Food

[Galdegir]

So this proposition maybe a little controversial but that do you guys think about food and sleep. I mean it could make the game more real and difficult if the characters had to eat and sleep. No food - healt and stamina decreases after some period of time and finally the character dies. So the player would have to buy food in taverns while in the city, and on the road have supplies and hunt. I know that for some this could be a hindrance and an unnecessary addition to gameplay but thats why it could be included in one of the announced mods: Expert Mode, Trial of Iron, or Path of the Damned.

As for sleep in would be similar to food, your party members and character would have to sleep from time to time to regenerate stamina, mana healh. No sllep for a long time your character has less stamina, less mana, his hit accuracy deacreses and so on.

So what do you guys think would this be a challenging addition or just a bother?

[evdk]

+1

[Shades]

I wouldn't mind seeing this, and having to sleep certainly makes sense (so my characters aren't super-insomniac-zombies running around without sleep for weeks). But augh, if they do this I just know I'm going to end up hoarding all the food I can because it looks so tasty. It's happened to me in any other games that have food as an item

[metiman]

I admit that the meat-on-a-stick from Ultima Underworld II and the apple pies in Arx Fatalis always made me crave such things. It makes me think that product placement could be used as a way to raise more money for projects like this. I liked the use of food in Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis, but in other games it hasn't seemed so special. FONV had a nice variety of food, but for some reason it didn't make me crave any of it. Of course if food is included there is always the possibility of poisioning it. A sub-quest in Arx used just such a mechanic and it was great fun.

[Aedelric]

Food, drink and sleep was great in New Vegas but that was with one character.

 

Project Eternity we would have to deal with multiple characters who may or may not get hungry/thirsty/tired at the same time due to varying race types. It would involve far too much micromanagement to make it enjoyable in any way.

 

In general I say no, but as an additional optional game mode I would have no reason to say no.

[Bill Gates' Son]

Fatigue was in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and it actually gave your characters a reason to rest even if you had full health. So, nothing wrong with bringing it back I guess.

Edited September 27, 2012 by Bill Gates' Son

[Gorth]

Your party members may be different races. If you run out of food, do you draw lots who gets eaten first or do you pick the party member that tastes like chicken first or just the smallest and weakest one?

 

What if some party members are nocturnal, would your party be "gimped" 50% of the time because one half is awake and the other half sleepwalking?

 

I like it in single player games. It could end up being an awful lot of micromanagement though when trying to coordinate the appetites and sleep patterns of various races and species. So my position would be sitting on the fence with a decisive "it depends!" view

 

[norolim]

I'm in favor of anything that increases realism and is reasonable. I just wrote about food, sleep and other things that could increase realism here

 

Your party members may be different races.

Every party member has his/her own supplies in the backpack. Quite reasonable.

 

What if some party members are nocturnal

I doubt having nocturnal members in a party consisting of diurnal characters would make much sense either way.

Edited September 27, 2012 by norolim

[Haawkings]

maybe they rest better with some food and drinks? I never liked tamagotchies.

[silvarius2000]

I'd like to suggest an alternative mechanic for handling death.

 

For one we will augment the idea of Hitpoints with Critical Injuries. No no! Let me finish! This would be different!

 

As players get their HP reduced through attritional combat, they catch occasional Critical Injury points which cannot be healed in the field. I'd suggest even magical healing would be very limited for these. Forcing the player back to whatever town or whatnot to patch up and heal their serious injuries.

 

Perhaps even the Steve Jackson concept of having provisions. 2 provisions = Resting 2 times out there. With varying degrees of provisions in terms of quality,quantity. Nasty jerky which lasts you a long way? Or yummy fresh meat which lasts... pretty darn short.

[ogrezilla]

I really don't want this. All it does is add tedium. I don't have any interest in this being more hardcore than the old IE games. They did a nice job of keeping out mechanics that didn't actually add value beyond realism for the sake of being hardcore.

