Meta Progression

[bombasticSlacks]

Summary

Features "Meta Progression"

Purpose of change

Some scenarios are really complicated or require a lot of game knowledge. These aren't great introductions to the game so they should be locked behind some experience by default. Also gives people a chance to work towards stuff, build linear stories and have their challenge scenarios have easter eggs to unlock further professions.

Describe the solution

Scenarios and Professions now can have a requirement which is an achievement ID

To play said start you need to have completed the achievement on some past character.

added UI support to explain this in character creation:

• always in the sidebar (so you can see even if you have it unlocked)
• at the bottom if you don't,
• in a popup if you try to select it anyways.
• They are also greyed out and sorted to the bottom of the lists by default.

now lab starts require you to actually have cleared a lab finale.

Meta Progression can be enabled per world.
Meta Progression can be permanently disabled using the debug menu.

Random starts respect what is unlocked.
Preset characters Do Not rationale being any time you are using a preset it should work out of the box.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Don't over engineer this as much, I really went overboard with the infrastructure on this one.

Add more locked scenarios but for now I'm gonna hold off and keep them to separate PRs where they could be argued individually.

Meta Progression could be a proper option however for example I like to have a debug world (where this would be disabled) and a "standard" world where I actually play.

In the future additionally options could be added to only track meta progression for the world you are currently playing allowing for challenge runs on specific mods.

Testing

Loads up fine in the character creator.

Additional context

Example Profession (I didn't actually lock this one behind impenetrable this is just an example)

Labs being locked

If you've completed the achievement

World Gen Option

Debug Override

[TheShadowFerret]

Can this be further specified to block locations w/o an achievement(ex. can't start at refugee center w/ Safe Place without completing The Last Homely House/finding it?

[sonphantrung]

How will this play out to Experienced players where they have done a lot of challenge runs?

[bombasticSlacks]

If you mean what happens to current players and will they now be locked out of content they've already done the answer is no. The game already tracks past achievements so if someone has cleared a lab it already works.

[Night-Pryanik]

I don't like this at all, for several reasons.

First of all, I hate it when content is locked by requirement of previous runs. Especially in sandbox games. I'm a total newbie and I want to play ultra-hardcore challenge? That's completely my business and no one should prevent me from selecting it, even if it will result in my character's death.

Second, what if experienced player, who got all the achievements in his previous runs, deleted the game some time ago, and now is returned from hiatus? He must complete achievements once again to get challenge scenarios?
The same for scenario where game folder was deleted for some other reasons, e.g. disc failure.

And third, as developer, how do I fix the bugs with some challenge scenarios if I don't have required achievements?

All in all, this feature should be made togglable.

[bombasticSlacks]

I was planning on adding a toggle I'm just not sure if it should be a

game option
A debug option to unlock all achievements.
A world option.

@kevingranade had some opinions when we last talked about it but the mechanism for checking achievements is much simpler now than we first discussed.

[Night-Pryanik]

Personally I'd prefer it to be a debug option, but without linking to achievements. I might want to get achievements in challenge scenarios right from the start. Simple "Unlock all professions/scenarios" would suffice.

[PatrikLundell]

I dislike it for the same reasons as @Night-Pryanik. I "upgrade" by installing the latest experimental as a new folder to avoid removed files remaining and messing things up, and then copy my current save over. When I start a new game I generate a new world (which may be in a new install). Also, whenever debug hacks are used achievements are disabled, which I don't care about as such (I know achievements can be re-enabled, but I just don't care enough to bother).

Also, I strongly dislike games that lock away contents behind requirements to have played previous sessions, typically to "extend game play".

I believe challenge scenarios should be described as such, and if you want to disregard the warning that should be there it's your business. The same goes with other "extra challenge" options.

Hiding "challenge" options from players by requiring them to find how to enable them via debug options (that are themselves hidden until you enable them) may be useful for developers and sufficiently experienced players, but not for regular players who would think debug options are for debugging. If you insist on hiding such contents it should be through a character generation option that would be disabled unless the player enables it (similar to how you select the point system to use). Whether it should be a single "challenge" switch or more granular per category is a design detail.

[sonphantrung]

Also, there's a critical fact: many players (like Vormithrax for example), actually NEVER bother to deal w/ achievements when it's turned off

[bombasticSlacks]

I think you all are entitled to your passion when describing how this might be a mild inconvenience for power users.

As for new players who just need to "suffer through it" or "git gud" This game isn't Kenshi, the scenarios aren't on a sliding scale of hard to easy with the only reward being bragging rights each scenario gives points. So you start up the game and see that lab starts give 8 points or starting as a cyborg gives 4 (not bothering to read the "broken" part). You pick them so you get more Skillz, start playing and start dying for no clear reason. Or are in a room you don't understand how to get out of, youre not fighting a hard boss, just unable to leave a room. This kind of stuff makes people assume the free open source game is broken and bounce off the game entirely.

So this isn't supposed to be some long term 100 hours to unlock everything grind. Just a way to help ease new players into the game and the brainstorming on it started because of repeatedly helping new players on the discord with complex game systems who don't actually understand any of the simple systems yet.

