Please, please please, let us customize our starting characters

Suggestions
1

I keep seeing this posted bery now and then, and I always seem to find the same answer

“team radiant does not want to give that option because it would feel like it would optimize the game”.

I can see this point, my main complaint is this.

I have had several succesfull civilizations, and in these, everything is ok, they all seem to have a patters of citizens, but it always comes down to certain aspects and traits.

I always try to re-roll until I can get something I am semi-satisfied with.

My main gripe is this, late game, I end up not being able to fight off enemies because I did not have specific classes designed to do the job they were assigned to.

I still keep getting people with 1’s and 2’s, and I basically can only have them as workers.

The problem is, that at the begining, I usually have aplan as to how I want to organize my town:

1 carpenter
1 mason- blacksmith
2 fighters/1 archer or 1 herbalist
1 cook
1 farmer
1 weaver/herbalist

This is the build I always want, and it bugs me a lot that I cant get this easily.

I always reroll until I can get something that more or less resembles this party (never succeful to a degree I like, I always have to compromise and give up)

This aspect makes me want to just not start the game sometimes. Its frustrating to not be able to start form an aspect that you want.

I think the random aspect should be the quirks the little hearthlings get. Maybe sokme are neurotic? maybe it limits the tital hearthling score (6,6,6 the perfect build, cannot happen. I want a firgther with 6 body, 1 intelligence, and 4/5 spirit, thats it, I want to be able to CHOOSE where my starting base is)

I keep getting massacred, and have to start all over again, because I cant organize my town from th ebeigning how I wanted, because I cant chose the appropriate citizens for the job.

I want to be able to choose passions, 1 trait, and points, maybe limit the ammount of points, but please, let me CHOOSE where I can place them.

It gives me a headache to not be able to start in the way I want.

Thanks!

2 Likes
2

Well, if you organize your farms good when you have farmer, your cook still can harvest your plants you know so you dont have to assign more farmer. Also you dont have to assign someone as blacksmith at an early game, you can get stuff from merchants.

3

Unfortunately the “we don’t want you to optimize” forces users to reroll a million times at the start to get the 1 carpenter, 1 mason, 1 herbalist, 1 shepherd, and 2 fighters mix, and then save game right before the daily update in case you get a 1-1-1 who wants to be a knight. There needs to be a system to train up hearthlings or modify stats somehow (schools/gyms/sensitivity training?) or a point system where users can customize within specific parameters.

1 Like
4

if you play on hard mode, a blacksmith is almost a necesity, you need higher level weapons to fight against the army of orks, and after that you have to keep at least 2 clerics to keep your army alive, and the archers will decimat eanything you might have.

it also depends on how you want to handle food, do you want to trade all the time for tasty food? or do you want to have lots of poyos and make your own ommeletes?

5

I know right?

maybe make it like the sims, you can have some traits, but you have to choose some disadvantages too (neurotic, glutton, etc).

i just wish we could CHOOSE, rather than have to rely on luck

6

I think its not that hard but i dont wanna talk big because i didnt play on hard mode :sweat_smile: Its enough to have one fighter after 3. day for me, then i’m assigning one more if needed, also i’m getting ready things for craft like herbalist staff, flowers, etc. then im assigning my herbalist to heal my units. But it can be really hard on hard mode.

7

Click on them, open console, destroy. Works best for this situation, then you just have to wait til the next day to get the next one. That or you can stand them and let them starve to death, giving you a tombstone for decoration.