[Luckmann]

Been over this many times. I'd love "Hardcore". Preferably completely integrated into the game and not just something on the side like in Fallout: New Vegas, but a "mode" is better than nothing.

[Keyrock]

I'm all for making food, water, and sleep necessary in Expert Mode a la Fallout: New Vegas.

[RiceMunk]

Both hunger and tiredness mechanisms belong in my books to the category of "Nuisance if they have nothing to add to the game so if they don't add anything, don't add them."

 

Whether hunger adds anything to the game really depends on what kind of an enviroment your party ends up adventuring in. Hunger systems in my opinion have worked best in post-apocalyptic settings for the very reason that food being a scarce commodity can sometimes make finding a fridge full of tasty yum-yums feel like as big an accomplishment as finding a shiny new gun.

However, if your adventuring party is constantly hovering around well-stocked towns and cities, keeping food supplies stocked means you just have to occasionally pop into a town to go buy another pile of Generic Rations and I don't see such round-trips adding anything of value to the gameplay.

It becomes another issue if you have wander far from civilization and move slowly because you're needing to take breaks to heal up and whatever. In this case a limited food supply will bring with it a natural limit to how long you can stay in the deep wilderness until you start running into hunger-related issues and have to begin the trek back to the nearest town. Even here, though, if the trek back and forth between town is nothing more than a matter of clicking your map, it becomes nothing more than a tiny chore to get back to where you were, with nothing significantly changing if you hadn't had to make the trip back. You can make it matter by adding random encounters or respawns happen if you do such traveling back and forth but will such things make the return journey be littered with annoying nuisances or actual peril that you actually have to think twice about before you choose to risk the encounter? Depends on how difficult you make the random encounters, I guess.

 

As for resting mechanics, I don't have anything against them in principle if they're something akin to Baldur's Gate et al., which involves essentially clicking a button and hoping you don't get jumped while you sleep. What I find annoying about even BG-like systems, though, is how often you may be forced to rest your party. Sometimes it feels downright silly that you need to have your party take an 8-hour nap every 2 encounters because your mages have run out spells. I'm not sure what to do about such a problem, though.

 

While writing this I was actually reminded of a rest/food system that I personally found rather nice. The system in particular being the one from Ultima 6. What makes Ultima 6 a bit of an odd ball in the Ultima series is that it's the only Ultima between 1 and 7 that didn't have starvation happening from running out of food.

However, in it your party could rest at any time in the wilderness and while doing so, if your party had food, ate some food before going to sleep. Your sleep could be interrupted by the usual random encounters as is typical with these but what was interesting is how having the food and eating it before sleep affected the gameplay. That is, your party would heal a whole lot more from a good night's rest if they had food. Going to sleep without food was mostly good for passing time but little else.

 

This makes me consider how sleep and food could be combined in a nice way to give a decent balance between micromanagement and tactical interest. That is, your party will never start explicitly starving because you can assume that they'll always manage to scrounge for food or eat some boring crackers or whatever to keep the worst parts of hunger away. However, having actual tasty rations brings with it the advantage that your party's resting will be greatly more effective. Without food, your party will barely heal at all and maybe even the mages have trouble memorizing their full set of spells/recharging their mana after their nap. If you do have food before resting, though, your party will mucnh away at some of it and get a proper night's sleep. They wake up nicely healed and your mages are full of magical goodness, ready to face your new day of adventuring.

At least it sounds good in my head.

 

I'll stop rambling for now.

[Amentep]

I've never found food mechanics fun*, but as long as it is optional (like how Fallout: New Vegas did it). That said if it can be optional and not a problem to develop it for those who'll like it - sure why not?

 

Sleep mechanics I think I like more as long as its simply a stat penalty and not a "YOU MUST SLEEP OR DIE...HOWEVER YOU CANNOT REST HERE AND YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE AREA WITHOUT FIGHTING 1000000 ORCS BUT YOU CAN'T FIGHT BECAUSE YOU MUST SLEEP" kind of thing.

