anyone feel rimworld planets are to... earth like?

[Chilli Dog Dave]

i mean where are the psychic fauna, deadly beasts, psionic grown fruits/flowers that give psychic mood buffs, world altering events or on the wilder and possibly not so in lore side, predatory alien humanoids, spacial horrors, parasitic plant life, planetary devistating events, etc.

rimworld feels far to much like an earth sci-fi drama than a story driven drama on a RIMWORLD, i mean i love rimworld played plenty of it, but my issue with the game has always been that it felt far to "tame" and well... familiar, many people i see streaming it for the first time comment how it feels to much like "earth" sim rather than an alien planet.

sure there are mods but they dont add anything "unique" just crossovers, i want to see the wilder side of rimworld, i mean the royalty was the perfect chance to throw in some psychic and possibly aggressive wildlife or plant life or even just some mysterious and exotic alien life but all we got was early day warhammer 40k psyker culture and ended up sort of disappointed by it.

[°๖Blaze]

i mean, as far as plants and animals go yea its way to earthy instead of alien but as far as planet structure goes no, as most planets in the universe that can support life are going to be similiar in that to earth deserts, forests,swamps etc, plant life and animal life is the only thing that doesn't make sense

[pheanox]

Per the lore, worlds are terraformed and seeded with plants and animals by teams of terraformers. The unusual animals are results of mutations or reactions terran animals have to terraforming. Rimworld planets are supposed to be earth-like.

[eldiabs]

Alpha Biomes has some pretty unique biomes. And they can drastically alter the gameplay.

[Hykal]

what are you gonna do, settle on an inhospitable hell hole?

(that being said, weird biomes are super great)

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Chilli Dog Dave:

...rimworld feels far to much like an earth sci-fi drama than a story driven drama on a RIMWORLD, i mean i love rimworld played plenty of it, but my issue with the game has always been that it felt far to "tame" and well... familiar, many people i see streaming it for the first time comment how it feels to much like "earth" sim rather than an alien planet.
...

Notice how you correctly emphasize first the "sci-fi drama" and then separate out the "story driven drama." But, then it feels too much like an Earth sim.

So, I was reading a sci-fi/something book the other day. I'd already given up on it a year ago, but decided to give it another try. (Lack of new reading material...)

The author, who I've read before and didn't appreciate as much as their fans seem to, was very actively promoting this whole idea of "different" and "alien" and "much wow, very setting."

Every single page had some new word for something on it. New, supposedly meaningful, characters were dumped in front of the reader all the way up through page 300. Cultures and Nations and Ancient History, Oh My...

This author was desperately flailing around throwing speedbumps at the reader with wild abandon. Why? "Because "Epic" that's why!" They were so very desperate to promote the setting, to force the reader's face to stick to the page just because they wrote a word in some made-up language, to detail strange cultures that are only interesting because they're strange... They were so very desperate to dump all this meaningless garbage in front of the reader that they ignored the reason the reader is there - To read a "story."

How can a reader catch their breath and start to involve themselves in a "story" when every page is desperately screaming at readers to learn a new word, a new culture, a new backstory event, some random piece of fluff who's only purpose is to, yet again, tell the reader they're in a different place?


The comparison is apt - Keeping gameplay focused is important, too.

What was Tynan's focus when conceptualizing this game and how did it change during development? Where did the whole "Story Generator" idea come from? Was it during design and playtesting when Narrators started to make themselves known in combination with the Events, Colonist's Needs, interactions between colonists, colonists becoming upset, et al? Probably. (The influence of Space Colony/Startopia/DF, etc, should be noted, too.)

Vanilla Rimworld play certainly focuses on the colonists, their needs, their behaviors and interactions as well as all the "static" variables like survival needs. As one plays, one develops the mechanics of one's base and slowly starts to solve basic survival problems. But, one's gameplay starts to become more frequently a question of dealing with the variable of "Fredjick does not have the best bedroom of all colonists, which is something he strongly desires, so he has decided to murder Jalwocky."

Imagine if you were playing the game for several hours and had advanced your base, but were still dealing with "new concepts" and an influx of "alien this" and "alien that." What time would you have had to focus on the core "focus" of what Rimworld actually is? Would working towards building that "Alien Artifact Psychic Generator Lava Jewelry Tribble Mutator" begin to overshadow the fact that Jimbo is a cannibal and is very upset at not being able to eat human meat?

I realize it's a long, involved, post. But, all that focus should serve to demonstrate that past a certain point, one has to decide what to focus on. Did Tynan want to focus on "alien world" or "colonists and their stories?" He wanted to focus on "colonists and their stories" and put just enough "alien" in the game to make it feel like an "alien world."

If it had too much Alien World in it, it'd be like some modded game with fifty-eleven "robot mods" in it and a bucket full of so many distracting things that any engaging "story telling" potential would be fairly absent.

