Meat, Part Two

[nauta]

Simple question:

Do you think meat (in particular) and animal bits, in general, are too prevalent? 

I'm of two minds.  First, a master ranger can definitely run through the Vrun Driath region and come back with fifty pieces of chalton easily.  On the other hand, non Master rangers might suffer.

Solutions: make master skin not quite as masterful; make things like chalton and scrab give off less meat; make bodies rot (unskinnable) after a certain amount of time; more meat eater creatures (e.g., some critter that roams the Vrun gobbling up objects).

[bardlyone]

No, in fact, I think that until the creature who weighs, say, 200lb, is giving off 100lb of meat, it is artificially low.

I do think that people are killing more than they need to and leaving shit laying around and that is gross and cluttering and breaks immersion to a degree when it's food.

I can't help but wonder if you could simply tag skinned items that have not yet been picked up from the room they are skinned in, to disappear after X ticks the same way that veins/deposits/quarries of stones do. I think that would fix the problem. Also if it did the same to foraged rock that people leave laying around.

[Riev]

I'd be okay with mob corpses disappearing at a faster rate due to being baked in the sun.

I'm okay with nearly every body dropping -some- meat. Some animals are clearly meat animals (like chalton, versus scrab). I don't think that's the concerning part, at least for me.

I think eating raw meat vs cooked meat, or food items that come from a certain level of skill, should be noticeably more filling. Or raw meat having a chance to give you a sickness that lasts for a few IG hours.

[Riev]

random thought - What if there was an NPC like the poop buyer, that purchases ONLY RAW foods from a bag, and returns a pittance for bringing it in? Like, you bring them a full bag of meat, they might give you a small (and it takes a LOT of meat to fill a bag).

Then at least there is incentive to pick up the meat, and it'd make sense that the city pays for raw meats for cooking/etc.

[bardlyone]

random thought - What if there was an NPC like the poop buyer, that purchases ONLY RAW foods from a bag, and returns a pittance for bringing it in? Like, you bring them a full bag of meat, they might give you a small (and it takes a LOT of meat to fill a bag).

Then at least there is incentive to pick up the meat, and it'd make sense that the city pays for raw meats for cooking/etc.

This is neat, and would make sense if it was in the slaughterhouse, perhaps near the meat counter that sells all that meat - of course they could resell it at a markup.

[Delirium]

random thought - What if there was an NPC like the poop buyer, that purchases ONLY RAW foods from a bag, and returns a pittance for bringing it in? Like, you bring them a full bag of meat, they might give you a small (and it takes a LOT of meat to fill a bag).

Then at least there is incentive to pick up the meat, and it'd make sense that the city pays for raw meats for cooking/etc.

This is neat, and would make sense if it was in the slaughterhouse, perhaps near the meat counter that sells all that meat - of course they could resell it at a markup.

I like this. Sometimes you're not out there for the food alone, but you need X number of hides for Y project.

Being able to turn in all the edible bits would go a long way to making this feel less... weird.

[Riev]

It could even tie in with Ath's mention about turning in "tokens" to an NPC to track plot progress. Just have someone occasionally checking, if possible, the amount of meat that is getting turned in. That data alone might be able to drive some decisions from staff as to whether there is a lot of "useless" meat dropping or not.

[Miradus]

This is a little bit of a modern notion popping up into the game world. The concept of "wasting meat" isn't hardly known amongst tribal peoples. Not because they eat every part (some do, most don't) but because they eat the parts they like and leave the rest for their dogs or as carrion.

The modern notion is propped up by movies and literature which takes modern ideals and projects them back onto more primitive peoples. For example, "Dances With Wolves" where the Indians are horrified by the slaughter of the buffalo just for their pelts. 1st person accounts and anthropological studies have shown that most primitive cultures eat what they want and leave the rest. If they're hungry or in hard times they may consume more than normal, but in times of plenty they are pretty picky.

If the meat is a problem, don't blame the player hunter. It's a code issue. Do you blame the tavern sitters who spend 3 game days sitting at the bar chatting without ever buying a drink? Implement some clean-up code or mobs that will pick up or eat the meat.

[Synthesis]

The only mass-slaughter I see around lately is from mobs that are aggro.  So it's likely not that PCs are out spamkilling them for nefarious reasons, but that it's simply easier to kill it and move on than it is to flee and and risk a) wearing out your mount and b) not paying attention to where you're going and ending up in a bad spot.

[nauta]

I actually meant the question in terms of game play.  (My hunch is in the south, it is other mobs generating loads of bodies near reboot -- plus aggro mobs that you didn't want to fight in the first place.)