 

*To me its needlessly micromanaging things; again if we are looking that we're playing a character and their skills and knowledge and not mine are important, that I'd like to think I'm playing a character who knows how much food they need to bring with them and if nothing else how to subsist if they run out rather than make me plan their dietary intake for days on end. I think this is why we just went with a flat upkeep fee in town to abstract food mechanics in most PnP RPGs we played. At least with sleep mechanics you have something that can directly effect travel and adventuring without requiring the micromanagement of items, unless you have to expend bedrolls to sleep or something.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Amentep

[Luckmann]

People saying that party management is needless micromanagement is to me like saying that combat is needless micromanagement; after all, why not just roll a dice to see if you pass the encounter? Hell, why have healthpoints if all you're going to do is to drink potions anyway?

 

Food, drink and sleep was great in New Vegas but that was with one character.

 

Project Eternity we would have to deal with multiple characters who may or may not get hungry/thirsty/tired at the same time due to varying race types. It would involve far too much micromanagement to make it enjoyable in any way.

 

In general I say no, but as an additional optional game mode I would have no reason to say no.

The difference in managing one character and managing six is miniscule in this regard. When one eats, everyone eats according to their needs. That's how I've always done it before, anyway.

 

When the orc (high metabolism) needs to eat, you feed him two hams, which removes his Hunger entirely. By this time, your elf (low metabolism) doesn't need to eat, but you still feed him a bit of bread, to remove his hunger entirely, too.

 

The odds that someone in your party will be starving while someone else in your party doesn't need to eat at all is exceedingly remote.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Luckmann

[eimatshya]

I'm with the other posters who have said that it would depend on how the system was implemented. It could be a fun addition to give adventuring a bit more depth, or it could be a tedious exercise in micromanagement (an especially likely scenario in a party-based game). If they do have food, you should have ways of getting food and water in the wilderness (e.g. survival checks). It would be silly if the ranger who grew up in the wilds had to return to town every few days to buy food.

 

I would prefer if starvation/thirst didn't kill your character but instead imposed penalties of some sort (same with sleep deprivation). That way, you have an incentive to keep your party supplied, but if you run out, it isn't game over (not realistic, but more enjoyable).

 

*EDIT*

Oh, and since this is a party-based game, I would prefer eating and drinking to be done automatically. That is, a certain number of times each day, your party's food and water supplies are reduced by one per party member, and each party member's hunger/thirst resets. That way you don't have to individually feed everyone all the time since that would get old really fast. There could still be the option to manually eat and drink stuff by clicking on it, but this should not be necessary for your party members to stay fed (they aren't babies; they should be able to eat on their own).

Edited September 28, 2012 by eimatshya

[Sargallath Abraxium]

Fatigue was in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, and it actually gave your characters a reason to rest even if you had full health. So, nothing wrong with bringing it back I guess.

 

 

...this should be the wway it be handled fer rest - food jus' be a dumb idea, adds nuthin'...

 

 

...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

[ogrezilla]

People saying that party management is needless micromanagement is to me like saying that combat is needless micromanagement; after all, why not just roll a dice to see if you pass the encounter? Hell, why have healthpoints if all you're going to do is to drink potions anyway?

 

Food, drink and sleep was great in New Vegas but that was with one character.

 

Project Eternity we would have to deal with multiple characters who may or may not get hungry/thirsty/tired at the same time due to varying race types. It would involve far too much micromanagement to make it enjoyable in any way.

 

In general I say no, but as an additional optional game mode I would have no reason to say no.

The difference in managing one character and managing six is miniscule in this regard. When one eats, everyone eats according to their needs. That's how I've always done it before, anyway.

 

When the orc (high metabolism) needs to eat, you feed him two hams, which removes his Hunger entirely. By this time, your elf (low metabolism) doesn't need to eat, but you still feed him a bit of bread, to remove his hunger entirely, too.

