A little criticism about Event's

[Nextgener]

So, I've been enjoying CoC 2 for awhile now, and I have to say the amount of content in the game is some of the best written I've seen in a long time. However, something's been bugging me for awhile now. Especially after going through Kikiyo's quest line, I've noticed it's become a bit of a problem that has some huge impact on gameplay. And that's the Random Event's system.

Now, I don't mind so much when random event's pop up from time to time. Sure if I'm just trying to save the game and finish for the time, it can be kind of annoying to have one crop up near the end (especially if it's lengthy). But that's rarely ever been a huge issue. What is an issue is when event's Don't pop up. At all.

At the beginning of the development stage, there weren't that many random event's that could pop up. So it wasn't that big of a deal since the event pool was so low. Now it's so high, it can take Forever for a specific event to pop up, if it ever does. For example:

You know Sugo? The Centaur you meet at the first (well technically second if you played long enough) area of the game? Yeah, there are So many event's that happen there now, back in the day where I couldn't walk more than 5 tiles without finding him, it can take up to 3 in game day's worth of exploration in that One zone to have a Chance of running into him.

Now you might be thinking "But there's so many random event's, so it's a good thing you did them all right?". Yes-ish. It's Good that there's so many event's in 1 area to incentivize you to looking for new content. The problem is now that there's so much content, you might not even know the content Exists in the first place. Yeah if you've been following blog post and development update's since day 1, you might have a general idea. But even then, that's all information packed away in either a dozen patch notes or the wiki. And you'd have to know the content existed in the first place. And you have to remember this game is Also on Steam, so treating it like a game everyone is playing for the first time without looking up details about it is kind of important.

The game is generally good at leading in direction's and giving you the freedom to explore. But alot like Fallout 3, I feel like it drops the ball when it comes to informing you "Hey, there's something to do here FYI".

Which leads into the second problem, and this one is kind of big and goes back to the Kikiyo Questline. Random Event Procs that...don't proc

So, if you've done Kikiyo's questline (which is my favorite btw) you know you end up having a daughter called Kinu. I Really like the interactions between here and your character, they're adorable and well written. It's some of my favorite content to experience in the game hands down. That is "When" you can experience it.

Kinu's adventure involves several long and random event's in which you get to play as your daughter and experience event's through Her. It's really good and offer's you a chance to shape her through a morality system. It's fun, it's intuitive...And by God does it Never proc.

I have more often that not played a character who with over 100 in game day's(with the amulet gotten on the first), has only ever seen 2-3 of the 20 or so event's that can happen with her. I know they Exists because I had to look them up, but because they so rarely happen, I've barley seen Any of them in a Single run through. And my most recent was dedicated to making Sure I interacted with Both they're content as mcuh as possible. Still going, and still hoping to get her out the orb at Some point. Which I should feel like doing, but then I miss out on all the content In the orb. And that's generally not what you want to do with content you like.

Oh, side note:

Spoiler: Story spoiler for freeing Kikiyo

Kero's is a dick. Guy speeds up time in the astral plane by 10 years in order to get her out, and never gives you a chance to say goodbye to your family before hand? Yeah, everyone's understanding about it, but it's still super stupid, and makes him come off as an ass.

Now you might be thinking "But that encourages multiple play troughs and making new characters, doesn't it?". No. Because the pool is random, so you can very easily see the exact same scene's in a different game file, and never even know the other's exists. (again, coming at this from a casual players perspective, which is very important)

So, how do you fix these? Well, the essayist solution I've come up with (and the simplest) is adding a new button to allow you to force event's to proc. Similar to how the new "Pick a Fight" button allows you to easily get straight into fighting. This feature basically works on the same principal by allowing you to force any event you Haven't seen to happen in a given area to...well, Happen.

This is the simplest solution I could come up with, but if anyone has a better one, I'd love to hear it. Only voicing my criticism because I Love this game and want to experience as much of it as possible. But I feel like at this point it's become So big for it's own good, it can be very easy to miss out on content if you either don't know about it, or don't keep up with all the updates.

