I'm sure you realize i was alluding to the paradign of evoking emotions through audio and visual cues and not trying to advocate changing the soundtrack pace or having the camera sway anytime your character feels hungry. But you may have hit the nail, accidentally: hunger, thirst and fatigue are involuntary responses. You really cannot be in control of them.

Your character is feeling cramps.

You should find an outhouse and rest.

Your character has lost control of his bodily functions.

You become stunned.

A goblin stabs you from behind.

You die, how embarrassing.

*******************************

Now, think about the above. If anyone here played New Vegas they would know that the 'hardcoe' Food/Drink bit didn't feel real at all. They were just annoying indicators that could have been anything; such as "you've been poisoned, take an antidote; you're feeling tired, take a caffeine pill; you're bleeding badly, find a bandage". Those are great and all, but they don't IMMERSE you into the world. If anything they feel like annoying stat messages you would get while playing an MMORPG. All they do is put you in situations where you're out and about having fun in a dungeon or the wilderness and oops; you've run out of food. Guess you have to put your adventure on hold and fast travel back to town. What if you're the roleplaying type though? You probably hate fast travel. Well, enjoy the walk! (Most people that are asking for food/water deprivation are roleplayers, why else would they want annoying indicators?).

The thing is, for food/water to work right the time system would need to be altered to be slower. Time just passes too quickly in The Elder Scrolls. You'll be stuffing yourself silly all day and the more heavily armored characters will have to carry around more useless junk.

No, I say from a gameplay standpoint food/water deprivation brings nothing fun to gameplay, only annoyance. And considering you're already able to eat food and pretend that your character was hungry, I don't think it's important enough to take the time to implement this time around.

Food and drink are good enough as stat restoratives and fatigue/health restoratives.

Edit: That said, a mod will add it for sure. Why make the devs do it when a player will? Just wait for the mod and you can eat and poop in game all you want.

A number of the people arguing for more "immersion" features say that they need the game to do more for them, because their imagination isn't enough.

Other "immersion" threads (in this, and other forums) have argued to remove as much of the UI as possible (or make it invisible) because all that stuff on the screen "reminds them it's a game".

Many different opinions floating around.



(Also, in the case of the pen-and-paper RPG example you gave..... there's some difference between the GM saying "You're hungry. Eat something." or going off into some florid & theatrical speech about hunger pangs, weakness, etc.... not that I'd want too much of that second example, personally. )

Bingo!

Which comes with consequences of it's own.

If the time is too slowly paced, you'll never see the world change around you. Which would svck. You'd have to manually alter the world yourself.

I'd say it's fine as is..

I am not quite sure how to interpret your initial argument without having to put words in your mouth, but I'm going to try and respond to this. It would seem that you are comparing a tabletop RPG to a videogame RPG and hypothesizing that a DM in a tabletop game will not physically harm you in real life to immerse you, he will inform you of the state of your character.

I never suggested that players were to act out their actions in-game in a real life setting, that is simply absurd even if it may be immersive. But let us imagine that the dungeon master in this case is informing you that your hunger level has dropped to a critical state and you need to consume something in order to survive. How the dungeon master goes about informing you of this may assist you in your immersion. Instead of simply saying "Dinrauko, you're hungry now, eat something ya newb" he might choose his wording more creatively like "[Dinrauko's characters' name]'s rumbles slighly, hinting at his hunger" or something like that. What I'm basically saying is how the idea of your characters' hunger is suggested to you may be improved, and I do still find the idea of a machine designed to tell me that I have become malnourished to be quite moronic and does indeed destroy the immersion for me.

Guess i have to chime in...

Let me see if I got it right. You're saying no matter how good and creative the conveying is you will always find it moronic?

What is fundamentally different between a health bar - the computer informing you how high your health is - , a stamina bar - the computer informing you how high your stamina is - and some other device that lets you know you have reached a critical level in malnutrition?

One can find moronic undertones everywhere, if one wishes so.

By "device", he meant the Pip-Boy. And that having his FO:NV character be so dumb that he needs to be told he's hungry by the medical-monitor attached to his wrist (instead of, say, noticing he's hungry) seemed moronic to him.

i.e, it seems "un-immersive" for his character to not notice he's hungry until he's told it by an in-game electronic device.

If you're right, and you could wellbe, then there would be no problem having a ?Hunger bar? just like a stamina bar. When it'd reach a critical low point, the undesirable effects would take place.

In what way is this fundamentally different from the orthodox health/stamina bars?

I have never proclaimed to have any beef with a "food-bar". But now that you mention it I imagine it would sink very slowly and the bar would quickly blend into the background as opposed to the health and fatigue bar which users might be more inclined to monitor as they empty relatively much much more frequently and situationally. Basically I think the player would be much more aware of fatigue and health and the hunger bar might empty without you ever even noticing it.

