Let's get rid of hunger

[Nick]

I would like to add that hunger probably shouldn't be a death sentence as it currently is. Hunger should be a factor in how healthy and energetic the character is on their long trek through Angband to slay Morgoth. Not everyday a banquet or the threat of starvation outweighing the threat of the enemies at hand. Right now hunger is effectively binary. You are either fainting or not. There is fundamentally no difference betweeen FULL and HUNGRY or any of the the turn increments between full and fainting. If you weren't guaranteed death if you couldn't find food for too long, but merely had the risk of dying during an encounter increase due to being weakened, then you could avoid saving up food or scumming for it. It would become a calculated risk whether you kept your character well fed or not. All that would be left after that would be adjusting the availability of food to make that risk meaningfully weigh on the player. The current binary system makes food being plenteous necessary.

I agree with Ingwe - this is seriously worth thinking about.

[Hounded]

Long-time lurker so forgive any presumption. I think my most memorable death was a Half-Troll Warrior who died of hunger because he couldn't get out of a corridor full of white lice (though that may have been back in Moria to be honest).

Personally I appreciate the dimension that hunger adds without consuming the whole mechanic. Yes it's a pain to worry about a commodity but who doesn't carry around a pile of {insert your preferred bulk consumable here} because it's what you've decided is a must-have. Food just happens to be less glamourous than Cure Potions.

I would lean towards-
* De-Buff Slow Digestion. It shouldn't permanently solve hunger.
* Reduce availability of Satisfy Hunger
* When HP are below maximum (ie. when healing) then increase the speed of the hunger clock.

I like the possibility of having degrees between Full & "About to Die" with some sort of actual impact on @'s performance but again, not sure it's really worth the effort. Hunger adds atmosphere but it's not critical.

[Carnivean]

A couple of years ago there was a poster that was introducing their son, age approximately 7, to Angband. Because the son was a new player to the game they had to stop and think about everything as it arose. Literally everything was new and wondrous to this child. Every thing you take away from the start of the game, every rite of passage that veteran players had and won't be there any more is something that future versions of this child won't be able to enjoy.

I look back at dying to an eye, literally starving to death, helpless from paralysation with some nostalgia. I want future players to be able to fail so poorly, though hopefully only once or twice. It's part of how we learn that the game is dangerous and complex.

Making starvation optional for seasoned players, or making it trivial to ignore from a game play perspective is good. Removing this experience is, in my opinion, a bad thing.

deification

Deification is already the point of the game! Defeat Morgoth, become a god.

[tangar]

1) it would be fun to have a new curse, which would increase hunger (opposite to slow digestion)
2) add trap of hunger, which would infuse you with such curse for certain amount of turns

Also if there is planned option to turn off hunger (already @ trac), maybe bring back gorged state? Lets it would give less mali, like -3 to speed (or progressive: from -1 to -10) and wouldn't be permanent: so it would stay gorged like 10 turns idle, then your character PUKE and become hungry It would solve problem with the need to 'R' for hunger to be able to drink pots at high lvls.

[Grotug]

I don't want to see hunger become a thing you constantly have to hunt for. I think it's fine as is as far as its availability, but what I would like is for the binariness of it to be removed. That is, when you become weak you should start to be affected by it (you regenerate slower) and when you become faint, instead of immediately entering periodic paralysis mode, you start to drain stats (STR and CON, with CON getting hit harder than STR (for every 3 loss to CON you lose 1 STR). After your STR drops to 3, then periodic paralysis sets in (same as it behaves now). This sort of stat drain should probably trump sustains, just as Time attacks do.

Some elements in a game don't have to be super interesting or super meaningful or super important, for their existence to be justified. I do not think hunger needs to be one or the other: a super-interesting/frequent problem or removed entirely. Hunger has a place in the game's flavor; in its history, but doesn't need to be a major character in the game (and for me it presents a meaningful drawback to playing half-troll warrior since I don't like scumming and so I find myself fainting fairly often!).

That said I'm open to the idea of having food and its purpose in the game be more interesting (Bilbo's Delight as a given example), but I don't want to see the possibility of starving completely removed!

I don't understand the desire to debuff slow digestion. You have to sacrifice something in order to gain slow digestion unless it happens to be on a great piece of kit. But no one is wearing rings of slow digestion over other rings; so why the need to debuff it? It's still a low priority piece of kit even when it almost completely stops the hunger clock. And I have no problem with hunger ceasing to be a concern in the late game due to having slow digestion. Again, I'm not of the belief that the challenge hunger presents in the game needs to be dramatically increased so that slow digestion is a more meaningful concern to the player. Not every aspect of the game needs to be a top concern/challenge. Just as not every resistance in the game needs to be top priority to have. Some things in the game are more important than others. rBase is more important than rPois which is more important than rLite; FrAct is more important than pConf which is more important than slow digestion.

Basically, hunger isn't a super interesting aspect to the game, but that doesn't mean it needs to be removed. I think Carnivean's point is a significant part of my argument.

For people against hunger for the bother of it, what about having the game automatically eat or read scrolls for @ periodically from @'s inventory? Or automatically satiate from food/scrolls on the ground when walked over? Could be added as a togglable game preference.