Well that will happen every time with every system that gives benefits. People will also grind for loot, experience... whatever. The thing is that if they do what you said they'd have already spent a good bunch of time to get (to start getting) the benefits from it.
I agree with Alpha_Squad on this one. Eventually everyone will try for the ULT-resistances of everything and just keep grinding until they get it. The only way I can see around that problem is if the players lose all/some of their resistances when they die, but that would get frustrating real fast for lv100 planets. Although with creatures improving its stats with each kill, grinding is going to become an issue anyway. I believe that this type of mechanic would fit better on larger servers, because people would tend to stick to one climate, thus putting them in a sort of community without them even realising it, and being part of a community is an important part of large sever based games.
Just the way you worded it it sounded like "stand in fire and watch as your resistance slowly climbs" or "repeatedly punch a stone wall so that your arms get stronger", which is a great concept but always ends up being a pretty bad mechanic in my opinion. Ultima Online (one of my fav games of all time) did that. Runescape did that... Darkfall did that. It makes people spend time, but it doesn't make them spend time having fun. You basically tell the players to hit the gym! Heh, that's why Terraria doesn't have EXP, actually. According to Blue they figured that people would feel compelled to just grind Zombies for EXP instead of going out and exploring. Two different games, but I think it still applies here, too. Now, if you got a one-time permanent Fire Resistance bonus after beating a huge fire breathing boss on a lava planet... That's really fun!
What I think is that if a player bores himself because he "hit the gym", that's his choice. The important thing is that the game offers the possibility of both getting those resistances and not having to bore yourself to it, and this does. You can do anything you want on the planet, keep exploring, keep building, keep doing quests or fighting bosses. If you don't, that's your choice. Also there's no need to stay on a planet for an artificial ammount of time just to get more resistance, as you will surely visit plenty of other planets that will also boost it. I don't believe it is right to deny features just because some players might go the other way and bore themselves by grinding because they want to. That will happen every time, in every game, for every system. In Terraria those who wanted could spend their time cloning their items, so what? Let them do it. Anyways, the method you proposed is also a nice possibility, just getting that evolutive boost to your resistance after accomplishing a certain task on that planet (maybe actually getting a 1% for every quest you complete on a planet, not much grinding there). I like that idea.
I doubt you've ever played any of those games, then. In UO you can raise Swordsmanship by fighting with a sword against infinitely respawning newbie monsters, or you can use a macro program that makes two of your characters hit each other with swords and heal themselves while you go to sleep or work or whatever. So you can choose to either spend an eternity killing the same newbie monsters over and over and earn very little, or bypass it, max out the stats and get into the fun stuff. Just look at World of Warcraft for a better known example. Carrot on a stick. Yeah it's not a problem if it's actually fun to do, or if the effect is insignificant enough. If you need to spend 10 hours on a planet you hate to gain enough stats to go somewhere fun then it's a bad system. People will rather AFK macro on that planet or use an editor. If you get the resistance while doing things you love doing then it's an awesome system that I fully support! I suggested the boss thing for that reason. Tying together fun and progression is what makes games with progression even more fun! Funny sentence... Well yeah you shouldn't remove Coins and items just because somebody is gonna grind them, but what you CAN do is make them fun to acquire! Grinding in limited amounts can be fun in a mind numbing way, just like simple work is. However if it's required to get something then that's usually bad. The reason most people gather items on Terraria rather than edit them in is that they enjoy gathering them the proper way. Most little kids who inv edit everything seem to get bored really fast... Not a big surprise. There are people who inv edit tons of blocks, though. It's because they love building and Terraria doesn't have a creative mode like Minecraft does. I think it's a good example of people bypassing what they see as boring to have fun.
This idea reminds me of the classic NES game Evo xD Good memories with that game! But I think evolution would be a bit overkill and kind of hard to program :L ~ Just thinking outloud John Devince
I read the OP and I like the idea, but I feel that for us characters (or any animals) evolution would take a LOOOONG time,...too long for game standards. So instead, How about genetic custom-made evolution? You could engineer animals to adapt, say, 1000% faster...then it would be possible. I personally would restrict this to NPCs or animals, not necessarily us characters...just my 2 cents.
It's a good idea, but the passive thing could get annoying and would have all sorts of complications. I was thinking more along the lines of inserting animal/monter DNA to your character seeing as you can examine then and shove them into lab experimental tube things.
Well what if characters would only evolve if the planet contained some sort of ore. Which you could mine and would be a vital ingredient in genetic engineering. If a character was on a normal planet,maybe he would have to stay there for, say a day real-time or so for any effect? But if the ore is present it will happen much faster. The more ore, the faster it happens. Like 1 ore = 10 % faster 2 = 20 % 3 = 30 % 4 = 40 % 5 = 45 % 6 = 50 % 7 = 55 % 8 = 60 % 9 = 62.25 %... or something, might take some balancing though. Thus you would need to balance genetic engineering with conserving natural ore.
Well I do agree with the concept of Evolution, but I personally would find it pretty strange how a process which takes thousands of years and forms over many generations would be implemented that a single generation would develop resistances. What I do find plausible however is when there is, depending on the type of damage/environmental hazard, that there are a few species of indigenous creatures, whether they are technologically advanced and have developed a means to counter the hazard or a species which has evolved over a very long period of time, are present. From them you would be able to reverse engineer their technology or study their DNA to see how the respective resistance works. Then you could use technology in the form of armor or genetic manipulation to adapt to a planet. Although environmental suits will probably be implemented it would be nice to have several options to counter environmental hazards. Thanks for reading
It could even be possible that special quest be put into the game for the evolution of a certain animal, e.g gathering materials for some genetic research allowing a special enhancement given by an npc quest giver
I agree with what LastDay has been saying, if it is fun to get these resistances then why not? The problem is that it usually isn't and it is usually done out of necessity of making another task easier. I don't mind the DNA splicing as much as long as it doesn't making any one character far superior than the others, perhaps it could even be just a temporary effect, like a stim-pack(or potion in Terraria terms).
I get your point. I mean, I also played Morrowind, where you could upgrade your jumping and running skill by doing exactly that, resulting in travelling everywhere by jumping and running. But what I was suggesting originally was not meant for every "skill" in game, just a small set of passive bonuses to help you adapt to the planet hazards (resistance to fire 10%, that sort of thing, nothing else). Of course this is also grindable, but being able to upgrade it while doing other fun stuff would be, well, fun. The genetic engineering thing that a lot of you mentioned is something that I also would love to see in the game, only there's the DNA Mixing thread for that already, which is why I didn't talk about it here. I support that idea 100% and god I hope it will be included. I was running more along the lines of "natural" evolution (of course it wouldn't be that logical if it only took a lifespan to develop distinctive traits, but then neither is it logical to be able to travel between so many planets, you'd die old in doing so), just for the fun of it. Now, I guess it would have to be some kind of reward rather than something that works automatically, so there are various possibilities here. It could work like the hearts in Terraria which you find throughout the world, only ONE by planet which would slightly (VERY slightly) boost a certain passive resistance, or by completing some sort of quest on each planet, or yeah, by killing a big badass boss too, that's also awesome. Now these bonus wouldn't be REQUIRED to advance to other harder planets, my original idea was only to make little variations among characters, like some sort of biological logbook of where you've been spending your character life.