[Night-Pryanik]

I'm not sure why should I tolerate this kind of inconvenience and limitation. For what? In order not to hurt feelings of some random dumbass who can't read things right?

[Inglonias]

I don't like this at all, for several reasons.

First of all, I hate it when content is locked by requirement of previous runs. Especially in sandbox games. I'm a total newbie and I want to play ultra-hardcore challenge? That's completely my business and no one should prevent me from selecting it, even if it will result in my character's death.

Second, what if experienced player, who got all the achievements in his previous runs, deleted the game some time ago, and now is returned from hiatus? He must complete achievements once again to get challenge scenarios? The same for scenario where game folder was deleted for some other reasons, e.g. disc failure.

And third, as developer, how do I fix the bugs with some challenge scenarios if I don't have required achievements?

All in all, this feature should be made togglable.

I agree entirely. The first thing I can think of is that as a developer, I'm rebuilding the install in my local repo all the time, and more importantly, don't play in it regularly. I don't have the achievements there.

I also agree with the sandbox philosophy. Putting "Challenge" in front of these scenarios makes it clear to new players that they shouldn't seriously attempt them unless they have some idea of how to play because they are, well, challenging.

Making this feature optional or toggleable completely defeats the purpose of including it as well. If you can turn something like this off easily, it may as well not be there.

[PatrikLundell]

I again agree with @Night-Pryanik. I don't consider it to be unreasonable to require that people read the description before greedily taking all those "free" point. If "get gud" means acquiring a basic reading ability for a game that contains a lot of reading, then I'm for it.

However, that also means scenarios should be clearly labeled, and it wouldn't hurt to have an overall description informing players that things are worth points because they add various difficulties, and those looking for free points might want to look at the free point setting (or whatever it's called). I don't remember if the labeling currently is as clear as it should be, though.

I do not fully agree with @Inglonias, as cutting away a lot of chaff you don't want to have to wade through and don't want to use has its own benefits. The game has lots of useful filters for this kind of thing, but I don't think there's an easy way to make a filter that's easy to use without prior knowledge of what to filter for.

[sonphantrung]

Just for some references: the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy games (1/2/3) actually disallows you to start in some locations and disguises unless you met the required mastery level

[PatrikLundell]

And that's a crap implementation. A lot of games have unlocks to extend play time because it's good for their metrics, not because it's good for their players.

[sonphantrung]

And that's a crap implementation. A lot of games have unlocks to extend play time because it's good for their metrics, not because it's good for their players.

Definitely. It's just for some "references", one can see it 'crappy', one can see it 'good', based on his opinions

[bombasticSlacks]

Some questions: how does this interact with the "random character/play now" and "preset character" starts? Does it randomize from all professions/scenarios or only unlocked ones? Does it reject preset with locked professions/scenarios or does it just accept the preset?

The next thing Im gonna do is make it so you can flag any option as disabled for random runs. I personally play random and find a lot of the challenge runs not very fun for all random. Preset I'm not sure I'll test that later today probably.

better communicate the fact that this feature is optional, since many people don't usually fiddle with game options

My thought would be if the player is intelligent enough to understand the difficulty of challenge runs and make an informed decision of diving right into them they are also capable of reading the world settings. If players don't want their hand held when it comes to picking starts then Im not gonna hold their hand by making the setting more obvious than a clearly displayed toggle.

solution might be to disable the progression locks if a user chooses the freeform points pool, to mark it as a sandbox mode.

This was my first thought but the issue is all the proposed overhauls to character creation have us moving towards free form with descriptives. #52877 this had some issues but was fundamentally what was desired.

[I-am-Erk]

Scarf, for the amount of time you took to type that analogy, you could manually turn the progression option off in every single world you'll ever make of cdda. I can't believe the amount of complaining here to a problem that can be solved by turning a single readily-accessible ticky box to "no"... Assuming you don't want to just go into debug options and permanently disable it.

[Ilurker]

Just skimming the comments here. There are clearly some strong opinions. I very solidly fall in the camp that putting some newbie bumpers on games helps more players enjoy and stick with the experience than it drives skilled players away, and I support the PR as it stands.

I've had the experience of writing literal pages of help for new players who picked the cyborg start because it sounded really cool, only to get very mad at the game when it was a world of pain. CDDA already has a brutal learning curve for players and just about all of the coolest sounding starts - even the ones that confer an advantage - turn that into more of a cliff. This gets especially bad when you regularly see people talking about how lab and TCL are the best starts, both of which will generally take a new player and slam them into the pavement eight or nine times before they figure out the basic control schemes. To someone who knows the game, it might be obvious that they just took a bad newbie pick and should try something else, but to a new player, nothing is obvious yet, and we're gambling that they won't abandon a new (free, so no sunk cost) game rather than tough it out.

If it hasn't been suggested before, couldn't much of the philosophical debate over whether it's alright to lock progress be solved with an options switch disabling progression gating? I'd imagine a dialogue window that pops up during initial character generation with a short paragraph explaining that some scenarios are hidden to both save surprises for a new player, and warning that it's very possible to create a character or take a scenario for whom the game will be more or less impossible for anything but the most veteran of players.

