[Brian]

Continuing with Morale this week, and if you haven’t read pt.1, you may want to read that first. Now, you may be wondering, what happens when the Shelter’s collective Morale is less than the Morale bonuses gained that day, and quite frankly, that’s a good question, because it will happen often. The answer to this is found in one of the major resources in the game – Luxury Items.  Luxury items are scavenged from houses, buildings, stores, etc. and are stored at the Shelter as a way to offset Morale losses.  They are creature comforts and distractions, items that make allies forget about the horrors of survival. All luxury items or Morale bonuses contribute to a “stockpile” of positive Morale that can offset losses. Days where Morale turns up negative can be offset by any “surplus” of good will from the player’s actions or collection of luxury items.

You can think of it like this – while having food should be enough to generate good will, it’s not – people expect to eat, it’s an imperative. As gross as it sounds, people don’t need to bathe to live, but after a few days of hiking to the nearest towns and being covered in zombie gore, a bar of soap is going to be more valuable to your allies than gold. However low the Morale is at the Shelter that day, just having the small luxuries we’re used to can put things in perspective for the survivors – all might be lost, but at least you can still grab a cup of coffee and a hot shower, and that’s one less thing to worry about.  Luxury items give people a way to forget about the horrors outside or their losses, so as long as they have toilet paper, a paperback, and a cigarette, their stress is kept to a minimum and the illusion of society is preserved for another day.

One great thing about luxury items is that if you have enough of them, you can take risks or make decisions that otherwise might cause people to get upset. In a way, they can “buy off” the negative reactions that people might have if someone you have a problem with “met an untimely end” in the field. As long as people have stuff, they generally placated and less likely to have a problem with your leadership. Of course, like all things, luxury items are going to take effort and risk to procure, and unlike food, they do not grow on trees. There are many types of luxury items with various levels of worth, and you’re definitely going to want to keep a large supply of them, because if people’s moods drop too low, it could start having consequences in the field – which will be covered in Morale Pt. 3, next week.

[Jakkar]

A good concept, Brian - open to exploitation, but I'm sure you'll deal with that as you flesh out the system.

Might I suggest that past a certain point, it takes more and more luxury items to score a point of morale boost, a soft limiter to how decadent the crew are willing to become. Disgust and diminished self-worth upon realising how indulgent one has become are key concepts in Dawn of the Dead, as an example of my point.

I wouldn't go as far as to suggest a consequent morale drop as seen in that case, that would be getting a little too convoluted.. Although that does bring to mind that the use of stimulants should have a chance of 'crashing' the morale of the user for the following night, moreso upon repeated usage.. Argh, distraction.

Also traits related to the efficiency of 'luxuries' - the 'ascetic' character might be immune or disapproving of such indulgence, while the 'frivolous' survivor might get a double bonus due to their sensate lifestyle.

If the luxuries were visibly or invisibly split into categories, you could furthermore emphasise items of personal hygiene as something that would appeal heavily to OCD types or to everyone after a particularly gruesome melee. I don't imagine a rising 'contamination/dirtiness' statistic would be too difficult to implement as a riser during melee combat, as it would have no dynamics but to rise during close combat and be removed when luxury hygiene items are used.

Another category might be junkfood - appealing in particular to 'gluttons' while having little appeal to characters with athletic bonuses of any kind.

Overall this would add a lot more personality per-individual at a fairly low cost in programming, and allow you to court individuals you approve of by grabbing the goods they particularly like.

I admit it's starting to sound a little Sims-like, but you said yourself; this may be a game full of zombies, but it's about humans. The greater depth of interaction, the greater emotional connection.

[Brian]

A good concept, Brian - open to exploitation, but I'm sure you'll deal with that as you flesh out the system.

Might I suggest that past a certain point, it takes more and more luxury items to score a point of morale boost, a soft limiter to how decadent the crew are willing to become. Disgust and diminished self-worth upon realising how indulgent one has become are key concepts in Dawn of the Dead, as an example of my point.

Well, we can consider it, but that would require a lot of checks for what is essentially a resource. Think of it this way - it would be like finding out that some of the gold you looted in the dungeon was counterfeit and couldn't actually be used to buy new stuff. One of the big reasons luxury items are there is to encourage you to take risks with Morale if you think you can buy people off. Not that your idea isn't a good idea or suitable for the theme, but possibly a level of complexity that I'm worried could get a bit frustrating over time.

However, to address the second point you made:

Overall this would add a lot more personality per-individual at a fairly low cost in programming, and allow you to court individuals you approve of by grabbing the goods they particularly like.

This is in. Getting specific items or meeting other conditions for your allies will raise their Mood and possibly their confidence in you.

I admit it's starting to sound a little Sims-like, but you said yourself; this may be a game full of zombies, but it's about humans. The greater depth of interaction, the greater emotional connection.

Actually, there were quite a few times I was playing Sims when I wished you could press a "zombie invasion" button during a birthday party and watch the results (and satisfy the "Kill Zombie" aspiration.) They let you unleash disasters in Sim City, but I guess they left it out of the other Sim franchises. However, if Sims is any indication of what people will do to virtual personalities, some of those player Shelters are going to be damn hard to live in.

[Jakkar]

Well, we can consider it, but that would require a lot of checks for what is essentially a resource. Think of it this way - it would be like finding out that some of the gold you looted in the dungeon was counterfeit and couldn't actually be used to buy new stuff. One of the big reasons luxury items are there is to encourage you to take risks with Morale if you think you can buy people off. Not that your idea isn't a good idea or suitable for the theme, but possibly a level of complexity that I'm worried could get a bit frustrating over time.

