A story generator, not a skill test?

[Nightweaver20xx]

So I just had this tooltip pop up on me, and I'm on the fence on whether to call this pompous artist BS or not.
"Rimworld is a story generator, not a skill test. A ruined colony is a dramatic tragedy, not a failure."
I don't know about you, but this game sure FEELS like a skill test to me, and the people who can play it well are just smarter than I am. I'm not really that interested in telling a great story in Rimworld, I'm interested in playing it well, and beating the game.

[HunterSilver]

It can be both or either, that's just the desired path for the game by the creator. You don't need to experience the game as they'd like though, you can play on merciless difficulty and push yourself to the limit if that makes you happy. We have the ability to decide that here.

[Kasa]

The reason why it can be considered not a skill test us because the AI is sonetimes out to get you.

[Xeal]

No one said you had to play it as they intended. It's not like you're asked whether or not you're into roleplaying or writing or some form of crafting a story before allowing you to buy the game or not. The game has it's share of min/maxing that can be done, tactics and strategies, and what not. That doesn't mean it's a skill test though, just means a more experienced player gets a tell a longer and potentially more epic tale.

[gussmed]

I think that particular hint is a useful insight into what to expect from the game.

The game is deliberately not fair. If you play it for any length of time, you'll see that the game really likes to hit you with multiple bad events at once. Things will be sailing along fine, and then you'll get a cold snap, a toxic fallout cloud, and a mech raid. Any one of which would be OK, but it's a lot of pressure to handle them all at once.

It's not random. Piling it on is intentional. To the point where I really expect bad events to come in threes.

There are some games which add random events as garnish. In Rimworld, the random events ARE the game. The game isn't about how things go normally, it's about whether your colony can handle a series of stressful events. Half the game is about preparing for raids, the most common kind of bad event.

Rather than call it a "story generator" think of it as a "challenge generator."

One of the many concepts that Rimworld borrows from Dwarf Fortress is "losing is fun." The game really is set up for things to fail catastrophically on you. Whether you see the game as a skill test or a story generator, it's very important not to expect fairness from the game. It's a mental adjustment you have to make if you want to survive.

In a way it's like the original XCom (UFO Defense, not the later Enemy Unknown). That game gave you a lot of soldiers, and you expected them to DIE. You had to learn to accept casualties. Rimworld's the same way, sometimes a valuable colonist gets shot between the eyes and dies. You have to roll with it and keep playing.

In my current game, I've lost two colonies, both to infestations. Rather that quitting, I ran away with what I could salvage, and continued on with the survivors. It is, in many ways, more interesting to do this than to just quit and start from scratch.

[Nightweaver20xx]

It's very hard for me because I'm a perfectionist by nature and I don't like losing anything in a game if I can help it. If I feel that I have the agency to keep situations under control, then if I lose progress or items or what-have-you, then it's MY fault and it makes me feel like I'm not a good player. It's why I've rage-quit the Dark Souls series multiple times. I feel inadequate because I can't shake the feeling like everyone is "better" than me at the game, and despite my decades of experience in gaming, I can't quite seem to do things "right."

[HunterSilver]

I mean there's risk mitigation but even the best laid out bases by some very talented and knowledgeable players aren't without their damage and losses. I have key turrets to dissuade sappers, a kill box that can, apparently, handle 37 centipedes without taking much damage or any casualties, and I had my main psychic instantly killed by a pikeman when it one shot her through the heart through her marine armor when a mech raid drop podded into my base. Does this mean my entire base is flawed and I've failed as a player? No, ♥♥♥♥ happens.

I guess just enjoy it for whatever you can enjoy it for and do what you need to do to bring the rest of the game in line. It's your experience, you're not playing for anyone else but you.

[Narrowmind]

I'll also go ahead and add that it took 400 hours to start not caring so much about my people, but you're going to have to. Perfectionism is a death sentence. It's just too hard to not be able to accept all but the most catastrophic mistakes.

