Kenshi - open-ended sandbox RPG set in a desert world

[Delterius]

see that mountain? cannibals live on it

 

[Zanzoken]

Kenshi becomes considerably less fun once you level up past the point that legitimately terrifying enemies like cannibals, fogmen, and beak things are no longer a threat to your party.

Like I understand that progression is fundamental to RPGs and your characters should experience growth. And there is also a certain satisfaction that comes with losing to something and then going back later and kicking its ass.

But what if terrifying monsters were always terrifying, even at max level? That would make things really interesting.

 

[TT1]

Kenshi becomes considerably less fun once you level up past the point that legitimately terrifying enemies like cannibals, fogmen, and beak things are no longer a threat to your party.

Like I understand that progression is fundamental to RPGs and your characters should experience growth. And there is also a certain satisfaction that comes with losing to something and then going back later and kicking its ass.

But what if terrifying monsters were always terrifying, even at max level? That would make things really interesting.

Go to Leviathan coast and have some fun :D

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Fight Cat-Lon alone. One on one. Using a fucking Katana.

As an aside, playing with Living World, More Plate, and Let's Talk.

I think next game i start over, I'd like to start as a member of the Southern Hive, becoming some horrific Eyegore-like warlord or something similar. Is there a good mod compatible with Living World that adds more races to play as?

 

[Technomancer]

Go to Leviathan coast and have some fun

Meh, leviathans are docile grass eaters. They don't do shit unless you attack.

 

[Delterius]

Go to Leviathan coast and have some fun

Meh, leviathans are docile grass eaters. They don't do shit unless you attack.

no truce with the vegetarians

 

[TT1]

Go to Leviathan coast and have some fun

Meh, leviathans are docile grass eaters. They don't do shit unless you attack.

If you are in more than 3 people, they attack

 

[gogis]

Kenshi becomes considerably less fun once you level up past the point that legitimately terrifying enemies like cannibals, fogmen, and beak things are no longer a threat to your party.

Like I understand that progression is fundamental to RPGs and your characters should experience growth. And there is also a certain satisfaction that comes with losing to something and then going back later and kicking its ass.

But what if terrifying monsters were always terrifying, even at max level? That would make things really interesting.

You still have skin bandits and all boss characters who will wipe weak (< ~70 in combat stats, depending on your raid size) party

Then you have mods like "Stronger Group Combat" and various "X group overhaul"

Obviously, when you have fully cyborg party of elite athletes with top notch weapons and exorbitant stats you invincible, but ... this is sandbox game after all

 

[The_Mask]

Is there a mod to make the Holy Nation Outlaws not starve to death? Let me know. Tag me.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

Spoiler

DECLARATIVE PROLOGUE.
The team have been hugely busy this month working on a ‘vertical slice’ of Kenshi 2, which I have the pleasure of sharing snippets of today.

For those unaware of the terminology, a vertical slice is a portion of near-finished quality game which then allows a studio to visualise some of what they’re up to. It’s traditionally distinct from a prototype in that the quality is much higher leaving less room for flexibility but for us we’re blurring that line a bit and using it primarily as a tangible design tool. Internally nicknamed ‘Concrete Neon’, it’s about having a space to test and iterate on some of Kenshi 2’s ideas by taking them away from a design document and experiencing how they might actually be played.

Sharing some thoughts on our first major milestone, Chris compares Concrete Neon to founding Kenshi’s Holy Nation and his hands on approach to game design: “Anyone who played the [Kenshi 1 early access] map in it’s earliest incarnation will remember that only a small area around the holy nation was active, the rest was greyed-out and you couldn’t go there, because it wasn’t finished. This gives us a test bed to get everything working early on so we can play the game and experiment. I’m not a very formal designer, my technique is iterative because my ‘special skill’ is playing a game for a while and then going “hunger needs to be 0.8x slower and strength needs to raise 1.12x faster instead of 1.08x”. It’s also better that way because I can approach the design as a player rather than as a game designer. I don’t like game designers.”

https://lofigames.com/july-community-update/
Last month's community update is here. There's more info about new team members and fixes to Kenshi 1, but I figured I'd just quote the interesting part.

 

[Zanzoken]

Those screenshots look really good!