Actually, a hunger bar, which would start out green and gradually diminish over about a day or so, would be better than the "alarm clock" method, where you get a pop-up warning that you're suddenly hungry. You could tell at a glance what your situation was, and deal with it at your leisure, rather than as a sudden interruption and distraction in the middle of a fight.

Ideally, we could have a green "food" bar shrink over time, until it vanished completely and was replaced by a gradually growing red "hunger" bar, which would indicate "minor inconvenience" penalites to health, fatigue, and magicka regeneration. From there, it should take several more days (at least a week) to max out and cause more serious problems. Of course, the whole thing should be an OPTION, because a lot of players just don't want the added hassle, or are just playing to run around and kill stuff.

I don't think that "needs" should be an issue in an "urbanized" game, but when you're out on extended forays into the wilds, with no place to just drop in and buy something to snack on, it really should be a consideration. Playing a "hunter" character would be pretty pointless without that motivation to drive you.

No food bar is needed, No health or fatigue bar either.

Shader effects is the way to go imo. The more pain you feel, the more red the edges of the screen get (near death your screen would be all dark red). The more exhaustion or fear you feel, the more blurry and pulsating the edges (or in severe cases, like when drowning all) of the screen would get. Hunger and thirst could also have their own little effects that grow overtime.

This means: If you feel [censored], your screen will be full of stuff. That'd be annoying; just like being hungry, injured and exhausted in real life also simply makes you feel bad. You'd naturally would want to get rid of these things.

If you're only a bit hungry and slightly exhausted, only the very edges of the screen might be a bit dark and blurry. You'd feel slightly uncomfortable with that, just like you'd feel slightly uncomfortable in real life, but you can ignore it, just like you can ignore slight hunger and exhaustion in real life. It would barely limit your battle effectivity.

So, in a town, with no fights going on or anything, you'd probably instantly be able to get rid of any such effect, given you have enough money for a nice and warm place to sleep and plenty of good food.

When you're travelling in the wilderness, it'll never go away completely because you'll always be a bit uncomfortable, it'll be cold and you might not have much to eat (or only stuff that doesn't taste well and doesn't get rid of the hunger feeling entirely, even though you will not die from hunger as long as you have it). You'd adapt to the slight blur/darkness at the edge of the screen and live with it - you'd feel a bit uncomfortable, as I said, but you'd be alright. You'd still be glad when you reach a tavern and can eat and sleep well to get rid of these effects entirely for an evening and half of the next day (or longer, if you don't leave in the morning).

When you've got an arrow stuck in your shoulder, haven't eaten for two days because you were stuck in a dungeon, haven't had time to sleep and were constantly running from some monster, you'd feel [censored] in real life, and so you would in game. Your screen would be dark and blurry and you'd be happy when you finally at least find an apple so a bit of it goes away.

This is a good way, imo, to translate feelings. You turn pain, hunger, thirst and exhaustion into annoyance and then put it upon the player. Thus, the player might not directly feel pain, hunger etc., but he'd feel something undesireable that he'd want to get rid of, so the effect is the same.

A bar is too easy to ignore and hurts immersion. Numbers and bars and stuff always throw me out of the world, telling me "Hey mate, this is a game." I don't want to know about how this is a game, I want immersion!

A friend of mine once said
?You want immersion??

?Get into the bathtub?

Seriously, i'm not tto keen of shader-listic hunger depicting. But it's worth exploring the idea.

Personally, I'm a numbers guy. Stats, skills, percentages, bars....... yay, numbers and feedback!

The problem that was alluded to with realism mods like hunger mods is that in a world (such as Tamriel) where time is quite rapidly sped up, you have to eat far too often. Not only are you eating 3 square meals a day, but your day is cycled in a few real hours. So then the process starts over again.

But where in the world did the idea come in that people need 3 meals a day in the first place? The military industrial complex said "We guarantee 3 squares a day and a cot" .... and sometimes don't even keep the cot, but you still get your 3 square meals. Why? The human body doesn't need that much food every day. We need less calories, and that comes from eating fewer meals or smaller portions. We should be eating breakfast, and then we should be eating about 2-3 pm, and then eating a snack (fruit etc) after 6. This is the reason so many of us are fat.

A little off the subject, sorry. So anyway, the whole debacle would be solved by spreading out when you need food to only once per day. Or twice, if just snacking. And we don't need any annoying messages. When we get hungry, our belly rumbles, and the character automatically finds the most nourishing food available and eats it without any input from us. A person with food in their inventory has no need to go hungry simply because they find opening an interface to click on it too tedious. Let the lazy person's character automatically eat the food for them. Now, if you HAVE no food, then you'll have to go hunting. Let the hunger pains just be a warning that you'll need food by tomorrow. You'll then have several in-game hours to find some food to eat. If you don't eat in 25-30 days, then you die. But until then, you just hear a few growlings once or twice a day. Case closed.

