Hunger and thirst in games is pointless. You start off normal and then deteriorate, eating and drinking just bring you back to normal. You're entire motivation is to prevent a negative consequence, there is nothing positive about it at all.
Beyond that, the typical game loops around eating and drinking are usually boring as fuck. Harvest, craft and eat, most of which is just looking at progress bars. It's not fun. All it does is add an additional chore to a game with no positive outcome.
I don't mind food that adds buffs, that's fine, but a simple hunger / thirst mechanic? no thanks
So why not just add positives as well? And what’s wrong with normal? If normal means tip top fighting shape then that’s a good thing
I feel like you've missed the point.
If you add positives, it's no longer hunger and thirst mechanics, it's something else. There is nothing wrong with normal, but I was already normal, the game is now just making me worse unless I eat or drink, two things that are boring as fuck in computer games.
So, at no point during the hunger and thirst cycle am I doing anything fun. It's boring to do, doesn't enhance my character, doesn't progress anything. It's just a pointless mechanic, so why bother at all?
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
/ready check /no "Sorry , character has to take a shit"
Well, of course there has to be a balance between "adding conditions for success" and "really"?
I have to say that I was really enjoying the Skyrim survival mod, especially when I was fighting and slowly the effects of the dungeon crawl were taking a toll on me. I had to keep backing up, saving enough stamina for a block, getting a swipe in here or there ...
The problem with these systems is that they tend to make it so that you feel you are always eating. They tie it to the in game "game day" which goes by so fast that you will be playing a short amount of time but feel you constantly have to stop and eat. Maybe the better way is to not tie it to game day as you aren't really feeling it as a person and instead tie it to play time.
Maybe once an hour even though that could be a whole "game day".
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Hunger and thirst in games is pointless. You start off normal and then deteriorate, eating and drinking just bring you back to normal. You're entire motivation is to prevent a negative consequence, there is nothing positive about it at all.
Beyond that, the typical game loops around eating and drinking are usually boring as fuck. Harvest, craft and eat, most of which is just looking at progress bars. It's not fun. All it does is add an additional chore to a game with no positive outcome.
I don't mind food that adds buffs, that's fine, but a simple hunger / thirst mechanic? no thanks
So why not just add positives as well? And what’s wrong with normal? If normal means tip top fighting shape then that’s a good thing
I feel like you've missed the point.
If you add positives, it's no longer hunger and thirst mechanics, it's something else. There is nothing wrong with normal, but I was already normal, the game is now just making me worse unless I eat or drink, two things that are boring as fuck in computer games.
So, at no point during the hunger and thirst cycle am I doing anything fun. It's boring to do, doesn't enhance my character, doesn't progress anything. It's just a pointless mechanic, so why bother at all?
That doesn't make any sense. wtf do you eat?
If I eat an amazing, healthy meal then I feel "amazing and healthy and not bloated down". If I eat a lot of pizza then it's good for a bit but it doesn't make me feel great. If I eat something like Pasta that isn't going to do it for me except stave off hunger.
So positives such as giving the character added energy completely feeds into (pun intended) a hunger/thirst system.
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Hunger and thirst in games is pointless. You start off normal and then deteriorate, eating and drinking just bring you back to normal. You're entire motivation is to prevent a negative consequence, there is nothing positive about it at all.
Beyond that, the typical game loops around eating and drinking are usually boring as fuck. Harvest, craft and eat, most of which is just looking at progress bars. It's not fun. All it does is add an additional chore to a game with no positive outcome.
I don't mind food that adds buffs, that's fine, but a simple hunger / thirst mechanic? no thanks
So why not just add positives as well? And what’s wrong with normal? If normal means tip top fighting shape then that’s a good thing
I feel like you've missed the point.
If you add positives, it's no longer hunger and thirst mechanics, it's something else. There is nothing wrong with normal, but I was already normal, the game is now just making me worse unless I eat or drink, two things that are boring as fuck in computer games.
So, at no point during the hunger and thirst cycle am I doing anything fun. It's boring to do, doesn't enhance my character, doesn't progress anything. It's just a pointless mechanic, so why bother at all?
That doesn't make any sense. wtf do you eat?
If I eat an amazing, healthy meal then I feel "amazing and healthy and not bloated down". If I eat a lot of pizza then it's good for a bit but it doesn't make me feel great. If I eat something like Pasta that isn't going to do it for me except stave off hunger.
So positives such as giving the character added energy completely feeds into (pun intended) a hunger/thirst system.
I'm purely talking in game mechanics, of course eating and drinking in real life makes sense!
