Why I refuse to play Ideology.

[Highly Inappropriate]

I seem to be far from the only one who thinks this, so feel free to skip my rant if you've already heard it before.
I think the Ideology add-on is fundamentally flawed, in that it locks playstyles away. I haven't actually played this add-on, but from what I understand, there's no way to play a cross between cannibals and raiders, and then branch into cybermen, when you can only choose one class at the very start, and then you're stuck with it, and a specific set of special abilities.

The core game doesn't do this. You can create your own Ikea furniture making company, AND you can become a drug baron, AND you can raise cattle, AND you can make all kinds of stuff, AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly. It will just take you a couple of additional rooms, and researching the required technology for it. In the base game cannibalism is still an option, and so is raiding. Practically everything that you can choose for an ideology, is still there, except that in the add-on, special mechanics are now available but locked away.

Seemingly this is due to a mere lack of imagination from the developers - that they can't depict certain playstyles intermixing, or evolving. ...while many players very much can, and as a result just feel limited by the add-on. I took one hard look at the add-on and then disabled it. I also don't want medieval kings or royalty imposed on me, so I disabled that too.

...so in short: Change it - I don't like it.

[VoiD]

Not true.

Before the DLC you could do all of those things, but you didn't get any bonuses for doing them, unless you eat human meat and remove all of your non-canibals or something. Which you can still do.

The DLC doesn't take anything, at all, away from you, it just allows you to play with certain specific rules and different morals IF you want to, there's nothing stopping you from going with a bland ideology, just like pre-DLC, with no bonuses or minuses, the same morals from previous patches and just doing the exact same things.

The DLC just adds more choices, doesn't take anything away, even the option of "not having an ideology" is present, just pick some meme with no significance like individualism and no others and there you go, call the leader a mayor, call the "preacher" a philosopher or something.

Also, I have not done this yet but I read somewhere there might a way to change ideologies in the game, twice, it involves a big sale.

Honestly every single person I've seen complaining about the DLC after playing it are actually complaining about their own choices, "this DLC sucks, everybody is mad at me all the time" because they created an ideology with certain requirements, for some unknown reason, and decided not to follow the requirements they have chosen for themselves.

Like, why would you create a colony that REQUIRES human meat and then complain that people want human meat?!

[Winterbloom]

Well time to break this down a bit.

"but from what I understand, there's no way to play a cross between cannibals and raiders, and then branch into cybermen, when you can only choose one class at the very start, and then you're stuck with it, and a specific set of special abilities."

You must choose 1 meme, but can have 4. you listed 3 memes, and all of them work together. Infact, now i'm curious how playing cyborg raider cannibals would be, sounds fun.

"In the base game cannibalism is still an option, and so is raiding. Practically everything that you can choose for an ideology, is still there, except that in the add-on, special mechanics are now available but locked away."

So by mechanics being locked away, you means everyone being super angry that you didnt raid someone this quadrem, and everyone going on a tantrum because they went more than a day since their last cannibalistic feast.

-

Theres also this big fancy button labled classic. which sets all forced precepts to be the same base precepts without dlc, where people get angry you ate insect meat and are upset you butchered another man. As for the last bit which I sort of have to laugh at. you don't want medeival kings forced down your throat, ignore the very charity quest to protect the lord from the manhunting animals he has angered. simple as that.

Edit: There is really only 1 point in this I agree with, and its the fact theres no religious reform option later down the line. you make it day 1, and your stuck into that for eternity.

[NisseDood]

You can make Canibal Raiders who go in to cybermen.
Just dont choose that they are against body modifications and you can body mod them all you want.
Transhumanist just makes them happier about it.

[Highly Inappropriate]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Not true.

Before the DLC you could do all of those things, but you didn't get any bonuses for doing them, unless you eat human meat and remove all of your non-canibals or something. Which you can still do.

Don't go "Not true." and then immediately agree with my point. These bonuses and playstyles can easily be implemented in the core game as well, as research in the tech tree, without locking away any other part of the tech tree. ...and before you go "That's OP.", you can easily balance the game to account for that.

The DLC doesn't take anything, at all, away from you, it just allows you to play with certain specific rules and different morals IF you want to, there's nothing stopping you from going with a bland ideology, just like pre-DLC, with no bonuses or minuses, the same morals from previous patches and just doing the exact same things.

This is basically you arguing that going to prison is a choice, and that prisons therefor only expand your freedom. It is a very convoluted spin.

The DLC just adds more choices, doesn't take anything away, even the option of "not having an ideology" is present, just pick some meme with no significance like individualism and no others and there you go, call the leader a mayor, call the "preacher" a philosopher or something.

There is also the option to disable both add-ons before you even make a game, and I've never been happier. I mean I WANT a lot of those bonuses, but I don't want to be STUCK with them, because there's no point to it or reason for that. I don't think of "I want to be stuck in communist prison for months." as "Freedom of choice.".

Also, I have not done this yet but I read somewhere there might a way to change ideologies in the game

The reviews I've read state the opposite.

