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[Dean_the_Young]

Notes: Shortly after Slumber Brothers, the conversation continued with a discussion about Camping Mechanics.

The template for this idea is the general form of Fallout: New Vegas.

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Anonymous Wrote...

This has made me think about something that games that involve lots of land travel could benefit from - a proper camping mechanic. One of the things I did enjoy about FNV was the sense of wilderness travel. I think it would have been awesome if while trudging through the wasteland I was keeping an eye out for good camping sites as dusk started to fall. (I know there's a "wait" button, but I would enjoy lugging a sleeping bag, taking turns on watch, deciding whether or not we're going to light a fire, etc.)

Dragon's Dogma has an interesting day/night mechanic. The land is being overrun by monsters (incidentally, most of them are from classical tradition, which really does make them feel like alien invaders in a Tolkienesque fantasy kingdom), the most fearsome of which prowl at night. The game takes on a kind of survival horror feel in the dark, with your characters unable to see out past their lantern light. But it lacks any way to set up a camp, which I think would have been a really sweet mechanic.

Dean_the_Young
08:49 AM 2012-09-22

A camping mechanic sounds like it could be interesting, especially in something like Fallout. I wouldn't say in so much that 'and then there are deathclaws everywhere', but escalating the difficulty of playing at night, and combining it with a pressure mechanic, could definitely make 'where can I sleep/huddle up' worth it, as well as offer a few of the under-rated skills (perception, night-sense related, survival) a chance to shine.

While you'd have to rebalance XP on the night-side of things just to not level up to max in a single wave, I could definitely see an escalation pressure mechanic. A lot more enemies begin spawning at night as they come out: weaker at first (Geckos, wolves), but as they engage you or you kill them, the noise and time begin attracting bigger things. Your fist-fight with a wolf-pack, for example, may seem like less of a good idea when a Yao-Gai pokes up for the next turn. And then a host of fire ants. And by the end of the night... definitely Nocturnal Deathclaws.

A big thing at night is that Human perception is incredibly weak vis-a-vis all other creatures and classes. In the present game night-vision is pretty much useless, as you can see clearly regardless: in this concept, '15 feet' would be an exageration, but not by much. Definitely a severe penalty on the enemy-detection radar, and maybe a half-distance vision bonus at best... if you have max perception. With really bad detection, you'd be even worse. Perks for night-senses are incredibly powerful at night, as are night-oriented gear like NVGs (to see at night), or risk-reduction gear (deathclaw-urinated leathers, to scare off most animals).

At lower levels, fighting through everything at night is definitely not an option. Survival at night is as much about hiding/shelter as it is the occassional fighting. To that extent, the under-used skills become a lot more important: Peception for being able to see enemies in the dark, stealth for staying hidden, Survival makes it easier to get hints/avoid detection of the worst, etc. Except for the people willing to make the gamble, most nights are spent bottling up: Camp Fires, Isolated Buildings, and Towns.

Camp Fires are the anywhere-'safe zones': most creatures still fear fire, and so as long as you can maintain a watch of some sort (easier with companions) a simple fire-place should protect you on most evenings. There could be a minigame/random-event-generator, in which your state of preparation (number of companions, your perception/luck/survival scores, status with factions, a passive sleep meter that notes how long it was from your last sleep) effects how your night goes. You could have an uneventful night, or be ambushed from a compromising position by animals/bandits/enemy factions. (Yay to being woken up by a team of Legion Assassins.) You could even have some benevolent random encounters: with a perk/barter skill, merchant caravans will share your spot of safety and in exchange give you good safety for the night and a one-time discount on items. Of course, other campfires aare situationally bad: you know, the sort with skeletons near them because people set up in Radscorpion Cave without clearing it out first.

Obviously different companions are better and worse than others. Lily the Nightkin is probably the 'best' for safety: Arcade the worst. Tireless EDI better than Wrex, but with some sort of tradeoff. Campfire-related perks are useful for people who like to travel a lot. A campfire is an imperfect defense, but one that will protect you from the worst of things.

Isolated Buildings are those shacks out in the middle of nowhere, not enough to be towns but indeed having 4 walls and a bed. These are the next-best-thing to a town, because (usually) animals don't follow you in. Besides the occasional 'insect hive right beneath', which will mess you up if you try to sleep without clearing it first, the bigger concern is encounters from owners/other travelers. Most, wastelanders or fellow travelers, won't mess with you if you don't mess with them. Some will be similar to the Camp Fire encounters: a Caravan Convoy, raiders wanting a place to crash, etc. etc. A much more common problem now will be pick-pockets or theives: people who place themselves as neutrals but whom you won't realize have stolen from you until after you awake and they are long gone.