(Just like that one author I apparently just can't friggin' stand...:) This watering down of a proper focus for Rimworld gameplay is why I only use a handful of mods. Too many and the game becomes "something else.")

PS:Added - Something else to consider - A new player's interpretation of their gameplay is going to be very different than a veteran player's. All games need to be focused on "new player" experiences. One reason we have "mods" for any game is usually because veteran players "want more" of something. They've gotten past the new player experience. Good games serve both, but desired additions shouldn't overshadow the new-player experience for... new players. That's one reason why smart gamers always recommend a player not use mods for their game until they've played a good bit of it. There is very rewarding play for a new player in a good game and too much of "veteran wants more" content in a new game might threaten that experience.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

Originally posted by Hykal:

what are you gonna do, settle on an inhospitable hell hole?

(that being said, weird biomes are super great)

well i mean most of the start up selections are crashlanded or "ok i took your money byyyyeeee" as with the crashlanders, naked brutality or to a lesser extent the rich survivor(or whatever that one is called, woke up like 20mins ago so cant remember)

Originally posted by pheanox:

Per the lore, worlds are terraformed and seeded with plants and animals by teams of terraformers. The unusual animals are results of mutations or reactions terran animals have to terraforming. Rimworld planets are supposed to be earth-like.

as stated above though the rimworlds are usually random planets you end up on so theres no way they terraformed ALL of them, i can understand some or alot of them being similar sure but you are telling me every planet happened to have the right make up to allow for brown dirt, blue water etc, just like earth? i mean i wouldn't even feel so "samey" if there was differences in dirt or sand color at least

[Bozobub]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

{Smarty-pants.}

Wow, great post Morkonan. *unsarcastic golf clap*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP6v4T3VT7I

Originally posted by Chilli Dog Dave:

Originally posted by pheanox:

Per the lore, worlds are terraformed and seeded with plants and animals by teams of terraformers. The unusual animals are results of mutations or reactions terran animals have to terraforming. Rimworld planets are supposed to be earth-like.

as stated above though the rimworlds are usually random planets you end up on so theres no way they terraformed ALL of them, i can understand some or alot of them being similar sure but you are telling me every planet happened to have the right make up to allow for brown dirt, blue water etc, just like earth? i mean i wouldn't even feel so "samey" if there was differences in dirt or sand color at least

It's simply the anthropic principle[en.wikipedia.org] writ small. You are watching the story of the people who didn't die immediately in the atmosphere of a gas giant or on some alien Venus, that's all.

Furthermore, it makes perfect sense that there would be far more space traffic (and thus, more accidents) around an already-inhabited world. It's not too likely you'd be hanging around random sterile rocks for long enough to crash-land onto one ^^'.

[Dr. Uncredible]

Like someone mentioned, the mod Alpha Biomes add quite a few different biomes that feel truly alien to play in, complete with distinctly unearthly fauna.

I believe the base game is pretty down-to-earth (Ha!) to provide a solid, unobtrusive foundation that players can build upon themselves using mods.
You want to settle an alien planet, but the person next to you might not, they might want to make a drug+slave ring, another might want to mod up a medieval playthrough, or run a lovecraftian cult, or a myriad of other potential scenarios.

[Rianith]

I'd say, if you are a new player, avoid all mods and definitely the DLC till you've enjoyed the genius base game over several colonies. Then go wild of course.
You're gonna be playing this for thousands of hours, so enjoy the vanilla experience for as long as you can. You will never be able to recreate that wonder.

[Von Faustien]

well i disagree with the planets need to be like earth to have life as extremphiles show life can live most places we are playing as humans so an exotic biosphere completly alien to earth based life would likely kill us.

this planet uses diffrent protien and dna structures you pawn has now gone into shock after eatting because everything is posion. or oh life on this planet is anerobic and doesnt use O2 so the atmosphere isn't breathable. or this planet is covered in a sea of hydrocarbons and the only life is oil eating based bacteria you die.

none of those sound fun to play

[Bozobub]

Exactly. You're just seeing the stories of people who survived crashlanding (or even living on) a habitable planet, or it's simply "Game Over" right away, roll credits. Where's the fun in that?

[Twelvefield]

I've finished reading Dune for the dozenth time, this time because the blurb for Rimworld said that Dune was an inspiration for this game. Most rip-offs of Dune that I have seen focus on giant worms and psychotropic drugs. They fail to recognize that Frank Herbert spent five years developing the ecosystem of Arrakis, carefully weaving history, culture, philosophy, military, religion, and ecology to present his masterpiece. Herbert transposed his experiences living in the arid leeward regions of Oregon into Dune: the coastal land representing Caladan, the urban areas representing the Empire, and the desert representing Arrakis itself.

Rimworld to me definitely falls into the category of missing the deeper parts of Dune and aping the easy-to-grasp parts. It's not a bad thing, but it's also a missed opportunity.