Learned traits proof-of-concept - Unique traits through gameplay

[Xhuis]

Summary

SUMMARY: Content "When enabled in world options, you may gain unique traits through certain actions."

Purpose of change

I'm not sure if this fits the game, so feel free to contest it if it doesn't.

The Cataclysm was a complete upheaval of the world, and it changes people. Civilized people devolve to banditry and murder, and people society once looked down on suddenly find their experiences helping them to survive on a hostile Earth.

I always felt like the player character's seeming immunity to any kind of mental changes (outside of mutation) despite the world ending was rather strange - you can leave the shelter and, 90 days later, be the exact same with regards to stats and mindset. Only your stuff will change, plus bionics and mutations! I aim to remedy that.

Describe the solution

Adds a new kind of mutation/trait called a learned trait that displays in light blue and can't be gained anywhere else. These traits are intended to be gained through gameplay.

Added two new traits, called Acquiescence and Resolution. Each time you eat human flesh while in danger of starvation (3000+ starvation) there's a 1-in-100 chance to run a one-time check to gain either one.

Because of how the two new traits are implemented, this also has the side effect of significantly reducing the morale penalty from eating human flesh if near starvation:
"You feel awful for eating someone, but you're so weak from hunger..."

• Acquiescence - 75% chance to gain, or 100% if you have Strong Stomach. Removes morale penalties for eating human flesh, nothing else.
• Resolution - 25% chance to gain. Starvation won't lower the morale penalty for eating human flesh, so you'll get the full negative hit regardless of your hunger.

Finally, I added a world option to enable or disable this feature.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I considered adding more traits of this nature, and initially planned to, but I wanted to add the feature in independently to see the reception and how people thought of it before I went forward with adding a lot more.

The possibility exists to only add Acquiescence instead. I've often heard people chattering about how you should become desensitized to eating human flesh after a while, so I wanted to implement that route. However, I also still wanted a chance of failure so that people don't actively cannibalize to min/max.

[TechyBen]

Some learned abilities/changes in behaviour would be very interesting.
Things like getting used to the rain. Getting used to plain food (wild vegetables etc). Even learning attacks that would not get used until you needed to, like learning how to parry a Zed. :P

Obviously, things like allergy traits would not change. But the player character could get used to the changes around them. This could be a positive only trait, but could easily be somewhat balanced by making some negatives.

Like if we take a possible learned trait of liking uncooked food (veg, raw meat that is not rotten etc), the character would no longer get the moral reduction, but would the game also give them less nutrition? So it would not be a net benefit, it would only be a possible way to deal with a lack of resources, or a challenge. Find something to cook food with, or hold out until some of the moral penalty drops off. Then if the character gets the resources to start cooking again, they have negative moral gain for a while until the trait drops off again. A kind of "fight it, or dig in and deal with it" style of gameplay.

So this kind of dynamic could allow for some mid term goals, forcing a character into a poor situation, may have an instant negative effect, but could level out a little, then become a small benefit. Sudden changes are still a challenge, but long term problems no longer become an annoyance game wise, and lore wise have some flavour and dynamics.

[MT-Arnoldussen]

My initial reaction to reading the title was to not like this, as learned traits remove character customization and make all characters eventually converge to the same set of optimal traits.

Having only "post-cataclysm traits" learnable avoids this to some extent though, so I like this idea a lot more.

There is still the issue of incentivizing grinding to get these kinds of traits, so they all should be implemented in a way to discourage that (like your example traits).

[Xhuis]

It's indeed a really delicate balance between "organically earned through gameplay" and "easily grindable." The example one requires you to be in severe danger of starving, which makes you useless in combat, and even then there's a very low chance of it actually happening.

[kevingranade]

This is technically a "new" trait, but the effect overlaps with "cannibal".
As such I'm strongly against this particular trait, because it renders the cannabilism trait mostly obsolete.

[Xhuis]

Acquiesced simply removes the morale penalty for eating human flesh. Cannibal still offers a stacking morale bonus for eating it, as well as providing you with To Serve Man at the start. I tried to ensure that there was little overlap between the two, but if it's a big deal, I can rework it to simply heavily reducing the penalty rather than removing it entirely.

[FulcrumA]

I do like this idea, but I'd be very careful about implementation of particular traits - they should stem from very long-lasting, deliberate actions and gameplay considerations (we're talking here dozens upon dozens of actions slowly building up to a trait over months). Some could likely be as negative as positive. Lastly, some that aren't merely a conscious decision and a buff stemming from experience (though there should be such too) should have a chance to be lost if the character changes the attitude and way of being that led to them in the first place.

Probably quite a few could be made/migrated here. Stuff like being a nocturnal person that could provide a bit of a focus and a tiny speed buff during the night but make the person sluggy when it's a day. Dietary considerations - pretty sure one can get used to eating some potentially gross things at least a bit if those things are sole source of character's nutrients and many gross things stop being so depending on local culture (or lack of it after the society upholding it dies). Building lasting resistance to poison, venom and some diseases (which there may be more of in the future). Temporarily weakened limb status (small unarmed/melee damage - dependant on the limb - and carrying capacity penalty) caused by days of said limb being immobilized in the splint after breaking.

