Annoying game mechanics

[GAMING_Alligator]

Having now played this for a few dozen hours, there are some game mechanics that seem to exist purely to drive me up the wall rather than adding anything to my enjoyment of the game:

1. Operation failures - Yeah, I love to see that bionic arm that cost so many resources wasted because my high level doctor botched the operation *again*. Seems to happen way too frequently (around 1 in 3 of all operations).
2. Blight - adds nothing apart from needing to micro-manage plant cutting in the affected area.
3. Weapons default to not allowed on being dropped - why?!?
4. Caravan formation - can't order / filter by different stats of the colonists that I'm adding so that I'd know who my best miners / shooters were, or which animals were capable of hauling.
5. Category sorting on inventory lists - nice to sort by "category", but not so nice for the game not to actually tell me what those categories are, where they start and end in the list or let me filter them.
6. Idiot colonists running into the cross fire when there's a battle going on - See also colonists shooting each other instead of the enemy.
7. Not being able to operate turrets manually - just let me force fire when I really need to.
8. Working out who has what weapon / needs a weapon / which weapon they need.
9. Arbritary restrictions on which items can't be relocated - you really telling me that a couple of strong colonists couldn't work out how to move an auto-gun to a new place when I expand my base?
10. Working out colonist health - to work out how many prosthetic limbs I need to build I need to click on each colonist individually and look at their health. This is great fun once I've got more than a dozen colonists - see also working out who to give a prosthetic limb too once it's built.
11. Multi-selecting anything - After countless hours I still haven't worked out how to do this consistently - and much less performing actions on multiple things.
12. Colonists ignoring "Rest until healed" and then keeling over - micro-managing this isn't fun.
13. No way to search for something - it's fine when you start out and have a tiny stock-pile, but eventually my base is big, I have multiple big stock-pies, and I can't search for something without having to create a new stock-pile just for that item type and hope one of my colonists moves it there.
14. Battle formations - getting people to just stand in a line is too time consuming and fiddly, and especially if I want them to move foward as a line.
15. Combat targets - why can't there just be an "attack area" like in any other similar game ever and let the drafted colonists arrange themselves to do it? And on similar lines, attacking with a mixed weapon group is an excecise in micro-management that shouldn't be needed.
16. If I drag a box around drafted colonists in the middle of the battle, assume I'm trying to get ones that are standing to do something and don't include the ones that are downed (or at least don't prevent their inclusion from letting me tell the other ones to attack).

Most of these could be so easily solved with a few common sense "quality of life" type additions to the UI that exist in virtually every other similar game.

[SamtheCossack]

All of those actually have good reasons, and add a great deal to what the game is.
1) Operation Failures: Uncertainty and managing risk is the name of the game, if operations never failed, there would be no reason to build hospitals/level doctors
2) Keeps crops from going on autopilot. Throwing a wrench into your plans is what makes Rimworld interesting.
3) So that some other colonist doesn't haul it away.
4) Never actually had a problem with that, but then I don't usually run colonies so large I don't remember that. If you like big colonies, you can probably mod that.
5) Not sure what you are talking about, but the category list could use some redesigning, I agree there.
6) Because adding higher level AI to each pawn would be increasingly taxing on the system. Keeping them incredibly dumb gives you more freedom to give them orders, while not breaking your PC.
7) There are mods for that, the vanilla ones are explicitly autoturrets.
8) Good god, you have a lot of complaints, same theme throughout though. The game is the way it is because you are supposed to have good times intermixed with bad times. Stopping a colony from spiraling into disaster because your doctor wandered into your killbox is why many people enjoy Rimworld.

