[Poll] Player Hunger: Survival Fun or Invasive Drudgery

I like a lot of the feedback here. Stamina should have the largest impact on the hunger clock. That said I think whatever they do it needs to be on a scalar. For example they've discussed things like armour weight affecting your ability to swim and jump high... I would hope any just system would avoid markers... When you reach X level of stamina depletion and you jump abruptly drops to half it's original range. Or you reach X amount of weight and you abruptly overloaded. Everything you carry should affect your movement speed and jump height, from naked to carrying a house. Strength would affect the curve making lightweight burdens negligible but it should be a curve where speed is a property of formula like weight over strength plus dex. Not 399 pounds = can move, 400 pounds = immobilised. I'm not sure immobilised should ever actually happen either, if picking up an item would push you over the threshold from 1% movements speed to 0% then you should be able to pick it up.

This should also apply to any hunger system. You could use markers for triggering events like stomach growl sounds playing, or lethargy/hungar animations when idling... But there shouldn't be fixed points in hunger pool where you charater enters a state of "Hungry: 10% health regeneration reduction", then an hour later, snap "Very Hungry: 25% health regeneration reduction". Whatever the buff and debuffs are they should scale across the whole hour is in that example, when I'm half way between the hungry and very hungry states I'm should have 17.5% health regen penalty. I don't understand why this kind of system isn't used more often... It's a little more complex math wise to work out the right formula to use, but it's much easier to program in that one formula as the hunger state, then make a list of all the effects at the different stages of hunger... And being good at maths is a job requirement for programmers. This is more a general rule I'd like see applied to all systems though.

This pretty much sums up my point of view on the matter. They are including cooking, it shouldn't just be a decorative fluff skill like it was in UO, and it shouldn't just be alchemy/potion making in the different wrapper. Each profession should be unique, viable and functional... Otherwise what makes it a profession worth including?
I pose this question to everyone opposed to hunger on the basis it's not something they want to see the devs wasting time on when they could be working on other things and are voting, opposed no matter what... Do you want to see the devs wasting time on adding in the cooking skill at all? If not why fishing (pulling up treasure chests and monsters from the deep aside)?
The only viable counter argument is it provides role play options... And if you aren't opposed to it on that basis, then as long as an "opt-out" is provided for you in some form, why are you opposed to a system being included for survivalist role play styles? I'd like to see the feedback on the issue rather than a dismissive hand wave, so if the dev's do elect to include hunger they can tailor the system to address your biggest concerns.

On the issue of the hunger clock running while logged out, I'm pretty sure right now your character is in suspended animation when logged out right now and that's probably the plan going forward. One of the dev+ members mentioned it and started a tangent so I felt it was worth examining in the main post. Feel free to brainstorm but I wouldn't panic about starving while you log out for a week to focus on real life matters. Pretty sure the devs wouldn't do that to you.

 

With hunger, cooking should be a very useful skill from early on... So people can become chefs...

 

I already posted my views on hunger and they were dismissed. I still vote no. Override it all you want. If you don't want me to say that I don't want it, don't ask.

 

Not one for me.

The naive by-eye correlation suggests that those stronly in favour of the hardest PVP also strongly support hunger. Make of that what you will.

 

+1


Coincidentally (honest!) I was thinking about focusing on cooking. Not something I typically do but figured it would be nice to have a change.

 

My experience is many people who are pro-PK are skeptical about hunger, because it gives them something they have to do in the game other than camp at spots where they can murder people. Griefers don't like role-playing. Eating food for them isn't fun, chasing down n00bs is fun. They also tend to like things like recall books, that also make their life as a PKer easier.

Then, there are other PvPers, the ones who like mixing PvP with role-playing, because they like the idea of an open world, and tend to be supportive.

 

I'm very pro-hunger. It should affect multiple physical attributes such as stamina, strength, dexterity, concentration (focus), etc.
It creates a market for players that enjoy the cooking skill to sell there food items.
It creates a market for players that enjoy skinning and butchering ( they can sell the meat to the cooks and skins to the tanner ).

At a minimum players should be required to eat more than the equivalent of a full meal per in-game day.
Consuming nothing but meat everyday should be bad for your health. We need well nourished Avatars and variety is the spice of life.

It's not difficult to keep rations on you during your journey and consume them when hunger pains begin.
Consuming food during combat is a rather ridiculous proposition - out of combat consumption only!

I'm also a proponent of various bonuses due to food consumption. Tie that together with hunger and suddenly players have a reason to GM cooking.

I'd even vote for a food decay that ruins the food stuffs in your backpack ( not necessarily those in your bank/house ) after a certain period of time if not used after a few days. If items are to "decay" in-game I can't think of a more appropriate item than food.

Disclaimer: My wife always levels cooking in games we play. It's something she seriously enjoys. I'm never without food - either in game or in real life!

 

Is this your wife,

 

No, but she used to be thoroughly addicted to Zynga's Cafe World!

 

You're allowed to not want it and say so, that why that's a voting option. My question wasn't overriding anything it was asking for deeper incite.
However, the feedback you gave can ironically be summed up as dismissing everyone else's concerns, then threatening to take your ball and go home if we don't play your way. That's not constructive feedback.
You're happy with cooking being alchemy in a different wrapper and food giving light buffs and nothing more like it has been done in other games you've enjoyed and that's fine. But most the rest of us are pushing for something a bit deeper then that.
My question was assuming that we get it, how can it be implemented in such a way it doesn't cause you to storm off in a huff?

