Finding lore around the world.

[Doozerpindan]

So, I'm playing this game purely for the building. I turned zombies off cos they keep breaking my things, which is just rude. But as much as I love the post-apocalyptic setting and the overall aesthetic of the game, I do wish there were things like usable computers with data logs and the like, journals with details about the lives of people who have come and gone before you, and newspapers detailing events leading up to and during the outbreak.

 

Basically, I want more Fallout 4, cos this game gives me all the building freedom I wish Fallout 4 had (Rebuild the commonwealth. No, not there!).

[meganoth]

Problem is deploying lore like this is lots of work which is "consumed" relatively fast by players. That is why small developers prefer procedural generation to hand-created contents. They simply can't compete well with the numerous designers a big developer can put to that task.

 

Wait for the game to get out of early-access, then play Navezgane. There will be some background story to find there, not so much in RWG.

 

 

[Doozerpindan]

I've been playing Navezgane in creative mode with no zombies (deactivbated them cos I got tired of them breaking everything I build), I'm just playing for the building and exploration the game offers.

 

I was hoping for lore because there are so many places where I stop and wonder what the story there is. Like the house with the underground tunnels that lead to a crawlspace above the nearby motel room (it's called Fates Motel, it's clearly a reference to the Bates Motel), or another house I found where there seemed to be some kind of hidden military op in progress in a room beneath said house, or the corn farm where it looks like some kind of experimentation was going on with said corn.

 

There's a lot more, it's a fantastically crafted map, I love it.

[Blake_]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Problem is deploying lore like this is lots of work which is "consumed" relatively fast by players. That is why small developers prefer procedural generation to hand-created contents. They simply can't compete well with the numerous designers a big developer can put to that task.

 

Wait for the game to get out of early-access, then play Navezgane. There will be some background story to find there, not so much in RWG.

 

 

A few lore diaries/books/notes here and there are the simplest and easiest way to do lore. A fetch quest that asks for information (a book, a note with lore) is also a good idea.

[doughphunghus]

It would be really nice if, like the quest loot (where it gets spawned when doing a quest, and it can be spawned in several locations so it’s kinda random each quest) there could be a “poi tag” that was the name of the poi that was added to the quest loot.  Then there would need to be some sort of loot group tied to this.  Then basically any modder could add in items for that specific loot group, and when doing a quest they could find the special container, or just the quest loot itself.

 

if nothing else, it would enable targeting special items to be for a specific poi, without having to add special blocks to all the POIs.  Of course, if 100 modsers all added 2 “special items” to the same poi loot group, the odds of getting/seeing all the items is basically 0 in any map as you would not likely have 100x2 of that same poi, not counting finding duplicates as the loot table would be random.

 

So maybe being able to “control” what is found on the quest loot is more important, meaning if the loot determination was done at the trader when accepting the quest, the the modders could simply write all their quests at the trader mission level.  The only thing here would be able to send the player to a specific poi from the trader, so the quest reward/item was poi specific.

 

anyway, I think the ability to do lore as a modder would be fun

[khzmusik]

It would be very easy to mod in notes that can be found in zombie loot drops. Each now could be related to what the zombie was when alive, or possibly related to someone they killed. I'm planning to do that myself.

[meganoth]

Just a reminder: There is nothing simple with adding lore. Badly done, uninteresting text is worse than no text.

 

There is a reason good writers are well paid. It is not enough to solve the technical side of it, writing interesting lore that people want to read takes a lot of time, talent and creativity.

 

[Cernwn]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

No text is worse than badly done, uninteresting text.

There you go; fixed that statement for you. This is especially true considering the industry standard of poorly done text in indie or survival games (less than college education as estimated by AI). Just remember that when speaking from a roleplay perspective, grammar is usually not proper and contains much more slang. It is more about immersion, than proper English. No lore= no immersion. It's all in the details.

 

@khzmusik Yes, please.

[doughphunghus]

secondary issue with lore: The way the game works, by default, if you just add stuff to loot...you can keep finding the same item over and over (like: "Letter to Sarah from Bill").  Maybe there's 5 letters, and you just keep finding the 3rd one....or the last! Its not super immersive, not "questy" to not be able to control the starting point of lore, nor the progression of finding it, and once "its all found", you don't' stop finding it.

 

Sure, if its newspapers or other things that "could be anywhere" it doesn't matter as much, but it its personal, specific lore to a zed, place, or "quest chain" it gets weird to have a pile of the same personal note or something you keep finding over and over.  Of course, you could argue fighting the same nurse/stripper over and over isn't immersive and "not the point, you don't need a unique zed every time" and I agree.  The problem with the lore is you kinda want to "find unique things a lot" and want to read them, vs "eh, I don't remember which letter I found in the series, it doesn't matter anyway as its just junk I'm finding.".  Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the people who like to have a lot of junk to find, and I read it sometimes, but its a little annoying to not have a lot of control for when/where its found, and making it not findable anymore once you found it.

 

Anyway, not sure if there's an easy way of controlling lore better with the current version of the game, unless its trader based and each "quest" gives you a unique item that's needed to progress to the next one, etc.?  And I don't think you can "remove" a quest from the trader once you personally have done it ("Find Johns baby AGAIN? I found it 6 times already! WHO keeps throwing the damn baby down the same damn well every damn day?").  Some of this is likely too nitpicky and happens in a lot of other games, but, that's how I see it if you wanted modders to *be able* to do good questy lore stuff and not step over each others quests as much

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, Cernwn said:

There you go; fixed that statement for you. This is especially true considering the industry standard of poorly done text in indie or survival games (less than college education as estimated by AI). Just remember that when speaking from a roleplay perspective, grammar is usually not proper and contains much more slang. It is more about immersion, than proper English. No lore= no immersion. It's all in the details.

 

@khzmusik Yes, please.

 

Who is speaking about grammar? Nobody wants to read fine language and high literature in a zombie game. Especially since high literature can be very uninteresting and surely even badly done.

 

And a truck driver naturally should speak or write like a typical truck driver. Except if he is the untypical truck driver that is there to make fun of the stereotype. Or when he is the drug driver posing as a truck driver and the language gives him away.

 

Your final sentence would need no fixing, that one is already correct. It's all in the details! Correct.

[Cernwn]

7 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

secondary issue with lore: The way the game works, by default, if you just add stuff to loot...you can keep finding the same item over and over

Absolutely correct, but given currently modded encyclopedia sets as an example, those random drop notes could eventually be combined via recipe into a single quest trigger or trophy item. To use a poor WoW comparison - think The Green Hills of Stranglethorn, but with a worthwhile reward. Taking ranks in Daring Adventurer to choose quest rewards would help remove some of the randomness, assuming said lore items were added to the loot table for random trader quest rewards.

 

Personally, I would prefer a tiny bit of randomness (to balance player agency vs excitement), combined with a unique quest particular to each trader - like the current ones that are unlocked by doing multiple of the same tier.