stop bumping this

[SnuggleSnail]

Hunger has never functioned as a cathcup mechanic.

[Aerona]

That's like saying rain has never fallen from the sky. Not only does it, but it's impossible for it to do anything else. The way hunger works, it gives new hearthlings and hearthlings that eat fewer food and less valuable food items more FEPs per item than those that eat more of them. Since eating food for FPs is how attributes increase, and because the variety bonus is more powerful at high hunger values, this has an exponential effect on how quick and easy advancement is.

Where it falls apart, first, is items that reduce the effect eating has on hunger value. There's no 'catch-up mechanic' to make it easier to acquire these items, so someone who has them, and more and better of them, simply gets more mileage out of the FEP multiplication and variety bonus than others do. (In most cases, it seems that the FEP bonus is much less significant than the hunger reduction, since retaining a high hunger value both improves FEP gain and reduces the number of FEP required. This is unintuitive and hard to see in the interface.) Hunger reduction items and obsessive hunger management allow players to gain attributes more easily than others even when they play more, not less.

One thing that would mitigate this problem would be if new hearthlings started with lower hunger values, but this would still apply to those who lost their progress on death, so they wouldn't be able to get back toward a level playing field. (It'd also make the game feel slower and less responsive for new players, which would hurt new player retention.)

Most players don't have access to large amounts of hunger reduction, and many don't even eat at tables. For them, the system works as intended, the ones that play less frequently can catch up somewhat with those who play more frequently, since the latter end up needing to eat much more to gain the same amount of attributes. Players that do have access to large amounts of hunger reduction and take advantage of it at all times are able to get much more out of the system, and if they spend more time playing the game and invest that time in making sure they have a) many times more food items b) much more and better Symbel items and c) using inheritance to reset their hunger, the only limit to how much they can gain this way is how much there is to gain this way. There's many potential points of failure there. It's not the underlying system that's creating the problem, it's layer upon layer of conditionals laid on top of it that are all giving the green light to this.

If it was more regular that the most potent Symbel items were the least durable, that would help. (Royal chairs seem particularly silly, they're more powerful than most items even though their use is unlimited. The only limit on those is how much pretentiousness the others around it are willing to tolerate.) The race for ever-increasing item quality would still unhinge any attempt to keep things in balance though, there's still a snowball effect there which can overcome the diminishing returns. So, again, it looks like the best solution is to flatten the curve and reduce the value of increasing the numbers so high in the first place.

If the amount of time, resources, and effort required to get so "far ahead" just means they miss the point of being there, problem solved. Introducing more elements of risk to that kind of extreme gameplay is also a good remedy because while some might still get lucky and pull far ahead of everyone else, those who repeatedly push their luck will see it run out eventually. Rewarding moderation and punishing obsessive overcommitment is good game design, because players who practice moderation make for a more healthy and sustainable playerbase, they're not going to burn themselves out trying too hard all the time.

[abt79]

[Nightdawg]

I'm not reading all that, you've already proven you're stupid, shubla

Inherit hunger.

[Aerona]

Again - in fewer words for the challenged - that's not a good solution because it doesn't address any of the underlying problems and it would unnecessarily kick players when they're down.

Shubla has been gone for years, get over it. And really, if "proof you're stupid" means what you think it does these forums might as well close down because there's no point in having a hundred people in one place calling each other stupid while willfully ignoring each other. It's like someone who plugged their computer into the contents of their refrigerator complaining that technology is bad while eating the food their antics caused to spoil.

[Audiosmurf]

I'm not reading all that, you've already proven you're stupid, shubla

Inherit hunger.

I think this guy acts more like aleck than shubla but am pretty convinced they're a novel retard

[Aerona]

Novelist.

[abt79]

I think this guy acts more like aleck than shubla but am pretty convinced they're a novel retard

Yeah the guy whose literal second post - 40 minutes after creating his account and mere days after reset was announced - was a bump to a SIX YEAR OLD shubla c&i thread is definitely aleck or some sprucecap totally uninitiated to hafen forum culture

guess i could see it being a “madgonad”-style parody of shubla types if the butthurt expressed wasnt so high effort/sincere

[Aerona]

Forget sprucecaps, tinfoil hats are the meta!

The deep tribalism is impressive, the lack of perspective grounding much less so. Feels like watching a couple members of Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas chat about someone they feel has an embarrassing lack of understanding of Roman tradition, while at the same time never having seen a toga before and having no better grasp of Latin.

I mean, look at you. You're talking about 'forum culture' while at the same time just shitting all over it.

[loleznub]

Forget sprucecaps, tinfoil hats are the meta!

The deep tribalism is impressive, the lack of perspective grounding much less so. Feels like watching a couple members of Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas chat about someone they feel has an embarrassing lack of understanding of Roman tradition, while at the same time never having seen a toga before and having no better grasp of Latin.

I mean, look at you. You're talking about 'forum culture' while at the same time just shitting all over it.

imagine having an account less than 2 month old with almost 200 posts on it. Dude spends more time being a forum warrior than playing the game, checks out they don't understand the issue here