanical min/maxing. What I suggested with occupations is basically the same but balanced mostly through skill ranks or early access to equipment or schematics. It is all negligible in the long run and a lot of extra work for the developers.

Cosmetic stuff like voice acting would take some time to develop and require new talent to be introduced (actors and dialog scripts), but would be a lot easier to implement and add to the "role playing" factor of the game. That's all I was trying to say.

I don't necessarily need/ want more different characters but would love to be able to pick my own starting skill levels. Much like many RPG's let you distribute skill points in the character creation process. This wouldn't take much to implement, the skills are already in you just need an interface to be able to pick them yourself instead of getting a default preset.

I do prefer a detailed character creation in every game where you have to impersonate somebody whom attributes are important in the gameplay.

Here are my reasons to make it simple:

- You can use a default suggested attribute and skill set, if you only wish to start a game without thinking too much.

- It is one of the best available tools in a game in order to have increased replay value even for story mode.

- It provides more detailed condition tracking factors than the current system.

- Worth mentioning how really helpful addition for a game designer if you can weaken or strengthen the player in many different ways.

- You can have completely different gamestyles than anybody else, bringing in new experience.

- Provides wider range of possibilities for co-op, or online gameplay.

It is nearly impossible to compare the difference between the possibilities of a game with or without a character attribute and skill set simply because the limitations you face after a while in the variable game elements without this pre-requirement.

That is all in general, and I am really interested about our community's point of view in this particular case.

And the fun part

I personally favor the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, introduced in fallout 1 which includes the following:

(I have no idea how these copyright things work, and I know it is not a valid argument in my defense.)

Strength

Perception

Endurance

Charisma

Intelligence

Agility

Luck

It may be a bit too complex for a game like TLD, and it is just an example, but it is still helpful to give you something to start with.

If you need further help, consider the following.

Your strength actually depends from factors like, sleeping, the quality and amount of food your consume, etc...

Your strength totally influence multiple things in a game like TLD, carry weight, combat effectiveness, condition, etc...

Perception is simple too, your senses summed up, your ability to hear, see, smell, touch, and taste, which also can determine things like eating raw meat, sleeping next to a corpse, etc...

Endurance is also something what I find a solution to many topics in these forums, like stamina bar, the ability to run, etc...

Charisma may be totally useless at this stage, but if you think of story mode, or online gameplay, it can be used as well.

Intelligence is my personal favorite in all games, and unfortunately most of the time it is pretty unbalanced, and I am sure everybody have their own ideas about how Intelligence can be used in a game where you can learn, craft, figure out things, or not, because it is easily may be a limiting factor in many cases, just like how long should it take to repair, how fast your tools degrading, etc...

Agility is again something what may be to much for this game, but worth considering to use it for a bit more than determining your in game moving speed, since many other factors may depends on it like setting up a fire, searching in containers, collecting wood, etc...

Luck is something what in my eyes, never ever allowed to explain in a game, it is a fun factor what you must figure out for yourself.

That is about the attributes in my point of view.

The skill set, is again another huge topic, but this is far more than enough for today.

Please stay constructive if you reply to me, because this is something what we totally should have a fertile conversation about instead of ignoring the benefits because of the amount of time you have to invest in it.

I like the idea of different characters, but this seems a little too complex... moreover I just don't feel this type of customization fits.

There was another thread that discussed the potential for introduction of additional characters (possibly from the story mode) with differing skill sets. Granted that wouldn't be as customizable as this approach, but it allows for a spectrum of characters that fit within the game's story (when it comes).

I think that a system like SPECIAL is too complex, in it's current state the game encourages the player in front of the screen to gain experience and less the character we play. The focus would be shifted away from this if we would have to level all sorts of stats. There is a mild form of leveling with fire and repair proficiency but that's not something you intentionally are leveling up, you do it on the way.