Like, why would you create a colony that REQUIRES human meat and then complain that people want human meat?!

Because when you choose ONE ideology, you choose NOT to choose all the OTHER ideologies. I wanted to play half of all those ideologies at once, from the start, and I'm not allowed to choose that. That's restrictive - not freedom.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Flibedi-floob:

...so in short: Change it - I don't like it.

Unfortunately for you, you are overestimating your influence. Not to mention that most of your points are pretty flawed or plain false and the same stuff that has been repeated 24/7 by few very vocal users.

If you want the same freedom as before, you still have it and even a lot more freedom. If you want to play into a specific way however you can now specialize in it. You would have known it if you actually would have played it.

And a lot of stuff you can now actually do was never possible before without hefty mood debuffs, so this also is plain wrong. You know, why would anyone listen to you if all you do is repeat 2nd hand, falsified knowledge? Let alone the devs?

Cause "I don't like it because some others told me so, so please change" is not exactly the most compelling argument to be made....

[Darkcake99]

So basically, Ideology does nothing but add to your game, and yes you can change it in game with dev-mode it is EXTREMELY easy. This is a DLC you have never tried and you are making blatantly trash statements about something you simply don't understand at all. You can allow your colonists to be more acceptable to anything than in the base game meaning you literally have less restriction, let me repeat it twice for you, it removes restriction, it doesn't add it, it removes it. You have 2 hours to refund if you don't enjoy it, so hows about you go ahead and actually try it before crying about things that aren't happening.

Reminder: DLC is optional.

[Henry of Skalitz]

Restricts you? Limits how you can play? You must be nuts.

Because of Ideology I have so much more playstyles to choose from. Hell, I can have an ideology worshipping rats that sacrifices prisoners who harmed them to a whole herd which then eats the prisoner.

[The Blind One]

I understand you OP and your frustration.

The DLC did exactly what I thought it would do in terms of ideology knowing what it did in terms of pawn development

Aka, nothing in terms of dynamic story telling.

Pawns are static objects, they have static backstories and arbitrary static traits that define them. Once a pawn with the princess backstory, always a princess, will never haul a single god darn thing, even if her life depended on it. Not even after 20 years of living on the cold floor, with nary a shirt on her back eating the berries off the land, she won't hault a thing. Very realistic. Very good story telling as well. 10/10

Ideology does the exact same thing but perhaps even a bit worse. Pawns don't have any personal beliefs or inclinations. All beliefs and thoughts conditions are tied to a rigid and completely fixed ideology system in which pawns either have 'conviction' or do not. A pawn who loses their ideology randomly picks a new one, completely arbitrarily as well (you know as opposed to simply becoming agnostic or an unbeliever). An ideology is what determines a pawns total existence and ideologies themselves are completely rigid and fixed and never change much like the fixed nature of pawns.

Once a raiding cannibal, always a raiding cannibal, you can't evolve into transhumanism once the wonder tech of bionics has been discovered, no even as a tribal tribe before you know about bionics at all you must believe in your future goal of bionics right from the start and suffer the penalties for not being body modded. What's that? You were only cannibal because of lack of food and now you have advanced hydroponics? Well too bad, once a cannibal always a cannibal.

Ideologies in essence are arbitrary and fixed entities which exist inside a vaccuum in a sterile form. Something is or isn't part of that ideology and there isn't any nuance.

You can't have an agnostic for example, because agnosticism would have to be its own separate ideology. You can't have a colony which goes from individualistic to collectivist christians for example because that would have to be a completely new ideoligion.

Ideoligions are gimmicks and themes but not actually interactive story telling mechanisms that evolve and change with your colony.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Flibedi-floob:

I don't know what I expected when I started discussing game design on a Steam forum yet again. I mean I expected people to be more understanding, and have similar opinions to mine, but given my past experience, I really shouldn't have. I expected rational people, but there are next to no rational people on this planet.
...and so once again I'll just have to live humbly with the fact that I'm right, and that everybody else would be happy with me as their despot, but that they'll just have to live with the ignorance of that as well.
Farewell.

Oh you poor poor soul, making completely innocent false statements you have actually no experience in with the expectation to change the game design of a DLC you don't own - and have no firsthand knowledge about - to you liking.

And those mean others here, myself included, don't uniformly applaud you innocently stating false stuff... There are a tons of highly rationale and nice people here (not including myself ^^), but they do value rationale thoughts, a basis your claims simply are lacking.

If you want to honestly, rationally discuss the game design be my guest, but for that you actually should have objective, rationale understanding of what you are criticizing which my friend you simply do not. And that you are now drawing the victim card was frankly quite predictable.

You can discuss anything and everything you want here. What you can't is expect everyone to just agree to your points, because opinions differ quite a lot.

[dot]

In short play it, i guess you are just lonely, you don't know wtf you talking about.

