Reimagining Temporal Storms and Stability.

[Mongster]

I know I'm not the first to discuss this.

I think that a lot of people complain about temporal storms, and that's mainly because all they seem to do is keep you inside your house for a whole day waiting it out. You can't do too complex tasks because of the wavy distortion effects. I think that temporal storms are MEANT to be a challenging event for the player, but in practice they're more of a weekly annoyance that doesn't challenge you at all.

Now, this is just an idea, but imagine that we got rid of temporal rifts spawning randomly. That means monsters are normally only in caves, or the rust world. Now just get rid of temporal storms in their current state, as in, the weekly rust world events. I would find it possibly more engaging if "temporal storms" were just weather events that lowered your temporal stability. Imagine you get a message in the chat box "It looks like it's going to be a bad night". And that night, your temporal stability goes down faster than usual.

Now, what I'm suggesting is basically variable events that cause your temporal stability to fluctuate. I think it should also be tied to how often you're starving, how deep in the world you are, if you're constantly at low health, if you spend too much time indoors(?), if you're at cold temperatures, and other things. I think way more stuff should affect temporal stability. Depending on the night, it might be greatly affected. And perhaps certain activities will heal your temporal stability, like drinking good alcohol. I think that the lower your temporal stability is, more rifts might spawn in the area around you. So rift gen is tied to how "sane" you are. This would also sort of solve the "rifts spawning in my base all the time" because it would be DIRECTLY tied to taking care of your player, making it all the more punishing to have a low temp stability percentage. And the lower your temp stability, the lower the drop rates are for certain goods, like farming and foraging. Maybe traders offer worse prices as you have a bad air about you, or are less friendly, wildlife is more aggressive... and vice versa. A 100% temporal stability would mean great boons for the player.

Basically, I'm suggesting that Temporal Stability be more like a credit score. You work hard to get it to a high level, but if you're not careful, it'll get lower and lower. Rather than just being a wheel that suddenly depletes in specific scenarios. What do you all think? I hope I made sense here.

 

[Psyloh]

You should not stay at home as T4 mobs could spawn just behind you and cut you in pieces ^^'
Temporal storms are a really bad feature for several reason :
- easy to cheese at any point in the game (trader houses)
- too dangerous for the most part of the advancement phase
- too rewarding when you built a mob farm
- based on chat messages which is really bad (intradiegetic stuff only, please...)

Adding a weather effect is a good idea, Salty's diegetic version is pure gold yet tempests might be hard to balance :-/

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Mongster said:

What do you all think? I hope I made sense here.

I think it's a fresh take compared to others I've seen and would make for an interesting mod, but isn't something that would fit in the base game. Temporal storms are tied to the game's lore and there are specific reasons that they occur as they do.

On the mechanics level, I think it's way too punishing for newer players and way too easy for more veteran players. New players are prone to making many mistakes due to a lack of experience, and some of those mistakes can easily snowball. Veteran players already have the knowledge to take excellent care of themselves, so a lot of things like starvation, low health, etc. just aren't going to be a concern.

28 minutes ago, Mongster said:

Now, what I'm suggesting is basically variable events that cause your temporal stability to fluctuate. I think it should also be tied to how often you're starving, how deep in the world you are, if you're constantly at low health, if you spend too much time indoors(?), if you're at cold temperatures, and other things. I think way more stuff should affect temporal stability.

It's also worth noting that if normal mechanics are tied to temporal stability, the player will have fewer options for choosing how to play the game. For example, if the player is working on intricate interior design, they're going to end up spending a lot of time indoors. Same goes for preserving food and other tasks the player might prefer to do indoors. If it's cold outside, the player will be more inclined to stay indoors as well to keep warm. If staying indoors causes stability to drop then players who prefer/need to be working indoors for whatever reason are going to be actively pushed away from doing those tasks. Likewise if it's winter, they'll end up suffering either way in the suggested quote example since being in cold temperatures will drop stability but so will being indoors.

It also feels like a very arbitrary implementation. Starving or suffering serious injury might destabilize a seraph, sure, but staying indoors? Being out in cold weather? The current vanilla implementation makes more sense, in my opinion, since seraphs already have a tenuous foothold in the present reality and dealing with anomalies like rifts and temporal storms will damage that connection.

37 minutes ago, Mongster said:

This would also sort of solve the "rifts spawning in my base all the time"

I do want to note that there is already a way to solve this problem, aside from turning rifts off entirely. The rift ward will actively stop rifts from spawning within a certain radius, provided that it is kept powered with temporal gears. One gear can power it for a few in-game weeks. While it is an effective tool for rift prevention, it's also the kind of safety that the player needs to actually earn by progressing through the tech tree.

Overall, I think most of the ideas listed are much better handled by a status effect system, and not a massive overhaul of the temporal mechanics.

[Mongster]

I just came up with a few things that could influence your stability off the cuff, but of course it would need a lot more thought and balancing. I do like the idea of it being more of a score than influences gameplay - I would also think that as a new player, you have a bit of a grace period, and your world usually starts in summer, so you should be alright.

I'll also address the rift ward thing - I have never made one of those before, and I suspect most players haven't either. I think people just don't like rifts to begin with. And I do understand temporal storms are impactful to the lore, but I don't see why this new idea couldn't fit. Certain nights or certain events that lower temporal percentage, rather than just stick you in the rust world. Perhaps a Status Effect system would handle some of the other mechanics I mention, but it won't fix the annoyance of temporal storms.