We Don't Need Water In Magik Fairy Kingdom of Allanak

[picklehead]

Rindan's the man. Bring on the dehydration! Getting thirsty a bit faster isn't going to make it impossible for city-dwellers and new characters to survive. Water's supposed to be a scarce commodity that people should need to consume as often as food, regardless of where they are in the world. The city doesn't have central air. Even in the shade it's likely to be pretty damn hot.

[Larrath]

It's a while until new characters need to eat and drink for the first time.  A few RL hours at least.

Allanak may be larger than Luir's (if that somehow helps at all), and has buildings with shade and what-not, but it's also in the middle of the South.  Allanak is substantially hotter than Luir's.

I really do like this new approach; the problem isn't that the world is too small, but rather that it's too easy to cross it on a kank without stopping to rest.  Reduce kanks, solve the problem.
Instead of making water increasingly expensive, making it more commonly needed by city-faring folk would not only make people appreciate (and pay more for) it, but they'd also need to worry about it more often.
Drinking a 90 'sid worth of water from your waterskin and then forgetting you have to drink for a couple of RL days is a bit heavy on the purse, but light on the immersion.

And four hours are ample time for a new player to find the Temple of the Dragon, ask a PC where he can buy some water, or contact a Helper/post on the boards and ask.

Water needs to worry people.

[Maybe42or54]

The water in merchant houses isn't unlimited, from my experience, if a Pc doesn't fill the barrels/cistern/what have you, there is no water.

Kurac seems to manage just fine, and as has already been noted, Luir's is a place where thirst rates DO work properly.

Kurac. They seem to always have a leader also. I was talking more along the lines of Kadius, Salarr (I don't know if Salarr still has those barrels and tuns).

Leaving some 'sidless hunter S.O.L.

Are you listing this as a down side?  You mean hunters might have to struggle a little bit?  Awesome.

I am listing it as a downside. If a Kadian leader Pc, or Salarr leader Pc isn't around, and there is a shortage of Rich ass Hunters, and you log on and do some hunting and drink your water, then go back to town, then end up needing more water as you walk through the town, then end up in your compound dieing of thirst to find out the water barrels are empty and you are too poor to buy some and there is no leader Pc around, then you are fucked. And die, or go do something you OOCly know to get some quick 'sid, or do something your Pc probably wouldn't do, so you can log off and not feel like a twink for logging off thirsty.
Which would save your life.
And hell, I bet I'd see more and more of those spam hunters. Their excuse? Have to pay for water. They'd have an excuse. If I played my hunter that only hunted when he had to, I'd have to play a twink hunter just to survive, because I had poor endurance. I got thirsty every other IG day, sitting in town, as it is.

Shade acts like shade in RL?
It moves around from one side of a building to the next.

I agree.  Shaded should act like shade in RL.  If it is 140 F or 60 C and you are in the shade, you bet your ass that you are still dehydrating like mad.  You will be dehydrating slower then if out in the sun directly, but you better believe you are going to be getting damn thirsty.

Until then, I'm not in favor of this.

I think there is a very simple rule of thumb that needs to be applied.  If at any time your thirst rate is slower then your starvation rate, unless there is magik involved, something is horribly wrong.  Water should be concern number one at all times, NOT food.

Then tweak them. Not make one drastically higher then the other just because Luir's has it that way. Allanak is pretty damn tall. Depending on how Zalanthas orbits the sun and all that bullshit, It may be shady -most- of the day.

So, you are going to penalize the Byn Runner so much just for logging on 5 hours a day and loving Arm? And the sarge, who's Character is IG the same amount of time, wont have to buy water every damn day?

No. No thanks.

I don't agree that Red Storm should be a lot higher either. They may have hot winds, but do they ever see the sun down there?

[Jherlen]

I agree with all of this, but I also hear Maybe's point about clan water supplies having shortages. I don't want to have to drag a huge water barrel across Allanak from the merchant or noble quarters (which are WAY far away from the water seller) every single freaking RL day as a leader pc. It gets to be a huge chore.

I'd say... up the thirst rates, and then up the water rations given to clan compounds to compensate, and we'd be all good.

[bloodfromstone]

I heard one or two comments about how, in RL, you have to drink water every day. When you do become thirsty IG, you drink gallons of water, not mouthfuls. I'm sure this is to represent the amount of water consumed over a longer period of time. I, personally, don't want to have to feed my character three times a IG day, drink 8 glasses of water, and use the bathroom in between while I'm trying to play out a scene with someone.