So, in game. Lets say you don't have hunger and thirst mechanics. My character is always at the same energy levels so I am free to do whatever I want.
But, add in hunger and thirst mechanics. I will get a certain amount of time where my character acts normally, then I'll get worse as I run out of energy. So, I'm forced to eat or drink to bring me back to normal.
So, a hunger/thirst mechanic is purely negative compared to not having one. It's not making my character any better than it would have been otherwise, it just consumes time and is probably going to be attached to boring gameplay (gathering / cooking). I would actually prefer peeing / pooping mechanics as at least those would result in some jokes!
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Hunger and thirst in games is pointless. You start off normal and then deteriorate, eating and drinking just bring you back to normal. You're entire motivation is to prevent a negative consequence, there is nothing positive about it at all.
Beyond that, the typical game loops around eating and drinking are usually boring as fuck. Harvest, craft and eat, most of which is just looking at progress bars. It's not fun. All it does is add an additional chore to a game with no positive outcome.
I don't mind food that adds buffs, that's fine, but a simple hunger / thirst mechanic? no thanks
So why not just add positives as well? And what’s wrong with normal? If normal means tip top fighting shape then that’s a good thing
I feel like you've missed the point.
If you add positives, it's no longer hunger and thirst mechanics, it's something else. There is nothing wrong with normal, but I was already normal, the game is now just making me worse unless I eat or drink, two things that are boring as fuck in computer games.
So, at no point during the hunger and thirst cycle am I doing anything fun. It's boring to do, doesn't enhance my character, doesn't progress anything. It's just a pointless mechanic, so why bother at all?
That doesn't make any sense. wtf do you eat?
If I eat an amazing, healthy meal then I feel "amazing and healthy and not bloated down". If I eat a lot of pizza then it's good for a bit but it doesn't make me feel great. If I eat something like Pasta that isn't going to do it for me except stave off hunger.
So positives such as giving the character added energy completely feeds into (pun intended) a hunger/thirst system.
I'm purely talking in game mechanics, of course eating and drinking in real life makes sense!
So, in game. Lets say you don't have hunger and thirst mechanics. My character is always at the same energy levels so I am free to do whatever I want.
But, add in hunger and thirst mechanics. I will get a certain amount of time where my character acts normally, then I'll get worse as I run out of energy. So, I'm forced to eat or drink to bring me back to normal.
So, a hunger/thirst mechanic is purely negative compared to not having one. It's not making my character any better than it would have been otherwise, it just consumes time and is probably going to be attached to boring gameplay (gathering / cooking). I would actually prefer peeing / pooping mechanics as at least those would result in some jokes!
But that's my point, there's eating and there's "eating".
One could have it so if there is a certain type of food you become "normal". If one eats well then one is a bit better than base line. Not "uber powerful" but just a bit better. And if one doesn't eat, doesn't rest then they are subpar.
I don't really find it boring in the least. I do, per my post above, think it can become interruptive.
Also, I don't think gathering/cooking is necessarily boring.
I'm going to assume you don't like survival games!
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It has a place in some MMOs. But normally it is a waste of time.
A normal MMO with the player playing even at an average level of play already has "continuous investment" mechanics in the forms of maintaining social relationships with guild members and regrinding gear/levels with each update. It doesn't really need another form of "continuous investment". It has a good chance of even harming the typical MMO because in the periods between updates/expansions there will be a point where logging in will cause negative advancement as your character is maxed out but you need to spend time/gold on food (which means that logging in just means spending savings, to maybe help a newer member of the guild).
I would love to see food to tied to really strong benefits. For instance in Mabinogi eating food can be another way to permanently increase your stats faster than grinding at "ultra high" levels. While Haven and Hearth does have hunger (I've never actually been threatened by it), eating has the benefit of being the only way to increase your stats.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
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Sometimes it's a thin line between immersive and being tedious.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
While the concept of food spoiling is interesting from a design standpoint, it seems like it would be rather technically difficult to implement. Since checking every piece of spoilable food for whether enough time has elapsed every single game loop would crash your server, the only thing you could really do is implement the spoil check on a timer (e.g. every 10 minutes), with different tiers of spoilage (e.g. fresh baked bread might start as steaming hot, and then progress to cold, stale, moldy, rotten, etc each successive spoil check). This would result in issues with food that is cooked close to the next spoilage check being downgraded very quickly, which would in turn result in players tracking the time between spoilage checks and watching the clock so they only cook things in the first 30-60 seconds after a spoilage check for maximum preservation time, a horribly unimmersive result from a mechanic designed to increase immersion.