 

I would love to see a real reason for cooking other than a skill to bump up because you have done everything else. Imagine having to hunt because you need to survive and if you miss that deer, no delicious venison for you and you might have to suck it up and beg in the local tavern or *Gasp, steal to live.
this will make people take more care with what the see around them, search high and low for herbs, tend gardens for a purpose, banquets held would be more than just empty gestures, asking a special someone over to woo them with cooking would be a real and tangible event in your life...so many options.....

 

Well acting like having overlap with alchemy isn't the end of the world would be a good start. I am even OK with the buff it would give being so good that you feel like you walked out of the house without a weapon or armor. If my character is going to die directy because I didn't eat: that is as much of a deterrent as the devs seem to think having to go back and getting your corpse is. Since my feedback isn't "constructive" (i.e. agreeing with you) and I'm some horrible hardcore PvPer (not really I just want to PK my husband) go ahead. It just leads me to hope the devs have more sense to focus on more important things like what exactly happens when we die and get exactly how much xp debt actually? Stuff I especially want to know in the event that I might starve to death because I was busy. With the day-night cycle being an hour or so, I will be popping carrots in my character like dumping quarters in an arcade machine or playing eq2 and munching on celestial cookies and washing it down with some celestial coffee that I bought from my favorite player that has an endgame provisioner.

Yes I realize that I basically said that I don't care if you make it suck so badly that you may as well be dead. I receive the reverse Nerf much better.

PS: The Whitehouse pastry chef quit and I am pissed! (not kidding)

 

Well, I am strongly anti-PvP and I think hunger should be in the game. I don't want severe hunger. I don't want death from hunger and I don't want it to get too tedious, but hunger has always been a strong element in Ultima and I think it's a tradition worth preserving as it enhances the Ultima feel of the game.

 

Riding takes at least a quest in LotRO, and you need to have reached a certain character level to absolve this quest. So I had all these horses from the Riders of Rohan update and could not use them on my characters, which are still underdeveloped. (But I have a lifetime account, so there is still time ...)
Or you can buy the ability in the store.

Back to topic:
I hate the enforced necessity of food for the character in game. Just currently in Might and Magic X this hate has been woken again - you can only get a certain amount of food, and whenever your group is doing some rest to recover health and mana, one food is eaten. If your food stash ended and the potions too, you have to visit the next town and refill your food stack again, otherwise you are soon out of ability to heal up and fight.
So I also vote no for enforced hunger with punishing effects.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

I didn't understand a lot of that. But I will say constructive feedback is not defined as agreeing with me or anyone else. Praising someone point of view is in fact the as much the opposite of constructive feedback as deriding it is.

Constructive feedback is helpful feedback that can be worked with to improve the matter at hand. Feedback is constructive when it is specific to the issue rather than generalisations, focuses on the effects of the issue that can be changed rather then the issue itself, takes the needs of all parties (or both sides of the argument) into account and provides a descriptive assessment of the issue rather than an evaluative one.

Presenting a bunch of logical fallacies and distractionary arguments (like implying we don't take you seriously because you're a PVPer or not, which no here has accused you of one way or the other) doesn't help anyone.

Anyway responding to part of the post that did seem clear and rational I imagine that if you are idling your character would be logged out (thing functionality was present in R2) and the hunger clock would stop. Also the day night cycle been an hour isn't set in stone and is currently just for testing purposes. Chris Spears has said we should expect it to be longer at launch.

 

In RuneScape, combat is largely determined by who can fit more Rocktail Soup in their rucksack. As a future SotA cook, I'd rather cooking be useless than be an alchemy clone. Eating pounds of food in the heat of battle should not be beneficial. Rather, food should serve to provide players with a reason to hit the local taverns or buy a cook's wares.

A modest hunger system, that imposed anything from visual impairments, to small stat debuffs, to small skill penalties would provide incentives to visit taverns and grocery markets. The debuffs would never be so large that you had to eat, but just large enough for eating to have some merit. Alternatively, a hunger system could impose no debuffs, and instead provide small long-lived buffs for eating. Either way, eating should take time so that people aren't found feasting during fights.

 

That's deep man.

I had forgotten about the implications of devouring a roast dinner mid sword swing. It certainly should be disruptive activity like a long emote you have to be sitting to trigger. We've seen camping gear in the game... I wonder how that will be incorporated...

 

Guys... I said it was a naive correlation. My statement was one of looking at data and spotting the trend.

It isn't (1) science, (2) rigorous, (3) causation (just correlation -- admittedly I might have implied causation but that was naughty of me ;-) ).

You both make great points and could well be correct. But really we shouldn't impose our views on the data but let the data tells us what the trends are. It still look like there is a lack of anti-pvpers in the anti-hunger vote lists.

There are many possible outcomes. Two suggestions: I could be (1) very wrong or (2) correct that there is a trend but the causes are just "random" rather than anything to do with the nature of pvpers.

 

Good post, and I probably wouldn't QQ if something like that was implemented. I remember SWG giving buffs for eating, there was a huge difference between eating and not eating before combat though!