AutoReiv

I'm not suggesting all this because I want the experience of eating in the game. Let me be clear, I do not want to bog down an awesome game with contrived and stupid mini tasks to perform all the time, with a hundred different bars and stats, ok? That's just stupid. What I'm suggesting is very simple and it's a less contrived way of putting some sense into the rest/sleep function instead of just limiting it to, say, 2 uses per day.

If you stayed at an inn you wouldn't consume any of the party's food/rations, it would be "included" in the price you payed I'd say.

Having food or rations doesn't necessarily mean adding anything like hunger or fatigue (that's just contrived). If you read what I've posted just a page back you'll see an example of how it could be done. Abuse? Why should you or anyone else care about what other people do in their own game sessions? Can you elaborate? I fail to see how it solves something tedious. First question: I do not care how other people play, But the guys at Obsidian apparently does. I, on the other hand, only care how I play myself. Instant full HP, MP, and spell regain, all for free and unlimited use is just lame. Second question: As I said to Virgil, I explained earlier in this thread: Let's say there was a common item called "ration" that you could buy at most shops or loot off of killed enemies, and your party consumed one or more of these every time you rested or slept. You'd still be allowed to do it whenever you wanted and how often you wanted but it wouldn't free, and it wouldn't unlimited, and certainly not lame; no hunger bars, no fatigue, just a simple and elegant solution to a problem the developers and many players have underlined.

If you just changed the "gold coin" symbol that you see next to how much you have of it into an image of a pile of mixed valuables like coins, paper money, and gems, it would be more obvious that "gold" is an abstraction and not actual gold coins. I also vote for keeping it weightless.

It'll be very disappointing if they didn't allowed multiplayer co-op. The multiplayer for Baldur's Gate is a ****ing hassle, but many of us still go through it to this day because, even being tackay, it allows for one of the best co-op gaming experiences of all time to this day.

It'll not add something tedious, it would solve something tedious; a problem that the creators have directly addressed. Automatically consuming rations when you rest/sleep is a creative way of doing so, I would argue.

But it would be a nice solution to the sleep/rest-abuse without being a burden.

I haven't seen any talk about this anywhere. They said something about only allowing you to create the main character and not a whole party like in Baldur's Gate (damn shame that), but will that also mean that you can't play with your friends where they create their own characters? I'm pretty sure the ability to do so in a game like BG2 is the main contributor to it's longevity.

Food and drink could be something you came across just like everyone you meet carrying gold and the occasional gemstone; random loot, and most shops would sell supply it. Depending on how the inventory will be set up you can either have food and drink items be all sorts of things like a flask of brandy or a bowl of porridge, if items were to take up space in your inventory based on their seize, but if your items, be it a chest plate or a ring, just takes up one slot, then you'd rater have drink and food represented as a single stackable item, as in a ration. I think food and drink is an easy way of increasing the immersion in the the game, since it is something we all can relate to very closely, but if it is to make it into a game it needs to fill a purpose. I think hunger bars and such might be a too contrived way of doing that, but one Idea could be to use it as a way to get rid of the sleep/rest-abuse and have food and drink, or rations, be consumed every time you made camp, just like in Betrayal at Krondor as Nakia said. The amount of food and drink, or number of rations, that were consumed each time you made camp would best be based on how big the party is. If your companions have their own inventory then they would each consume from there.

Firstly, thanks for providing an "insider's" view on the ideas! Regarding the food and drink part. I might have stressed the inherent antagonism too much and the creative solution too little. I am aware that the use of potions and healing is to replenish health at huge amounts and at a very quick rate (often instantaneous), but I'm suggesting that this is only the case since it's just during battles that you lose health at those rates. However, if you were affected positively and negatively depending on if you were well fed and happy or starving and grouchy, food and drink would actually serve a purpose and not have to compete with the use of potions and healing during battle, perhaps even amplify them. Changing seasons does indeed require changing the look of the environment, and the reason I thought it possible for this project is because it will use a 2D or 2D-like isometric world instead of a 3D world with high-res textures. The only issue would be how often the "background" would be updated, i.e. how gradual the change would be. Personally I would be happy with going to bed during a winter night and waking up during a spring morning. There are also some games that have a weather mechanic, usually just precipitation (rain/snow) and the occasional lightning strike. The frequency of these things could also help fleshing out the seasons in more detail (of course depending on what kind of region you're in). About the quests and that you'd have to make a lot more game material than you can consume in one playthrough to make it possible: First I'd like to see it as a nice way of rewarding those who stick to the game, like many of us have done for decades with some titles. There will, however, need to be more game material (quest-wise) to allow for this, but it's not a problem of whether or not it is technically possible or not, it is simply a matter of putting enough payed hours into it. But at the same time I guess people that work with game development use formulas like: The amount of game material should always provide the equal or just slightly greater amount of gameplay-hours than the average player from the target group invests. Of course it's an effective way of not "wasting" money and hours, but I'd like to at least open the discussion on what could be done, and what could be won, by doing so. It is, however, difficult things I'm proposing. But give them to a team of guys like these, with the proper funding and support... Baby you've got a stew going!