That being said, I don't have a whole lot of technical experience with this sort of thing, so if anyone can think of a better solution I'd love to hear it.
While the concept of food spoiling is interesting from a design standpoint, it seems like it would be rather technically difficult to implement. Since checking every piece of spoilable food for whether enough time has elapsed every single game loop would crash your server, the only thing you could really do is implement the spoil check on a timer (e.g. every 10 minutes), with different tiers of spoilage (e.g. fresh baked bread might start as steaming hot, and then progress to cold, stale, moldy, rotten, etc each successive spoil check). This would result in issues with food that is cooked close to the next spoilage check being downgraded very quickly, which would in turn result in players tracking the time between spoilage checks and watching the clock so they only cook things in the first 30-60 seconds after a spoilage check for maximum preservation time, a horribly unimmersive result from a mechanic designed to increase immersion.
That being said, I don't have a whole lot of technical experience with this sort of thing, so if anyone can think of a better solution I'd love to hear it.
The easiest thing is to add a bar and only allow you to stack food bought at the same time. The bar go from green to yellow to red and after that it turns into spoiled food.
The thing is that you don't need to stack that much food that spoils anyways and since most people don't want much more food then they would use it wont become so much to keep track of. Since MMOs easily can keep track of lots of buffs and debuffs I don't think it will be a huge problem keeping track of te food in the players lunchbag as well.
Also, certain food and most drinks wont spoil but will be less effective then the food that spoils. Iron rations, jerky and trailmix certainly don't spoil and neither does water (and we could let wine and similar stuff keep from spoiling as well).
Make one of the players bags a lunchbox to make it easier and you could limit the number of stacks a player could have in there if you want to (having too many is useless anyways.
I don't see a problem or any need to make things to complicated.
So I love food in-games. It's part of the in-game economy and farmers/cooks are based around it.
"I hate growing my own food, cooking my own food, etc." Then don't. How many of you grow your own food IRL? Half of you probably don't even cook it beyond tossing it in a microwave or toaster over. Same idea in-game. If you hate a particular aspect of the economy then you give someone else gold to do it for you.
The issue I have is most food in-game is tedious.
A. You have short duration buffs you constantly have to remember to refresh. B. You have some food bar that you forget about and all of sudden your character is dying or suffering greatly. You don't just forget to eat to the point you end up starving IRL.
That is why I would implement food in the following manner:
Food isn't just a bar, it's a slot. You put food and drink into the food and drink slot. Doing so means your character will automatically start eating and drinking whenever they are hungry or thirsty. Food quality still matters, you still have to restock on food occasionally. But we are talking more every 6 hours and less every 30 minutes.
If you do forget about food, your character will start reminding you of it fairly loudly and obviously about 20 minutes before things get dire. Rumbling stomach at first, moans as they get more hungry etc. This is if they eat all the food in their food slot and their hunger levels dip below about 60%.
I think that's a great idea. I'd add that certain foods have very small buffs to them, or only high quality versions of the food, so there can be a cook profession. If I win the lottery, that's what I'm implementing in my MMO lol.
Cryomatrix
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So I love food in-games. It's part of the in-game economy and farmers/cooks are based around it.
"I hate growing my own food, cooking my own food, etc." Then don't. How many of you grow your own food IRL? Half of you probably don't even cook it beyond tossing it in a microwave or toaster over. Same idea in-game. If you hate a particular aspect of the economy then you give someone else gold to do it for you.
The issue I have is most food in-game is tedious.
A. You have short duration buffs you constantly have to remember to refresh. B. You have some food bar that you forget about and all of sudden your character is dying or suffering greatly. You don't just forget to eat to the point you end up starving IRL.
That is why I would implement food in the following manner:
Food isn't just a bar, it's a slot. You put food and drink into the food and drink slot. Doing so means your character will automatically start eating and drinking whenever they are hungry or thirsty. Food quality still matters, you still have to restock on food occasionally. But we are talking more every 6 hours and less every 30 minutes.
If you do forget about food, your character will start reminding you of it fairly loudly and obviously about 20 minutes before things get dire. Rumbling stomach at first, moans as they get more hungry etc. This is if they eat all the food in their food slot and their hunger levels dip below about 60%.
I think that's a great idea. I'd add that certain foods have very small buffs to them, or only high quality versions of the food, so there can be a cook profession. If I win the lottery, that's what I'm implementing in my MMO lol.