The main thing I hope for in Kenshi 2 is more C&C / reactivity. I know they don't want to design quests, which is fine, but if you aren't going to do quests then you have to come up with other ways for the player to interact with the world, and for the game to acknowledge the player's progress. Also, the world should feel like it is living and breathing on its own, independent of the player, with NPCs who are pursuing their own interests just like the player is, which will inevitably lead to conflict.

The first Kenshi doesn't really do much on its own, and is also quite limited in how it responds to the player, so it just feels incredibly static. Hopefully they'll come up with clever ways to improve that in the next game.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Yes, Kenshi's greatest weakness is the limited amount of interactivity with the existing factions, all of which should expand or decline organically as a result of the actions of the player. There are mods that attempt to fix this issue, but the most they can accomplish is to increase the amount of scripted world changes in response to certain triggering events, rather than introduce game mechanics that would determine factional influence, city prosperity, population changes, and so forth.

 

[The_Mask]

I found Beep.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I found Beep.

You can now consider yourself alive for the very first time, my child.

 

[The_Mask]

Almost reaching year 1. When I do, I'll start my writeup.

Major_Blackhart

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS SO GLAD I GOT THIS FROM SOME FAGGOT GAMERSGATE BUNDLE A MILLION YEARS AGO

EVRY ONCE IN A WHILE I PLAY IT AND ITS DEFINITELY UNIQUE AND FUN

 

[Serious_Business]

I think I just sinked 12h non-stop into this

I'll definitively die alone but what the hell, what a game. What a game

 

[Delterius]

I think I just sinked 12h non-stop into this

I'll definitively die alone but what the hell, what a game. What a game

you have friends in this thread

we shall all die alone... together

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

I think I just sinked 12h non-stop into this

I'll definitively die alone but what the hell, what a game. What a game

You don't have to die alone when you can recruit a bunch of shek females, unlock the slider values, and turn up all the important sliders to 500.

 

[The_Mask]

I found Burn, and I think I remember reading a post here (toro if I am not mistaken) saying that his stats don't fit the story, and I tend to agree.

All the other companions, with Beep being the crown jewel, so far make sense and blend in well with their stats within the world, but Burn seems to be have been some sort of left-over thought. So far, one of the very few complaints about the game, really.

 

[toro]

I found Burn, and I think I remember reading a post here (toro if I am not mistaken) saying that his stats don't fit the story, and I tend to agree.

All the other companions, with Beep being the crown jewel, so far make sense and blend in well with their stats within the world, but Burn seems to be have been some sort of left-over thought. So far, one of the very few complaints about the game, really.

Agnu has 50 STR. Real Burn lives in a tower and has normal stats.

Edit: You probably encountered a skeleton drifter named Burn because of random name gen.

 

[Tweed]

Anyone tried Genesis? I normally don't go for overhauls, but I just dominated a most vanilla playthrough of the game (living world, squad increase, and a mod to make warrior drones slightly less useless) after 180 hours of timesink and the game calls to me still, but I'm feeling really lazy about trying to find individual mods to make things more interesting.

 

[polo]

Anyone tried Genesis? I normally don't go for overhauls, but I just dominated a most vanilla playthrough of the game (living world, squad increase, and a mod to make warrior drones slightly less useless) after 180 hours of timesink and the game calls to me still, but I'm feeling really lazy about trying to find individual mods to make things more interesting.

Just heard of this, its tagged by the modders as an exploration mod, since its alpha, they do not recommend yet a full playthrough.

 

[Tweed]

Just heard of this, its tagged by the modders as an exploration mod, since its alpha, they do not recommend yet a full playthrough.

Going to try Blood and Sand instead.

 

[agris]

Anyone tried Genesis? I normally don't go for overhauls, but I just dominated a most vanilla playthrough of the game (living world, squad increase, and a mod to make warrior drones slightly less useless) after 180 hours of timesink and the game calls to me still, but I'm feeling really lazy about trying to find individual mods to make things more interesting.

Speaking as someone who also played a mostly vanilla game, the squad increase mod really trivializes the difficulty. I added it without really thinking about the impact on the difficulty, just out of annoyance that the game mostly stops offering you new potential recruits / hires after you hit the vanilla cap. But, bringing 15 people to assault a stronghold made the game much easier, and in retrospect I should have either kept my war party to less than 10, or never installed the mod.

I expect if you replayed Kenshi without the squad increase, you would be stomping the game a lot less. At the least, there would be a much longer runway to becoming overpowered and trivializing content.