Stats & hunger, sleep, weather

I wrote about this idea way back before the Kickstarter pledge drive was completed. At the time I was still debating how some of it should work, I think I have a better idea of how I would ideally like it to. This, of course, is a stick approach, with stat penalties.

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The idea is to have a system where the penalties are visible to the player, so he doesn't have to look it up in a stats window, while also realistic. As you can see in the graphic, the penalty creates an accumulating cap on the meter, and aggregates with other penalties that also accumulate. It first affects stamina and mana; then, after mana and stamina get to a certain minimum, it them starts to affect health.

Possibly, you would be forced to sleep when your stamina is exhausted, too.

In theory you could also have the reverse -- minimum caps, established by spells, that prevent your stat from going below a certain number while the spell is active.

Also see discussion on stamina in the dodging thread.

 

I can see where this would appeal to more hardcore survivalist players. I've been playing Skyrim with mods that add hypothermia and the like and have been having fun with it.. but on a larger scale.. well I think you know what's coming. I just don't think a lot of players want to micromanage their food and sleep. Besides you can't really do sleep in multiplayer. Nobody wants to just watch their character sleep.. though the dream sequence idea that has come up one or twice is kind of interesting.. the problem is you'd be repeating the same scenarios over and over again.

I would probably enjoy needing to eat though.

 

A couple of things

Many folks want a minimalist UI - is there a way that your idea can be incorporated so that we can see info without clutter?

What do you thing is a good real world time for a in game 24 hour in game cycle? The reason I ask is that if a in game day takes half an hour in real world time - then we would be starving after 2.5 hours of play - would that be too tedious in your opinion gameplay-wise ... also, there are the crafters to consider when we talk day cycle and whatever else I may be missing

I like the idea but if magic is used as a work around then doesn't that defeat the purpose of your system?

 

@Bowen,

Yea, we had a conversation about this before. I agree sleep is a problem on multiplayer -- though its always possible it could be simulated in some manner that isn't realistic.

The devs at some point said that a day cycle is about a half hour, either they meant the full day, or just daylight. Don't know what they meant. I'm not sure. But everybody keep that in mind when considering this. -- I think that would mean either three or six hours of gameplay for the Day 5 scenario I show here, depending on what they meant. You would have a lot of time before it became a real problem.

Don't know that I'm a survivalist player, I just think things like this are good for role-playing.

 

Not necessarily starving, the chart also shows lack of sleep. The sleep issue is a real problem of course gameplay-wise. It would be longer than 2.5 hours, since that's not counting the first day. I don't know that its a big problem. That means you'd sleep about 1.5 hours into gameplay, or 3 hours into gameplay if the full day cycle is an hour. Whether that's tedious for other people, I don't know.

If there's no sleep, but there's hunger, it would take about 3 times longer. So, 4.5 hrs, or 9 hrs.

 

The thing with good role playing is that it requires an audience or there's no point. Head to the local tavern. order some food and chow down. I'm pretty sure you'll see that kind of thing a lot from the RP crowd.

The day cycle usually refers to the entire 24 hour period.. I think what they had said was it was set at half an hour at the time for testing but the actual cycle would be longer.. like maybe an hour which I think is pretty good.. 30 minutes is just too short.. 2 hours might be too long.

I would like to see food have some significance.

 

@Margard,

Yea I forgot to respond to this one point -- I think it can be implemented so its clean and uncluttered. And you're going to want the main HUD to show penalties and buffs anyway I think, regardless if its done this way.

 

I think it would be nice if your ideas could implemented in some form - I like to have a game that is more "real" than whats currently out there, and it adds complexity in a good way .... although I'm not sure if sleep and eating is too much for folks, ... I can imagine crafting and having to stop to eat I kinda like that

 

Ok, I don't want to seem anti RP, since that's a big part of what I'm here for. But if I am going to starve to death by being logged in doing nothing for, say 6 hours (lets just say it happens), that's gonna break something. If I had to keep food on me, I'd do so. If I had to remember to click eat/sleep functions every single half hour to an hour just to keep the character working... No.

As for sleep, I'd rather think that the character is resting while I'm at work. I log out, he sleeps, showers, eats, does his laundry, sweeps the corners, all that incredibly non heroic stuff that I wouldn't want to spend time on anyway.