But I would very much like to have different characters to choose from with different abilities, as discussed here:

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=4026

Just don't loose the beautiful simplicity of the game by overdoing things

I don't think starting the game with different skill sets adds much to the game, but learning through practice and reading books does. Not only would reading books give us something to do during blizzards, but also it might add to the incentive to explore and find all the books. Books could potentially become as important as a hunting knife or rifle if, say, you could learn to smoke meat or make a fire bow. Edit: In this way, you create your character and skill sets as you go.

I don't have a problem with learning skills by reading books, as long as the reading is not done instantaneously. Reading the book should take time (more than just a few hours).

Please no If I want to read a book I do it in real life by my own choice, it's the part I hate the most in games like Skyrim where you have to read through myriads of books to get a feeling for what is going on. When I am gaming, I want to play the game, I'm not looking for an alternative life to live

I stand by my point though, I think that any form of character skill progression is contra-intuitive to what the game wants to achieve, that the players skill should increase. I know only of two other games that took this approach serious, GuildWars1 and Dark Souls, and those are among the best games I've ever played, I hope TLD stays this way too. I am still for different starting characters to get some variety to sandbox play, but once I've chosen the char the learning should happen in front of the screen.

I can understand that. But if we're going to be learning new skills by reading books, it should not be: click the book to read it and poof the next second you know the skill and can use it accordingly. If reading a book to learn a skill doesn't take time, I don't want to be reading books at all.

Reading a book in TLD would however not mean you'd actually have to read a lot of text. It would work the same as everything else (crafting, foraging, sleeping etc). The screen would go black and time would accelerate.

I stand by my point though, I think that any form of character skill progression is contra-intuitive to what the game wants to achieve, that the players skill should increase.

This I don't follow. How is character skill progression contra-intuitive to the skills of the player increasing? Without skill progression, there is no increasing a skill as both progressing in a skill and increasing a skill are the same thing. So I guess I'm not understanding what you mean by character skill progression.

I stand by my point though, I think that any form of character skill progression is contra-intuitive to what the game wants to achieve, that the players skill should increase. I know only of two other games that took this approach serious, GuildWars1 and Dark Souls, and those are among the best games I've ever played, I hope TLD stays this way too. I am still for different starting characters to get some variety to sandbox play, but once I've chosen the char the learning should happen in front of the screen.

+1 for this.

I'm sorry, but I just don't have the feeling that TLD would benefit much from adopting too many aspects of classical role-playing games. Don't get me wrong - I love RPGs, but I would prefer TLD to stick to its original concept of being a thought-provoking and exploration-focussed survival game (I'm really looking forward to the moral decisions you might have to take during the story mode). To me, TLD is somehow "unique" and "precious" because it isn't trying to be a role-playing game. Distribution "skill points" somehow just doesn't feel right for me in this context. I'm sorry, but I can't explain it better.

I wouldn't mind learning certain "abilities" (e.g. how to built and use a fire-drill or how to increase your sewing skill by 5) by reading books, though.

And I would love to have a few more characters added to the sandbox with slightly different features (I still like the idea of lumberjack and engineer^^).

I get that and I don't want TLD to turn into a typical RPG either. But how is picking a character from a set of pre-made characters different in this respect than allowing the player to make his own custom character? If you have to pick a character from a limited set, there will always be characters not in the set that people will want to play. But by choosing the skills yourself you can play any character you like.

There's only one difference elloco: as I understand the OP's and your suggestion, he want's our characters to gain new skills and level existing ones while playing the game. This is completely different from having a fixed set to chose from the beginning and deal with that.

Here's an example of why I think the player should level and not the character: suppose there is a skill to withstand blizzards longer, if you master it, it will take double the time to freeze you, your cloths would slower decay, maybe even your field of vision would be bigger. Instead of learning how to deal with blizzards, memorize landmarks on the way and always have a mental map prepared to find your route to shelter, you could simply increase this skill say by reading books or the like. In both examples you would reach the same goal, blizzards would become less a hustle the more your skills increase. The difference is, with a skill system only the character "gains" knowledge, you as a player can stay pretty much ignorant to the environment. With the system we have now on the other hand, you actually learn something that might even be valuable in RL, because your skills and not some arbitrary characters skills increase. That's what I love so much about TLD and the other two games I've mentioned.