As far as dehydration rates... It would be nice to see water be more of what it is made out to be. It's a thin line between making the game harsher and making it less fun, however. This water business could become a horrid chore, rather than a fun vessel for roleplaying. If dehydration levels do increase, I would suggest that new characters have a decent period of time before they start. Newbies dying on the streets while people laugh at them for asking where the Dragon Temple is (ICly, it should be obvious, after all) won't help our playerbase increase.

[X-D]

Myself, I think thirst is currently correct in game.
And I don't know how somebody has recently had any chars that lived IC years without drinking, even in the city, unless they have very low playtime or never leave the taverns or other buildings.

As it is, The cities represent sanctuary from the harsh deserts, thats why people stay in them...DUH.

Voted a big FAT NO on the poll.

There -should- be a marked difference between the horrid icky wilderness desert and the nice, reasonably safe, lawful (smirk) shady city.

Luirs does not compare, its an outpost, a glorified fort.

Also, to those who don't think there are tall buildings in nak, start reading descs, specialy the ones outside, Nak is full of towers and temples and other tall buildings. Also, why do they need to be tall to give shade? take a look at any RL city which has been around for a few hundred years, even if the building are only 1 or 2 stories, the roads are quite narrow, more like corridors, providing shade most the day.

[Anonymous]

The top of every 'rinthers mind shouldn't be food, it should be water.

I intend to disclose a description of the 'Rinth:

You are standing in the middle of a poverty-stricken alley, the
Highlord's chamberpot of human life.  All about you, piled against
dilapidated stone buildings, are piles of garbage, excrement, and the
occasional corpse -- or perhaps that's simply a sleeping child -- that
gather here.  The sky above, what is visible of its dome through the
blood-tinged air rank with foul scents, shines less brightly upon you, the
sun's rays blocked out by the tall cracked structures of crumbling red
stone, buildings which give this alley a claustrophobic feel, despite its
being quite wide.  

For, you see, life is not without mercy.

Semper Pax,

Dirr

[Ghost]

I would say, providing shade still does not make them so very preserving body water.  The air is dry in Zalanthas, unless it is an Oasis.

I think increasing the frequency of getting thirsty would be a huge penalty for outsiders.  Because it already is a pain for anyone stepping out, unless they are d-elves.

But I think making like:

Inside the buildings, caves, structures, tents, and a few unique places:  Fully Shaded.

Streets in the cities:  Moderately shaded.

Small outposts:  Little shaded (or moderately shaded)

Outside:  No shade.

...Could work?
And in storms, the thirst rate can be increased, I -think-.

Rinth can be considered as fully shaded or moderately shaded I think.  Either would work.

[Maybe42or54]

I don't know what you players are smoking, but I want some.
I live in the southwestern United States of America, and I only really get thirsty once a day and drink a couple glassess of water and I am fine. Even if I do work out in the sun a lot, being a "guard" at a construction sight is fun work.

Now, I play for maybe 2-4 hours a day, if at all, and my pc has to drink water every damn OOC day as it is. Yes it is a city dweller, and no I don't hunt like a freakin' speed addicted maniac, If I do it at all.

[Rindan]

I personally am baffled that there is even an argument over this.  Allanak is in a desert.  DESERT.  It reaches up to 140F or 60C.  The air is bone fucking dry.  Allanak exists for the singular reason that it is a place with walls that has water inside of it.  Allanak is NOT supposed to be a magical fairy land where people don't ever have to drink water.  That is in fact entirely counter to the game.  This is a desert world where survival has hard.  Water is SUPPOSED to be a valuable commodity.  For someone who never leaves the city, water is worth literally nothing.  I have a character who went over 4 days of play time, that is around 65 Zalanthas days of being logged in, who has never once drank.  That is wrong, pure and simple.

Second, shade does not prevent you from needing to drink.  Only in MUD land where shade offers -6 to thirst does shade prevent you from ever needing water.  Should shade slow down your need?  Sure.  Should it eliminate it?  Hell no.

Everyone is going to tear up about how harsh it would be if on a desert world where the temperature peaks at 160F drinking water would just be too much.  Okay, lets work under the assumption that making people drink in the desert world of Zalanthas would just be taking 'realism way too far' and make the game too harsh, then at the very least compromise.

If reality is going to be thrown to the wind, then at the very least, eating and drinking should be swapped.  People should never have to eat while inside a city because there is, um, shade and, um, people don't move around much in a city, so they really don't need to eat.  

