CLOK BBS

This started as a reply to Merin's thread, but this post got so long and deals mostly with stuff that isn't thaumaturgy so I started a new one.

Rias wrote:We would love to have more specific feedback. The hot topics I can think of are mostly Church related - the more involved/patience-requiring initiation consideration process, more specific thaumaturgic guidelines (they were always the expectation from the beginning; now they're just more clarified), adhering to behavioral guidelines in general - a lot of people don't like that they have to do this (I'm still not sure why they want to be in the guilds if that's the case, but I've never gotten an answer on that).

Well, Rias, you know I'm not one to be particularly quiet about the things that bug me, and you and I have gone back and forth on the thaumaturgy thing enough already. The only thing I could add to the conversation at this point is that you've made it clear that thaumaturgy and the Church of Light aren't going to change, as they are your wish-fulfillment pet projects (which sounds worse than it is and you've called the Church that yourself), so I don't see the point to discussing it any further. And I've told people that. But I also think you handled the establishment of the Wyrvardn and Jilliana's leaving the Templar for that guild especially well, so it isn't like there aren't options for people who don't like the Knights Templar. I think getting that non-thaumaturgic healing guild out will further alleviate the situation by giving people an option who want to heal but don't fit the Monastic Order, so I was pleased when I heard that is in development.

The non-Church-related things I can recall hearing a good deal of complaints about are horses getting tired (the general outcry was "make it less so", which we did, and I haven't heard anything on the subject since), and the recent nutrition expended on energy regeneration, which I also haven't heard any further feedback on after the initial burst and tweaking, so I'm assuming we've found a happy place there.

So, what are the big-ticket issues? I hear a lot about long-time players getting grumpy or wanting to leave, or people saying CLOK is in a big decline. I hope some of the people feeling this way will give us some specific details as to why they think that is. I've had a couple people make some general allusions, but for the most part it seems they're content to be upset about it but not make it clear to staff.

Here's your chance to be bold. Voice your opinions, tell us why you're upset with CLOK, and give us a chance to actually do something about it. Complain to your friends about it to vent, sure - but it would be really useful if you took the major points of your vent and then informed us on staff so that we can realize the concerns are there and address the specific points. Help us know and address the problems in CLOK. If we never hear about it, we can't take care of it.

I wasn't going to say anything at first, but since you're asking: A contributing factor to my deciding to take a break from CLOK is that there's been several recent changes that have added to my game-related stress, when I have more than enough RL stress right now, and I figured that I should distance myself from the game before evaluating said changes. I wanted to see if the changes were actually bad or if I was just suffering from "This isn't how it used to be, and I don't like it." And I was thinking that maybe the individual changes weren't too bad, but they seemed to come back to back to back which just compounded the effect. Most of this is stuff that I've already emailed you about, but here you go:

The Hunger Game
Unless things have changed since after my break, hunger is still pretty bad. I was giving you a chance to tweak it before saying anything further. Quite frankly, I don't see why we have a hunger mechanic at all, and if it was my game, I'd get rid of the entire system since it does nothing but frustrate players. I do remember how I've posted that "Some things are there to kill, annoy, or inconvenience you," but that was about mobs. The difference is that CLOK is a combat MUD, so the fact that there are nasty things wanting to eat my face and not drop phat lewt is expected. CLOK is not a survival game, so having my exploration, roleplay, and combat interrupted by a "You're starving!" message is just irksome. It contributes nothing, and it interferes with my ability to enjoy the real game.

If CLOK was a survival game, it'd be a different story. I'd be expecting to worry about things like hunger, thirst, exposure, and not digging my poop hole upriver... and I probably wouldn't play. Some of it doesn't even make sense: It takes close to a real life month to straight-up starve to death, but we'll die from it in CLOK in a matter of minutes. You can die from dehydration in three days, but there's no system for that at all. Hypothermia is pretty crappy and can kill you in hours (unless you fall in a river or something and then you're screwed), but usually not if you're wearing warming layers and keep moving unless it is obscenely cold. A lot of times I've had to ditch warming layers if I was moving. Frostbite is the more typical problem, but even that is mitigated with proper gear. Heat stroke or heat exhaustion can drop you in a matter if minutes if you're dehydrated and wearing too much junk, but there's no system for that at all.

