Hunger Code
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:47 pm
I think it's time for a serious revision to the hunger code, or removal all together. (I'm more for the second, personally. Though I know that's very highly unlikely!)
Some of the biggest problems with the code I find:
- It takes approx 30 apples or 15 cakes or 4 packets of rations or 2 loaves of bread or 4 stews to fill your character up. If the point of the hunger code is realism, that is not very realistic at all.
- It's incredibly frequent. If you fill your character up, you're going to wind up having to do so again probably in an hour of play. While this is logical for literal in game time, it's not very logical in general. In an hour, though several in game hours have passed, only an hour of roleplay or dungeon crawling has.
- Adventuring and eating? To me this makes very little sense. "Hold on guys, gotta eat these four packets of rations before the next rush of ogres." I imagine that an adventuring party would go dungeon crawling for what, 8-12 hours? They would probably eat before hand and maybe bring light snacks for inside. Maybe they would stop within for a quick meal, but on a MUD that's less practical with roaming aggressive mobs.
- Lowbies losing limbs and heads because of the hunger code. I cannot tell you how many times I've had my head pop off of starvation. Or my limbs all turn purple. As a lowbie it progresses insanely quickly, maybe two starving warnings in you're purple limbed. Meanwhile, a level 50 gets nothing of damage.
- Overall impracticality makes tending to the hunger code at all pretty much an unroleplayed often ignored factor. You'll often see:
Bob yells at Bill 'Well, you can shove it up your arse!'
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill snarls at Bob 'Let's take this to the fields!'
While we all might say meh that's just bad form, your choices are pretty slim there. If your character got hungry mid-confrontation it would be something easily ignored. But on a MUD, you cannot -really- ignore it for too long or you'll be seeing faeries. I won't pretend I don't do this at constant. Heck, I'll even do it mid battle just to get rid of the echoes. I'm probably the worst about it.
Ideas for fixes:
Well, the easiest would be to make eating purely cosmetic. That's essentially what it is right now. The only time a meal is roleplayed is when people legitimately go for a meal, otherwise it's just the code being answered to.
But if we're going to keep it:
- Make more foods fill more quickly. I'm aware at how much of an overhaul this would take. But 30 apples? 15 cakes? It's all a bit much.
- Make timers run moreso on real life time than game time. This will make it so people can do a dungeon quest without spamming eat rations bag awkwardly at some point.
- Make the damage caused level based, so a level 10 isn't taking the same amount of damage as a level 50. The level 50 goes unharmed while the level 10 loses a head. Both should be receiving the same exact consequence of not eating, logically.
- Make it so your character actually has to stop what they're doing to eat. Maybe they have to sit to eat or something. Something that makes us need to roleplay it, but only if it's much, much less frequently necessary.
Additions?
Some of the biggest problems with the code I find:
- It takes approx 30 apples or 15 cakes or 4 packets of rations or 2 loaves of bread or 4 stews to fill your character up. If the point of the hunger code is realism, that is not very realistic at all.
- It's incredibly frequent. If you fill your character up, you're going to wind up having to do so again probably in an hour of play. While this is logical for literal in game time, it's not very logical in general. In an hour, though several in game hours have passed, only an hour of roleplay or dungeon crawling has.
- Adventuring and eating? To me this makes very little sense. "Hold on guys, gotta eat these four packets of rations before the next rush of ogres." I imagine that an adventuring party would go dungeon crawling for what, 8-12 hours? They would probably eat before hand and maybe bring light snacks for inside. Maybe they would stop within for a quick meal, but on a MUD that's less practical with roaming aggressive mobs.
- Lowbies losing limbs and heads because of the hunger code. I cannot tell you how many times I've had my head pop off of starvation. Or my limbs all turn purple. As a lowbie it progresses insanely quickly, maybe two starving warnings in you're purple limbed. Meanwhile, a level 50 gets nothing of damage.
- Overall impracticality makes tending to the hunger code at all pretty much an unroleplayed often ignored factor. You'll often see:
Bob yells at Bill 'Well, you can shove it up your arse!'
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill eats traveler's rations.
Bill snarls at Bob 'Let's take this to the fields!'
While we all might say meh that's just bad form, your choices are pretty slim there. If your character got hungry mid-confrontation it would be something easily ignored. But on a MUD, you cannot -really- ignore it for too long or you'll be seeing faeries. I won't pretend I don't do this at constant. Heck, I'll even do it mid battle just to get rid of the echoes. I'm probably the worst about it.
Ideas for fixes:
Well, the easiest would be to make eating purely cosmetic. That's essentially what it is right now. The only time a meal is roleplayed is when people legitimately go for a meal, otherwise it's just the code being answered to.
But if we're going to keep it:
- Make more foods fill more quickly. I'm aware at how much of an overhaul this would take. But 30 apples? 15 cakes? It's all a bit much.
- Make timers run moreso on real life time than game time. This will make it so people can do a dungeon quest without spamming eat rations bag awkwardly at some point.
- Make the damage caused level based, so a level 10 isn't taking the same amount of damage as a level 50. The level 50 goes unharmed while the level 10 loses a head. Both should be receiving the same exact consequence of not eating, logically.
- Make it so your character actually has to stop what they're doing to eat. Maybe they have to sit to eat or something. Something that makes us need to roleplay it, but only if it's much, much less frequently necessary.
Additions?