Cryomatrix
Everquest 2 already does this (besides the whining if the food stack is empty) so it isn't exactly something new but I guess it works.
The thing though is that it still gets a bit annoying without adding any survival feeling or realism to the game. It is a good way to get crafters to be cooks but I kinda feel that they just could have skipped it altogether.
If you want to add some realism or survival theme to your game you don't want people to carry around cooked stakes and soup in their backpacks, that is the reason I suggested the spoil system earlier in the thread.
Eldurians version works excellent to promote crafting and if that is what you are going for and have a great crafting system it is a good idea, otherwise I would either skip it altogether or go way further.
While the concept of food spoiling is interesting from a design standpoint, it seems like it would be rather technically difficult to implement. Since checking every piece of spoilable food for whether enough time has elapsed every single game loop would crash your server, the only thing you could really do is implement the spoil check on a timer (e.g. every 10 minutes), with different tiers of spoilage (e.g. fresh baked bread might start as steaming hot, and then progress to cold, stale, moldy, rotten, etc each successive spoil check). This would result in issues with food that is cooked close to the next spoilage check being downgraded very quickly, which would in turn result in players tracking the time between spoilage checks and watching the clock so they only cook things in the first 30-60 seconds after a spoilage check for maximum preservation time, a horribly unimmersive result from a mechanic designed to increase immersion.
That being said, I don't have a whole lot of technical experience with this sort of thing, so if anyone can think of a better solution I'd love to hear it.
The easiest thing is to add a bar and only allow you to stack food bought at the same time. The bar go from green to yellow to red and after that it turns into spoiled food.
The thing is that you don't need to stack that much food that spoils anyways and since most people don't want much more food then they would use it wont become so much to keep track of. Since MMOs easily can keep track of lots of buffs and debuffs I don't think it will be a huge problem keeping track of te food in the players lunchbag as well.
Also, certain food and most drinks wont spoil but will be less effective then the food that spoils. Iron rations, jerky and trailmix certainly don't spoil and neither does water (and we could let wine and similar stuff keep from spoiling as well).
Make one of the players bags a lunchbox to make it easier and you could limit the number of stacks a player could have in there if you want to (having too many is useless anyways.
I don't see a problem or any need to make things to complicated.
I think a better way yet is to not have stacks for spoilable food unless in a special container (I'll explain that later in this post). You don't need it for anything that spoils because players won't carry enough to spoil. Then add a level of decreasing freshness (your color bar) to each spoilable food item. I don't know how often games save (in case of crashes), but that could be a time to perform each action. Or on every 10 minute mark or something. Who cares if a food items loses a little freshness after 1 minute or 10 minutes (only the first time) as when it's going to last an hour or so? (Real time.)
Now (about those special containers), an additional thing to apply to the economic part of this is keeping foods cool or frozen for long term storage. This is something for the city trade, internal and trade to others (and include farms in the countryside too). Old fashioned block houses full of ice. Now you have another thing to play in the game for economics. Cutting ice blocks and an additional thing for transports (caravans or just pack horses). With ice, you can also add barrels or crates packed with ice, coolers the old fashioned way, for transport over longer distances. So adventuring players can throw one of these on a pack horse, fill it with ice later on when they reach the mountains, and move preserved "fresh" foods from camp to camp on a long journey into a vast desert. Of course, the ice should not last forever, but maybe 10 hours of game play?
What I'm getting at here is a game where long adventures have more strategy and simple preparations. And more risk if some MOB destroys that container or kills said pack horse.
And still, the well prepared players (not a difficult task at all) can carry dried foods so that they don't suffer too much even in case of losing their fresh foods.
I'm against having a full survival game style hunger system as it would be too tedious for a MMORPG and detract from the other aspects of the game. However, a system that makes food and drink more useful than a weak temporary buff or just another kind of hp/mp/stamina potion would be welcomed if done right.
Take, for example, Mabinogi. Other shortcomings of the game aside, they actually have a unique food system where your stamina bar cannot regenerate to 100% unless you eat food. It sounds bad but the degradation of your stamina from hunger didn't happen very fast. Just having a couple food items in your bag to eat every so often (like once in an in-game day) was usually enough for most people. Stamina potions can only restore up to the max level set by your hunger but are still useful for the quick in-battle stamina recharge. Also the type of food you eat matters for your character's appearance. Eat too much of the wrong things and you get fat. If you get fat you can either eat specific foods and lose weight slowly or sit in a magic hot spring. Mabinogi, in my opinion, did a good job at creating a defined purpose and separate role for both food and potions in the game.