[Razor 2.3]

And now you know the reason behind a good 60% of RimWorld's mods.
1. There are mods for that. I use Less Arbitrary Surgery.
2. There are mods that reduce the micro.
3. So the pawn doesn't immediately pick up or reequip it.
4. Really needs to be overhauled, I agree.
5. Could also use a find item or jump to feature.
6. Pawns only flee / fight when they spot hostiles, and not when they spot a fight, so you need to learn to zone.
7. That was taken out long ago. I want to say just after alpha 16? Part of the big turret nerfing that continues to this day.
8. Shooter? Any gun I have laying around, unless I have assault rifles. Then everyone gets one. If I've got spacer weapons and pawn has 15+ in shooting? Charge lances, while everyone else charge rifles. Melee? Sword. Steel or plastisteel. Or one of the Royalty swords. Also, anyone who should have a gun is a hunter. That way I get notified when they're not equipped.
9. There's mods for that. MinifyEverything comes to mind.
10. There's mods for that. Medical tab's the popular choice.
11. There's mods for that. Allow Tool, which I feel should be in the base game.
12. Bed rest needs to be higher priority.
13. There's mods for that. List Everything is what I use.
14. You guessed it. Achtung! Also Defensive Positions, for when you get those killboxes set up.
15. Keeping with the theme, Search and Destroy.
16. Yeah, there's no reason why a downed colonist should have the same selection priority as a drafted colonist.

[believor in Prawn]

Originally posted by marclev:

Having now played this for a few dozen hours, there are some game mechanics that seem to exist purely to drive me up the wall rather than adding anything to my enjoyment of the game:

1. Operation failures - Yeah, I love to see that bionic arm that cost so many resources wasted because my high level doctor botched the operation *again*. Seems to happen way too frequently (around 1 in 3 of all operations).
2. Blight - adds nothing apart from needing to micro-manage plant cutting in the affected area.
3. Weapons default to not allowed on being dropped - why?!?
4. Caravan formation - can't order / filter by different stats of the colonists that I'm adding so that I'd know who my best miners / shooters were, or which animals were capable of hauling.
5. Category sorting on inventory lists - nice to sort by "category", but not so nice for the game not to actually tell me what those categories are, where they start and end in the list or let me filter them.
6. Idiot colonists running into the cross fire when there's a battle going on - See also colonists shooting each other instead of the enemy.
7. Not being able to operate turrets manually - just let me force fire when I really need to.
8. Working out who has what weapon / needs a weapon / which weapon they need.
9. Arbritary restrictions on which items can't be relocated - you really telling me that a couple of strong colonists couldn't work out how to move an auto-gun to a new place when I expand my base?
10. Working out colonist health - to work out how many prosthetic limbs I need to build I need to click on each colonist individually and look at their health. This is great fun once I've got more than a dozen colonists - see also working out who to give a prosthetic limb too once it's built.
11. Multi-selecting anything - After countless hours I still haven't worked out how to do this consistently - and much less performing actions on multiple things.
12. Colonists ignoring "Rest until healed" and then keeling over - micro-managing this isn't fun.
13. No way to search for something - it's fine when you start out and have a tiny stock-pile, but eventually my base is big, I have multiple big stock-pies, and I can't search for something without having to create a new stock-pile just for that item type and hope one of my colonists moves it there.
14. Battle formations - getting people to just stand in a line is too time consuming and fiddly, and especially if I want them to move foward as a line.
15. Combat targets - why can't there just be an "attack area" like in any other similar game ever and let the drafted colonists arrange themselves to do it? And on similar lines, attacking with a mixed weapon group is an excecise in micro-management that shouldn't be needed.
16. If I drag a box around drafted colonists in the middle of the battle, assume I'm trying to get ones that are standing to do something and don't include the ones that are downed (or at least don't prevent their inclusion from letting me tell the other ones to attack).

Most of these could be so easily solved with a few common sense "quality of life" type additions to the UI that exist in virtually every other similar game.

1. it is a price, do you want to be fully safe and sure that nothing goes wrong? use gliterworld, are you cheap and not willing to fully accept the risk? industrial meds, are you dirt poor? herbal.

2. it is something bad, it can destroy and entire harvest if you dont cut it in time and even if you do instantly it would still cut a lot of your harvest

5. and dont forget that herbal medicines are counted as manufactured.