There, now eating is gone as something to worry about, and it can be replaced with a need for food.  I personally would much rather Zalanthians never eat then have them never drink.  Water should have value in a city.  Water should have value everywhere.  It doesn't.  That is a role playing destroying quality.

[Packersfan]

140 degrees Fahrenheit is not the same to a Zalanthan as it is to us. I think you forget this. Have you taken into consideration that your character may be getting water while you are quit out, I mean Allanak is huge and who knows what can happen? Finally, I know that my characters in 'Nak always got thirsty, so I don't know what to tell you.

[Sanvean]

The main reason we don't do this is a playability issue.  The vast majority of new players start in the city and adding thirst issues to the panoply of new things they must learn to overcome creates (imo) too high a barrier.

[path]

I also think it should be coded that, if you kill someone, you can drink their blood to rehydrate. The Donner party would agree with me.

[Rindan]

The main reason we don't do this is a playability issue.  The vast majority of new players start in the city and adding thirst issues to the panoply of new things they must learn to overcome creates (imo) too high a barrier.

I understand your reasoning, but I don't believe that the cities should be treated as one giant newbie zone.  I would rather have food needs be dropped to almost nothing for playabilities sake then water.  Newbie still need to eat, but they don't need to drink.  It would be MUCH better to reverse those if you really insist upon affecting the rates of an entire zone for newbie friendliness.

Hell, even better, throw in a filled waterskin for newbie starting equipment, a pile of water filled food, and turn off their ability to dehydrate for a few hours.  Drop the price of water, lower the price of food, do take whatever measure is felt needed to protect newbies, but making it so that you don't need to drink at all is easily absolute LAST measure I would take.  

It is a MASSIVE breach of the game's atmosphere for people to literally live their entire lives without ever needing a drink on a desert world.  It wildly skews the game so that city dwellers, especially poor city dwellers, are always worried about food, but never water.  Sure, food should be an issue in the 'rinth, but an even BIGGER issue should be water.

Hunters and Borsail aids might not appreciate what sort of effect this has on the game, but criminal, city dwellers, poor, and people who are not in RPing rich organizations do.  It seems like mangling the atmosphere for a part of the game that is already marginalized by its lack of staff supported organizations just to help newbies is a skewed way of dealing with the problem.  Declaring the entire city a newbie zone when it comes to dehydration rates seems like an overly extreme step when other newbie friendly options are still available.  

Make it so that newbies don't need water for the first 6 hours of play and load their starting equipment with water.  Whatever you do, please don't mangle the atmosphere of an entire city for newbie friendliness.  Mangling the atmosphere of cities for everyone just for newbie friendliness is like trying to kill a mosquito with a stick of TnT.

[Maybe42or54]

I am baffled on how your pc went four OOC days without drinking water.
I wish mine could go 8 hours without needing a drink.

[ale six]

If the dehydration rates are increased, you might have to worry about dehydrating to death during netsex. This would lead to less netsex. We certainly can't allow that! Therefore this idea should be scrapped.

alesix has spoken.

[Praetorian]

I have a character who went over 4 days of play time, that is around 65 Zalanthas days of being logged in, who has never once drank.  That is wrong, pure and simple.

If you feel your character should be thirsty by then, and that it didn't do its drinking when you were offgame, then what is stopping you from playing out the thirst and just drinking?  Don't need a coded message to do that.  If you want complete realism, I would think there would be outhouses of some sort all over the city, and that every game day you would have the urge to go drop ass.   :twisted:

Also keep in mind 'time' is a sort of skewered thing in a mud environment.  Conversations often take RL hours to type through, but in game time you have been standing on that street corner all day.   The same consideration might be used in referencing frequency of thirst.

[Rindan]

If you feel your character should be thirsty by then, and that it didn't do its drinking when you were offgame, then what is stopping you from playing out the thirst and just drinking?  Don't need a coded message to do that.

Not everyone chooses to play someone rich.  The people that this complete lack of dehydration in cities affects are not the Borsail servants, Tor scorpions, or Kadian merchants.  For these people, it is just a message that flashes across their screen and makes them take a swig of water to make it go away.  There are other people that choose to play poor, elves, 'rinthers, criminals, and common people where water is supposed to be a big deal, not just a message that occasionally flashes across their screen.  If my 'rinther had to drink, you better believe that would have a major impact upon his life.