That system on top of the typical temporary buffs and hp/mp/stamina restoration makes food and drink more useful and immersive without being one of your primary concerns like it is in a survival game.
They are called survival games and already exist. Lately they have been focusing more and more on multiplayer, so eventually these survival games will reach that point where they can label themselves MMO and the problem will be solved.
One of the main reasons I couldn't get into MUDs was almsot every one insists on having a thirst/hunger mechanic where you either die or lose serious health if you starve/go thirsty..... Too often it was something I had to tend to and quickly becomes an annoyance.
Eating, drinking and pooping are boring as hell mechanics in a game...even in survival games when it's something you need to do every frigging five minutes.
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It didn't really bother me in EQ. You could buy a stack of 20 food and drink from vendors. I barely thought about it. Some classes could summon food and drink or forage.
@Eldurian ;The food in slot system reminds me of Path of Exile's potion in slot system. I like the idea quite a bit, as it gives the player more granularity to their food choices and less tedium. That is why I liked the potion system in Path of Exile (and Diablo III for that matter): I didn't have to keep getting in my inventory to drag more potions onto the slot, as they were already assigned.
I have no problems with making those kinds of mechanics optional with greater rewards for such difficulty levels.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Just becomes a pointless tedium (like it did in EQ1 where food/water just ended up being more buffs)
That is true, the only reason to have hunger and thirst in a MMO is if you can make the system fun instead of a bother.
I do think you can make the system fun, but current system (that either gives a buff or faster health/mana regeneration) just isn't.
There is also the question of how much survival aspect a MMO should have, and I think that depends a bit on the game. Food, drink, cold & warmweather clothes and medicine can be an interesting aspect or a huge bother depending on what you are going for. If combat & looting things is more or less the only important thing in your game it is just another timesink.
Having players fight the entire enviroment can however be really fun as well and in themepark games as well as sandboxes. For instance in a game with much wilderness and little civilization surviving the wilderness makes far more sense then in a world with huge cities and much farmland.
Also, it depends on how much resources should impact the game. If most useful things in a game is looted instead of crafted having things like food makes less sense which also makes it less fun.
Hunger is more fun in a game based on Conan then in a steampunk game as well.
I don't think it is an issue a simple yes or no would solve. Hunger and thirst should only be in a game if it is fun to add but if it fits a speciffic game or not depends a lot on the game you are making. Lazily adding it for buffs just because you can't figure out enough crafting skills otherwise is a huge misstake.
I think a better way yet is to not have stacks for spoilable food unless in a special container (I'll explain that later in this post). You don't need it for anything that spoils because players won't carry enough to spoil. Then add a level of decreasing freshness (your color bar) to each spoilable food item. I don't know how often games save (in case of crashes), but that could be a time to perform each action. Or on every 10 minute mark or something. Who cares if a food items loses a little freshness after 1 minute or 10 minutes (only the first time) as when it's going to last an hour or so? (Real time.)
Now (about those special containers), an additional thing to apply to the economic part of this is keeping foods cool or frozen for long term storage. This is something for the city trade, internal and trade to others (and include farms in the countryside too). Old fashioned block houses full of ice. Now you have another thing to play in the game for economics. Cutting ice blocks and an additional thing for transports (caravans or just pack horses). With ice, you can also add barrels or crates packed with ice, coolers the old fashioned way, for transport over longer distances. So adventuring players can throw one of these on a pack horse, fill it with ice later on when they reach the mountains, and move preserved "fresh" foods from camp to camp on a long journey into a vast desert. Of course, the ice should not last forever, but maybe 10 hours of game play?
What I'm getting at here is a game where long adventures have more strategy and simple preparations. And more risk if some MOB destroys that container or kills said pack horse.
And still, the well prepared players (not a difficult task at all) can carry dried foods so that they don't suffer too much even in case of losing their fresh foods.
That would work excellent in game mainly based on controlling resources instead of looting fallen enemies (like SWG). I wouldn't use it in a Wow type of game though.
And BTW, while you can survive a long time on dried and salted food I would not recommend it for someone who is actively adventuring. There is a reason those usually is emergency rations.
I voted other. I wouldn't mind hunger and thirst as long as they meet certain conditions.
I think these types of things should match the scale of other in-game systems, especially the time (day-night) cycle. With a day of less than 8 RW hours, the need to eat/drink/sleep takes over the game play, making eating and drinking too much of the game play. Hunting and foraging take a lot of time. The game worlds typically emulate agrarian societies, not subsistence-level hunting and gathering societies, don't make the majority of the game play into getting your next meal.
