(Poll) Hunger & Thirst Damage

[Rat King]

Hello you lot. What do you think about keeping hunger & thirst damage enabled as we move out of the Metro event? For those of you who didn't realise, being on 0 hunger and thirst would progressively cause you to lose health. I wanted to know what people thought about leaving it on? Keep in mind I have absolutely no say in the matter, I just wanted to see what the community's thoughts were lol. I've drafted some pros and cons for you to look at.

+ Sense of Combine Control - We want to create an atmosphere that makes players feel like they're being closely observed and controlled without actually stifling roleplay, making ration deductions more impactful helps this. Ration deductions as a result of rebel activity is meant to act as conditioning to make citizens dislike rebel activity, with the threat of hunger & thirst being reintroduced, that conditioning may actually be effective.

+ Rebel Food Drives / Humanitarian aid feels a lot less pointless when the people you're helping are actually in danger of dying from starvation or thirst. Suddenly food drives are less "neat, a free pancake" and more "these people literally saved my life." Lets local groups of slummers work to be actually effective motivators of insurgency just through the feeding of citizens while rations are down.

- Newer, underequipped players are at risk - There is a risk that citizens who struggle to make ends meet could face the death of their character through no fault of their own, simply because rations were closed too often or there were not enough work-shifts. Perhaps there are policies that could be put in place from an OOC perspective to help alleviate this, such as a restriction on the duration of ration downtime?

 

[Deleted member 2717]

Combine would absolutely need to step up the ration frequency were this to be introduced. Seems like they were permanently down even prior to the antlion arc in general.

 

[DillonVentures]

i believe it should be disabled again

even with a lot of credits, it’s still hard to keep a high amount of points within hunger and thirst, because most the food items barely give you any, so spending most of your money on something like peanuts or praying to wallace breen that some citizen will hand you a stack of pancakes is basically necessary

also, the whole ”newer players are at risk” thing is a big factor in this as well, a new player’s first thought shouldn’t be “i need to grind credits so i don’t die” as soon as they get out of the trainstation, it should be “i want to roleplay with other players and have fun”

if there’s going to be a limit to how much damage you can take from this, for example, it only bringing you down to like 5 or 10 hp, then maybe i would be more accepting with it staying

 

[Donavin Jones]

Used to be a thing.
I was in sewers and just died instantly cause of it, and thus after people kept dying almost 30 minutes after thirst or hunger were 0 it was removed.

 

[Astro]

if there’s going to be a limit to how much damage you can take from this, for example, it only bringing you down to like 5 or 10 hp, then maybe i would be more accepting with it staying

I think this is a worthy compromise. Instead of flat out putting people on timers, I believe that it would be a better idea to simply put their hp lower until a certain threshold. However, the damage indicators would likely need to be changed to discern between physical damage sustained by other players/NPCs/etc and hunger damage.

 

[PicassoCat]

I think this is a worthy compromise. Instead of flat out putting people on timers, I believe that it would be a better idea to simply put their hp lower until a certain threshold. However, the damage indicators would likely need to be changed to discern between physical damage sustained by other players/NPCs/etc and hunger damage.

If it's made to discern between the two, it'd be cool to see something along the lines of "Visibly malnourished" or some equivalent of the damage indicators

 

[toby]

Should deal zero damage.

 

[George]

maybe not kill, but increase debuffs perhaps. Make it something people have to RP.
Maybe have client side messages pop up, "your mouth is parched" or "you suddenly get a migraine due to dehydration" or some shit

 

[toby]

maybe not kill, but increase debuffs perhaps. Make it something people have to RP.
Maybe have client side messages pop up, "your mouth is parched" or "you suddenly get a migraine due to dehydration" or some shit

yes.

 

[Overseer Inspector Count Reece Orlok]

my biggest issue with food is the over abundance of it. You have permits, smugglers, rations and that one vendor in the nexus that provides free infinite food.

I think for most people they only really care about getting rations because of the credit coupon, not because they’re on the verge of starving.

It’s only a small issue but how can we bring the importance of rations back when players can get better and more filling food elsewhere legally.

 

[Purple Knight]

The need for food should be more of an issue I believe, I mean frankly what's the point of even having a hunger / thirst system at all if it doesn't actually hold any real power over you, yes, I think OCC mitigations will have to be made in order for this not to just become a PK fest, and like some of the other folks here I agree with the following points:

It should not kill you, only severely wound you - Perhaps if you remain starving AKA on 0 food AND thirst for a long time you should die.

It should hold different flavour text to normal damage, things like "This person looks dangerously malnourished" or something to that effect.

This will bring with it, the further feeling that this is, in fact a serious RP server, and so the most basic of things have to be looked after, and additionally, lead to more players actually buying food from stores, rather than just sitting there happily looking at everything in grey scale as they'd rather spend their credits on a fancy new hat or something.

It opens avenues for additional RP, scenes like people on the verge of dehydrating to death, laying in the streets begging for food and water;
Riots, should rations be left closed for too long, giving every faction something to do;
As stated above, rebels and slummers doing food drives, to boost their reputation and members;
Loyalists could also do the same, perhaps to gain favour in their party, along with pushing the Combine agenda.

The possibilities are endless to those who possess a quality of RP, and so I'd say yes - make starvation an actual feature, though don't allow it to actually kill players so easily, just cripple them.