[MUD-Dev2] [Design] [REPOST] Food in MMOs

[Tess Snider]

This is going to sound pretty negative, through the first two-thirds.
Just bear with me. :)

On 5/14/07, Lachek Butalek <lachek at gmail.com> wrote:
> After all, we have a pretty good, well established simulation environment of
> what a virtual worlds should act like - the real world.

I'm not sure I agree with this assertion.  If virtual worlds "should
act like" the real world, why have virtual worlds at all?  I've got
this perfectly good real world here that I don't even have to pay a
subscription fee for, and man -- I tell you -- it's pretty darn
realistic.  I can even taste the food.  Too bad about the permadeath,
though.

> My theory is that as long as we aim towards absolute realism, our virtual worlds
> will not be afflicted with symptoms caused by artificiality.

Why play games when you can have death and taxes?

> One example is the roaming "boss" monsters - no more camping a single spot
> for the boss monster to spawn, because the spawn point is random and the
> boss roams around the world when present in the game. This is a step in the right
> direction, IMHO.

A step in the right direction?  Do you think people enjoy being
pointlessly slaughtered by randomly wandering uber-monsters that they
have no chance of ever defending themselves against, just because they
commit the grave sin of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

> My solution to the problem above would be to make player characters so
> utterly powerless against a "boss" monster that they would be more
> likely to flee from the spawn point than camp there.

Well, see, the only possible justification I could think of for having
wandering boss monsters  randomly slaughtering players all willy nilly
was that there was a slim chance that the feeling of triumph they
would get from eventually vanquishing the thing with their friends
would *hopefully* compensate for the hours meaningless victimhood that
had preceded it.  But now you're suggesting that it should be almost
impossible for them to do that, too?

> What is inherently wrong with making player characters more vulnerable
> and helpless?

The fact that people don't like feeling vulnerable and helpless?

> Will it make the game less fun to play if you don't score
> a magical weapon after 30 minutes of play?  Will it somehow break the
> fantasy genre mold to have the protagonists be any less than almighty?

Reducing the Monty-Hallism of MMOs does not require making players
feel "helpless."

> I seriously doubt it. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship was
> made up by the creme de la creme Middle Earth had to offer (and a few
> hungry Hobbits, too). Even so, Boromir - one of the most mighty fighters
> - was slain by some orcs by the end of the first book (and he couldn't
> even run back to his corpse to resurrect!).

Orcs?  Ha!  I'd like a show of hands of everyone who has never been
killed by a rat, a barnyard animal, a bird, a frog, a housepet, an
insect, or something that could otherwise be killed with a good puff
of industrial strength roach spray.  I don't think there's any
existing shortage of fatal game encounters that make players feel like
pathetic goobs.

> The traditional fantasy MMO/MUD suffers from inflation from the moment
> it goes into public beta - possibly before. In a tabletop session of
> D&D, the player characters are protagonists, with special abilities and
> skills that sets them apart from the common rabble. They are likely some
> of the most talented, skilled and all around powerful people in their
> corner of the world - or they will be right after they reappear from the
> newbie dungeon. The problem with MMO/MUDs is that there are literally
> thousands of these Nietzchean Ubermensch in the same province or even
> city, which is a major game balance and realism problem even before you
> start taking mudflation into account.

Ah, now, yes.  This has pretty much always been a problem with MUDs.
On AmberMUSH, we used to say "Everyone wants to be the World's
Greatest Swordsman."  The trouble is that nobody wants to play "Civil
Servant Online" or "Oppressed Peasant Online" or "Barefoot and
Pregnant For Half Your Life Online."  Even in "A Tale in the Desert"
-- a game where you pick grass and rot camel dung, among other things
-- the player characters still become larger than life, over time.

That's one of the reasons that we play, I think.  I have come to
accept, on some level, that there are an extraordinary number of
exceptional people about.. and that, moreover, I'm not going to have a
very compelling conversation with the robot who grows the wheat to
make my bread.  Even if there's some guy out there who wants to play
"Wheat Farmer Online," he's not a large enough market to write code
for him.

> Food.

You'd have caught me totally off-guard with this one, if it hadn't
been in the subject header.

> Food is consumed at a fantastic rate on a national scale, creating a
> perfectly realistic "sink" in the economy. Those with access to plenty
> of food will develop quicker both physically and mentally, and will be
> less likely to fall ill - a perfect complement stat to XP. If a person
> didn't have enough food, they would be crippled and unable to fulfill
> themselves in other ways.

Crippled?  I'm not so sure you want to cripple people.  Please see my
earlier post, entitled "Framing and Player Psychology."

> Food supply is an important factor to consider when travelling, as everyone
> who has played D&D or been on a roadtrip in AZ will know - a factor almost
> completely unutilized in MMO/MUDs, that nonetheless often feature extensive
> travelling.

If there's so much travel in the game that you have to worry about
food, it's too much travel.

> So, there's my RFC. How can food (supply and production) be implemented
> best in an MMO/MUD, to encourage realism and prevent all the problems
> associated with inflated stats, while still providing a fun and playable
> game? What games currently implement food, in what ways, and how
> successful are they? Are there any major problems with the whole concept
> of food in an MMO/MUD?

Pretty much, unless I'm playing a strategy game or a sim, I abhor all
maintenance.  Food is maintenance.  So, I would say, you'd have to
find some way to make food *not* maintenance to get me on-board.

Many games use food.  In "A Tale in the Desert" and "Star Wars
Galaxies," it is used for temporary buffs.  In "World of Warcraft," it
is used for faster healing, and sometimes buffs.  In "Everquest," back
when I played it, your character became weak if she didn't eat
constantly, so you had waste a bag slot carrying around a stupid stack
of muffins everywhere you went.  Buffs are fun.  Carrying around
muffins so you don't get weak is not fun.  See, it's all about
framing. :)

Tess