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Food, Sleep, Logout location etc.


vylqun

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In the last few months we've seen quite some suggestions concerning mandatory mechanics like food, having to log out at certain places etc. I wont say that you shouldn't do those suggestions, but i want to remind you on what Dual Universe is supposed to be:

 

" [...] the game focuses on massive scale emergent gameplay based around exploration, voxel building, trade, politics and warfare."

 

taken directly from the website.

 

It is not a survival - roleplay simulator !

 

So please, while having suggestions like these, try to think about them in a way that won't impact people who want to play Dual Universe as what it is announced to be :)

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Oh also, if when in space in an Eva suit or otherwise. If well have oxygen or an energy meter.

 

Maybe science advanced enough to have personal small sized air scrubbers and also the energy to power all your other systems and or nanoformer.

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I think food could be more important if there was an npc population like in eve. But I don't think we're going to have that.

 

If there is food I would think it would have more to do with being an optional system that provides buffs.

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i would like to not turn this topic into yet another thread where such things are discussed, i meant it as a friendly reminder, thats all.

There's a pretty big thread about food and related stuff already :)

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It doesn't really hurt to have a basic survival element in the game by having to eat / drink. Heck, combine this if you want. Just use food items that both satisfy hunger and thirst. And you can set it that you don't have to eat every 5 minutes.

 

It would touch on the whole logistical aspect a bit. Perhaps make it so that you have to eat once an hour or every 2 hours?

 

Some consider it a nuisance, I see potential in this simple mechanic that adds a whole economy and somewhat forces you to bring a bit of food if you go out and explore. Perhaps make it different. Instead of having food items that give buffs, make it so that you have some kind of hunger bar or system. You're fine until it hits some minus value. Then you could have minor debuffs at best but you don't die.

 

E: Right.

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@Warden

I as well as many others would never play a game with mandatory food. Even if its DU. But as i said previously:

 

i would like to not turn this topic into yet another thread where such things are discussed, i meant it as a friendly reminder, thats all.

There's a pretty big thread about food and related stuff already  :)

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We posted at the same time, saw it too late.

 

But I do wonder out of curiosity: What if you just had to eat a bit once a day? An actual day, for example.

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I want to build, explore and pvp, i don't want to have to limit my experience by any mandatory actions that are useless to my playstyle. Even if i only had to eat once a day, i would still have to bother with buying and carrying it, even if there are waypoints where we could log out all over the universe i wouldn't want to bother with looking for those locations to log out etc. It has no value except for survival roleplayers, which isn't what DU is.

 

So to answer your question, every mandatory action which wouldn't be important for any integral part of the game is something that will make a few or many ppl quite the game, me included.

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Yes, stay on the topic guys. The game is not based on survival. It's a building and economics game, with PvP due to economics (no surprise there).

If food is to be in the game, make it an extra afterthought, giving buffs or what-have-you. But not a core elemnt of a game. Fuel on the other hand, yes, absolutely. If ships were to run on wishes, it wouldn't be fun.

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From their facebook page:

 

"We are considering to implement survival gameplay. In the case we would develop this aspect, we haven't decided possible features yet. Some ideas we are currently looking into are harsh environmental conditions, like atmosphere toxicity, gravity, temperature. The goal is to have survival gameplay when you explore a wild, unknown planet, not colonized yet. But once proper gear or element is crafted and population start to grow on the said planet, all the survival aspect would slowly fade as the environment start to be controlled."

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/dualuniverse/posts/561569937348716?comment_id=562179610621082&reply_comment_id=562641063908270&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R8%22%7D

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Don't know anything of whats writtenon facebook^^ but if they consider including some survival elements and keep it at those they named, that means harsh conditions, then its ok, as long as you are within those "zones" you may need more fuel, electricity etc. But that shouldn't carry over to the zones with normal condition :)

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As long as it's not too intrusive, I'd be okay with a hunger mechanic.  Say, for example you just have to ensure you have some kind of food stored on you, which slowly depletes - you don't have to actually click a button to eat it.  When it's on zero you suffer some minor stat penalties and your health very slowly decreases.  You could die eventually from starvation/thirst, but it would take a long time.  Some numbers: it takes 24 hours for your food store to deplete from full, and it takes another 24 hours to die from starvation from full health (assuming no other damage is taken).  Food/health only depletes when you are logged in and playing.