Food and especially water is very heavy and takes a lot to haul it around. Plus there's the whole spoilage issues others have commented on. In most current MMORPGs, the net effect of food seems to be one that detracts from immersion rather than supplementing it. If people have to portage food around, isn't it about time that we see pack animals, carts or even storage on a boat to accommodate the need to lug food around?
The SWG concept of 'cantinas' seems more interesting than what has been attempted in most MMORPGs. Rather than making sustenance a button push (or mouse click), eating becomes an activity that takes time. Eating shouldn't be an activity that's easy to fit in between the mouse-clicks of combat. A static place, like an Inn, could support more elaborate (beneficial / expensive) meals, while a campfire in a dangerous place would be limited to more basic meals. It would be real easy to envision a pattern of a group fighting and taking a quick break (no more than 3 minutes) to refresh themselves.
The group meal seems like it would be easy to scale. A meal eaten in silence isn't as satisfying as a meal eaten among friends or a sumptuous meal in a banquet hall.
I'm not a huge fan of food as buffs either. I can see it as a means to restore stamina (Endurance), but not health (HPs). Food isn't a primary healing component. I see it rather as affecting the cost of actions -- swinging a sword when full might take 1 Endurance unit, while swinging that same sword when starving might take 6 Endurance units.
If the game is striving for realism, eating should take time, both to actually consume the food and for the benefits of the food to take effect. Eating a meal shouldn't immediately have any effect.
Effects of food should include a sliding scale that also encompasses both extremes of over-eating and starvation. Don't put any kind of visible display about these statuses. Let the player decide to stop and eat or drink depending on how well their other activities are operating. So, no form of Food Bars.
I would love to see a system that is more elaborate than every MMORPG that has attempted this, without rendering the game into a version of The Sims.
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I don't see why this is any worse than crafting armor in terms of tedium or any less interesting. Then again I never much liked crafting equipment. I thought it was more fun to find it. What exactly is fun anyway? I think people often say something is not fun to them, but once it's gone from a game it's often not as enjoyable. I think part of the fun of these types of things is if there is a strong competition that gives it some meaning. If you aren't gaining some type of fame or fortune with regards to other players these types of things do become a bit tedious. I feel that way about everything in modern MMOs though. Too much is accessible to everyone and that devalues everything worth. I could see someone wanting to become known as the best chef on the server. I don't think it would be my cup of teas though. I'm more into adventuring and exploring.
I don't see why this is any worse than crafting armor in terms of tedium or any less interesting. Then again I never much liked crafting equipment. I thought it was more fun to find it. What exactly is fun anyway? I think people often say something is not fun to them, but once it's gone from a game it's often not as enjoyable. I think part of the fun of these types of things is if there is a strong competition that gives it some meaning. If you aren't gaining some type of fame or fortune with regards to other players these types of things do become a bit tedious. I feel that way about everything in modern MMOs though. Too much is accessible to everyone and that devalues everything worth. I could see someone wanting to become known as the best chef on the server. I don't think it would be my cup of teas though. I'm more into adventuring and exploring.
This.
MMORPG crafting systems need to play the same sort of role, of distinguishing an individual player character (PC) from other PCs (skill), as combat. If each game system does not have the capacity for separating players by skill or ability, then that game system will not appeal to most players, unless it is integral to the 'fun' systems. What makes the MMORPG genre unique to other genres is the multiplayer aspect. In same way that great real-life social relationships involve camaraderie, cooperation, and a bit of competition, an MMORPG must offer these things as well. If the core systems of an MMORPG do not facilitate relationship building as an integral part of the overarching core systems: the game will fail to deliver the unique experience that makes MMORPGs so special.
It is one of those mechanics, that with a thousand more little features like it, will add to the game experience. Alone, having or lacking food&drink mechanics means nothing, but when the 999 other little details like it, is taken out then the entire game changes. And this is exactly what has happened to mmos while they e/de-volved - Simlifying, cutting, generalising, balancing and all the things in the name of creating a better and smoother user experience, and better control tools for the developer.
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If you add positives, it's no longer hunger and thirst mechanics, it's something else. There is nothing wrong with normal, but I was already normal, the game is now just making me worse unless I eat or drink, two things that are boring as fuck in computer games.
So, at no point during the hunger and thirst cycle am I doing anything fun. It's boring to do, doesn't enhance my character, doesn't progress anything. It's just a pointless mechanic, so why bother at all?
