Let's get rid of hunger

[Derakon]

It's been years since that change was made, so I can't remember the exact reasoning given, but I suspect it was something like "knowing that you need to work up some hunger before the Morgoth fight to avoid getting gorged is one of those weird things that basically just serves to trip up newbies." It was practically never an issue outside of the Morgoth fight since most other fights don't involve guzzling large numbers of healing potions, and you're statistically more likely to read Satisfy Hunger before the Morgoth fight than before any other.

[wobbly]

I'm pretty glad gorged is gone myself. Pretending that hitting R 10000 enter before the final fight is adding tactical complexity is just that, a pretencence. It's a gimic rather then real difficulty.

[Netbrian]

I'm OK with eliminating hunger altogether -- I don't think the added bookkeeping is worth the very, very rare cases where it's relevant. There are plenty of other ways to add flavor or complexity that don't come with this baggage.

[Derakon]

It occurs to me that the modern equivalent of the hunger clock is forced-descent mode. It serves a similar purpose as old-school hunger clocks did, of forcing you to progress whether or not you feel ready. By similar measures, there's Sil's collapsing staircases, ADOM's corruption counter, the advancing fleet in FTL or Everspace, the ghost in Spelunky, etc.

Vanilla Angband pretty clearly does not have anything that forces the player to progress besides the player's own desire to progress, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but we may want to consider if there are more options we can add that, like forced-descent, act to push the player to play more aggressively.

[tangar]

I like hunger system; 'gorged' also was fun. Eating is fun It brings more realism to the gameplay.

But it's always alright to add new 'birth' option for player who wish to play without it

[TJA]

I would like to see an option to remove hunger.

[MattB]

I’m seeing lots of arguments as to why it might be a bad idea to remove hunger, and others saying why those arguments may or may not be valid, but I don’t think I actually saw an argument as to why we should remove hunger.

[Netbrian]

I’m seeing lots of arguments as to why it might be a bad idea to remove hunger, and others saying why those arguments may or may not be valid, but I don’t think I actually saw an argument as to why we should remove hunger.

OK, I'll give this a shot --

As mentioned before, in Rogue, the design goal of hunger was to force the player to move forward through the dungeon. Angband is fundamentally not designed for that, which obviates the ordinary game design reason for hunger.

In the current game, hunger is very seldom an issue. It's incredibly rare that it creates meaningful decisions, or tactical trade-offs, even in ironman. It's a box ticking exercise. This comes at a very real cost in terms of busywork -- remembering to cast a spell every now and then, or remembering something has slow digestion.

Moreover, for new players, we're adding one more thing they have to learn for no pay off. It's not even adding interesting complexity -- it'd be like if the game asked you for math facts every few 1000 turns. If it wasn't already part of the game, it's hard to imagine anyone would add the hunger mechanic as it sits today.

I'm open to revamping hunger, but again there's a trade off. We'd need to justify why we're trying to fix this particular game mechanic, rather than simply eliminating it, and if desired, adding mechanics elsewhere. Sure, it's flavorful, but it might be just as flavorful to remove hunger and add item crafting or something.

[Pete Mack]

So a better solution is to get rid of the spell, and make food only intermittently available in town. I agree. (Don't bring back 'gorged' status tho. That is just a nuisance.)

[tangar]

Yeah, satisfy hunger spell makes food not so fun. It's very cheap and makes 'eating' just a very regular and boring activity.

It's so great to appear in the dungeon without food and without possbility to escape! So you need to survive, find _anything_ to eat. Every mushroom is a treasure I had such situation at TomeNET IDDC recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4lP2L_vHzc

Suggestion:
It would be fun to have an option to have 'gorged' status for players who wish to use it. Maybe also enhance it in some way, make it customizeble (via .txt files? constants.txt) or less severe (-10 speed it's pretty huge debuff, I would make it -5.. Maybe even add several gradations for it - so if you are a bit gorged - it's -1 speed ... up to -10 in the end. Having -10 at once doesn't really make sense in terms of logic.

p.s.
this topic inspired me to make satisfy hunger scrolls less accessible at my PWMA server... If this scrolls would be rare/expensive - players would use common food and would meet problems with glutton ghost more often Thanks for an inspiration, guys

[TJA]

I’m seeing lots of arguments as to why it might be a bad idea to remove hunger, and others saying why those arguments may or may not be valid, but I don’t think I actually saw an argument as to why we should remove hunger.

For me, it's just massively annoying and has no purpose.
It is obsolete and it would be great to have the option to disable it.
If you like it, use it - but why have other to use it?

[Sky]

I feel that the only problem with hunger is that nearly every class can create food with minimal effort. Restrict this to CL30 priests and CL20 druids and the problem disappears.

It's a game restriction - you must use a slot for food. You must decide how much weight to sacrifice. If you rely on drops, and do run out, you'll be forced to recall.

Still, i support the idea of a birth option, for those who play harder gamemodes.

[Nick]

A couple of things to note here:

• Of the nine new classes, only druids and rangers get Satisfy Hunger
• Making the player's hunger level never change would be almost trivial to add as a birth option

So one plan could be to add that birth option, and remove scrolls of Satisfy Hunger.

[wobbly]

If you're adding the option you may as well add it for the light clock as well.

[Netbrian]

It's a game restriction - you must use a slot for food. You must decide how much weight to sacrifice. If you rely on drops, and do run out, you'll be forced to recall.

I don't care for this -- it'd encourage you to recall to the town more often, and I think gameplay is more interesting if you visit less often.

So a better solution is to get rid of the spell, and make food only intermittently available in town. I agree.

This might work, but we'd need to think carefully about what kind of gameplay it'd encourage. We don't want people scumming early levels for food if the town runs out.

If you're adding the option you may as well add it for the light clock as well.

The light clock is less of an issue IMHO, since once you've found perma-light, you never have to think about it again. Hunger is more of an ongoing nuisance.

Besides, I'm not sure I favor the radical gameplay changes involved here --

1. Don't go to General Store.
2. Don't buy lantern.
3. Don't kill Morgoth.