Then, give them the option to disable achievement gating. Default the initial selection to the one that suggests you keep some scenarios locked to present keymashing to to a failure state, and hide the toggle in the options menu in case a veteran player keymashes into a lockout. At that point, the newbie lock will very much be a newbie lock, and for most players will only be served once. For those of us using odd upgrade methods, a single extra dialogue on the first character gen only really isn't much of a burden.

[Ilurker]

Sorry to double comment, but if the intent is really to make achievement gating a core part of the gameplay loop, perhaps make the lockout optional as a debug override? Same idea, just a less accessible menu that really selects for veterans, and has its own warning already attached?

[bombasticSlacks]

Sorry to double comment, but if the intent is really to make achievement gating a core part of the gameplay loop, perhaps make the lockout optional as a debug override? Same idea, just a less accessible menu that really selects for veterans, and has its own warning already attached?

Way ahead of you, check the images in the PR

[Ilurker]

Way ahead of you, check the images in the PR

Of course I missed that. 🤦‍♂️

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• This will add the arcade mode achievement unlocking all starting scenarios and professions for all worlds. The character who performs this action will need to die for it to be recorded. Achievements are tracked from your memorial file so characters from any world will be checked. Activating this will spoil factions and situations you may otherwise stumble upon naturally. Some scenarios are frustrating for the uninitiatedand some professions skip portions of the games content. If new to the game progression would otherwise help you be introduced to mechanics at a reasonable pace.

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[scarf005]

I can't believe the amount of complaining here to a problem that can be solved by turning a single readily-accessible ticky box to "no"...

Maybe the actual problem is that cataclysm still lacks proper tutorials. Heard of XY problem? Making longer, better tutorials would probably be better for new players?

[bombasticSlacks]

If you would like to make more tutorials they would be welcomed.

[I-am-Erk]

Making longer, better tutorials would probably be better for new players?

Sure, go for it. That still misses a fundamental point that is common to the complaints in this thread: it wouldn't provide anything for those of us who are quite excited to play in achievement unlock mode. Since that's the main reason I personally am excited for this feature, I don't think tutorials are the "actual problem".

[sonphantrung]

This reminds me a lot about the SystemD being implemented into Linux Distros: Many veteran Linux users just hate SystemD

[I-am-Erk]

Scarf, go to Reddit or discourse or something if you want to make a bunch of off topic posts. This is a pull request, not a chat forum.

[NetSysFire]

There are pretty mixed opinions on this and I generally see this addition as a good thing.

Also, I wonder if you should use terminal punctuation in the marked strings since it appears that everything else also uses it and that would introduce inconsistency.

Another thing is the capitalization of "Arcade Mode". This is how it is in the achievement but e.g the y/n query says "arcade mode".

[DamienRoyan]

I can't believe the amount of complaining here to a problem that can be solved by turning a single readily-accessible ticky box to "no"...

Maybe the actual problem is that cataclysm still lacks proper tutorials. Heard of XY problem? Making longer, better tutorials would probably be better for new players?

The current tutorial is quite sufficient actually. I went through it recently so I could walk my friend through the new tutorial (He got stuck trying to figure out how to open a door).
Unless the player accidentally skips a dialogue explaining something (his case), the tutorial gives a full rundown of control and environment interaction basics.
So to conclude, I'd say the tutorial is not the issue here.

[NetSysFire]

There are issues with the tutorial but this is not the place for that. There is #57571 for issues with the tutorial and general new player experience.

[silencecoder]

a fundamental point that is common to the complaints in this thread: it wouldn't provide anything for those of us who are quite excited to play in achievement unlock mode. Since that's the main reason I personally am excited for this feature, I don't think tutorials are the "actual problem".

The locked content is. CDDA still doesn't have a good on-boarding process for new players. They should be guided into a proper entry point (an introduction scenario) or provided with an embedded tutorial in each scenario instead of being restricted in their choices. If a new player want to start as a cyborg in labs, then the game should warn player about the upcoming hardships but ultimately leave the decision to a player.

If seasoned players with a sufficient internal progression want an external meta-progression then it should be provided in form of a campaign. That way the game would allow a tailored per-player progression in a dedicated mode with a unified list of achievements. Developers can use this list as a dependency for new modular content (easter eggs, special events, characters, plots and more). That way content can be provided 'as is' in a normal play-through or silently toggled in a campaign.

New players also can choose to play a campaign if they prefer a linear storytelling. But this might come at a cost of wrapping their heads around achievements. If new content can be obtained only with unlocked achievement, player need to get a rough idea on available achievements and what they are about. Which in turn may disclose mechanics, events and other content hidden in the game. This can be solved with a curated tiers of achievement, but that approach won't do much for seasoned players other than further narrowing their progression options.

Again, the PR starts with "Some scenarios are really complicated or require a lot of game knowledge. These aren't great introductions to the game so they should be locked behind some experience by default."

[I-am-Erk]

A closed thread is not the right place to discuss questions and suggestions for improving tutorials. There was an issue linked above.