A flamewar startingpoint.

[s001gmu at nova.wright.edu]

Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 09:26:41 +0000 (PST8PDT)
From: Brandon Cline <brandon at merlin.sedona.net>

>On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Chris Gray wrote:
>
>> [Brandon C:]
>> :> [Me:]
>> :> I think I would not be bothered by such things as long as they didn't
>> :> bother me! There needn't be a point - it can all be "atmosphere". However,
>> :> if I have to spend a minute or two every time my character needs to eat,
>> :> then I *will* become bothered.
>> :
>> :In a mud environment though isn't it true that in order to create
>> :"atomosphere" you need these details?  Or should players be expected to
>> :"emote" everything the designer decides is too tedious to implement?
>> 
>> Having a tedious requirement to 'eat food' is not hard to implement - it
>> would probably take an afternoon to add. I'm all for having atmosphere in
>> a game, but there are lots of players (often including me), that don't care
>> to spend a lot of time doing things that don't move my character forward.
>> 
>> I wonder if it is feasible to have a "detail switch" in a game. Players
>> who want to go through the motions would turn it on, and so would have to
>> choose and buy food & supplies, and use them periodically as appropriate.
>> Other players could turn it off, and just have a small steady drain from
>> a "food counter", and would automatically stock up when they go into a
>> store. The former player would have to 'eat food' (or something possibly
>> a lot more detailed involving setting up camp, taking out utensils, filling
>> a pan with water, building a fire, choosing what to cook, paying attention
>> to the cooking, eating the result, washing the pan, putting things away,
>> etc.), while the latter would only have to occasionally check their
>> "food count" to make sure it doesn't get too low.
>> 
>
>Not sure if you saw my point or not.  What i was trying to say, is that in
>order to build up atmosphere some details are required... esp if you
>intend there to be some sort of roleplaying or other such things involed. 
>So just removing somthing, like say combat, or eating food just because at
>it's base level it is annoying to do could be destructive in the end to
>the ability to create that atomosphere. 
>  Conversely, having boring and tedious "details" that are required by
>every player is just as destructive in other ways.  The solution I was
>hoping you'd see was that instead of removing these things maybe there
>should be a better way of doing them so that they are not boring, or
>tedious or required to do all the time...  Like you were saying, some way
>of having a detail level for player actions...  So say on the eat food
>thing, you shouldn't be required to eat food every few minutes etc, and
>obtaining, cooking, and consuming food should be allowed to be regulated
>to low detail "unless" the player sees need in which he would want to do
>it himself, does that make sense?  There should also be a way to convey
>that all the above detail is assumed, so that people don't feel like their
>characters go on without just because they don't have to, but they go on
>not visiably eating because it is assumed that when they are hungry they
>eat and it is just not shown... or shown in very low detail.  

hmm... I wonder how feasable it would be to have eating be a semi-automated
process?  Kind of like breathing.  You can take control, but most of the
time it's automated.  When you get hungry, assuming you are not too busy
doing something else (like fighting for your life, or casting a spell), the
game has the character pull out a loaf of bread or whatever, and eat it.
You do sacrifice a bit of realism, in that they might be running for their
lives from that nasty dragon whose layer they just raided, but it takes care
of a tedious detail, while still keeping some flavour (I am assuming that the
character and everyone within visual range will see them going about eating).
It also requires the player to have enough food on hand, adding another
resource to manage, and a layer of complexity.  

Granted, a system like that could be argued to be only shoving the tedium off
to another level, that of obtaining the food, but hey.  You had to do that
when you were forced to tell your character to eat.  I see it as getting rid
of half of the tedium.

-Greg