Some adjustments to rarely picked negative traits.

[WinFrz]

First off, this isn't about the traits that are considered free like prone to illness and such, but more about the traits people avoid. I've played with nearly every negative trait and there are some that definitely need some tweaking in my opinion.

 

1. These are the traits that no one will ever tell you to use. The most glaring being: All thumbs, Disorganized and Sleepyhead.

 

All thumbs - Dexterous, the positive counterpart to all thumbs, makes you pick up and transfer items in half the time and costs 2 points. All thumbs gives you 2 points so I assumed it doubles transfer time. It actually quadruples it, that seems like a bit of an oversight. Maybe reduce the multiplier to at least 2 times (heck I'd even go with 1.5 times if it's only worth 2 points) or increase the points it gives, or both.

 

Disorganized - Reduces your container capacity by 30%. It's a massive handicap when it comes to backpacks as even a military backpack will only be slightly better than a duffle without any traits. I think 15% reduction is more acceptable, so organized remains still really good, but disorganized isn't as terrible in comparison.

 

Sleepyhead - In multiplayer this doesn't really apply, but in single player that +30% fatigue gain and -10% sleep efficiency is a real put-off for me. It usually causes my survivor to sleep up to 14 hours a night with this trait because fatigue is nearly impossible to avoid in this game. Maybe instead +20% fatigue and -5% sleep efficiency?

 

Maybe these changes are too drastic but in my defence no one picks these traits so I believe that indicates an issue.

 

2. There are negative traits that would be fine but are missing something, making them undesirable. for example: Restless sleeper.

 

This would be a perfectly acceptable trait. You wake up prematurely from sleep, so wait an hour then go back to sleep. The biggest issue is you can't recover all of your fatigue, however you can find caffeinated items like coffee and tea which can recover the rest of your fatigue. The downside is you can't reliable get coffee and tea and you can't grow it.

 

The good news, there IS a north American plant that produces caffeine, the Yaupon Holly. The bad news, you can't get Yaupon Holly in game, you can find regular holly but it won't restore fatigue (Yaupon Holly also may or may not be poisonous but considering you can buy Yaupon Tea commercially it's probably fine to make tea out of. And also it's not native to Kentucky but shhh...!). This obviously opens up the possibility of overconsuming caffeine to the point where you'll never need to sleep again so there will need to be something to avoid this, I suggest overconsumption causing cardiac arrest (maybe that's too far).

 

3. The last two traits are Deaf and Illiterate, you get exactly what your asking for picking these. The only suggestion I'm making is some way to make survival with these traits more feasible. these are more focused around NPCs so aren't exactly something to consider right now.

 

Illiterate - The downsides are obvious, you can't read. But I don't think it'd be a stretch to imagine asking someone to read skill books or recipe books to you so it'd be about finding the time and someone willing to do it. An NPC who you just met would probably find it a waste of their time to read 'How To Use Generators' to you so you would need to get to know each other first, build some rapport.

 

Deaf - I think it'd be logical to assume that someone who is deaf would have trouble with communicating to non-deaf survivors. So here's what I'm thinking, American Sign Language being a trait/learnable skill that non-deaf survivors can have. Deaf players can have this by default (because you already have a massive handicap) and non-deaf survivors can either take a trait or be taught ASL (and not from just reading a magazine, it needs to be more involved as it takes a while to learn in real-life).

 

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

 

Edited November 20, 2023 by WinFrz
Wasn't happy with title

[getstoopid]

Totally agree with your opinion on the negative traits, except I want to add that sleepyhead has a big impact on mp servers with sleeping on... since on small servers usually the whole group needs to skip time (without hopping off the server). So one sleepyhead hits the whole group

[heavenstarship]

Having a deaf player character able to sign to other NPCs is such a great idea, & a cool one at that. Likely wouldn't be too hard to translate dialogue options into ASL animations & would be pretty immersive as well. Only issue with it is it may not be that easy to find other residents of Kentucky who know sign language. Another option could be that your character has to communicate by writing on a whiteboard/in a notebook, which could have the risk of frustrating other NPCs (rural area in the 90s, people may not be accepting of ways that are different than theirs, etc. etc.) Really great list with some fantastic ideas here.