I was thinking in simpler terms =) Apply a multiplier to the luxury item morale-boost based upon how many or how few recent luxury items had been consumed/used.. i.e. if more than five luxury usage-events occurred in the last three days, a 0.7-and-worsening multiplier to the next morale boost, with each usage-event having a cooldown in hours. Too much indulgence would overload the users and negate the effect of further luxury, a safeguard against the event of surplus that means you won't need to so carefully balance the number of luxury items in the world - and a realistic human behaviour.

Might also encourage 'hoarding', the player keeping a secret stash of trinkets he can dole out at his leisure to keep his crew motivated - control over scarcity and surplus, the mark of the post-apocalyptic tyrant.

Actually, there were quite a few times I was playing Sims when I wished you could press a "zombie invasion" button during a birthday party and watch the results (and satisfy the "Kill Zombie" aspiration.) They let you unleash disasters in Sim City, but I guess they left it out of the other Sim franchises. However, if Sims is any indication of what people will do to virtual personalities, some of those player Shelters are going to be damn hard to live in.

I spent too much time doing the same. The Sims was meant to be a psychological toy/tool as much as a game - we should have noticed Will Wright had no real control of his productions then, instead of believing for a moment Spore would be a decent game.

It would be a tragic twist if players ended up spending more time torturing your NPCs than playing your game - but it would certainly be a mark that you'd done your job right, and done something no RPG has yet. Organic simulated NPCs rather than statues with dialogue trees.. Dynamic emotions and behaviours. That would be quite fascinating.

I promise I'm not getting my hopes up Just giving my imagination a little extra free rein.

On the note of Sim-torture and the undead, have you ever played 'Ghost Master'? It's a fantastic piece of work, lead design by Chris Bateman (International Hobo).. Essentially a management game in the vein of Dungeon Keeper, but with an emphasis on indirect control of powerful entities, building and spending 'fear' as a resource in order to build your means and eventually complete an objective - usually absolutely terrorising everyone in the environment.

Basically 'The Sims' in which you control ghosts to influence their moods and behaviour, impressively deep character simulation.

[Bjergtrold]

I have a more general question regarding the morale system:

What effects/things/events will add to the daily morale bonus/penalty (like the bonus from the Negotiation skill), and which will add to the morale "pool"/stockpile (as luxury items)?

[fernando24691]

I don't thinks if this is the correct thread, but I can see some kind of economy or social system based on "the after" to the zombie destruction.

By this I mean I don't know exactly in which period of time we're talking: first weeks (people desperated, running, finding shelter, chaos, etc.), first years (a new structures raise, a bit more calm, people know what's going on over there, they assumed to live with and they build a new world based on hope) or first decades-centuries (a complete oddworld, with a solid human society and economy, differing completely with the one we have today - mad max like).

Anyway, I guess that if we want to "squeeze" the power of a new genre like this, a first period of weeks/months would be the best election, IMHO.

This is an important point, because the whole morale, ethic, economic system needs time to re-structure itself. If we talk about an earlier "ztime", people will react based on their usual habits and their survival instinct. Not new ones.

So, we all know capitalism rules today in our society. It's supposed to be that capitalism would re-enforce itself in a zombie apocalypse (people would look after themselves). Or, things may change to comunism, even anarchism system? That's another important thing. A mixed ideology as responding to the lack of prejudices in a destroyed world.

In short, this is a "juicy" aspect, every of these factors I presented could have a place in characters personality (like points in a MMORPG but more like : confidence, courage, oratory, etc). These points configuration would affect irrational elections and restrict a wide election of possible actions. These configuration can started by the player (as they wish), but the character will finally adopt the real personality that matches with the players, because gameplay modifies this configuration. Skills (like in WoW, chemistry, militia-belic knowledge, technologic aspects like making a radio station) are skills, not personality aspects. These skills can be completely voluntary choiced by the player, not as personality.


Talking about this it's very interesting, but it stills complicated to build a game engine as complex as we expect. ¿Should we try to think these things by a "coding" way. IMHO, it would be good to start with a little script base, and try to build that complex variables tree with everything we're talking about. I mean talking about variables, not ideas.

Goodbye!

[fernando24691]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart That's what I am talking about.  

In spanish : http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagrama_de_flujo

We can start this by presenting the main variables. Then we can compute more complex results by formulas, etc.

Something like this:
Main variables:  Initiative, Intelligence, Physical fit, Emotional index, Social skills, Average culture.

The we can mix these ones in order to compute new ones:

Stress resistance = Intelligence*0.20 + 0.50*Emotional Index + 0.20*Social skills + 0.10*Culture.
Improvisation = Initiative*0.40 + Physical fit*0.20 + Culture*0.30 + 0.10*Emotional Index.
 

PD: The main variables set up by the player are changed directly from the game actions. For example, a equilibrated alimentation would keep the variables up. Even tough, a bad alimentation would make our character average condition to decrease. Living with more people would make character gain intiative, social and emotional skills. Alone, our character would be more depresse. We can even change the way voluntary actions affect character main variables, defining by this way real personalities. impossible to transform them to another one (imagine an old war veteran granny and a high school girl: same actions would affect by a different way in their common variables)

[kalaboka]

Will fear bypass the morale loss? I mean... you can be as depressed as you like, but I certainly doubt you would still be reluctant to obey your leader if you have 200 zombies after you, and no idea of what to do.