My characters end up junking a lot of meat -- sometimes I feed my beetle, sometimes I junk it at the NPC/vNPC spots that make sense, sometimes I leave it.

I guess the thought was: We implemented this meat decay code which I was supposed to motivate more hunting, but it still seems like there is a lot more meat out there than we need.

[Miradus]

My character is always thirsty, almost never hungry. I don't actually know that I've ever really even seen the hunger messages.

[Akariel]

Simple question:

Do you think meat (in particular) and animal bits, in general, are too prevalent?

I'm of the mind that they aren't, which is why I started the Meatcraft project. In this project what I'm doing with the help of numerous other staff and builders is trying to make sure every single thing in the game drops at least a little meat. Yes, this does open up the game to more people who go out hunting for specific things and leave their kills laying all around. Yes, this does mean some people will drop the offal and bone-marrow broth in favor of the steak. People leaving kill all over the ground, however, is something that could make an interesting plot.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,51342.0.html
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,51343.0.html

I'm of two minds.  First, a master ranger can definitely run through the Vrun Driath region and come back with fifty pieces of chalton easily.  On the other hand, non Master rangers might suffer.

While the only released portion of Meatcraft right now is the Gol Krathu region (not including the Grey Forest), when we get down south I plan to tweak the way those races are skinned as well. This might be in the form of adding more meat, or it might be in the form of removing some. It might be making skinning particular things -more- difficult, or less. If you have thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them in a clan related: question request clanned to the Byn and titled ATTN: AKARIEL. I cannot and will not promise that I'll be able to use every idea, but I do always love getting insight on the topic.

Solutions: make master skin not quite as masterful; make things like chalton and scrab give off less meat; make bodies rot (unskinnable) after a certain amount of time; more meat eater creatures (e.g., some critter that roams the Vrun gobbling up objects).

1. Already working on it.
2. Bodies do rot - well, they disappear after a certain amount of time.
3. I'm not sure that's the issue, as they only eat bodies - not the left over mess from hunters who leave their skinnings behind. I'm up to different opinions, however.

No, in fact, I think that until the creature who weighs, say, 200lb, is giving off 100lb of meat, it is artificially low.

I agree, to some respects. Actually getting a 650 stone critter killed, skinned, cleaned, and then preserved would not only be a huge process I don't think anyone wants to deal with in their game, but would give you more meat than you or the entire playerbase could eat before it all rotted. So in some respects we do need to make sure that every creature isn't feeding the world, too, or becoming too tedious a process for people playing hunters.

I do think that people are killing more than they need to and leaving shit laying around and that is gross and cluttering and breaks immersion to a degree when it's food.

My best suggestion here is to always give other players the benefit of the doubt. You don't know why another character did something some way. They might have had a perfectly valid reason for it.

I can't help but wonder if you could simply tag skinned items that have not yet been picked up from the room they are skinned in, to disappear after X ticks the same way that veins/deposits/quarries of stones do. I think that would fix the problem. Also if it did the same to foraged rock that people leave laying around.

People leaving stuff around seems to be an issue that can be resolved by players through IC motivation and plot, rather than being ignored.

I'd be okay with mob corpses disappearing at a faster rate due to being baked in the sun.

I'm okay with nearly every body dropping -some- meat. Some animals are clearly meat animals (like chalton, versus scrab). I don't think that's the concerning part, at least for me.

I think eating raw meat vs cooked meat, or food items that come from a certain level of skill, should be noticeably more filling. Or raw meat having a chance to give you a sickness that lasts for a few IG hours.

This is already the case. Raw meat is not as nutritious for you as cooked meat. I decided not to go and make all raw meat poisonous, but it did cross my mind a few times.




Anyways y'all, I'm keeping an eye on this thread. I'm always open to hearing about new ideas in this field, and again, while I can't make any promises, it might give me an idea to branch off on.

[Riev]

I will say, the "slabs" of meat that are in the Gol now? They are amazing. I love that its more of a butchering, more of an ordeal now.

Right now, the chalton, scrabs, spiders, raptors... they just leave corpses everywhere, and either someone is getting free skinning lessons, or they're looking for only one out of the 5 things that skin off a corpse.

IC is IC is IC, and I get it, but when someone litters the entire Vrun Driath and nobody knows who or when? What do you do?

[Miradus]

Hear that, you filthy southies? When Akariel is done you'll be eating cock too.

The new skinned stuff in the north is pretty cool. More stuff on the ground. Hurray.