 

I think something like this would fit with the FB quote yamamushi found.  Once a planet is colonised and filled with players, food will be so plentiful that "refueling" is a non-issue, but when setting out to explore the unknown you need to be well-prepared, whether that's ensuring you have enough food with you, growing some in a hydroponics bay, or hunting & gathering.

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Even if we put aside that the need for shared infrastructure and basic supplies is a huge factor in people coming together socially to form factions and have the emergence of politics, I seriously doubt they are going to decide what feature or not to implement based on how easily it fits within the confines of an abstract synopsis of the game design. I remember all too well the people arguing against oxygen and fuel and even planets in SE because its a game about engineering in space. Ofcourse this is only used selectively for things people dislike personally, as none of those were arguing against the inclusion of combat and piloting. Even if used the otherway around, "This is a dual universe game, its supposed to be a universe! Thus realism", it would still be pretty bad. I really can't think of a case where this type of argument would be a reasonable one, gaming or otherwise. Do people apply this elsewhere? Would you stop watching an historical drama and shout "it isn't a comedy!" because a character made a joke? If it gets any more common it's going to deserve it's own fallacy entry (Edit: Sorry if that sounded aggressive, my beef is with the phenomena, not with you vylqun, in general the vast majority of my beefs are with phenomena, or burgers, the occasional steak or kabab, but usually phenomena).

 

To the issue at hand, I think making it cheap & easy to provide with infrastructure but difficult without would strike a really good balance, which is fairly realistic since theoretically most of those resources should be renewable. A lot of the ideas provided so far could actually work in favor of this. Simply having bigger bars means you can take care of them less frequently, Connecting supplies to log-in "life pods" could mean you wake up with more then enough for the average play session, and producing supply packs that contain all the oxygen/water/food you might need for a given time would mean you don't have to babysit each and every bar even when you do go out of missions, at least assuming you are prepared for them. My personal favorite is a system that pass a certain point would ration your supplies the less you have of them, giving you increasing disadvantages but not outright killing you (At least for quite awhile).

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Well, we certainly do have to think about what the primary game genre is.

Dual Universe is not primarily a survival game, so we should not expect food and drink to be a focus to the degree it is in a survival game such as H1Z1.

H1Z1 also has building, but building in that game is secondary to staying alive.

 

Dual Universe is a voxel game primarily about gathering resources and building structures. Those activities are going to be time-consuming enough wiithout also being forced to gather food and drink every 15 or 20 minutes. Enforcing sleep is also not conducive for voxel-building gameplay.

But, as Klatu says, it's fine to require food and drink as long as it's not overly intrusive. Once every several hours.

 

As we're out harvesting for resources, finding a "logout" location is also going to be problematic. Unless we can carry portable shelters along with us.

I'm actually more interested in countering radiation and toxic atmosphere when it comes to the survival aspects of Dual Universe, but again, as a more long term obstacle than minute by minute.

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Food management can be a great mechanic unto itself. For all of you QQing abut how your life is going to end if you need to eat a can of veggies every couple of hours consider the content that farming and hydroponics creates. These are HUGE gameplay elements which directly tie into resources like water and plant life.

 

They add tons of reasons to deform terrain, consider lighting (natural and artificial), they could even go so far as to have something like soil quality (maybe you can compost some rotten food and organic matter to increase soil quality).

 

Seriously, you'd deny all of that because you're too lazy to keep an avatar from starving to death? As long as a hunger mechanic isn't persistently annoying there's little reason not to have it. Plus on top of generic avatar nutrition there's also the bonus effects of certain foods and plants, the integration into medical supplies, and even more.

 

Seriously, this encompasses SO DAMN MUCH.

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I'm still generally in favor. If I look at Minecraft (correct me but I think it wasn't specifically advertised as 'survival game' but it had a survival mode nonetheless with food consumption) that is a good example where the whole "You have to eat once in a while" played a not so small factor in gameplay. It was more fun and challenging.

 

Especially on some civilization-like servers you had to find food first or go to major cities that had public farming areas or food boxes to get by. You had to consider this as you built your hideout or organization base. If we consider this but notable slow down food consumption, I really see no hassle for DU if you indeed have to eat once in a while where "once in a while" would be every few real life hours or a bit less.

 

For me that seems perfectly acceptable and it all makes sense if food items are playing a role beyond just body health but medicine etc, as Cadavus mentioned.