I have to say that I was really enjoying the Skyrim survival mod, especially when I was fighting and slowly the effects of the dungeon crawl were taking a toll on me. I had to keep backing up, saving enough stamina for a block, getting a swipe in here or there ...
The problem with these systems is that they tend to make it so that you feel you are always eating. They tie it to the in game "game day" which goes by so fast that you will be playing a short amount of time but feel you constantly have to stop and eat. Maybe the better way is to not tie it to game day as you aren't really feeling it as a person and instead tie it to play time.
Maybe once an hour even though that could be a whole "game day".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If I eat an amazing, healthy meal then I feel "amazing and healthy and not bloated down". If I eat a lot of pizza then it's good for a bit but it doesn't make me feel great. If I eat something like Pasta that isn't going to do it for me except stave off hunger.
So positives such as giving the character added energy completely feeds into (pun intended) a hunger/thirst system.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
So, in game. Lets say you don't have hunger and thirst mechanics. My character is always at the same energy levels so I am free to do whatever I want.
But, add in hunger and thirst mechanics. I will get a certain amount of time where my character acts normally, then I'll get worse as I run out of energy. So, I'm forced to eat or drink to bring me back to normal.
So, a hunger/thirst mechanic is purely negative compared to not having one. It's not making my character any better than it would have been otherwise, it just consumes time and is probably going to be attached to boring gameplay (gathering / cooking). I would actually prefer peeing / pooping mechanics as at least those would result in some jokes!
One could have it so if there is a certain type of food you become "normal". If one eats well then one is a bit better than base line. Not "uber powerful" but just a bit better. And if one doesn't eat, doesn't rest then they are subpar.
I don't really find it boring in the least. I do, per my post above, think it can become interruptive.
Also, I don't think gathering/cooking is necessarily boring.
I'm going to assume you don't like survival games!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
A normal MMO with the player playing even at an average level of play already has "continuous investment" mechanics in the forms of maintaining social relationships with guild members and regrinding gear/levels with each update. It doesn't really need another form of "continuous investment". It has a good chance of even harming the typical MMO because in the periods between updates/expansions there will be a point where logging in will cause negative advancement as your character is maxed out but you need to spend time/gold on food (which means that logging in just means spending savings, to maybe help a newer member of the guild).
I would love to see food to tied to really strong benefits. For instance in Mabinogi eating food can be another way to permanently increase your stats faster than grinding at "ultra high" levels. While Haven and Hearth does have hunger (I've never actually been threatened by it), eating has the benefit of being the only way to increase your stats.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
While the concept of food spoiling is interesting from a design standpoint, it seems like it would be rather technically difficult to implement. Since checking every piece of spoilable food for whether enough time has elapsed every single game loop would crash your server, the only thing you could really do is implement the spoil check on a timer (e.g. every 10 minutes), with different tiers of spoilage (e.g. fresh baked bread might start as steaming hot, and then progress to cold, stale, moldy, rotten, etc each successive spoil check). This would result in issues with food that is cooked close to the next spoilage check being downgraded very quickly, which would in turn result in players tracking the time between spoilage checks and watching the clock so they only cook things in the first 30-60 seconds after a spoilage check for maximum preservation time, a horribly unimmersive result from a mechanic designed to increase immersion.
That being said, I don't have a whole lot of technical experience with this sort of thing, so if anyone can think of a better solution I'd love to hear it.
The thing is that you don't need to stack that much food that spoils anyways and since most people don't want much more food then they would use it wont become so much to keep track of. Since MMOs easily can keep track of lots of buffs and debuffs I don't think it will be a huge problem keeping track of te food in the players lunchbag as well.
Also, certain food and most drinks wont spoil but will be less effective then the food that spoils. Iron rations, jerky and trailmix certainly don't spoil and neither does water (and we could let wine and similar stuff keep from spoiling as well).
Make one of the players bags a lunchbox to make it easier and you could limit the number of stacks a player could have in there if you want to (having too many is useless anyways.
I don't see a problem or any need to make things to complicated.
Cryomatrix
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The thing though is that it still gets a bit annoying without adding any survival feeling or realism to the game. It is a good way to get crafters to be cooks but I kinda feel that they just could have skipped it altogether.
If you want to add some realism or survival theme to your game you don't want people to carry around cooked stakes and soup in their backpacks, that is the reason I suggested the spoil system earlier in the thread.
Eldurians version works excellent to promote crafting and if that is what you are going for and have a great crafting system it is a good idea, otherwise I would either skip it altogether or go way further.