8

I kinda like the idea of them having random stats at start but can gain stats over the time you play.
a Blacksmith maybe gets more body overtime because he’s working with heavy stuff and a herbalist gets more spirit and if a previous Blacksmith starts working as a Herbalist he slowly loses his body overtime and maybe the starting stats are the lowest this person can drop to but they could maybe increase their stats up to 10 and max starting stat is 6 in the stats and maybe not 6,6,6 but 12 total stats spread out over these 3 stats.

and perhaps you can have these gyms like someone said that allows anyone to go workout to increase their body to a max of 6 no mather what profession :slight_smile:

Just ideas :slight_smile:

9

Haha nice idea but i think going gym is out of game theme :stuck_out_tongue:

10

I do find that in just about every game I start I tend to reroll a lot. It’s better now that you can reroll individual hearthlings. I do understand radiant’s ideology here though. Being able to customize too much leads to min/maxing which would take a bit of personality away from it all. I tend to shoot for 4+ in the stat I want, otherwise i’d be tempted to reroll endlessly for sixes.

My thoughts on how it COULD be done though, is allow a limited pool of points to be allocated for the starter hearthlings. Not enough to make them all gods, but enough to customize it the way you want. Not sure how that could be inplemented though.

11

There is also the balance between two important game objectives for stonehearth (don’t know whether radiant thinks about it in these terms, but I do). These are the objective that you as a player ‘write’ a story with your hearthlings (an author can choose the personality of his characters) and the objective that hearthlings live their own lives. (if what is useful for the hearthling doesn’t align with what’s useful for the player, (i.e. 1-1-1 wish tobe knight) well, that happens sometimes).

In that light, I always found the current amount of customization spot on where it should be. Any less, and the story-objective suffers, any more, and a player would be able to excactly build a hearthling the way they want to. (which means the hearthlings own lives-objective will suffer.)

Ok, I may need to explain why you can build hearthlings then

Currently you can customize everything but two variables; the stats and the traits. You can only reroll both of these at the same time, so they are linked through chance.
If only one of the two variables was determined by chance alone, then the player could reroll until the he/she was satisfied on that variable, and then customize the rest of the hearthling to his/her liking. You could start and say, “I want this hearthling exactly”, and get your way all the time. i.e. you could build a hearthling.

Because of this, I don’t think more direct customization is a good thing. Point systems and such could work, but letting either stats or traits be chosen the way a name can be, would not be good. That is my opinion though.

When I play, I see the combination of traits and stats as the identity of the hearthling. I generally find myself rerolling a few times, but I am satisfied with some imperfectness. (and that is not really in my personality)

Although the reason that I am satisfied with imperfectness is that I know these considerations. And, as the existence many other threads on this topic shows, apparently these considerations aren’t conveyed in the game (through the UI and such). At least not in such a way that a 1-1-1 knight (but a less extreme example) is percieved as, “well, sh*t happens” but instead is percieved as annoying.

Maybe here is a possible solution. For example, if Radiant wanted to convey that you can’t choose the identity (traits/stats combi) of the hearthling, then they could change the character cards to have a box around the stats and the traits together, and put a reroll die inside that box.

I also believe that training could be a solution. In that way, a 1-1-1 aspiring knight can train to be a knight. I may take a while, but he/she is determined to do it, then he/she will maybe succeed. Would allow for some character growth as well.

That is just my two cents.

12

This basically seems like a call for a concept similar to Prepare Carefully for RimWorld. In that case, I’m totally adding my +1 to this thread. This might be better to ask of the modding community though, as Radiant are not the only developers who refuse such starting customization; and for good reason.

13

Basically a +1 for the op.

Why not let everybody play the game the way she/he wants?
And having to reroll endlessly to get the party one wants is simply a bad implementation / bad game mechanic.

     Simply make every trait have drawbacks as well as bonuses

I’d like to see more traits on every heartling (almost everybody has some job preferences) and more impact on the gameplay by traits.

14

I’m with Banto, I would rather see randomized rolls for hearthlings at the beginning of the game. With that said, I think a good compromise would be to have custom stat rolls in the normal mode with hardmode getting set rolls that can’t be changed. Basically, you are stuck with what you get. If that’s done, the map roll should be the first thing to select to somewhat force the player to play with those characters. Players are right in that what’s the point in not having custom stat rolls when you can endlessly roll a new hearthling.

I agree however, that the traits should have a positive and a negative that are determined for the hearthling.