Ideology just adds the posibility of changing moral systems, in core you are stuck with ONE, in core unless the trait of a pawn avoids it, they will always feel bad punish you for executing prisioners, feel bad in the dark, want more comfort and luxury, feel bad when they see a corpse, feel bad for sleeping outdoors... etc etc etc. Now depending of the ideology of the pawn, they will feel bad or good for the things, like mood traits but more and you can change the ideology of a pawn for other of the existing factions if they are in your colony.

With the ideology you can create your own Ikea furniture making company, AND you can become a drug baron, AND you can raise cattle, AND you can make all kinds of stuff, AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly. The difference is that you can opt for being good and optimal at something.
If you think you could do all things seamlessly in core, you can in ideology.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by dot:

AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly

Now this is just blatantly false. Pawns who have different ideoligions will nearly always be at odds with each other and have strange and ridiculous fights due to low opinion and they don't transition gradually or seamlessly into other new ideologies.

There is no seamless transition from agnostic pawn to a believing pawn for example. Agnosticism would have to be its own separate ideoligion when in reality agnosticism is just a lack of conviction or a lack of faith in something but in the current setup all pawns MUST have an ideoligion no matter how ridiculous it is. There's absolutely no seamless transition between ideoligions.

It's an all-in or all-out system. Pawns don't have any personal inclinations they are all assimilated into the borg collective the moment they switch ideology and there is no nuance to the ideology they join. Everyone in the ideology reacts and believes exactly the same way.

[dot]

Originally posted by Flibedi-floob:

I don't know what I expected when I started discussing game design on a Steam forum yet again. I mean I expected people to be more understanding, and have similar opinions to mine, but given my past experience, I really shouldn't have. I expected rational people, but there are next to no rational people on this planet.
...and so once again I'll just have to live humbly with the fact that I'm right, and that everybody else would be happy with me as their despot, but that they'll just have to live with the ignorance of that as well.
Farewell.

"I'll just have to live humbly with the fact that I'm right, and that everybody else would be happy with me as their despot, but that they'll just have to live with the ignorance of that as well."

After answering once giving the exact same arguments of the opening post, mental. Humbly mental. Just like used previously not humbly at all.
Bye artist with u, good use of your freedom, it seems you are giving it all.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by dot:

AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly

Now this is just blatantly false. Pawns who have different ideoligions will nearly always be at odds with each other and have strange and ridiculous fights due to low opinion and they don't transition gradually or seamlessly into other new ideologies.

There is no seamless transition from agnostic pawn to a believing pawn for example. Agnosticism would have to be its own separate ideoligion when in reality agnosticism is just a lack of conviction or a lack of faith in something but in the current setup all pawns MUST have an ideoligion no matter how ridiculous it is. There's absolutely no seamless transition between ideoligions. It's an all in or all out system. Pawns don't have any personal inclinations they are all assimilated into the borg collective the moment they switch ideology.

Like the OP's first post, this is also false.

You can create an ideology that's accepting of other ideologies, and you can customize the starting ones as well if you really wanted to create a world where they all hold hands and get happier the more diverse a colony is.

Also, if there's a name, you can call it an ideology, agnosticism is also an idea and it can be defined, so just define it into the game.

Also, pawns can convert to some random ideologies out of their own will, if they are happy with life why would they? When they aren't, they sometimes adopt some crazy/random ideology too, it's not a gradual process, but it works.

Also, again, that is false, pawns do have personal inclinations, a canibal will like to eat meat even if he's not in a canibal religion, likewise a non-canibal converting to a man-eating-tribe's ideology will start eating meat.

It's not a 100% real life sim, but it does a good job, and there are absolutelly NO downsides to this DLC compared to the basic game, it's just a better version of the same, with more options.

[dot]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by dot:

AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly

Now this is just blatantly false. Pawns who have different ideoligions will nearly always be at odds with each other and have strange and ridiculous fights due to low opinion and they don't transition gradually or seamlessly into other new ideologies.

There is no seamless transition from agnostic pawn to a believing pawn for example. Agnosticism would have to be its own separate ideoligion when in reality agnosticism is just a lack of conviction or a lack of faith in something but in the current setup all pawns MUST have an ideoligion no matter how ridiculous it is. There's absolutely no seamless transition between ideoligions.

It's an all-in or all-out system. Pawns don't have any personal inclinations they are all assimilated into the borg collective the moment they switch ideology and there is no nuance to the ideology they join. Everyone in the ideology reacts and believes exactly the same way.

Context, "you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly" is copy pasted along with all the the lines written from "The core game doesn't do this. You can create your own Ikea furniture making company, AND you can become a drug baron, AND you can raise cattle, AND you can make all kinds of stuff, AND you can also mix any and all of these branches together seamlessly. " from OP post fust switching core with ideology.

And excuse me but I don't understand why then you answer with what you answer, seems to me like you didn't read my first paragraph.

[Yaldabaoth]

Another one of these "I didn't really understand the ideology menu" posts. You can modify every. single. thing. You don't need to take 4 memes. Just take Cannibal, if you want that. Remove precepts you don't like, add ones you do like. Not sure which ones? Set to "don't care". Ideology FREES you from gameplay constraints, not the other way around.