6 always draft everyone during combat

7.those turrets cant be fired on target because they are cheap and the ai isnt that good.

8.this is a strategy game in things like that, you are just upset there is strategy in a strategy game.

9.those autocannons weigh nearly tons and are merged with the ground so much that it is impossible to be picked up, that is the entire point.

12. you just didnt assign the doctors or the bed rest well enough.

13. what are you supposed to be searching for?? and why do you have more than one overlapping stockpile?

14. i never have had that problem but you can use atchung! if you find it a big problem

15.what benefit is attack area supposed to have?? and again, strategy in a strategy game.

[Waggle]

One thing you'll find about this game is that the fanboys will defend more blindly than any other game. Your best bet is to abuse the dev menu and mod the game until the game is fun. Play the way you want. I don't shy away from reviving dead members or dev-restoring body parts due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

I mean, why can a colonist self install a psytrainer into their own brain but fail to install a bionic arm on someone else? Who knows, but I'm sure someone will follow up with whatever they feel the dev's ArTiStIc ViSiOn is. Meanwhile, I just spawn another arm if surgery fails, because why the hell not.

[Blazikasu]

Originally posted by marclev:

Having now played this for a few dozen hours, there are some game mechanics that seem to exist purely to drive me up the wall rather than adding anything to my enjoyment of the game:

1. Operation failures - Yeah, I love to see that bionic arm that cost so many resources wasted because my high level doctor botched the operation *again*. Seems to happen way too frequently (around 1 in 3 of all operations).

If you're failing that many operations, you must be doing something wrong. A doctor with a meager 8 stat in medicine, already has a 90% success chance. There is another factor there that must be making your doctor botch those operations.
Check if he's doing operations after taking drugs, if he has a prosthetic arm, missing an eye... maybe the room you're performing the operation doesn't have light (I didn't realize this could be a factor and I had already a few hundred hours and games until someone else told me when I commented I was failing too many surgeries with a 17 skill doc, but duh of course it does). So yeah, that's probably easily fixable if you find out the root of that problem.

[adobo]

Originally posted by Waggle:

One thing you'll find about this game is that the fanboys will defend more blindly than any other game. Your best bet is to abuse the dev menu and mod the game until the game is fun. Play the way you want. I don't shy away from reviving dead members or dev-restoring body parts due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

I mean, why can a colonist self install a psytrainer into their own brain but fail to install a bionic arm on someone else? Who knows, but I'm sure someone will follow up with whatever they feel the dev's ArTiStIc ViSiOn is. Meanwhile, I just spawn another arm if surgery fails, because why the hell not.

This is a game that punishes you hard and some people like that about the game. Every little "bad" thing you can list is something someone else finds fun about it.

Cheat as much as you want. Mod as much as you want. Play it however you like.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by majikero:

Originally posted by Waggle:

One thing you'll find about this game is that the fanboys will defend more blindly than any other game. Your best bet is to abuse the dev menu and mod the game until the game is fun. Play the way you want. I don't shy away from reviving dead members or dev-restoring body parts due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

I mean, why can a colonist self install a psytrainer into their own brain but fail to install a bionic arm on someone else? Who knows, but I'm sure someone will follow up with whatever they feel the dev's ArTiStIc ViSiOn is. Meanwhile, I just spawn another arm if surgery fails, because why the hell not.

This is a game that punishes you hard and some people like that about the game. Every little "bad" thing you can list is something someone else finds fun about it.

Cheat as much as you want. Mod as much as you want. Play it however you like.

None of my points were about being punished though, I like the fact that the game randomly throws challenges my way, some of which take a major toll.

What I don't like is the amount of micro-management it sometimes takes to play the game and how lacking in basic features some of the tools are that the game gives you to perform that micro-management.