I dislike the idea of getting diseases from raw meat. It simply isn't common. For example, rabbits carry certain parasites that can make you really ill, but any rabbit infected with them is going to look incredibly sick and you won't be eating it. And there's very little chance of a disease crossing from say, insects to mammals.

I've had tribal characters who loved sinking their teeth into a big chunk of raw flesh straight from the kill. Not as filling? Sure. But remove it as a roleplay alternative completely? No like.

[Lizzie]

I really love the idea of a raw-parts-buyer. I even know WHO the buyer could be: an agent for the Union of Allied Allanaki Cooks local 420, who supplies raw bits for Byn stew, all other house stews/soups, and various sauces and stuffings used in preparation of house savory dishes.

The buyer could buy all raw meats, entrails, guts, eyeballs, brains, gellid masses of who the hell knows what. He'd buy it in the same way that the spice buyer in Red Storm buys spice - different types have different values, but he requires a minimum turn-in to get anything at all - with none worth more than "x" sids each.

[bardlyone]

stuff

I think the meat revamp is amazing.

I don't like seeing spammy stuff laying around outside, it's just the same thing that makes me compulsively use arrange over and over in an apartment so stuff decorating it doesn't run past a line. An aesthetics-based tic of sorts.

I know people are hunting more than they need to (for food alone) because I've played someone who works leathers who's had to hunt down more than a handful of things (thus more than they can eat) just to cover basic expenses for food, rent, mount rent, etc. Its just the nature of the skin code not dropping more hide, when you're messing up 3 out of 4 hides in either tanning or crafting and can get the meat of four animals but wind up with a 14 sid belt you can sell, not even covering mount rent.

That's why I like the proposed idea of the raw meat buyer or the notion of making the skinned stuff that doesn't get picked up disappear.

[Molten Heart]

.

[Jingo]

I think there needs to be a junk vendor that allows you to sell all those useless bits you'd collect from a kill. Even if it's for 10% of the item value.

Okay. I got the steak to last me another two ic days. What now? I don't bother picking up the hide or the bones or the horn because the market is already saturated at a quantity of five.

[Raptor_Dan]

I wish vultures would fight you over those bits of meat and entrails left out if you didn't get to them soon enough.

[Evilone]

I think in the south around nak we went from only having like spiders and scrab around, to a shitload of chalton. Synthesis is right tho. Its mostly npc critters killing each other leaving mass quantitied of meat on the ground. Maybe a couple chalton spawns need to be removed?

[bardlyone]

I think in the south around nak we went from only having like spiders and scrab around, to a shitload of chalton. Synthesis is right tho. Its mostly npc critters killing each other leaving mass quantitied of meat on the ground. Maybe a couple chalton spawns need to be removed?

I can't really agree with this with how many times I've gone out and found literally no chalton. Also, when an npc kills a chalton it makes a corpse which decomposes. When pcs wander the sands and skin the corpse and leave meat, bone, hide, whatever, laying around, THAT STUFF does not decompose, or at least only the meat does, and only slowly. That's a big part of the issue, people coming along and skinning these mass corpses laying around thanks to that scrab, and just leaving it all to (most of it NOT) rot.

[BadSkeelz]

I think duskhorn dicks should be a whip weapon.

[nauta]

Re: Chalton -

I think it's something about reboots -- the Vrun goes kind of crazy around then, and a lot of bodies are left.  I played a chalton farmer for a bit, and there's definitely some variability in how they spawn which I wasn't ever able to figure out.

Skinning them and leaving the bits is on a PC, but one doesn't have to assume bad form (perhaps they got distracted or whatever).  That said, you can always do:

Code Select Expand


get meat; junk meat (feeding ~beetle);


[Riev]

I think duskhorn dicks should be a whip weapon.

When I heard duskhorn dicks were BASICALLY a real thing, I got super excited.

Too bad in game, it wasn't really a thing that was relayed, and we spent in game HOURS scouring Allanak for a duskhorn's dick.

/derail


Nobody wants to be the guy to go around and clean up someone else's skinning mess. I know when I'm leading some sort of group, I tell them to junk or bury the "squishy" stuff because otherwise it'll attract spiders and other nasties. Not everyone follows suit.

I've walked down the road to the west and just seen literally 8 scrab corpses on the road. Sometimes its not even a corpse, but the full list of skinned items without a single thing taken. I think THIS is what people are talking about, not the "oh man a chalton killed another chalton in a fit of passion and now there is a random corpse out here.

[Reiloth]

Why not make skinned goods become hidden after a few minutes, and allow hunt to reveal them?