I also like the acquiescence/resolution dichotomy, though I am not sure how well it fits in this situation and I'd rather make it less dependant on chance, but more on the traits and circumstances. Malnutrished and starving character who is not strongly predisposed by traits to act otherwise likely wouldn't give a damn at the point when they're slowly losing grasp on morals and sanity due to hunger and get acquiescence or nothing - though it also shouldn't happen immediately upon trying a human meat but over a period of eating such and getting used to it. Resolution to not eat humans should stem from the player.

The trait acquiescence itself I find fine - people who want to be cannibals still will find bonuses the trait offers pretty good, it's just that others will have a chance to make it less punishing, while not getting any bonuses that'd encourage them to be devoted cannibals. A bit of the overlap here is actually good and makes it seem more like a different approach to the same situation.

Small technical consideration though: cannibals probably should be unable to get that trait since in their case it would do nothing, just take one more position cluttering the trait view.

With above taken into consideration I wouldn't mind it to be a default on vanilla thing, as it theoretically makes a very interesting "third branch" - next to mutations and CBMs - of character development, similar but with certain differences that make it stand apart.

[dissociativity]

I do also like the idea of fitness traits (your max natural strength without mutations or bionics being starting levels +2 at max, hard to get, but a hardened long-term character will have something to show for it, may degrade if one doesn't exert themselves for long enough, could go with the stamina exertion changes).

I feel as if fitness 1 should be str +1, fitness 2 should be str +2 dex +1.

Chance of Permanent damage penalty similar to glass jaw and similar if the player has a limb hit 10% health or lower, 20% for torso and head perhaps, with rare specials that can possibly remove the damage, maybe autodocs with the right SD card med software?

Idk, just digging for ideas.

[Maskrow]

That is quite an interesting concept, would gladly see it fleshed out more. Maybe some of the starting traits can be "degraded" instead? Like a Pacifistic character slowly losing that trait from killing lots of stuff.

[scanevaro]

Have you created this based on my post on reddit? I think that while I was writing it you where implementing it. What a coincidense.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/9hu2gz/earning_a_trait_positive_or_negative/

[Xhuis]

I did not actually see that post! The PR was mainly inspired by a previous PR that added learning traits through certain books that I believe was closed.

[kevingranade]

I tried to ensure that there was little overlap between the two, but if it's a big deal, I can rework it to simply heavily reducing the penalty rather than removing it entirely.

How about starting with a not extremely contentious trait as your first addition? As it is the cannibal aspect completely overshadows the traits concept.

The way cannibalism functions is working as intended, and subverting it by grinding away at trying to randomly get over it is not ok.

[Xhuis]

You seem to be the main one disapproving of it, so it isn't causing contention in the general base - just a disagreement. That said, you're the one who owns the repo, so I have no problem changing it. What would you recommend as a replacement?

[scanevaro]

I did not actually see that post! The PR was mainly inspired by a previous PR that added learning traits through certain books that I believe was closed.

That's another cool feature to have.

[ZhilkinSerg]

Would you please resolve conflicts?

[kevingranade]

The concept is maybe ok, but subverting the cannabilism penalties is not.

Ideally I'd like to see a number of traits suggested and have a discussion around what should and should not be an acquired trait before merging infrastructure for it. With what has been suggested so far, I dont see a strong justification for proceeding with adding the feature.

[kevingranade]

The concept is maybe ok, but subverting the cannabilism penalties is not.

Ideally I'd like to see a number of traits suggested and have a discussion around what should and should not be an acquired trait before merging infrastructure for it. With what has been suggested so far, I dont see a strong justification for proceeding with adding the feature.

[Xhuis]

The difficulty with coming up with learned traits lies in that it's not entirely certain whether or not conflicts are okay. Something that springs to mind is learning to adjust to constantly being wet and having less wet penalties as a result, but that also conflicts with Outdoorsman, which does the same thing and can be chosen in the beginning.

A primitive form of this also exists in the way of guilt from killing and the Psychopath trait. Psychopath removes it entirely, but any survivor who marches into a school and kills everything there just won't care about killing zombie kids by the time they leave. It's possible this could be migrated to a learned trait as well - maybe it could even keep the name Acquiescence.

Conflicts with traits don't seem inherently bad to me. It seems more of a question of: "do I want to suffer this downside for quite a while, or do I want to invest 1 or 2 points to remove it entirely?" Those traits could also simply be removed from the starting pool, but I don't think that makes much sense.

Cannibalism obviously lies on the extreme end of this, but still falls in the same category; it just also leaves the most to be broken by inclusion into the system, especially with it being dependent on RNG. A guilt-like system where morale penalties slowly become smaller could also work, but it's a touchy enough subject in-game that it seems like exclusion might also be a good idea.

[dissociativity]

Perhaps do not entirely remove the morale penalty, but simply reduce it?

[Xhuis]

I haven't seen any kind of discussion here. I'd like to change off of the cannibalism subject for mutations, but does anyone have any particular thoughts on how that could be done? If the discussion is dead in the water, this'll have a hard time developing as a feature even if it does get merged.

[TechyBen]

It could start with tolerances. Those are real things, and not yet mapped to the game? Could it track how many of an item you consume etc and you build up a tolerance?

[TechyBen]

It could start with tolerances. Those are real things, and not yet mapped to the game? Could it track how many of an item you consume etc and you build up a tolerance?

[kevingranade]

No further proposals, feel free to brainstorm elsewhere and loop back around, but subverting existing purchased traits by making them acquirable isn't ok.

[kevingranade]

This pull request has been mentioned on Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/traits-through-skills/18830/5