» Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:29 am
I didn't vote because the poll svcks, but I do think that sleeping should have a more meaningful purpose than it has had in earlier games.
You could for example have a system where Health, Stamina and Magicka works in two layers: First you would have the default short term effect where your stamina drops quickly as you swing your sword and jump around, where taking a hit drops your health quickly and where using magic uses your up your magicka rapidly; then you'd have the second layer of actual fatigue that slowly reduces your maximum levels of Health, Stamina and Magicka by a small percentage of the losses you make of these resources. So after fighting for extended periods, you would experience slowly decreasing maximum levels of these resources that would eventually level out at say 50%. By staying well-fed and drinking throughout your adventuring you would greatly slow down the rate of this fatigue penalty, and by resting you would reset the penalty back to 0, allowing you take advantage of your full Health, Stamina and Magicka once more. You could make it easy to follow the development of your fatigue by having a crimson area growing at the end of your various meters, symbolizing your percentile loss of maximum performance. You could also have visual effects, like impaired vision and shambling walk occur as Fatigue begins to reach a critical high.
Resting at a place like an inn might even provide a larger bonus, making it take longer before fatigue starts effecting you again, but rest anywhere (anywhere that isn't dangerous, like a dungeon or in the presence of foes) would be enough to reset the penalties. While simplistic compared to the hardcoe system in New Vegas I think it's less obtrusive and annoying and still accomplishes its purpose, which is to add meaning to food and sleep. The time-scale also becomes irrelevant, depending not on how much time has passed but on how much you do. Difficulty levels in hard-core settings could easily adjust the maximum fatigue penalty, its rate of development and perhaps even if rest was regarded not as a penalty but as a bonus to said resources.