 

[wery12345]

If you want child Kinu events just spam move onto the tile she's on, it will proc eventually.

 

[bubblechaser]

Hmm well an important question to start out with is: does the game keep track of which "random" events the player has experienced? If not, then there's no way for the game to "know" you've already seen this or that scene.

The button you're describing would need that code first so it can rule out "old" scenes - and then what makes a scene "old"? is it when its popped up before? is it when you've fully explored that scene's options? is it when youve explored at least one option? That would need to be decided too.

SO: mods/coders - does the game mark "random" scenes as "seen" and "unseen", and if so how exactly?

My alternative idea:
another solution to get around this is similar: give each random scene a "home" tile. currently, each random scene seems to be spread out across a dozen or so tiles, with an equal possibility on all those tiles. I'm not saying to change that. but what if we alter the "wait" button's behavior - and make it like an "explore" button but only for the scenes that call that tile "home". any given tile would be "home" to only 3-5 random scenes.

• "exploring" in a tile choses form the whole area's list, like normal, like the game already does.
• "waiting" in a tile (for 5 mins or whatever) causes ONLY the events in that tile's HOME list to trigger. once youve expereicned all 5 events that tile is "home" to, you KNOW youve exhausted THAT tile's random events.

So even if an area had 100 random events and only 20 tiles, that would mean only 5 events per tile call it "home".

advantages to this version:

• "wait" is already in the game, so no need to code a new button.
• This prevents the coders from having to write a "has seen" "has not seen" script for every random event in the game.

Problems:
- the player needs a way to know that the wait button has this funcionality, without reading the forms. maybe leave a note about this in the "wait" menu?

 

[Daft Hellians]

Hmm well an important question to start out with is: does the game keep track of which "random" events the player has experienced? If not, then there's no way for the game to "know" you've already seen this or that scene.

The game does track all Kinu and Kiyoko events, and holiday events are tracked by year, so they can be repeated the next year. Though...I'm not sure if events like the Festivus Ball in Winter City repeats yearly.

 

[Nextgener]

If you want child Kinu events just spam move onto the tile she's on, it will proc eventually.

That's a pretty helpful tip to know. Doesn't fix the underlying issue of the randomness and not knowing how many scenes there are, but atleast helps with the repetition a bit. (should probably add that tip to the wiki)

Hmm well an important question to start out with is: does the game keep track of which "random" events the player has experienced? If not, then there's no way for the game to "know" you've already seen this or that scene.

The button you're describing would need that code first so it can rule out "old" scenes - and then what makes a scene "old"? is it when its popped up before? is it when you've fully explored that scene's options? is it when youve explored at least one option? That would need to be decided too.

SO: mods/coders - does the game mark "random" scenes as "seen" and "unseen", and if so how exactly?

My alternative idea:
another solution to get around this is similar: give each random scene a "home" tile. currently, each random scene seems to be spread out across a dozen or so tiles, with an equal possibility on all those tiles. I'm not saying to change that. but what if we alter the "wait" button's behavior - and make it like an "explore" button but only for the scenes that call that tile "home". any given tile would be "home" to only 3-5 random scenes.

• "exploring" in a tile choses form the whole area's list, like normal, like the game already does.
• "waiting" in a tile (for 5 mins or whatever) causes ONLY the events in that tile's HOME list to trigger. once youve expereicned all 5 events that tile is "home" to, you KNOW youve exhausted THAT tile's random events.

So even if an area had 100 random events and only 20 tiles, that would mean only 5 events per tile call it "home".

advantages to this version:

• "wait" is already in the game, so no need to code a new button.
• This prevents the coders from having to write a "has seen" "has not seen" script for every random event in the game.

Problems:
- the player needs a way to know that the wait button has this funcionality, without reading the forms. maybe leave a note about this in the "wait" menu?

Seeing as how the game can't trigger certain event's twice, I assume the developer's put in some "seen/unseen" trigger's. Unless they were only built for the event's in question (example: once you've recruited arona, you can't fight her in the hills again), in which case each scene would have to have an extra string added to it, yes.