So you have a couple of half-implemented systems from a game I don't want to play mixed in with the game that I do want to play. I got pretty good at ignoring those parts, and then you made them harder to ignore.

Mounted Dodge
I'm a member of a light armor guild (I would have said unarmored, but more on that in a moment), that rides horses (it's in the name), and uses ranged weapons. That means that my one and only defense in most situations is dodge, and that only defense is penalized by close to 50% when I'm mounted like my guild says I should be. It's discouraging. I feel like I'm being penalized/punished for playing the way that I'm supposed to play because if I go out there mounted and in light armor, I get my ass handed to me and start burning through poultices. The only way for me to be successful is by not roleplaying my character appropriately. A lot of this I attribute to the fact that the guild is new, but it still sucks.

Healing/Poultices
This is a pain in the ass, and my efforts to address it were rebuffed or ignored. That does have a discouraging effect on people offering complaints or suggestions. Anyways, whenever I do try going dodge-based and lightly armored, I get smacked around. One good hit gives me a moderate wound, and that means needing to run all the way back to the infirmary or use a poultice every time. It takes more time to make poultices than it does to burn through them, and I don't play CLOK to be a herbalist. It's something I do to support what I want to do, which is fight, and that means all that time spent trying (and failing) to find herbs, grind herbs (which doesn't even grant skill anymore), and assemble poultices is work. Mind-numbing, carpal tunnel-inducing work that I half-heartedly do on one monitor while screwing around with the internet on another since I won't automate it lest I get an ASP.

Eye Shots
Rias, I remember you wistfully talking about a player who tried a "hardcore" character who didn't come back from death and being sad that he died so quickly and that no one tries that anymore. Or that people don't take death seriously. Well, I've got the answer for you: Eye shots. Freaking eye shots. I will never play a hardcore character on CLOK because hours upon hours of work can be lost by a single die roll that is completely out of my control. I once racked up three eye-shot deaths in a couple of hours at which point I called it a night, and by that I mean that I was decked out in full plate except for my eyes (because of perception) and that three different bears ate my face for 51, 53, and 57 points of damage.

This is also why people stop roleplaying death like it matters: I tried that when I first started playing, and then I just started getting annoyed. Jilliana would be upset whenever she found my body, but by that point I was less "getting killed is a traumatic experience and I should roleplay it as such" and more "Again?! WTF am I supposed to do about lucky one-hit kills? Get off my back. This has happened before and you'll know it'll happen again and I need to get back to work."

You might be reading this and thinking, "But it's realistic! People drop dead in real life from a single shot all the time." Yeah, they do, but they also don't train solely with force-on-force live-fire exercises. They spend hours, weeks, months, and sometimes years training to hone their skills before entering combat. CLOK isn't that kind of MUD. I have played that kind of MUD, where all characters were hardcore characters and you trained and roleplayed your skill gains in non-lethal scenarios before it was show time, but CLOK isn't it. If you want people to take death seriously in a game like CLOK, they need to feel like they had control over the situation. If they died, it needs to be because they screwed up, and not because the RNG got pissy. I used to pride myself on a low death count because I played smart and knew my limits, but that stopped when I started getting killed at the drop of a hat.

It makes me wonder how any of these NPCs develop their skills. The world in general is just comically lethal at times. Feeding your hand through a sawmill is a career-ending event that virtually only happens if you do something extremely dumb, but it's a regular occurrence in CLOK. I've done it twice in one hour. Are there any mortal lumberjacks or miners? How do they survive the falling trees and rocks?