'Owners' provide the more significant role-playing option, and catalyst for contrast. Some owners won't want anyone in their place at all, and so you can't sleep or stay the night in there unless you're prepared to kill them (which will always be EVIL). Others will be mercantile (you can stay for X00/Y000 caps, depending on danger level outside), basically assuring your safety in exchange for caps/items. Bartar skill is handy for these, lowering prices or letting you pay in junk/cigarrets/booze instead. Then there are the kindly good sammaritans: Folllowers of the Apocalypse or otherwise, who won't charge a thing. Of course, there are Evil Owners as well: the sort who will have an inn full of cutthroats who will try to slit your throat as you sleep, or mission-specific ones of greater cruelty. (Hansel and Grettle kindly crone, or cannibles, or-).

The best Isolated Buildings are the faction safe-houses: guaranteed no-bad events, resupply, and so on. Since you have to have a pretty much legendary reputation with the groups to get a key in the first place, I'd even have a safe-house-specific Random Event of One Night Fling with Random Faction Member X (those nameless nobodies who are also at the safe-house at the time), who's impressed/enamored by what you've done and offers to 'help you sleep better.' You get the post-sex 'Well-Rested' Perk, and a chance for roleplaying the public hero.

A 'special' case of Isolated Buildings are the Dungeons. Dungeons effectively replace the night-game, as the enemies and challenges of the building replace those outside. Most dungeons will also have sleeping mats somewhere. Once a Dungeon is cleared it might act as a regular Isolated Building with random events at the entry areas, but otherwise not.

Isolated Buildings/Inns are far safer than campfires, with virtually no non-location-specific animal threat, but can still have random encounters and can have to deal with 'Owners' as a separate dynamic.

The safest areas of all are towns, which have the lights and firepower to keep the badguys and critters away. Sleeping in towns is a challenge, however, in terms of finding a cheap place to sleep. With all beds owned, the Inns can charge a good deal more for safety to morning (usually in terms of XY caps per hour till daybreak). However, you can always 'earn' a bed for you future use: area-specific developments are one, but faction-affection is another. All military camps and establishments are considered towns in terms of safety.

As how to survive each night is a challenge, part of the XP-from-waves rebalancing I mentioned earlier could be XP awarded from how you survived the night: less about the enemies you killed (maybe all only give you 1-10 xp regardless of difficulty), but with a end-of-night review giving you a lump-sum multiplication bonus for the accomplishments of the night. The general idea is that the game totals all the XP you gain from 6 pm to 6 am (or sleep), and multiplies that by the conditions of your night and gives that to you as a bonus. The longer you play outside in danger before going to sleep, the better your bonus, but the bonus stops accumulating the second after you enter a rest-area. After entering a rest area, no further night-gains are made. (IE, you gain 1 xp per ant you kill until you enter a rest area, at which point infinite ants won't give you XP until 6 am.)

Staying at a town or Dungeon (or stepping foot in one during the time) is a x 0 multiplier to all experience gained during the period. You get no special experience for what is essentially a cost-only difficulty. (If you killed 50 ants for 50 xp before entering a town boundary, you get no bonus XP that night.)

Isolated Buildings are a x 1 multiplier for the events that occurred before it: the primary XP gains are from your interactions with any random encounters gained. This provides minimal XP gain for events done after nightfall, but a pretty normal gain for random encounters. (If you killed 50 ants for 50 xp before entering Raul's Shack, and persuade your way out of a Random Encounter for another 50, at 6 am you will gain a bonus 100 xp. If you gain 50 critter xp before the shack, and then kill another 500 critters for 500 xp after leaving it, you will still only gain 50 bonus xp.

Campfires provide a a scaling multiplier with the scaler increasing by the time spent outside before camping, reflecting the higher dangers involved. As campfires are a 'pass the night away' event, you can't enter a campfire and leave. This provides an escalating risk-reward mechanic: if the scalar is the number of hours you stay outside after nightfall, then you'll get a greater bonus the longer you stay out. At midnight, you'd gain a x 6 bonus XP bonus in the morning... while at 5 am you'd gain a x 11. There would need to be some balancing to factor in Random Encounters (maybe a cap at midnight for a maximum x 6?), but Campfire nights trade risk for reward.

Outright surviving the night, however, is a massive booster: either a flat-sum of considerable amount (500? 1000? Difficulty dependent?), or a signficant modifier far surpassing the campfire bonus (x30). If you spend the night hiding and only occassionally picking off targets, that might not be much, but fighting through everything could be a massive challenge, and a massive reward.

Thoughts?