 

The odds that someone in your party will be starving while someone else in your party doesn't need to eat at all is exceedingly remote.

if we are in a setting where food might be scarce then sure, it could be an interesting gameplay addition because it becomes a necessary goal to find food. That adds to the gameplay. If we are in a setting where we can walk back to town and buy food every time we need it, then all it does is force us to walk to town occasionally. That's tedious and adds absolutely nothing to the game. So I guess it depends on the way the game is designed.

[Luckmann]

People saying that party management is needless micromanagement is to me like saying that combat is needless micromanagement; after all, why not just roll a dice to see if you pass the encounter? Hell, why have healthpoints if all you're going to do is to drink potions anyway?

 

Food, drink and sleep was great in New Vegas but that was with one character.

 

Project Eternity we would have to deal with multiple characters who may or may not get hungry/thirsty/tired at the same time due to varying race types. It would involve far too much micromanagement to make it enjoyable in any way.

 

In general I say no, but as an additional optional game mode I would have no reason to say no.

The difference in managing one character and managing six is miniscule in this regard. When one eats, everyone eats according to their needs. That's how I've always done it before, anyway.

 

When the orc (high metabolism) needs to eat, you feed him two hams, which removes his Hunger entirely. By this time, your elf (low metabolism) doesn't need to eat, but you still feed him a bit of bread, to remove his hunger entirely, too.

 

The odds that someone in your party will be starving while someone else in your party doesn't need to eat at all is exceedingly remote.

if we are in a setting where food might be scarce then sure, it could be an interesting gameplay addition because it becomes a necessary goal to find food. That adds to the gameplay. If we are in a setting where we can walk back to town and buy food every time we need it, then all it does is force us to walk to town occasionally. That's tedious and adds absolutely nothing to the game. So I guess it depends on the way the game is designed.

It prevents you from constantly sleeping/resting until you are fully healed and adds urgency for long-term or far-away exploration. "Forcing" you to walk back to town once in a while in an adventuring/roleplaying game.. makes perfect sense.

 

Unless you're hunters, foragers or rangers, of course, in which case you should definitely be able to utilize their skills, incentivizing the use of such skills (and spending effort to improve them).

[ogrezilla]

People saying that party management is needless micromanagement is to me like saying that combat is needless micromanagement; after all, why not just roll a dice to see if you pass the encounter? Hell, why have healthpoints if all you're going to do is to drink potions anyway?

 

Food, drink and sleep was great in New Vegas but that was with one character.

 

Project Eternity we would have to deal with multiple characters who may or may not get hungry/thirsty/tired at the same time due to varying race types. It would involve far too much micromanagement to make it enjoyable in any way.

 

In general I say no, but as an additional optional game mode I would have no reason to say no.

The difference in managing one character and managing six is miniscule in this regard. When one eats, everyone eats according to their needs. That's how I've always done it before, anyway.

 

When the orc (high metabolism) needs to eat, you feed him two hams, which removes his Hunger entirely. By this time, your elf (low metabolism) doesn't need to eat, but you still feed him a bit of bread, to remove his hunger entirely, too.

 

The odds that someone in your party will be starving while someone else in your party doesn't need to eat at all is exceedingly remote.

if we are in a setting where food might be scarce then sure, it could be an interesting gameplay addition because it becomes a necessary goal to find food. That adds to the gameplay. If we are in a setting where we can walk back to town and buy food every time we need it, then all it does is force us to walk to town occasionally. That's tedious and adds absolutely nothing to the game. So I guess it depends on the way the game is designed.

It prevents you from constantly sleeping/resting until you are fully healed and adds urgency for long-term or far-away exploration. "Forcing" you to walk back to town once in a while in an adventuring/roleplaying game.. makes perfect sense.