Why does this need to be so complicated? I don't see the problem. You include it for immersion, and let those who want to manage it can do so, but those who don't want to ... then it pretty much just manages itself for the most part.

All I want is food to be a factor. It can be towned down to suit the faster world, like one meal a day that is eaten faster than eating'd take in real life. But I do want hunger to influence my actions.

I'm strictly opposing my character finding his own food in the inventory, though. Maybe I bought a specific meal for home decoration, or I roleplay a character who doesn't eat certain things but has to carry them for one reason or another (be it only for selling it). I do not, ever, want my character to do anything I did not at least press a button for. I hate not being in control of my character. It's MY character, and if I want to stay hungry for a while and keep my rations until I need them, or to give them to someone else, then let me.

Sound cues are a good idea btw. Less intrusive than a shader, at least as long as the characters hunger is bearable that'd be a good way to simulate it. Slightly annoying, enough to make the player want to get rid of it, but not enough to disturb the gameflow.

I like realistic physics, graphics, and gore. When I'm stabbing a bandit with a sword, I want it to be as brutally realistic as possible. However, I'd rather not have to drink, eat, sleep, etc. I want whatever realistic elements that builds immersion but doesn't get in the way of gameplay. I'm playing a game to have fun, not to simulate human needs. A hardcoe mode would be awesome. I would probably turn it on and off here and there if I'm not in a rush, but I'd rather not allow it to get in the way and become a tedious chore. I don't want my character's teeth rotting out because it would be more realistic. That's just silly.

You can't indicate hunger with shaders and sound effects.
I don't know about you, but I tend to see just as well, when I'm hungry, than when I'm full. Sound effects only annoy the person. Annoyance is not immersion, you don't eat because your character is hunrgy, you eat because you want the annoying sound to disappear. True immersion would be to recreate the feeling of hunger which is pretty much impossible, unless you can plug in your stomach or something.

Your stomach could gurgle, growl and snort.

:drool:

You two just read stuff below.


Also, everyone is making too big of complication and philosophy out of this.
Why should there be 3 meals a day?
Who ever said that human must eat 3 times a day?
I get with one meal a day perfectly fine for example (witch is maybe a reason why I am not a fatass like lots of people).
Also, there are ways to improve hunger, thirst and sleep need while in the game.
Hunger could make stomach growling noises, thirst could make small dizzy effects on the screen and sleep could do small blur effects on of the screen.
At start you will have no penalty, but as the time goes, you will start to get penalties like loss of fatigue and some attributes and eventually to your health starting to drain and you die.
Still, serious penalties like major fatigue and attribute losses and shouldn't happen until some time passes by.
One week without drink should cause death, four weeks without food should cause death and if you go without sleep for a week, you will fall on the ground and sleep for 12 hours or so.
By getting those penalties little by little, you will notice something is wrong with your character and have enough time to fix the problem (if you can't get your character to drink a thing in a week, then you really deserve to die).

Because there are plenty of us who prefer to not micromanage and have a game force us to say "eat now, or die/penalty/etc." I dunno about you guys, but I found HC mode in NV to be more of a micromanaging pain than exploring and having fun. I can ignore this whole "realism" stuff, if it was optional. But at some point, this whole argument of realism vs. believability eventually goes from food/water/sleep to odd extremes for the sake of "realism" instead of what is fun.

Solving puzzles, exploring, fighting, and guesting, fun. Making sure you don't die of dehydration while wandering around Skyrim, tedious chore, especially when planning a trip outside of civilization.

It should say this in the instruction manual :
"Your inventory is where you will find all the items you have equipped, or are carrying. Here you will find armour ,weapons, alchemy ingredients, potions, gems, and everything else you buy or find on your travels.
It is assumed you are carrying, or can easily find, food and water sufficient to sustain your body, so these are not figured into your inventory, believe me this will become cluttered enough during your adventures.
Also, as it is assumed your character is not stupid enough to starve or die of thirst, eating and drinking has been assumed, as a character only eating when the player remembers is not conducive to role playing. Besides, do you want to eat and drink at regular intervals, or forget such trivia and hunt dragons?"

Obviously depends whether your game is a simulator.

Burnout: realism would be rubbish.

Gran Turismo: lack of realism would be totally adverse to the point.

Something between "some realism" and "lots of realism".

i've yet to see realism carried too far in a game, just badly implemented sometimes - mades guild vendors in oblivion being one example, they're open for like four hours a day, but they wander off all over the place, and the rest of the time it's just nope not for sale, which is dumb, and very irritating.

i was thrilled by hardcoe mode in NV but felt it wasn't realistic enough, sleep was especially lenient, i don't see the problem with a fatigue meter that drops over the course of forty eight hours or so, which affects your stats, and can be replenished with food and sleep.