Then add a level of decreasing freshness (your color bar) to each spoilable food item. I don't know how often games save (in case of crashes), but that could be a time to perform each action. Or on every 10 minute mark or something. Who cares if a food items loses a little freshness after 1 minute or 10 minutes (only the first time) as when it's going to last an hour or so? (Real time.)
Now (about those special containers), an additional thing to apply to the economic part of this is keeping foods cool or frozen for long term storage. This is something for the city trade, internal and trade to others (and include farms in the countryside too).
Old fashioned block houses full of ice. Now you have another thing to play in the game for economics. Cutting ice blocks and an additional thing for transports (caravans or just pack horses).
With ice, you can also add barrels or crates packed with ice, coolers the old fashioned way, for transport over longer distances.
So adventuring players can throw one of these on a pack horse, fill it with ice later on when they reach the mountains, and move preserved "fresh" foods from camp to camp on a long journey into a vast desert. Of course, the ice should not last forever, but maybe 10 hours of game play?
What I'm getting at here is a game where long adventures have more strategy and simple preparations. And more risk if some MOB destroys that container or kills said pack horse.
And still, the well prepared players (not a difficult task at all) can carry dried foods so that they don't suffer too much even in case of losing their fresh foods.
Once upon a time....
I'm against having a full survival game style hunger system as it would be too tedious for a MMORPG and detract from the other aspects of the game. However, a system that makes food and drink more useful than a weak temporary buff or just another kind of hp/mp/stamina potion would be welcomed if done right.
Take, for example, Mabinogi. Other shortcomings of the game aside, they actually have a unique food system where your stamina bar cannot regenerate to 100% unless you eat food. It sounds bad but the degradation of your stamina from hunger didn't happen very fast. Just having a couple food items in your bag to eat every so often (like once in an in-game day) was usually enough for most people. Stamina potions can only restore up to the max level set by your hunger but are still useful for the quick in-battle stamina recharge. Also the type of food you eat matters for your character's appearance. Eat too much of the wrong things and you get fat. If you get fat you can either eat specific foods and lose weight slowly or sit in a magic hot spring. Mabinogi, in my opinion, did a good job at creating a defined purpose and separate role for both food and potions in the game.
That system on top of the typical temporary buffs and hp/mp/stamina restoration makes food and drink more useful and immersive without being one of your primary concerns like it is in a survival game.
Eating, drinking and pooping are boring as hell mechanics in a game...even in survival games when it's something you need to do every frigging five minutes.
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"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I do think you can make the system fun, but current system (that either gives a buff or faster health/mana regeneration) just isn't.
There is also the question of how much survival aspect a MMO should have, and I think that depends a bit on the game. Food, drink, cold & warmweather clothes and medicine can be an interesting aspect or a huge bother depending on what you are going for. If combat & looting things is more or less the only important thing in your game it is just another timesink.
Having players fight the entire enviroment can however be really fun as well and in themepark games as well as sandboxes. For instance in a game with much wilderness and little civilization surviving the wilderness makes far more sense then in a world with huge cities and much farmland.
Also, it depends on how much resources should impact the game. If most useful things in a game is looted instead of crafted having things like food makes less sense which also makes it less fun.
Hunger is more fun in a game based on Conan then in a steampunk game as well.
I don't think it is an issue a simple yes or no would solve. Hunger and thirst should only be in a game if it is fun to add but if it fits a speciffic game or not depends a lot on the game you are making. Lazily adding it for buffs just because you can't figure out enough crafting skills otherwise is a huge misstake.
And BTW, while you can survive a long time on dried and salted food I would not recommend it for someone who is actively adventuring. There is a reason those usually is emergency rations.
- Effects of food should include a sliding scale that also encompasses both extremes of over-eating and starvation. Don't put any kind of visible display about these statuses. Let the player decide to stop and eat or drink depending on how well their other activities are operating. So, no form of Food Bars.
I would love to see a system that is more elaborate than every MMORPG that has attempted this, without rendering the game into a version of The Sims.Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
MMORPG crafting systems need to play the same sort of role, of distinguishing an individual player character (PC) from other PCs (skill), as combat. If each game system does not have the capacity for separating players by skill or ability, then that game system will not appeal to most players, unless it is integral to the 'fun' systems. What makes the MMORPG genre unique to other genres is the multiplayer aspect. In same way that great real-life social relationships involve camaraderie, cooperation, and a bit of competition, an MMORPG must offer these things as well. If the core systems of an MMORPG do not facilitate relationship building as an integral part of the overarching core systems: the game will fail to deliver the unique experience that makes MMORPGs so special.
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