GW1 had a level cap at 20 which could be reached within a few hours. This was something completely new to level 80 in WoW or whatever the cap was there, because ANet specifically said that leveling is only to get familiar with the game, your skills as a player should increase and not the characters level. I always loved GW1 especially for this concept, because it made me a better player

I'll try to explain it a bit, Elloco, but that's really hard as it has very much to do with personal feelings and the way you identify with your character. And it's just the way I personally feel about it, I'm sure many people don't share my point of view. ^^

But how is picking a character from a set of pre-made characters different in this respect than allowing the player to make his own custom character?

To me, the difference is that the "attributes" of the TLD characters should be solely related to their personal history, especially their profession and prior experiences.

In my humble opinion, the TLD character you play is NOT an ingame-version of IRL-YOU (I can't express it better, sorry) and thus has other attributes than you personally might (want to) have in this situation.

You're TLD character is rather an independent entity with an own history, profession and skill set. It's not his/her function to fit your needs and wishes perfectly.

To me, that's the main difference between a customisable RPG character (which has the function to answer your personal wishes) and a premade character being an independent person.

I really understand what you're saying and you're totally right that you will never satisfy everyone with pre-made characters as some people want to play extraordinary combinations. (In Fantasy-RPGs you would call them "stealthy tanks", "battlemages", etc). It's just my personal feeling that TLD would somehow "stray" from it's original purpose if it was possible to completely customize your character like in RPGs.

What Chillplayer just wrote is another aspect I agree with, but he already explained it really well so I can't add anything to that.

@ChillPlayer:

I do think it should be possible to gain new skills, that's true. Two years ago I would not have known how to make a fire using a firebow. But then I read about it, watched some video's about it and I learned the basics. Then I tried it out and after some practice was able to make a fire. This is how I learned a new skill. I haven't done this often enough to be good at it or anything, and to get better at it I would have to do it more often.

I wouldn't mind if learning new skills could be done in TLD. I think you could learn a new skill by reading about it. That doesn't mean you will be proficient in that skill right after reading the book of course. A new skill would start out low and only by using the skill will you increase it, much like how the existing skills in TLD already work.

There already are skills in TLD and they all start at 50 and you can increase them to 100. But this doesn't mean the player doesn't have to know anything or isn't learning anything while playing the game. There could be more skills, but I don't think there should be skills that give the player an advantage like the ability to travel in a blizzard like you describe.

I don't think you should be able to increase skills by reading books. If you're fire starting skill is at 80, you won't learn anything new by reading a book. Nor do I think there should be levels for the player or the skills. And you shouldn't get skill points to distribute as you see fit by playing the game like many RPG's work.

@Scyzara:

I think I get why you wouldn't want to create your own character. The problem I see with a limited set of characters to choose from is that there will always be people complaining that "their" character isn't in there.

Like you said, you'd like to see a Lumberjack and a Engineer character. Say those get added to TLD. You're happy. Now someone else would like to play a Park Ranger. He's not happy and complains on the forum about this. Others agree with him and eventually the Park Ranger gets added. Then there's someone who wants to play a Scientist. And then there's someone who wants to play a House Mom, or a Lawyer. So where are you going to draw the line? What characters get added and what characters don't?

No matter what characters they will add, there will always be people who are not happy with the choices. So I think it's best to either don't give the player any choice in the matter (like it is now) or give them full choice (a character creation system).

Now that doesn't mean there should only be a character creation system. There could be several pre-made characters (each with their own background story etc) and if you like to play something else you can do so as well. But you wouldn't have to use the creator.