 

Of course others are against it for whatever reason, but in the end you can argue back and forth or repeat yourself. What is a relative fact is that you can find arguments in favor and against survival mechanics (not just food). Over time and after many discussion threads, these pros and cons should be relatively known.

 

If there is no clear obvious community trend, I say let the developers decide in what direction they want to take their game. The rest is a question of prolonged feedback and tweaking.

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@Warden


Minecraft is not an MMO per se you see. It's a moddable platform with multiplayer gameplay. Dual is an MMO. You can choose to play survival in Minecraft, in Dual, it's a single-shard server, if you add survival, you force that gameplay on the players who don't like survival. Plus, it will drive new players away. Ain't nobody got time for Tamagotchi in Space.

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Food management can be a great mechanic unto itself. For all of you QQing abut how your life is going to end if you need to eat a can of veggies every couple of hours consider the content that farming and hydroponics creates. These are HUGE gameplay elements which directly tie into resources like water and plant life.

 

They add tons of reasons to deform terrain, consider lighting (natural and artificial), they could even go so far as to have something like soil quality (maybe you can compost some rotten food and organic matter to increase soil quality).

 

[...]

 

Seriously, this encompasses SO DAMN MUCH.

 

the only thing it influences is the industry needed to provide for the food, it doesnt influence any other gameplay element, thus it only creates work around itself, which is never a good thing in mmorpgs.

With that argument you could also include a need to take a dump, because it also would create its own industry, or the requirement to do regulary maintenance on all structures etc. etc.

 

But in the end its just additional effort without adding anything else to the game except for the means to sustain itself.

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Food management can be a great mechanic unto itself. For all of you QQing abut how your life is going to end if you need to eat a can of veggies every couple of hours consider the content that farming and hydroponics creates. These are HUGE gameplay elements which directly tie into resources like water and plant life.

 

They add tons of reasons to deform terrain, consider lighting (natural and artificial), they could even go so far as to have something like soil quality (maybe you can compost some rotten food and organic matter to increase soil quality).

 

Seriously, you'd deny all of that because you're too lazy to keep an avatar from starving to death? As long as a hunger mechanic isn't persistently annoying there's little reason not to have it. Plus on top of generic avatar nutrition there's also the bonus effects of certain foods and plants, the integration into medical supplies, and even more.

 

Seriously, this encompasses SO DAMN MUCH.

 

I'm still generally in favor. If I look at Minecraft (correct me but I think it wasn't specifically advertised as 'survival game' but it had a survival mode nonetheless with food consumption) that is a good example where the whole "You have to eat once in a while" played a not so small factor in gameplay. It was more fun and challenging.

 

Especially on some civilization-like servers you had to find food first or go to major cities that had public farming areas or food boxes to get by. You had to consider this as you built your hideout or organization base. If we consider this but notable slow down food consumption, I really see no hassle for DU if you indeed have to eat once in a while where "once in a while" would be every few real life hours or a bit less.

 

For me that seems perfectly acceptable and it all makes sense if food items are playing a role beyond just body health but medicine etc, as Cadavus mentioned.

 

Of course others are against it for whatever reason, but in the end you can argue back and forth or repeat yourself. What is a relative fact is that you can find arguments in favor and against survival mechanics (not just food). Over time and after many discussion threads, these pros and cons should be relatively known.

 

If there is no clear obvious community trend, I say let the developers decide in what direction they want to take their game. The rest is a question of prolonged feedback and tweaking.

 

Dual Universe plans to have some food management requirements; just not at the extreme of survival games.

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Dual Universe plans to have some food management requirements; just not at the extreme of survival games.

 

i'd like to have a quote for that, because i highly doubt that they will and thus wouldn't have claimed something like that.

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the only thing it influences is the industry needed to provide for the food, it doesnt influence any other gameplay element, thus it only creates work around itself, which is never a good thing in mmorpgs.

With that argument you could also include a need to take a dump, because it also would create its own industry, or the requirement to do regulary maintenance on all structures etc. etc.

 

But in the end its just additional effort without adding anything else to the game except for the means to sustain itself.

gives sense to flora and fauna, it's an important feature for exploration, a resource to trade, store, gives sense to kitchen elements, add a lot to roleplay (chairs, tables,...), and so on... ofc neither i want it to be an annoying feature, but wih the right dose, could be a nice addition to the game

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