I like the idea of retrofitting the Wait function, and you could add it to the description tool-tip on it to make it easier. And going back to my original idea, the tooltip could update to say "An event is nearby" to inform the player if they can proc something on the given tile.

The only problem I can think of is places you can't Wait in for obvious reasons. (i.e. The Astral Planes)

 

[Tony_Redgrave]

I get what you mean. For me, concerning Kinu's quest, I went through the whole questline to free them both from the orb only to be greeted by a "Quest Failed" message for "Educational Help". Had never heard of the quest before so I looked it up. Turns out I needed to first trigger an event with Kiyoko that I had just never managed to encounter. Needless to say, I reloaded my previous save file and made sure to get that quest completed.

 

[Burnerbro]

SO: mods/coders - does the game mark "random" scenes as "seen" and "unseen", and if so how exactly?

I'm not a mod or a coder, but simply looking at the save files through the editor or even opening them up as text documents shows that the game keeps tracks of pretty much all of the world and character states you might think of, including some future proofing (tracking of stats and conditions that aren't involved in the current content but might be useful later).

Overall, I think that the issue can be solved by simply tweaking some of the proc chances for unique events. Though I like the idea of narrowing down the area in which some of them are available, while boosting the proc chances significantly.

If I could find Vivienne's walking hut or run into Ninian more reliably while exploring specific tiles that make sense as those particular charcters' stomping grounds, I'd be one happy player.

 

[wery12345]

SO: mods

Dont know if your really new here, but there will not be mods.

 

[Nextgener]

Dont know if your really new here, but there will not be mods.

Really? TiT's had mod's. I'm kinda Surprised CoC 2 doesn't.

 

[WolframL]

The devs loathe mods due to the absolute shitstorm that the CoC1 mod scene was and still is. There are plenty of reasons why they don't want to see that happen again and why anyone trying to make one will find their post smote approximately a nanosecond after someone with moderator/admin rights sees it.

Here is but one example of why.

 

[wery12345]

Yeah, its something to bear repeating when brought up because its just, a net negative overall. Like it's why lore involving CoC1 is rarly brought up because mods have made people forget what was actually fucking written.

 

[bubblechaser]

Dont know if your really new here, but there will not be mods.

Oh, I was referring to moderators or coders , not modifications on the game FYI but yeah good call on the 'no modded content,' good to know

 

[Animalistic]

The devs loathe mods due to the absolute shitstorm that the CoC1 mod scene was and still is. There are plenty of reasons why they don't want to see that happen again and why anyone trying to make one will find their post smote approximately a nanosecond after someone with moderator/admin rights sees it.

Here is but one example of why.

shamelessly inserting their self-inserts into the lore and making themselves amongst the most important people

"Looks at Darius"

 

[wery12345]

"Looks at Darius"

God I fucking forget he fucking exists, hes literally the most "who" character ever. Ambrah and her fucking SINGULAR chat option are more interactable and memorable. Oh yeah hes the fucking only character who is beyond a reasonable doubt stingy about sex?

 

[WolframL]

"Looks at Darius"

Yes, because a character who's actual writing is done by one of the devs, is only encountered if you build the entirely optional Temple of Mallach and can be ignored even if you do build it is totally 'amongst the most important people' in CoC2...

Seriously, there's hyperbole and then there's Animalistic.

 

[Animalistic]

00

Yes, because a character who's actual writing is done by one of the devs, is only encountered if you build the entirely optional Temple of Mallach and can be ignored even if you do build it is totally 'amongst the most important people' in CoC2...

Seriously, there's hyperbole and then there's Animalistic.

We can ignore all of our companions, except Cait. We can ignore a lot characters that are important. So, I do not see your point.

Darius is an OC from a guy that was inserted into a game. Being a badly implemented one with official mark of approval makes him worse.He is a special guy that was directly brought here by Caits dad because of his "knowledge in field of magic portals", has a sap backstory and to access his sexual content you need to meat a specific requirements. Now, none of these aline would make me point fingers, but when everything is put together, I do consider him a badly inserted self fulfilment OC.