greatly reduce the severity of nyctophobia, also removing hallucinations from it

[esotericist]

Summary

Balance "greatly reduce the severity of nyctophobia, also removing hallucinations from it"

Purpose of change

nyctophobia as implemented in #59061 is far more crippling than warranted, especially for its apparent intended severity.

most notably, many of the effects that can trigger can be fairly immediately lethal in a lot of circumstances, the mitigation available (via medication) isn't reliable (especially for an early game character), and the hallucinations in particular are extremely problematic: just being near darkness can result in arbitrary hallucinations, even if standing in full sunlight.

further, the standard scenario (evacuee) is always in darkness, which can instantly trigger multiple effects (and is all but certain to result in at least one hallucination) even if the player immediately turns on a light source.

Describe the solution

remove the hallucination effects from the trait entirely, alongside the downed and paralyzed effect.

slightly reduce the frequency of the shakes/stamina impacts (but also increase the maximum shakes duration).

ensured that the stamina impact cannot also occur in the same turn as shakes, also ensured the periodic fear notification won't occur in the same turn as shakes or the stamina impact.

maintained the movement restrictions unmodified; this at least was working in a reasonable fashion.

Describe alternatives you've considered

considered adjusting the point value of the trait down (from 3 to 2), but given the long-term plans to discard point values, and the highly subjective impact of the changes, it seemed superfluous.

considered adding a second, more severe version of the trait, but per kevin this isn't desirable.

longer term a more staged progression (using one of our many systems: vitamins, eocs, etc) could be beneficial (to allow the player to reliably spend just a turn or two running through a dark area without immediately being impacted), as well as allowing some of the effects to scale upwards. it could be unhardcoded at the same time; there is nothing about this trait that strictly requires c++. for now, as this is a 0.G candidate, i've opted to not do anything that could cause string shuffling (beyond the removed strings).

for anyone working on this in the future: please do not reintroduce visual hallucinations, they are too problematic from a gameplay standpoint for what this is clearly intended to represent. if auditory hallucinations or the other effects (downed/paralyzed) are reintroduced, they should be only at a high fear intensity (i.e. a long time spent in the dark).

Testing

made a character with nyctophobia, on the evacuee scenario. waited. done in 30 minute increments, a few shorter increments, and simply holding down .

notably, even waiting in place with the reduced frequency of the stamina impacts, it's possible for stamina to get fairly low. a character actively moving through darkness (which still requires running) is very likely to have severe stamina problems in short order.

Additional context

screenshot showing incidence rate of remaining events in 30 minute wait time:

one of the lower stamina values observed while waiting.

[Night-Pryanik]

I don't like this at all. You're basically destroying my work as nyctophobia was designed to be severe and crippling, and definitely not for new players or players with little game experience.

[NetSysFire]

I feel like there can be two varities. This one and the more severe original. You could attain the latter by random mutations or maybe even specific mutagen flavors, but I cant think of any. Troglobite would never get any of this. Maybe could fit medical or something.

This would be a good compromise in my opinion.

[esotericist]

I feel like there can be two varities. This one and the more severe original. You could attain the latter by random mutations or maybe even specific mutagen flavors, but I cant think of any. Troglobite would never get any of this. Maybe could fit medical or something.

This would be a good compromise in my opinion.

i offered to do two traits with different severities and kevin told me no.

the long term plan is going to be to make this have progressive elements, so it gets more severe, as you spend more time int he dark. i just wanted to keep things simple for now, to address the most egregious problems from being briefly in the dark, or in the dark when you first start a run (as evacuee mandates).

[MochaModifier]

I do like the idea of progressive elements; that sounds like a cool mechanic to play around!

Making being in darkness a kind of timer to race against, worsening as the mind plays tricks on you - hearing things, panic attacks and terror sets in, hyperventilating, there's lots of things to play with as far as malluses go

edit: rest of post was summed up in #64195