I hear what both of you are saying about not wanting to turn TLD into some mainstream game. I certainly don't want that either. And I'm sure the devs won't add any system to the game if they can't figure out a way to do so without loosing TLD's identity or loosing sight of their plans for TLD.

To be able to freely choose all starting parameters of a char is an appealing idea, I certainly wouldn't mind that. But gaining new abilities and level them in the game would - for my liking - shift the focus too much towards maxing this abilities, away from learning the game. Take any RPG, there is usually a very handy skill that would make your life easier, either because you have stronger spells or you can lock pick master locks and so on. Once I've identified said skill I tend to focus in raising it as quickly as possible and not doing much else. Why should I explore different regions where I will encounter alot of chests that I cannot open because I don't have the needed lockpicking skill? Sure not all players think the same way but players which have efficiency in mind probably do, I count myself as one of them.

If you never experienced a game that focuses on skill development of the player it might be a hard to grasp concept. For starters, you don't get any feedback from the game in the form of stats, bars or level that show you how skilled you are. In the case of TLD, the only feedback you get is if you managed to live longer than the last time and this only if the success is rooted in you having learned something new.

Firemaking and repairing skills in TLD work in a funny way if you think about it. An inexperienced player will cheer once he get his firemaking skill to 80 and get a success rate of 100% with cedar. A more experienced player though might think, "hmm, I'm only at day 70 but my fireskill is already at 80 - what did I make 30 fires for, why am I not at day 200 now?". Same for repairing, higher repair skills mean you didn't pay close enough attention to the environment, endured more blizzards or got into more handfights with wolves and bears than you should and therefor had to repair your cloths more often.

It's that kind of realization and learning I am looking for in TLD. Although they are labeled "skill", they actually point to a poor routine that needs tweaking the higher your "skills" are

Like you said, you'd like to see a Lumberjack and a Engineer character. Say those get added to TLD. You're happy. Now someone else would like to play a Park Ranger. He's not happy and complains on the forum about this. Others agree with him and eventually the Park Ranger gets added. Then there's someone who wants to play a Scientist. And then there's someone who wants to play a House Mom, or a Lawyer. So where are you going to draw the line? What characters get added and what characters don't?

Well, I wouldn't mind at all if the added characters weren't exactly lumberjack and engineer.

I'm much more interested in their features (and the way this would force me to adapt my gameplay) than in the profession itself.

E.g. the "lumberjack"-like character might need 500 more calories per day, but takes less damage (and deal more damage) when hand-fighting wolves. It's not very important to me whether a character with these features would be called "lumberjack", "elite soldier", "park ranger" or even "fitness instructor". I'm just calling it "lumberjack" as I believe this would fit best into the game.^^

The same is true for the engineer/scientist-kind of character. My idea for him/her would just be to be more susceptible to wolf attacks, but on the other hand need slightly less calories (or have any other advantage... maybe he/she could be a bit more efficient when harvesting cloth/scrap metal or need less materials for crafting - the details are really not important to me).

Again, I wouldn't mind at all if the newly added characters (or their features) were completely different from my suggestions. I just love the idea of adapting the way I play to fit the needs of the character I have chosen.

It's up to the devs to decide which character they might consider worth adding. I personally would also be happy with a housewife and a lawyer as long as they have "unique" advantages and disadvantages enforcing different survival strategies.^^

So my main point is that I don't want to adapt a character to fit my preferred playstyle (like in an RPG) but rather the other way around.

Hello,

I am glad the community is interested in this topic, but even though I used the simplest way to describe the idea, you still started to talk about how contra-intuitive is the character skill progression.

The mentioned feature is already in the game, and nobody feels it contra - intuitive yet.

I was not talking about skills or progression, but if that is what you are worried about, than I have nothing else to add except the already mentioned stuff about how you are able to manage your gamestyle in game by changing your attributes instead of suggesting things on the forum about (just a couple of examples to get what I know):

- how hard to kill a wolf

- encumbrance and carry weight is too limiting

- food is too easy & too hard to find

- you burn calories too fast/slow

- how can I limit myself to make the game harder

- etc..