If you want complete realism, I would think there would be outhouses of some sort all over the city, and that every game day you would have the urge to go drop ass.   :twisted:

Again, you miss the point.  It isn't realism.  It is atmosphere.  Taking a crap doesn't add anything to the game.  Taking a crap has no effect on game play.  It is something trivial to do that adds absolutely nothing to the game.  The need for water in a desert world is not a trivial piece of realism.

[amoeba]

You know it must be a pisser to no longer be a newbie, to know the ins and outs of how to survive.  Perhaps making it harder to survive will bring that challange up to your level, screw the n00bs.  

All sarcasm aside.  Arguing realism is silly in a fantasy game.   We have wounds that heal in an hour, meat that never spoils, we never need to sleep or defecate.  Hell we even have sissors made of stone. Cool.  So arguing realism in this context is rather specious.  

We will agree to disagree.

[Bestatte]

I completely disagree with Rindan about his opinion that taking a crap doesn't add anything to the game. Currently it doesn't - but realistically...

If you have to take a dump, and don't, you end up very - very sick. If you need to pee and constantly hold it in til you can't hold it anymore, on a regular basis, you end up very - very sick. The game doesn't require that you play that out, and the code doesn't enforce it on you. But if you want to add some realism, then add it yourself first - and once you've gotten other people to catch on to the idea, then you can start screaming for more realism.

Realistically, people can't live in a desert world where the average temperature during the day is 140, with no air conditioning, plumbing, or electricity. Zalanthas isn't realistic. It shouldn't be realistic. It was never intended to be realistic. It's a fantasy world. If you want realism, go on down to the middle-east, grab yourself a camel and a pouch of water, and start looking for an oasis.

[Maybe42or54]

Rindan. I have some questions for you. For I am not understanding you, still.

As an independant, salt forager, I had to theoretically drink a skin of water per day, maybe two.
Now, Each waterskin costs 70+ coins to fill. Just because you have 69 'sid, you may dehydrate and die because there is no "Fill up as much as possible" option.
Back to Salt Foraging, foraging salt all day, doing emotes and whatnot, you could "possibly" (but not certainly, I'm making this up) make 76+ coin.
Which means you have to go out and forage all day long again the next day just to get by. Getting you away from people into a very secluded area of the game.

When I was a miner (using partially made up numbers here),  I could work all day and make maybe 200 coin, if I am extremely lucky. Or nothing, if I saw some light green or a magicker grazed me.

That may add a lot to Rping, but in the end. Will it ADD more RP, while negating as little as possible? OR will it get rid of more RP than it fosters? I think the latter is true in this case.

[Rindan]

You know it must be a pisser to no longer be a newbie, to know the ins and outs of how to survive. Perhaps making it harder to survive will bring that challange up to your level, screw the n00bs.

There clearly are no other solution to make water be a non-issue for newbies and the ONLY way to solve this problem is to designate cities newbie zones.

This is a silly argument.  As I already said, if the problem is n00b survival, then fix n00b survival.  Load newbies up with water and don't make them get thirsty for the first few hours of the game.  Newbies are protected and the environmnt is preserved.

If you have to take a dump, and don't, you end up very - very sick. If you need to pee and constantly hold it in til you can't hold it anymore, on a regular basis, you end up very - very sick. The game doesn't require that you play that out, and the code doesn't enforce it on you. But if you want to add some realism, then add it yourself first - and once you've gotten other people to catch on to the idea, then you can start screaming for more realism.

Realistically, people can't live in a desert world where the average temperature during the day is 140, with no air conditioning, plumbing, or electricity. Zalanthas isn't realistic. It shouldn't be realistic. It was never intended to be realistic. It's a fantasy world. If you want realism, go on down to the middle-east, grab yourself a camel and a pouch of water, and start looking for an oasis.

In fact, while we are at it, why not just get rid of thirst for deserts too?  Yeah, I know it is a desert, but what about newbies?  I have tried to play a ranger character, and it is really hard.  Maybe this should be changed as well.  Further, why even bother such levels of realism?  Why are we making people eat?  Why not just get rid of eating too?  

Hell, what is with this whole perm death thing?  Sure, it is realistic, but shit, that makes the game SOO much harder.  We have perm death now, what is next?  Making people cut their toe nails, take a shit, getting lice?  Does perm death really add that much to the atmosphere?

Comparing having to drink to taking a shit is ridiculous.  You could make the same silly argument about any feature.  Someone could offer to make a better and more interesting weather system, a better crime code, improve sneak and hide, or any number of things and someone could respond with "Yeah!  Well what is next!!!! having to pee!?"  Bah.  If you have an argument against it, make an argument against it.  The argument of if you do one thing YOU MUST DO THIS!!!! is silly and holds no basis in reality.  No one suggested that people should have to take a crap in game.