For example:

Working out who is best to send on a mining caravan because they are good in mining and adding a few animals to help haul in a sane interface would be something like:

1. Sort the list of colonists by "mining" in the caravan formation menu and selecting the top ones.
2. Filter the list of animals by "hauling", select a few of them.
3. Go to something like "Food" and select all packaged survival meals
4 Go to "medicine" and select a bunch of herbal medicine
5 Go to "furniture" and select some bed rolls.

This would be intuitive and it would take a minute or two to set up a caravan.


What you actually have to do:

1 Bring up the "Work" panel, order it by "mining"
2 Write down the names of the top ones
3 Go back to the caravan formation menu
4 Order by "name"
5 Find those colonists,
6 Realize you forgot to check what animals to take along.
7 Exit the caravan formation menu
8 Go to the "animals" panel
9 Write down a few of the animals that can haul things
10 Go back to the caravan formation menu
11 Have it forget all previous selections so need to select colonists again
12 Select the animals from your list
13 Go to the long list of items, select the "package survival meals" from near the top, because you know they helpfully appear there
14 Order the list by name (because you have no idea where medicine or bedrolls would be in its default "category" ordering)
15 Scroll down to "m" for medicine (or "h" for herbal medicine), add a bunch, then scroll up to "b" for bedroll, and ... oh wait no, I need to remember the material I used ... ok, scroll to "c" for cloth bedroll" and add a few. Maybe wolfskin ones as well if I haven't got enough cloth ones Ok, scroll down to "w"...
16 Finally good to go!

That is certainly "punishing" in a sense, but not the one that makes games fun to play :-)

[Narrowmind]

Originally posted by Waggle:

One thing you'll find about this game is that the fanboys will defend more blindly than any other game. Your best bet is to abuse the dev menu and mod the game until the game is fun. Play the way you want. I don't shy away from reviving dead members or dev-restoring body parts due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

I haven't seen anyone fighting tooth and nail to defend supposed artistic vision. But you know what I see a lot of? Nebulous comments like the opening post talking about similar games. Where are these similar games that are overwhelmingly positive with 98 percent recommended votes by 10s of thousands of people? Oh that's right: there aren't any.

Seems like the dev is screwed no matter what he does. When he tries to update the game, he is attacked by people who had their installed mods broken. He is actually moving the game forward and giving us quality of life improvements.

I haven't seen any one saying the game is perfect - far from it actually. We should actually feel grateful the framework is there to add even more quality of life improvements to make the game more accessible. If you don't like the game, I'm sorry, find something else. I guess you're one of the 2 percent.

When I think about the games I didn't enjoy, yet had no way to fix my issues, I'm glad for how granular this game is. I'm glad there are solutions if I will take advantage of them. Yes, it can sometimes be maddening. I wish the caravan screen was better too, but at the end of the day, there's a lot more right about this game than wrong. If you don't feel that way, I do apologize.

[Razor 2.3]

Wow, Waggle hit a sore spot, didn't he? I think you should calm down and think your response through. You seem to think this thread is attacking mods / modders?

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

I haven't seen anyone fighting tooth and nail to defend supposed artistic vision. But you know what I see a lot of?

Problem: Confirmation bias

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

Nebulous comments like the opening post talking about similar games. Where are these similar games that are overwhelmingly positive with 98 percent recommended votes by 10s of thousands of people? Oh that's right: there aren't any.

Problem: Strawman

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

Seems like the dev is screwed no matter what he does. When he tries to update the game, he is attacked by people who had their installed mods broken. He is actually moving the game forward and giving us quality of life improvements.

Problem: Argument without proof

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

If you don't like the game, I'm sorry, find something else.

Problem: All or nothing. (Love this game unconditionally or never touch it again)

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

When I think about the games I didn't enjoy, yet had no way to fix my issues, I'm glad for how granular this game is. I'm glad there are solutions if I will take advantage of them. Yes, it can sometimes be maddening. I wish the caravan screen was better too, but at the end of the day, there's a lot more right about this game than wrong.