[Vattende]

It's not a skill based game cause there is way much random stuff.
There are things you can't really do anything against. Some time your lucky, and the AI and storyteller lovely, some times not, and it's not only up to you.
When your high skilled fighter get stabed in a mastercraft marine armour by a tribe people with a stone knife, that's rng, not skill or lake of skill.
Some love it, others don't.
Seen so, yes it's storytelling. Look here or on reddit how many players post stories from the community, and how it ended, there tons of.

[Aturchomicz]

Originally posted by Vattende:

It's not a skill based game cause there is way much random stuff.
There are things you can't really do anything against. Some time your lucky, and the AI and storyteller lovely, some times not, and it's not only up to you.
When your high skilled fighter get stabed in a mastercraft marine armour by a tribe people with a stone knife, that's rng, not skill or lake of skill.
Some love it, others don't.
Seen so, yes it's storytelling. Look here or on reddit how many players post stories from the community, and how it ended, there tons of.

Yeah unlike Frostpunk where everything is reliable and purley based on "skill"

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Nightweaver20xx:

It's very hard for me because I'm a perfectionist by nature and I don't like losing anything in a game if I can help it. If I feel that I have the agency to keep situations under control, then if I lose progress or items or what-have-you, then it's MY fault and it makes me feel like I'm not a good player.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist too, and I found that there was a period where I was good enough to win on merciless (with a few helpful mods!) but I was doing more micro instead of less because I knew I could get everything right IF i spent an hour per in game day or whatever. Things got tedious because the “fun” was in the perfection, and that’s unattainable.

I’m mostly over that thanks to doing some challenges that forced me out of my typical play style, like no-pause, random research, and small map.

Now I’ve got a much more balanced playstyle and really enjoy it.

[Xeno42]

i take what i learned with darkest dungeon and apply it to this game. no matter how much you stack the odds in your favor its still a dice roll. sometimes your colonists with a 16 in shooting and maxed out bionic augmentations gets shot through the head and dies. a good player isn't meant to be able to completely prevent loss but is able to minimize the loss and adept around it.

[postatos]

Originally posted by Nightweaver20xx:

So I just had this tooltip pop up on me, and I'm on the fence on whether to call this pompous artist BS or not.
"Rimworld is a story generator, not a skill test. A ruined colony is a dramatic tragedy, not a failure."
I don't know about you, but this game sure FEELS like a skill test to me, and the people who can play it well are just smarter than I am. I'm not really that interested in telling a great story in Rimworld, I'm interested in playing it well, and beating the game.

The random part of the game is why they call it a story generator. Some event can't be overcome if it happens early in your colony, no matter if you are good or bad at the game. That's why it's not a skill test, you can do nothing about it sometimes.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by postatos:

The random part of the game is why they call it a story generator. Some event can't be overcome if it happens early in your colony, no matter if you are good or bad at the game. That's why it's not a skill test, you can do nothing about it sometimes.

Yeah, luckily a lot of these have been mitigated or set to a mandatory delay before they can begin, but even so if you're not prepared for them they're fatal. Before passive coolers were a thing, if you got a heat wave in an arid/desert base that was game over for tribal starts. Even if you managed to get dusters, cowboy hats, and shirts beforehand it wasn't always enough to stave off heat exhaustion before everyone died.

Same for toxic fallout, if you got hit with that before it was set to a 40, now 60, day delay it could easily sap all of your food and starve out your colony. Crops would die and animal meat would rot. Cannibalism only lasts so long and toxic fallout can last for months.

Whether you were a good or bad player that would be the end of a colony.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Define better players? Do you mean people who camp in a mountain base and have enough turrets \ furnace traps to kill a dragon?

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Captain KatKit:

Define better players? Do you mean people who camp in a mountain base and have enough turrets \ furnace traps to kill a dragon?

Players who are aware of potential threats that can hit them and have stockpiled the resources and established the infrastructure necessary to deal with them.

Even little things help a lot here, like making sure you have enough medicine not just for your next surgery but to treat everyone injured in the next few raids. Or making sure to build walls and barricades to use as cover when attacking a mech cluster. Or even just growing enough food so that you can weather a long-term threat instead of just scraping by.