This isn't realism for realisms sake.  This is realism for atmosphere's sake.  It is a frigging desert world.  That is the theme of the game.  If the theme of the game was taking a shit, I would probably be for people needing to take a shit.  It isn't though.  The theme is desert. People should have to drink water.  Why bother setting the game in frigging desert if you don't want to utilize the challenges that such a theme brings?

[Rindan]

Rindan. I have some questions for you. For I am not understanding you, still.

As an independant, salt forager, I had to theoretically drink a skin of water per day, maybe two.
Now, Each waterskin costs 70+ coins to fill. Just because you have 69 'sid, you may dehydrate and die because there is no "Fill up as much as possible" option.
Back to Salt Foraging, foraging salt all day, doing emotes and whatnot, you could "possibly" (but not certainly, I'm making this up) make 76+ coin.
Which means you have to go out and forage all day long again the next day just to get by. Getting you away from people into a very secluded area of the game.

When I was a miner (using partially made up numbers here),  I could work all day and make maybe 200 coin, if I am extremely lucky. Or nothing, if I saw some light green or a magicker grazed me.

That may add a lot to Rping, but in the end. Will it ADD more RP, while negating as little as possible? OR will it get rid of more RP than it fosters? I think the latter is true in this case.

I don't understand your question.  Salt foragers forage salt on the Salt Flats.  Obsidian miners mine for obsidian outside of Allanak.  Both leave the city and will need water even as things currently stand.

If your point is that some profession will become unprofitable due to the price of water, then the obvious and simple solution is to reduce the price of water.  If it turns out that making it so that city people need to drink water on occasion makes the game too hard, drop the price of water.  That said, I am not terribly worried.  People already need to eat every day, yet I don't think I have ever seen someone die of starvation inside of a city.  In fact, most people are have a backpack full of junk, piles of cool looking armor, or are covered in tattoos.  One more minor 'sid drain is not going to be the end of the world.  Even if it is, it is a trivial thing to fix it such that price of water is reduced.

Hell, make it so that people don't need to eat for all I care.  Everyone has to eat every day.  Kill eating and make it so that people only need to drink, and drinking only costs as much as food did if there really is a terror that the population will suddenly die of dehydration.  I would rather the game have only drinking and not eating, instead of the way it is now where there is only eating but no drinking.  This is a desert world.

[joyofdiscord]

My Nakkis have always had to consider water usage.  I think all this years/months/days without drinking thing is kind of overblown, because all of my characters have definitely had water as a pressing issue, even strictly city-bound characters, which the great majority of my characters have been.  Maybe your characters were eating lots of soup and stew, because otherwise, I can't imagine how you could have survived without water.

Also, I don't know about the code surrounding room flags, but it's always seemed to me that being outside in the city, especially in the daytime, and especially during a sandstorm, are more thirst-inducing.  Maybe I'm just imagining it though.  In general, I feel it'd be nice see a modest boost to the thirst rate and a modest downgrade to the hunger rate.  Something that wouldn't even actually affect the difficulty of survival, but just to make water more pressing a need than food.

[amoeba]

You know it must be a pisser to no longer be a newbie, to know the ins and outs of how to survive. Perhaps making it harder to survive will bring that challange up to your level, screw the n00bs.

There clearly are no other solution to make water be a non-issue for newbies and the ONLY way to solve this problem is to designate cities newbie zones.

This is a silly argument.  As I already said, if the problem is n00b survival, then fix n00b survival.  Load newbies up with water and don't make them get thirsty for the first few hours of the game.  Newbies are protected and the environmnt is preserved.

You missed the point of my pointed little comment.  I see this problem come up from folks who have been around sometime.  Things have gotten easy for them.  They know the in's and out's of the game, what it takes to survive. So they start making suggestions on how to tweak the code to make it fit their lack of coded challanges.    The arguements start turning into a lecture about how things "should" be.  

The silly portion of all these arguments is the level of hyperbola used to push thier particular point of view. Silly is the comment that it is possible to live 4 IG days without taking a single drink.  Silly is the approach that that zalathas is unplayable due to the fact that thirst does move at the pace you desire.  There are economics at play here as well, Maybe42or54 stated them well.  Silly is ignoring those arguements because it is convinent to do so.  Silly is repeating over and over again that this is a desert world.  Oddly enough I think we are aware of it.   You have stated your opinion, cool, lets move along.