Problem: Countering an argument no one has made

[Narrowmind]

I'm sure you're right. Good day.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by Razor 2.3:

And now you know the reason behind a good 60% of RimWorld's mods.
1. There are mods for that. I use Less Arbitrary Surgery.
2. There are mods that reduce the micro.
3. So the pawn doesn't immediately pick up or reequip it.
4. Really needs to be overhauled, I agree.
5. Could also use a find item or jump to feature.
6. Pawns only flee / fight when they spot hostiles, and not when they spot a fight, so you need to learn to zone.
7. That was taken out long ago. I want to say just after alpha 16? Part of the big turret nerfing that continues to this day.
8. Shooter? Any gun I have laying around, unless I have assault rifles. Then everyone gets one. If I've got spacer weapons and pawn has 15+ in shooting? Charge lances, while everyone else charge rifles. Melee? Sword. Steel or plastisteel. Or one of the Royalty swords. Also, anyone who should have a gun is a hunter. That way I get notified when they're not equipped.
9. There's mods for that. MinifyEverything comes to mind.
10. There's mods for that. Medical tab's the popular choice.
11. There's mods for that. Allow Tool, which I feel should be in the base game.
12. Bed rest needs to be higher priority.
13. There's mods for that. List Everything is what I use.
14. You guessed it. Achtung! Also Defensive Positions, for when you get those killboxes set up.
15. Keeping with the theme, Search and Destroy.
16. Yeah, there's no reason why a downed colonist should have the same selection priority as a drafted colonist.

Thank you! I have a few of those mods already, but will add the other ones that you mentioned.

[Narrowmind]

I'm glad to see you're using mods. Most of us do. I'm glad you're seeking out solutions.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by Ratlegion:

Originally posted by Waggle:

One thing you'll find about this game is that the fanboys will defend more blindly than any other game. Your best bet is to abuse the dev menu and mod the game until the game is fun. Play the way you want. I don't shy away from reviving dead members or dev-restoring body parts due to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design.

I haven't seen anyone fighting tooth and nail to defend supposed artistic vision. But you know what I see a lot of? Nebulous comments like the opening post talking about similar games. Where are these similar games that are overwhelmingly positive with 98 percent recommended votes by 10s of thousands of people? Oh that's right: there aren't any.

Seems like the dev is screwed no matter what he does. When he tries to update the game, he is attacked by people who had their installed mods broken. He is actually moving the game forward and giving us quality of life improvements.

I haven't seen any one saying the game is perfect - far from it actually. We should actually feel grateful the framework is there to add even more quality of life improvements to make the game more accessible. If you don't like the game, I'm sorry, find something else. I guess you're one of the 2 percent.

When I think about the games I didn't enjoy, yet had no way to fix my issues, I'm glad for how granular this game is. I'm glad there are solutions if I will take advantage of them. Yes, it can sometimes be maddening. I wish the caravan screen was better too, but at the end of the day, there's a lot more right about this game than wrong. If you don't feel that way, I do apologize.

OP here. I never said I didn't like the game. Steam tells me I've played it for 136 hours, so I obviously like it very much. Some of the UX and mechanics really does make me want to through the keyboard out of the window though sometimes!

So far I've got about 20 mods that I've been adding over the course of those hours to keep the game fun for me. The community support for this game is amazing.

[Narrowmind]

Yeah, I see that now. But when reading through your complaints, it was difficult to see. My mistake. I think there's something here for everyone. I'm glad you're seeing it too.

[BorisNotRussian]

Something about handling blights. Make more smaller fields to reduce initial spread.
When blight hits, make a work zone on affected fields and restrict anyone capable of plantwork to said zone. Mark all affected plants and unless they're too tired they find nothing else to do in the allowed area except cutting plants.

Might seem obvious to some but took me a while to come up with the workzone restricting, as ithelps with a lot of similiar things too. Animals in storage for carvan, hauling wood/crops home, prioritising construction in a certain area without forbiding everything else.