eating too much - bug?

[Brimstar]

Two of my characters have had this, and it has no roleplay value AT ALL!!! I can't control what I eat, and now I can't even assume that I have enough food no matter how much I pick up. I've seen a travelling character get this as well, and believe me, when travelling from Pok Desert, it is no fun at all to find all your food gone with no hope of getting any for several days. This change sucks. Someone needs to explain to us exactly how screwing with the ability to survive is somehow a good RP thing.

[Surly]

It is an official decision from the GAC not to explain this to the players.

So, you need to find out about it in-game...

[Nixit]

It is an official decision from the GAC not to explain this to the players.

So, you need to find out about it in-game...

Well, that's inconsistent.

[Brimstar]

Apparently "rest" is supposed to be a cure, which is pretty damned useless information to someone walking out of the desert. I sure wish someone (Jos) would explain what the value of this "addition" is.

[Pieter de Groote]

So, you need to find out about it in-game...

Not true.

I have some characters with this new feature that have plenty of food. They ignore it.
I have some characters with this new feature that don't. They die.

[tiddy ogg]

They're actually dying?
That is a bit much, but everyone is always wanting more realism, and this is a new super-bug and it's up to the chars to sort it out.
Well, I guess that's the theory, but as othrs have said, there is not enough time in Cantr to do that, and insufficient data available between chars to let them formulate a plan to eradicate it.
Eventually the cure will be posted here, as with the sneezing sickness, and it's only by such OOC knowledge that it will be dealt with.

Which makes the whole exercise pointless, imho.

[zisked]

Yeah, but that's already been established. At least on the players' side.

Maybe it's a sociological experiment for someone's PhD Thesis. How many pointless, unpopular features will the average game-playing audience put up with before the chuck in the towel?

[T-shirt]

How many pointless, unpopular features will the average game-playing audience put up with before the chuck in the towel?

I agree with your statement, Zisked. This change does not make the game more fun or challenging.

My characters with plenty of resources ignore eating too much; they just have to walk to the storage rooms a bit more often.
My characters without supplies will have to stop more often from develloping themselves, just to collect food.
There's no hint or logical order of events for any of my characters to suspect it to be an affliction or disease. It's a strange fenomenon. Not more strange than the increase in raw food consumption several months ago. Something you have to deal with.
The randomness of the food consumption makes planning a lot harder.

I can't think how this 'feature' could make the game more fun for anyone playing it. It does make the game more fun for those behind the controls though. But I'm not playing for the staff's satisfaction.

[kinvoya]

I think that chars randomly feeling faint actually has a lot of rp value. Tons of stuff you can do with that in rp.

It just annoys me that the new sickness just doesn't make sense. Who feels feels faint and then stuff themselves with enormous amounts of food? Doesn't happen. If it said, "You feel weak" it would make more sense. Maybe when we figure out the cause it won't seem so weird. As it is, my char just ignores the fact that he is eating extra food because it just is too goofy to go: "I feel faint, I better eat a whole bunch! *jams food in mouth*."

[formerly known as hf]

Guys, can you not create doctor chars, or statisticians chars, and collect data in game to figure out what works and what doesn't and how long the disease lasts etc. etc.? Why figure it out as a puzzle on the forum? Then I could just as well give all details right away. It's not the idea that we create puzzles for the players, it's rather about roleplaying that chars don't know what happens and try different solutions and you get different medical traditions etc. etc.

The problem with this suggestion is that the changes have caused excessive effect for characters.

Eating 5 days worth of food a day is not something many players are going to think 'oh, I should work this out with my character'.

It is something players are gonna get very worried about, and turn to other players and staff to find some kind of light on the subject.


I like the change. I've had a couple of characters suffer from it, and in my limited time playing recently, tried to RP with it.

It's somewhat of the kick up the behind that Cantr & it's players needed.


But to expect players not to work together OOC to find out what's happening is pushing it a bit. Doesn't mean you have to tell them anything, but once a couple of players work out the cause/effects/cures - you can be sure that that information will spread very quickly.
It's too big a change to expect players to just RP-out of it.

[SekoETC]

I'd rather have it so that there was a separate sickness that makes you feel faint and this will cause your tiredness get a big boost. It would be recovered by usual means but if it's an infection, there would be several of these surges and it's possible you might not have recovered from the previous surge before the next one comes.

[Sandra]

I like it, so far. The only thing I am curious to know about is if it's indeed random or not. I have some theories about the faintness and overeating, and I actually think I know the answer too, and it isn't a random event (only suddenly implementing it could be called random.

Anyways the challenge is to roleplay this. If you knew exactly if this is caused by something and you can do something about it, then you would immediately let all your characters do this, wouldn't you? Which could actually be called OOC information. I think the most fun part is to see how your characters react on this. Helping discover what it is all about if that is in their nature, or to just ignore it and do their regular things. And it is easier to do when you don't know what is causing it. Now that I think I know something, it's hard to not let all my characters do the same thing.

I like it also because in real life you cann't predict everything. While in CANTR till now, some things are predictable , I mean you don't know how others react, but for example projects don't fail unless you want it to stop.

Of course I can see some other side to. When I as a person was new I had to found out everything. And thus so did my characters. But once you are playing for a while, it gets more chalenging to roleplay certain things. Like should a newspawn know already to eat food to survive, to eat onions to heal and how to make every tool etc? I think they should not know everything from the start, there is no fun in that.

But to get back on topic! I think it is fun to roleplay, be inventive! But I can also understand that people don't want their characters to die of this.

[I_am]

I find the illness interesting and aggravating. I’ve had four characters come down with this illness and it has manifested itself a little differently in each one. I don’t believe that any of the “cures” my characters have tried have had any effect; although, all but one seems to have recovered. And OOC, I do not see any similarities between my characters to warrant coming down with the illness or to recover from it.

As to RP the illness, I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t get much response from other characters. The whole business is more aggravating than interesting.

[Phalynx]

Maybe it's the weather?

[Missy]

Jos Elkink wrote:
Guys, can you not create doctor chars, or statisticians chars, and collect data in game to figure out what works and what doesn't and how long the disease lasts etc. etc.? Why figure it out as a puzzle on the forum? Then I could just as well give all details right away. It's not the idea that we create puzzles for the players, it's rather about roleplaying that chars don't know what happens and try different solutions and you get different medical traditions etc. etc.

And just because a few people on the forum have listed long topics about how we need "mystery" in the game, including asking you to implement things where you have to figure out what resources are required without actually being able to see what resources a project needs, doesn't mean the majority of people feel that way about "not knowing." Especially something like this where there are negative effects toward your character. I've c hosen to ignore t his new disease for the most part. Except that I've run out of food twice now while travelling with a character and had to make sure recently that I packed up twice as much just to go a town away. Whatever. Someone figure out the cure and hurry up about it so I can get back to playing. That's how I feel about it. I think lots of others do as well but I don't know that for sure.