I’m glad to see folks looking into the gameplay aspects of Thrive and reflecting on if the direction we are going could be considered “fun”.
The microbe stage in it’s current state is rather dull from a gameplay perspective, and is currently lifted by it’s simulation mechanics and sense of progress.
The first thing I would like to bring up on the matter, is that there are actually a healthy amount of concepts that have already been devised on enriching and expanding on the playstyle of different metabolisms. Unfortunately due to the rather messy nature of our forums, these are easily forgotten by current developers, and never found by new faces.
So I’ll take this chance to remind everyone about some of the discussions that as of today still remain unresolved, unelaborated, or otherwise just not implemented.
Iron Respiration Rework
Sulfur Cycle Expansion (Not much on this one specifically but the idea is often circulated)
Thermosynthesis Complete Implementation
Implement radiotrophy (And radiation hazards)
Photosynthesis Cycle Complete Implementation
Going beyond just the metabolism of life, are the other aspects of microbe gameplay.
Combat Revamp
Straw Pilus Upgrade Concept
Toxin Delivery Methods Expansion
Terrain and Currents
Stamina Mechanics
There is likely much more that I am forgetting, but these concepts are the most recent in my memory alone.
So what is holding all of this back? There is no direct answer, but in the case for most of them, I believe it is the difficulty of implementation combined with having to adjust the AI and autoevo to account for completely unique features. Being a volunteer force, people are only going to work on things they feel passionate about or are most critical, otherwise it’s the easy fixes. Concepts like these; Devised by a different person, much more mechanically intensive, and with the risk of not even being as fun as they sound means that trying to implement them could lead you to putting a lot of effort into something that might not even pan out. And I get that, it’s exhausting.
There is not really a good solution to this. Having a dedicated paid programmer is a huge boon, and will theoretically solve this issue. But Hh is understandably more focused on other things of import, and will likely be hunting bugs and handling major features related to progress instead of revamps or new features.
I can wildly postulate and speculate all I want, I can scream to the heavens that this feature right here will surely be the best thing for the coming release, but it will always comes down to someone brave enough and dedicated enough to take on an ultimately experimental feature for it to happen. It’s this right here that ironically often makes solo projects go faster than team-led ones.
All the more reason I wish I could program things myself, rather than remain on the sidelines telling people what to do.
Anyway, that aside, I do like the ideas you have for hydrogen sulfide toxicity. It makes for a unique hazard in the vents, and will make them feel more frenetic and dangerous. It would make chemosynthesis more engaging by forcing players to think carefully about cloud concentration.
In it’s simplest implementation, we could probably just have hydrogen sulfide clouds damage cells that can’t store it inside themselves. (So cells that can’t store it, or otherwise are full on storage will be harmed.)
As an added bonus, we could even perhaps introduce a modification to the slime jet that makes it use hydrogen sulfide instead, hehe.
There is just one major problem. Hydrogen sulfide alone is easy to discern, but a potentially dangerous compound can easily be hidden behind a slew of other compound clouds as things get mixed together in the environment. Communicating that a specific compound cloud hurts you can already introduce a bit of learning-curve tax, so how will players handle having to carefully analyze a cloud before diving in? How many will complain about randomly receiving damage and not understanding the source?