Illarion.org

Yes, its a large, long suggestion, but I hope that it'll be liked and hopefully gets implemented. This came to me while I'm half asleep, so bear with me.

Currently we have the 'food bar', which goes down when you work or hurt (or need mana) and goes up when you shove food down your throat. Simple. This proposal asks to change that.

Instead of having a food bar, we have a 'fatigue' bar, which replaces the food bar. The fatigue bar would control (almost) everything that happens to your character - it ranges from 150% to 50%.

Basically, any action that you attempt, will get a bonus or penalty, depending on the state of your fatigue bar. (Perhaps 50% is too much, this is off the top of my head).

So its up to your best interest to keep this fatigue bar as high as possible. If you fight/craft with a full fatigue bar, you're going to produce exceptional work, while if you try anything with a penality, you're going to mess up.

Learning speed should be tied to the bar as well.

Controlling the bar

The bar should increase, logarithmically (positive and negative) with time on its own. It should take around 1 hour from 0 to max, and 1 hour from min to 0. However there should be faster ways of increasing it.

One way is to stay within the area of a town, instead of running around in some dungeon someplace. Certain areas of the town (such as taverns) should give a bonus, therebye creating hotspots where people tend to cluster.

Another way is by ingesting food. However, contrary to how food works currently, food will multiply the rate of increase, but only the best food eaten that [hour? 30 mins?] will be considered. So instead of choosing "15 apples, or an apple pie" you can eat 1 apple and regenerate slow-ish, or eat the apple pie and regenerate it faster.

Another way when not near civilisation, is to create a 'camp'. Using a certain item (fire?) will allow you to create a 'camp' which (as long as is free of monsters), allow fatigue to regenerate faster.

The bar should increase at a lower speed when logged off, and the area logged off in should effect as well. If you log off in a dorm/bedroom, it should increase faster.

Reduction

Fatigue reduces when actions are done. The speed should not decrease very quickly, and should rarely enter the negatives, unless you're powergaming yourself to death. No matter what work/fighting action is performed, the bar decreases.

Effects

Primarily, this should increase roleplay. It will encourage people, especially fighters, to secure an area from time to time, set up camp and just... talk.

It'll also make cooks very useful, and not required to produce bulk items which are consumed very quickly.

Moreover, it stops people from over-working IG, while they can still do it, they'll work at a decreased rate.

*exhale*

Discuss.

In my opinion a really great proposal, especially because that would end fight-pgin (Fight-Eat-Fight-Eat-Fight-...), but isnt that a really huge thing to script?
I mean, you have to change nearly the whole food system, and everything what has got to do with the food bar.
I guess this will end as a "nice to have"-one, but I really like the idea!

I believe the camping thing in conjunction to food would be a nice benefit as well.

There was another game where they had a camping feature, and people would gather and sit and have food. There was no real purpose to it, and it wasn't an rp game but it added a great situation for just laughing and having fun. The issue with the fire is that it spreads, so something should be able to be used on the fire to make it not spread. Possibly a 'rock circle', used with cut blocks, or pebbles or something, thus giving a use to a building material.

Sucks.

And well, here's why:
There are people like me who aren't really interested in PG'ing or running to the graveyard EVERY SINGLE DAY. However, once we do that, it tends to be goal-oriented (so you want to get a swirlie now that you are there for once, or whatever). So when there's little going down in town, there's no interesting stuff happening.. then you sigh and drag your character into some godforsaken hole to smack some monsters in hopes of gaining a few skillpoints/capping. Now, at certain point progress requires time investment which is not that insignificant. For me to take my char, go and let him kill monsters on his own, it requires time, right mood (namely, a sort of kamikaze attitude in the face of overwhelming boredom and the will to have at least moderate skillgain on an ancient char) and hence it doesn't happen very often. When it does, I do it properly. Capping 'always' ends it as it is, even though mostly 1 or 2 swirlies is enough for my PG'ing.. and I don't really see why I would be further have to be irritated further while doing stuff that is already quite boring and annoying as it is.

I really don't think that this will disturb the (oh-so-dreaded) powergamers one bit, but will just (further) demoralize, demotivate, frustrate, piss off, irritate and annoy us regular players who don't want to grind monsters every single day of gaming. I hope the point was made. If players prioritize on gaining skills, then all these hinderance systems are just minor obstacle for them. For people who don't prioritize on skills and only PG occassionally, all those systems make the short-term skillgain even harder, and since there's no coherent attempt at long-term skilling, they'll be, as it is politely said, f'd in the a.

I mean, the unintended consequence of this proposal might even be that people just log off and have to distribute the time they are in PG'ing somewhere more evenly, so it suddenly becomes even harder to actually find people loitering somewhere. And zero incentive to play after certain point during the quiet hours. Oh, see.. camping all by yourself there. Now aint that a blast.

Though, I don't think the idea about taverns/homes having effect on something is all that bad. Maybe spending time in a tavern or home before you skillgain, gives a bonus to the skillgain for x minutes 1/IG day.

As in:
Spend 30 mins in the tavern/20 minutes at 'your home'. -> Make cookies or whatever, for X-skillpoints/X-time, you get 25% bonus to skillgain.

Sorry, am cranky at these hours. *goes to bed*

Mr. Cromwell wrote:Sucks.

I agree with the cranky *winks* Mr. Cromwell though for different reasons. The ones that want to PG, this will not deter but just add another layer of "do I really have to do all this just to skill my char" irritation. Ones that like to RP and PG at the same time will feel the same, this just has more "actions" that have to be accomplished before RP. Example: kill monster, pick up loot, RP with the other char until another monster arrives possibly some #me's of swords etc.....your suggestion: kill monster, pick up loot, make camp using I don't know how many steps, RP some but basically sitting waiting to kill more monsters then finally can leave. The entire idea is also taking away from players rather then adding something... i.e. those that don't want to RP won't, those that like to skill and RP, and those that already like to RP, it will just irritate.

If you recall, there was almost ALWAYS chars in the tavern RPing when there was a tb depot there. Chars ig follow the depot. To encourage RP limit the depot's and place them in spots the char might have a good reason to stay to RP. *shrugs*

I suggested something like this a while back. It is a nice idea, it's main purpose, as I see it, is to make people spend more time in towns, in their homes, in their guildhouses, rather than all bulk up in the yard.

Crombar's point is valid, but if I read Camel-boy's post well *yawns* if you go PG once per month or whatever, you'd go rested, so it would not affect your ability to get caps.

Actually I never stated what the cap speed was tied to, and it aint skill learning.

So if you do decide to get off your couch and go pg-ing a bit, chances are you're going to hit the learning cap LONG BEFORE you hit the 0% fatigue mark.

The bar isn't dependant on skill, its dependant on constitution. A n00b killing a piggy uses the exact same amount as matt killing 15 demons. Of course if you do have quite a bit of skill already, then yeah you might need to take a break from your Pg-ing once in a while, I hate PG-ing too, understand.

Too complicated.

Making food restore the food bar via a LTE that does not give all food points at once, but time delayed, might be something from the category "nice to have". Maybe invest some thoughts into this?

I fail to see the big benefit in changing a system completely just to prevent anything I don't quite regard a problem.

In that case, lets just leave it as it is. I like instant before 'slow'.

Why? Because when you eat does it take 20 minutes to feel full, after eating the item? Not really. It takes like.. thirty seconds. If that.That really isn't worth the scripting, is it?