Passage of time in RPGs Quite some time have passed since the birth of RP video games, and we have seen innovation after innovation deepen the immersion and revitalize not just a game genre but also a culture. The introduction of 3D did a lot to the first-person branch of RPGs for example, and the obvious demonstration would be the Elder Scrolls series. The advancement of internet also did a lot to RPGs which by nature is based on gameplay including several players, if you consider their origins, and today we have a genre called MMORPG. I have always thought of the element and mechanics of time's passage as one of these things that could really revolutionize, or at least explore a very neglected aspect of gaming in general and worldbuilding specifically. I mean, today we can explore a sprawling and ever-so-detailed world with grass swaying in the wind and NPCs going about their daily tasks and talking to each other. But it's still like you're walking around in a world frozen in a time stasis. Nothing happens until you show up. If you can play for months or even years in-game why wouldn't you be able to see the seasons go by? I'm talking about using time as something more than just a decorative day and night cycle, or as simple quest requisites, as in "meet me here tonight". I'm talking about having the passage of time being an integral part of the game world and how things in it functions. It would be a difficult task to implement in a game like Skyrim for example, considering the massive, open, and minutely detailed 3D world it has, as regards to the pure amount of data it would require. But take something like what Project Eternity wants to create, and you can at least start to see ways of actually doing this. Brainstorming! So, let's take some basic aspects of RPG gameplay and expose them to the element of time and see what happens. Items and keeping inventory Items and the use of an inventory is elementary in RPGs, but since most of the things in an RPG inventory are probably made out of metal, paper, cloth and so on, there's really not much gong on in there. But let's say food and drink are important things for the wellbeing of a character, just like in pen-and-paper RPGs and many other games. So if food and drink are made important, you could actually have drinks going stale, bread molding, and meat rotting and becoming poisonous. Perhaps it would be wise to throw out old food if you don't want rot to spread to the other foodstuffs in your inventory. But then again, there's potions and healing... Potions and healing are the natural enemy of food and drink. Why go through all the pain of enabling players to satiate their hunger and thirst, and doing so to recover and maintain health, when you're just a couple of pots or hand movements away from full health at any moment? If food and drink is to be implemented it will compete with potions and healing since they all share the same use, namely that of keeping you healthy. Now, if everyone knew how to heal, then even potions would be superfluous, but not everyone does, and usually the healing is limited to X uses per day or something like that. If you think about it, potions and healing are almost exclusively used during combat, because that's where you often need to regain vast amounts of health in a matter of seconds. We all know only magic and futuristic auto-injectors are capable of doing this, not apple pies and dried meat. So that's out of the question. But what we do know is that a man's gotta eat and drink at some point, and hopefully not just to squeeze the local going-ons out of some poor tavern patron. What if potions actually were a rare and perhaps expensive commodity, I mean, where are all the factories supplying this ridiculous amount of potions at these prizes located anyway? If food and drink were to be made useful it would mean you somehow lost health or otherwise suffered outside of battle. I know there's a lot of people who would oppose themselves to that, believing the world outside of battle to be the safest place of all, and perhaps it aught to be in world where the urgency of time only is applied to battle, but as soon as you introduce time to the world as a whole I believe you should be able to feel it and act upon it, even outside of battle. Maybe your max health decreases if you don't eat and drink, or you become more vulnerable to some things (like poison and disease), less resistant to magic, or less efficient with your skills. Perhaps then players would feel inclined towards only using their few and valuable potions and heals when they really need them, during battle that is, and making room for the gastronomical adventure while making camp or as a non-contrived way of meeting and agreeing to help strangers at taverns. World and travel I've always wondered why some games have elaborate calendars with fancy names and mythology and the only purpose it seams to serve is to organize your saved games. Why not tie all these names and mythology to things that happen in the world? Most places located in temperate regions celebrate harvesting season for example, usually there's festivities and markets. Maybe there's a tourney every year to celebrate the local king's birthday or your own heroic deeds (after completing a quest). Maybe most shops are closed a certain day of the week, or perhaps the a local elven trader leaves town a few days to celebrate the coming of spring with his kin. There are many things going on in a town for example, many of which are daily tasks that aren't really worth plotting out in any great detail, but seeing the streets change from a sprawling social meeting place during day, to a dark, nail-biting gauntlet by night is something a lot of games have done before and with good results. Besides these area-specific events taking place you can have people moving about between towns and villages, like merchants or a traveling circus for example. Having different modes of transportation is also something that will make the game more interesting when you add the element of time. Will you make it in time to wherever you need to be if you just travel by foot, or will you need to buy horses or hire a carriage? Questing How is it that no matter how mundane or urgent a task it is, an NPC will accept no help but yours? What I'm proposing here hasn't been done in any RPGs, at least to my knowledge. To actually turn quests into their own processes of events, and if you want them to take certain path you need to intervene, and if you don't, they' will "solve themselves". Quests of the type "find the cure..." will likely only have one consequence if left undone, assuming you're the only one able to solve it. But let's say the quest is saving a merchant's daughter who have been kidnapped by bandits instead. If you never show up to take the quest, the quest will start solving itself after a while. Perhaps the merchant hires someone else to do the job, and maybe you run into this person by chance in the wilderness and he asks if you want to join in on the reward, allowing you to still pick the quest up. Perhaps you never meet the hired sword on his quest and maybe he fails, but you run into the bandits much later, and if you talk to them instead of fighting them you discover one of them was once a merchant's daughter who actually ran away from her overbearing father. Other quests might evolve in more complex ways, not always random, and you are able to intercept the quest anywhere as it travels along its' timeline and hopefully completing it, with different outcomes depending on where. This means you can't pick up every quest in the game in only one playthrough, at least not from their start, since you can't be everywhere simultaneously. Perhaps you have to make though choices based on that fact. Your choices, and at what time you make them, will have a profound effect on the story and the gaming experience of each playthrough. The replayability that implementation of time offers is immense. I'm not sure how far this project has gone and if this kind of input is "too late" so to speak, but it might still offer some food for thought.