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Advanced system of needs
July 14, 2020 at 10:52 pmIn these past days, I was thinking about some sort of advanced system of needs. My first idea was extension of classical needs you know from The Sims. Extension of classical needs is still part of my newer idea, but I will do seperate post about this.
My new idea is based on Maslows pyramid of needs – humans can self actualization when their needs (from physiological needs to esteem) are fulfied.
So I was thinking that maybe something like this could be applied in Paralives. It could effect moodlets, emotions, dreams and parafolk´s journey. The last need, self actualization, is also called growth need – this could be compared to aspirations from The Sims 2. This need is bound to one´s desire, wish, life dream, call it how you want.
I personally believe that system based on this could really have impact on gameplay. I will give now some examples, how could impact look like:
For example, we have para parents and their child. But father suddenly loose his job, which will affect family budget. Parents are worried about this as well about happiness of their child, so their safety needs are decreased and they must somehow resolve it before they can self-develope. Father´s esteem needs would also decrease as he might start feeling guilty that he lost his jobs and he could doubt about himself.
Traits and personality could also affect some needs and they could be affected as well – for example, someone who would be used to unfulfied physiological needs, would not be impacted as much as someone, whose physiological needs were always full. Or someone, who is ambition would have faster decrease of esteem needs, if they are unhappy in their work, or faster decrease of safety needs, if they loose job.
So this would be everything for now. This is only a raw concept, Im pretty sure someone would even come up with more ideas and maybe basic of this system. Since I based this on Maslow´s pyramid of needs, I would like to recommend reading something more about it, especially to devs, if you are reading this, it will give you more explanation on this topic.
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6 Replies
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I think your idea is great but it seems a little too advanced. I like the fact that if you loose your job or get fired and doing nothing for a while will affect your emotions but it should not go that far (the part with the father esteem decreasing and the unfulfilled needs, I think it is a little bit too much. But I’m not a native english speaker and I could have understanding it wrong..)
Sorry for my English.
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I like the research and care you’ve put into this, and I think the concept could be built into an interesting mechanic. Personally, when it comes to needs I’d be perfectly happy with a system as basic as The Sims’, or even simpler. But if needs were tied like this to “aspirations” and achieving life goals… maybe that would be a challenge I could get behind. It’s a little hard to imagine though, because I think the system would have to be simplified a lot to be easily communicated in the game.
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I think a system like this would be really cool. I only ever played that other game for a very short time, so I don’t remember much about it, but as far as I remembered, all needs were the same for all characters. I like this example you have here becuase it varies based on Parafolk’s personality, which I think makes sense. This pyramid would be great it could give Paras different priorities in life. If this concept isn’t too difficult to program, I’d like to see something like this in Paralives.
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This is really great but we must also then use an opposite pyramid to reflect the following when bad decisions are made, for example: –
self actualization = dissatisfaction
esteem = disrespect
love & belonging = disassociation
safety needs = insecurity
Physiological needs = ill health
Well something like that.
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