The Drunken Lizard Pub

I personally like this feature being added. I will be starting this game with food and water requirements, weapon damage, and journeymaster turned on! Seems book I had too many avenues of abuse for lazy people. My 2 cents.

Way back when... umm, I don't quite remember what game it was but it was PC RPG and I believe it was one of the Ultima games you had to eat... I loved that, I don't know why but for some reason it made my character seem more... human, more believable (The Mighty Avatar!) and it adds a certain dimension of character to your character. After that game however, I've never seen it again. I've seen food in many RPG's of course, but it always performs a sort of added bonus, it isn't necessary. You can go through the entire game and never have a bite to eat (or us the john or sneeze or any other life function for that matter) other examples aside, it just seems so odd that these people never had to eat or drink.

Personally, when I saw that you have to eat and drink in Book II, as insignificant as it sounds, it convinced me to try (and subsequently, as of ten minutes ago buy Book I) and salivate over Book II, for other reasons as well, but somehow as Rush said, this game brings you back home, to your roots.

Speaking of Rush... have I seen you on Moogie's Shining Force Central or is that just your avatar playing tricks on my mind?

function.require wrote:I personally like this feature being added. I will be starting this game with food and water requirements, weapon damage, and journeymaster turned on! Seems book I had too many avenues of abuse for lazy people. My 2 cents.

Well if it weren't for us lazy folk, we'd still be stuck in the stone age....


Tough Guy Caveman: What the hell are you doing with that giant stick?

Lazy-ass Caveman: I'm gonna use it as leverage to move that boulder

Tough Guy Caveman: What? Just push the damn rock!

Lazy-ass Caveman: Hell no, this will be way easier... I won't even break a sweat!

Tough Guy Caveman: Aww man, you're so lazy!

Lazy-ass Caveman: If you think I'm lazy, wait 'till you meet my descendants...

I for one am glad that most of the rules are going to be optional. Otherwise you might as well throw in bathroom requirements and a mood meter. =P I realize it's supposed to be a challenging game, but I prefer playing my games for the story. If I want a challenge, I'll go play some Quake Live against a bunch of hyped up, twitched out teenagers. Of course, when I was a teenager and heavy into playing FPSes, you didn't see me running around in Doom on Nightmare Mode with just my fists... O.o

While all you "hardcore" folks are crawling through the desert (if there's a desert..?), praying to find a drop of water, I'll be busy immersing myself into the atmosphere and story of the game.

I've personally never played a game where food and water were requirements so I plan on turning those rules on. I can understand how such requirements might become a hassle, however I'd imagine running low on provisions while in the desert would add rather than subtract to the story. (i.e. a kind of background atmosphere to get you feeling for your character's ailments.) But I guess we'll see, and likely just as many people will disagree then as they do now.

Heh, a little earlier I typed this:

Unclever title almost wrote:I'd imagine running low on provisions while in the dessert would add rather than subtract to the story.

Somehow the meaning was completely different by adding just one s in the wrong place. The story would most definitely take an unexpected turn there.

English is fun.

"Here I am, sitting in this giant bowl of strawberry shortcake, starving to death because I have nothing to eat... Woe is me, what shall I do??"

CrazyBernie wrote:
Well if it weren't for us lazy folk, we'd still be stuck in the stone age....

You have a point. Laziness can spur innovation. Although, it would be hard to innovate absent being motivated in the first place. In game; I'm never more motivated than when I have 2 thugs on my tail, 17 hp, and haven't saved in the past two hours. How can I survive in this situation? I lure them to the powder keg, because I'm lazy too!

I think we're talking about different types of being lazy here. Deliberately defeating game mechanics to make it easier just means you're playing wrong and are too lazy to think about doing it right.

But hey, BW is making these new book II mechanics optional for people that have less time and/or want less of a challenge.

function.require wrote:I think we're talking about different types of being lazy here. Deliberately defeating game mechanics to make it easier just means you're playing wrong and are too lazy to think about doing it right.

I'm assuming that you are referring to things such as re-rolling chests/corpses/locks and not the lack of food/thirst/sleep functionality since those mechanics weren't included in Book I and therefore couldn't be "defeated."

To which all I can respond is: *shrug* Yeah, I've done all that. But I find that spending large amounts of time re-rolling a chest is less "lazy" and more "stubborn curiosity." To open a chest, find nothing and just move on is far more lazy, IMO. It's that natural draw of "what could have been" that keeps me re-rolling.

Re-rolling to avoid a disease is more of an example of laziness I suppose. Avoiding the need to run back to town because I don't have a cure disease potion and I'm standing near the end of a lengthy dungeon and might not make it is good enough reason for me to re-roll that corpse. You see it as a challenge, I see it as an inconvenience keeping me from completing that quest.

I was recently playing a game called Zombie Shooter, because it had that old school Doom feel of tons of enemies coming at you and you mow them down with various weapons of mass destruction. I reached the final boss, and found myself running around the map trying not to get stomped all the while avoiding/killing swarms of zombies. I was supposed to guide the boss into this huge trap that caused massive amounts of damage, but at some point, the "boss" got stuck against a wall. Did I say "aw, that sucks," and reload from the beginning of the level because the "challenge" was gone? Hell no, I emptied all my ammo into that sucker! If you watch horror movies, the "victim" is always running away and trips and gets stuck on a tree root or something stupid like that. The way I saw it... "Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

I enjoy playing RPGs for the same reason I love reading fantasy/sci-fi: it's a grand story that takes place in a different reality. If I was reading a book and had to risk getting ink squirted in my eyes every time I turned a page, I probably wouldn't read books anymore. But if holding the book upside down meant avoiding that ink problem, then I'd probably read the book upside down, even if it meant people would call me a wimp, or lazy.

Well, we can agree to disagree! Since the food and water requirement will be optional it is a win win situation. I will be turning on probably all the options. I especially like the food/water requirement. I believe it adds to the story and makes you plan your trips through hostile environments. I believe weapons should degrade and break. Many weapons were created to disarm or break an opponent's weapon. But, you can turn the option on or off. The power is yours!

Meh, I personally love the idea of Food/Water requirements. On the other hand, I play a lot (read: way too many) of roguelikes, so Food/Water is kinda standard to an RPG for me. Bread and water FOR THE WIN!