I can see the idea of starvation working for someone who stays in the wild, or in a dungeon, and never bothers with food. But if the day cycle is an hour, and lets just say the devs put in some really challenging neat content that takes a large group and takes 4 hours to clear on a good day, that means we'd be stopping to camp and sleep and eat 4 times minimum. I can just ignore the day cycle going at hyperspeed when it's nothing but lighting effects, but if my metabolism is set to it, I'm gonna ask why my character moves so slow. One hour's worth of walking around and fighting in a 24 hour period? Nervosus Tortoisis!

Most of the MMO's I've seen work closer to a 12-24 hour cycle, so that the player can experience an actual day in the course of a day. I remember sitting on hills watching sunsets, just resting on my laurels cause I could do so. If the sun rises and sets and rises again that fast...

Well, the timing thing aside, all I'm saying is that IF I had to eat/sleep that often it would take away from game play, for me.

 

I agree MalakBrightpalm, large part of the reason why I asked about the day cycle - I was hoping that stamina/weakness (however it comes about) could be incorporated in game - it also related to dodging as well for me; I want to manually dodge but do not want to roll around incessantly like some games (Witcher comes to mind)

 

I updated the original graphic with time estimates so people can see that right away. Day 5 would come at 4 hours.

@MalakBrightpalm,

Yea, if you rested every single day -- which would be four times -- it would be once every hour. I don't know that once an hour is really a big deal. But you wouldn't even be required to rest every day. Like we were discussing in the other thread, under normal circumstances, a stamina penalty wouldn't be a big problem in gameplay; excepting if you needed to flee very quickly or do a lot of physical activity, and so on. You could probably do pretty good resting only every two hours.

And that would actually end up at one hour for a four hour session, if you don't rest at the end of the play period.

You obviously wouldn't even need to eat that often, if we're just talking about an eating penalty. It would be 3x as long before you would need to eat as you would need to sleep.

 

@redfish Yeah, I get that I wouldn't DIE right away, but it still really breaks the fourth wall, and my suspension of disbelief, and my feeling of immersion, if I get an hour, or two hours, of gameplay and I have to stop and make camp cause I've been doing this apparently for TWO DAYS!

Also, as long as we are considering RP consequences, where would it make sense for me to want absolutely maxxed out stats, with no penalties? I'd say right before a big boss fight would be a great example, probably top of the list. So there we are, we've fought our way to the bad king's throneroom, his goblin henchmen are dispached, the undead horde he kept in his cellars is no more. The dark knight that tried to hold against us in the chapel got a good death scene, and now I'm wearing his helmet (score!), aaaaaand, lets stop, make camp, and sleep so we are at max skill to bust into the throne room...

And, if we are aiming for some degree of realism, /sleep isn't gonna be a single global cooldown. If we really care, sleeping itself will take TIME. Even if the animation is of your character curling up on the floor with a blanky and his backpack for a pillow, the animation is gonna take a minute. To be realistic, more like 5-10 minutes (real people spend between half and a quarter of their lives sleeping, the usually quoted average is a third, which in a 1 hour day cycle would be 20 minutes)

See, if the day cycle is longer, I can totally get behind something like: You logged out in the wild, that means you slept on the ground, it rained, a squirrel pissed on your head, you have a stack of unrested penalty. Or: You haven't had food of any kind in your bags for three days. You are hungry!

But if the day cycle is that fast, it breaks the hunger/sleep thing.

I like the idea of some debuff for not properly caring for yourself, I just don't want to be able to max it out in a single day of realtime.

 

I wouldn't measure something like this in game hours.. but in real time gameplay. If you play for 5 hours of real time your character gets hungry.. hey so would you if you didn't stop playing to eat.. so if takes 3 "days" to starve.. let's say 72 real hours. It may not seem realistic but it's a game.. you can't be realistic with everything..

 

And if the time consumed was actually 72 real world hours, I would honestly be ok with that. If on my heaviest day of play I had to stop and camp and eat once in the middle to get my strength up, that would be fine. I would be fine with small penalties forming before that, since I will likely stop and heal and eat every so often anyways. As long as it's not an hourly thing that can kill me in one epic 10 hour session of not paying enough attention and then getting called afk by a family emergency.

 

@MalakBrightpalm,

You're really planning to do 10 hour gaming sessions? And if you are, you would plan to deliberately sleep every single hour just to have your stamina full?