The mentioned way with those seemingly all hated attributes can fix this in game, with one well planned move.

[yes, Iam so grumpy before my coffe]

All: Please ensure that your posts remain on topic (Character Creation)

Thanks!

All: Please ensure that your posts remain on topic (Character Creation)

Thanks!

Before anybody start guessing I reported them, no it did not happened, Ryan is just preactive:D

Thank you Ryan

(I am a bit slow today, maybe that was meant to me?

Was I about to start a flame war? shame on me, sorry)

I will just drink my coffee and come back 1 hour later.

...where you have to impersonate somebody whom attributes are important in the gameplay.

...

I personally favor the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, introduced in fallout 1 which includes the following:

It was this what I was referring to when I said it's counter-intuitive to the present gameplay. I know it sucks without coffee but before you get grumpy, just drink it first and go then online - I saved myself alot of arguments since I do it this way around :lol:

But really most other posts were in regards of ellocco's suggestion, not so much about your specific post. It's still on topic, you just can't expect that everyone in a thread will only answer to you, topics evolve and I don't think we strayed very far off, I rather think it's still ontopic everything that was discussed

Having said that, I respect your suggestion and I think I know where you are coming from. I personally just believe that any form of a skill/attribute system that lets you level ingame would break some core elements that make TLD so appealing to me. My fear is that you will rather depend on having good stats or skills to survive a situation than on you as a player having the wits, cunning and knowledge to somehow get out of it.

The last 20 days in my current run were the craziest I ever had in TLD, just ask Denyo what I had todo to somehow survive. I ran naked down a mountain in PV - only a sweather and socks on - in a blizzard free moment and piece by piece picked myself back together. Already 5 days later and with some cloths crafted I got back to the bunker in ML where I slept into the 127th day. Situations like this require you to have a deep knowledge of the mechanics, your character, timing and geography and you can't just read up on how to do it, you have to learn by playing a lot. Notice the many "you"s in the last sentence? It's you who has to learn and get better, not the character and that's what I love the most about TLD (should've added this to the poll ).

...where you have to impersonate somebody whom attributes are important in the gameplay.

...

I personally favor the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system, introduced in fallout 1 which includes the following:

I personally just believe that any form of a skill/attribute system that lets you level ingame would break some core elements that make TLD so appealing to me. My fear is that you will rather depend on having good stats or skills to survive a situation than on you as a player having the wits, cunning and knowledge to somehow get out of it.

EDIT for those whom do not like to read: I agree, with your statement about levelling. (read further if you are interested in the details)

That is up to Hinterland to decide, the fact I was brave enough to bring up the topic is that they already achieved with their 15+ years experience what I was not ready after nearly 30 years of gaming in the middle of the survival hype, they actually created something above my expectations.

So I just have massive trust in their skills, that is why I want to see something like this from them, because I believe they are capable of creating the best survival genre game of this decade, and the attributes are something what is a sin to left out from this genre as it would be a great addition, what is not often (I did not see anywhere in these popular survival games) implemented.

I guess because it is tons of work and hard to balance, but the profit just like as rewarding as hard to create it.

I see you still misunderstood my point, it is fun to explain these things with coffee pumping in my veins so just in a few words:

You (not personally you) guess my intention is to create something like hack & slash & grinding game by levelling stats, however I never mentioned levelling.

Just imagine a well balanced system when you can survive on your own influenced by your focused attributes or by a mixed combination of them, let it sink in a bit.

Yes, it is actually as many different experiences as many attributes you have.

It is a different game every time you try out focusing on any of the SPECIAL, or on a mixed combination of them totally depending on your previous experiences in the game.

Yes, I am talking about you, the gamer in front of the computer, not the character.

Orwell, can you give specific examples for how you think these SPECIAL attributes could be implemented? Strength is fairly obvious, but what about perception?