 

Unless you're hunters, foragers or rangers, of course, in which case you should definitely be able to utilize their skills, incentivizing the use of such skills (and spending effort to improve them).

it might make sense. But it doesn't mean its a good addition to a game. There are better ways to limit people from rest spamming and walking back to town for food simply is not enjoyable.

 

And I was actually on the pro-urgency side of an argument on this board a few days ago, but the long term exploration parts of the game are exactly where I don't want the game to add urgency.

Edited September 28, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Undecaf]

I'd love a system like that. Although, I'd - personally - probably go for a different style of "need" gauges and create environmental effects (like cold and heat with appropriate "equipement" soft requirements - e.g. cold environs require fur or furembedded apparel and alcohol (with appropriate side effects) to hinder the "cold" gauge; and hot environs require more light apparel and water (with appropriate side effects) to hinder the "heat" gauge; and temperate zones would be safe from these hazards) rather than normal eat and sleep mechanics happening everywhere.

 

Edit - That is to say, I think normal hunger and fatigue everywhere do not contribute to the gameplay more than adding a constant player busywork effect which grows tiresome and non-effective in the long run; whereas going environmentan would offer sort of challenge zones where one needs to focus more (think of an eyeopener between a boring drive through the town).

Edited September 28, 2012 by Undecaf

[Amentep]

It prevents you from constantly sleeping/resting until you are fully healed and adds urgency for long-term or far-away exploration. "Forcing" you to walk back to town once in a while in an adventuring/roleplaying game.. makes perfect sense.

 

Unless you're hunters, foragers or rangers, of course, in which case you should definitely be able to utilize their skills, incentivizing the use of such skills (and spending effort to improve them).

 

While I understand the sentiment, my experience with food mechanics is actually the opposite of urgency. You stock up on all the food you can carry at town, then use rations to get to the dungeon, then 1/3 of the dungeon is cleared you run low on food, now you HAVE to go back to town NOW or else run out of rations before you can get to a store, so you go back to town then restock and go back to the dungeon and now you have to walk back down to where you left off (hope monsters don't respawn) and so on.

 

So while I understand in theory food mechanics make you go "We can't just stand around here - our food is going to run out!", my experience with them is that the instead make you go "Wait evil baddy, I need about 12 more days to go restock on food and return because I don't want to starve and die while stabbing your horde to death."

[sanian]

A neat feature I guess. Not against its inclusion but I'd rather they spent that time developing the world more. It's not like this game is planning on being s.t.a.l.k.e.r. but then again they are adding modes now. *shrug* indifferent.

[ogrezilla]

It prevents you from constantly sleeping/resting until you are fully healed and adds urgency for long-term or far-away exploration. "Forcing" you to walk back to town once in a while in an adventuring/roleplaying game.. makes perfect sense.

 

Unless you're hunters, foragers or rangers, of course, in which case you should definitely be able to utilize their skills, incentivizing the use of such skills (and spending effort to improve them).

 

While I understand the sentiment, my experience with food mechanics is actually the opposite of urgency. You stock up on all the food you can carry at town, then use rations to get to the dungeon, then 1/3 of the dungeon is cleared you run low on food, now you HAVE to go back to town NOW or else run out of rations before you can get to a store, so you go back to town then restock and go back to the dungeon and now you have to walk back down to where you left off (hope monsters don't respawn) and so on.

 

So while I understand in theory food mechanics make you go "We can't just stand around here - our food is going to run out!", my experience with them is that the instead make you go "Wait evil baddy, I need about 12 more days to go restock on food and return because I don't want to starve and die while stabbing your horde to death."

right. it only really works if acquiring food is an enjoyable part of the game by itself.

 

Honestly, buying basic ammunition for ranged weapons is pretty much exactly the same. It's never "I should conserve arrows" its "I should go back to town and buy more arrows." Limited upgraded and magic arrows are good though. Or there should be some reason for me not to go back to town for more arrows while I'm in the middle of a dungeon.

Edited September 28, 2012 by ogrezilla