The reason I'm asking is not just to be defensive of this idea -- its that I personally wouldn't mind the system I proposed, and I'm not some special type of masochist that enjoys tediousness. I still play a lot of old school school DOS RPGs, and its pretty common for them to require some type of camping and I'm used to the mechanic.

So for instance, in Wizard's Crown, if you don't camp or go to an inn, you slowly lose morale, and this affects your battle readiness.



In Darklands, you need to camp or go to the inn in order to restore your health and get your stats back up to max. In any matched battle you would lose strength, so sometimes it would be after every battle.



Bard's Tale doesn't have this type of system, but healing is really slow, so you're forced to stop at temples every so often, or get healing spells. You also need to stop at taverns to replenish your bard's voice, and to Roscoe's to restore spell points.



Even in old Ultima games, healing wasn't automatic like it is in UO and Ultima IX, so you had to either have spells ready or stop somewhere and heal. In many of them, eating during camping helped you heal.



In no way does it ever feel this gets in the way of gameplay -- its just part of the game.

And I think back in the old days, when everything was DOS, everyone else was used to the idea too, and camping in RPGs was par for the course. Nobody complained. Nobody thought to complain. So my question is, what changed that everyone is so picky about this now? The games changed when computer gaming became mass market. But its not even that developers realized big audiences wouldn't play these type of games and stopped making them; not many devs even tried.

Let's put aside the sleep penalty and lets just look at the hunger penalty. It would take 3 hours of continous gameplay to get a 25% stamina loss. So 12 hours for full stamina loss (3 x 4), before a health hit. For you, would that be an acceptable penalty?

 

I just saw this in the death oooOOOOoOoOOOooo thread - seems to relate so I posted here (look at the last two lines)

 

Yea I play games that have specific injuries in them that need special treatment ( UnReal World ). You still need to build up hunger to create conditions for starvation, and it makes sense for it to be cumulative rather than a single stat hit.

 

I fine with what you propose - as long as there reasonable ways to take manage it in the field

For someone like me who plans to primarily be exploring, say I get injured and I'm no healer (I plan to be a Tinker) I would not be happy if I have to go find a temple

What I like most of your idea is that it creates challenges while I explore - but I would like them to be manageable in the wild so I can game for hours and not be sidetracked from my goal for the day ... I see myself charting a course, creating natural stop points, create maps, gather resources, go from town to town and eventually settle somewhere - but if game mechanics were so i felt like a micromanagement game it would be a big turn off

I am playing a game called Kenshi that will have similar game mechanics to what you are proposing, its in alpha and this element has not been implemented but I would like to play a game that feels real - I'm tire of games that you finish in a blink of an eye because all you had to worry about was your health bar and how many healing potions you carry (plus I would love it if they had a sound that says "ELF NEEDS FOOD" when you need to eat ... lol

 

lol, yea. This was a problem with Ultima VII. "Feed me, Avatar, I'm hungry."

You should be able to camp anywhere and live off the land. Ideally, you should plan ahead and take an ample pack of rations with you, and rest before you head out, but you could live off the land if you forgot as much as you needed. Sleeping, eating, and binding your wounds should give you some degree of health bonus even without aid from a specialized healer.

This is also why I'm arguing for the penalty to appear on your health bar, so you see the problem when its occurring rather than be surprised by it some time into gameplay. You really didn't know when your party members in Ultima VII needed food until they started whining.

 

@Redfish It's all a matter of perspective. If I set my character to gathering, and I'm running across an area, easily avoiding the monsters (cause I've resource farmed here before and I'm just that good) and I spend an hour at an intermittent light jog, picking plants, hell, *I* can do that without tiring. For that to exhaust my supposedly rugged and fit, magic using, monster smashing character, it's unrealistic and takes away from the game. This isn't looking like turn based, top view game play. I can see his legs moving, I can see how fast he's moving, it will be weird to see the sun actively setting and rising in fast forward as he goes about his chores.

If, OTOH, the day cycle is longer, and I can actually spend an hour playing and it will still be morning for both me and the character, then the penalties for days of exposure and starvation will pile up at a more natural pace, and I won't mind them at all. As you point out, I'll probably eat and rest to heal more than needed to avoid those stats.

Imagine for a moment the life of an endgame, fully developed, awesome character going about his business. He will have to stop and eat and sleep mostly because of this time factor, not because every giant spider and goblin are wearing him down. That's where we will feel it.