Armor Weight
In my ongoing quest to not die randomly or burn through poultices at the cyclic rate, I started wearing heavier and heavier armor. Actually, it started because I hit a soft cap while wearing leather armor: I was still regularly getting the armor penalty, but I wasn't learning any more armor usage skill to mitigate that penalty (which, honestly, shouldn't happen because if I hit the cap that means I shouldn't be getting the penalty). So I put on heavier armor to train the skill in the hopes that when I went back to light armor my skill would be so far above the requirements that I wouldn't be getting that penalty anymore, but I haven't gone back to lighter armor because I get chewed up and spat out when I do. Now I qualify for Armor Mastery and people have described Elystole as "that guy wearing heavy armor and carrying firearms." FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-- That's Kent! You could say that about Kent! I don't want to be Kent, but wearing heavy armor is the only way I can train somewhat effectively!

And it isn't for lack of trying. I don't get Tumble or whatever else you guys get, so I did things the hard way: I have over 1500 dodge and 1000 shield use. I've heard GM after GM say that a lot of people's defenses are too far behind their offenses which is why they get killed on tasks, so I purposefully went the opposite route and overtrained my defenses. Well, that didn't do anything about the one-hit kills, and you still get hit disappointingly often while training even when you outclass them just because of the sheer volume of combat. Then GMs told me that if my guild ever got tasks then they'd be set at the 1500 level, not according to my offensive strength, so I've been playing catch up. That also means that combat advantage I had is going away.

Still, it was working for a while. In heavy armor and with high dodge, I was doing pretty well and I could get through a training session no worse for the wear because I am constantly bandaging (with over 1000 first aid skill). And then the armor weight change came. It wasn't enough that heavy armor penalizes your maximum rolls, sometimes by close to half when you whiff your armor use check, now I'm getting penalized for weight too. It's a double penalty, and it means that I just stopped dodging. Remember, my dodge is far, far above whatever I'm hunting, but if I am in armor, I completely stop dodging. I never roll high enough to do it successfully. If I'm not in armor, I'm getting smacked around for moderate wounds all the freaking time, and now I've hit the point where I'm fighting nasty things that ambush you, knock you down, throw you around, and whatever else.

By the way, professional warriors don't wear things that keep them from fighting effectively. If knights couldn't maneuver and fight in plate, they wouldn't have worn it. I've seen video of amateurs, men with no previous armor training, donning full plate then running an obstacle course, tumbling, and fighting. You wouldn't want to go swimming in it, but the armor is designed to support its own weight which means it is nowhere near as encumbering as you would think, and... Nevermind. Read this explanation from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They do a much better job.

Armor Durability
By the way, another reason I don't like wearing light armor is that it falls apart far too easily. I can get beat up day in and day out wearing metal armor and repair it no problem with just a few minutes in the forge. Not only does leather armor not protect as well as metal armor, but it isn't anywhere near as durable. Why should I wear something that doesn't protect me and falls apart?

Riding
I still can't get decent riding gains. It's one of my guild's four primary skills, and there's even in-game rumors about how we're such fantastic riders. And I can't learn anything. I had "be the best rider in CLOK" on my to-do list because, you know, "Outriders," but that's not happening with the current system. It's the only skill I really care about that is sub-500, and more than half of my ranks have come from guild abilities (basic training and war riding). It especially sucks when I ask a veteran player for advice and all they can say is, "Oh, I just rode everywhere!" It doesn't work that way anymore. Not even mounted combat increases riding skill.

Grinding
I know how to grind and I kind of like it. Hence my skills. But it is time-intensive and slooooow. That means that I don't feel like I can hop onto CLOK for a quick bout of training because an hour or two of pure training, meaning no roleplay or anything else, finishes about a single lesson. That's six skill ranks. And that's not counting things like roleplaying, poultice-making, or raising the money to pay for the training when mobs aren't providing adequate funding. That and the ever-present threat of something crazy happening that requires my involvement means that if I log onto CLOK I am planning on being online for a while. Otherwise I don't feel like I've accomplished anything or I feel like I won't have time to give events their proper attention, so I don't log on at all.

...

My RL is pretty stressful and I come to CLOK to have fun, but I haven't been able to play my character the way I want and be effective. At least I could still train and work towards that glorious day when I get a few abilities or something and can actually be an Outrider and not a merc with guns, but I still wasn't learning any riding while grappling with the mounted dodge penalty. Then the hunger change came and I had to adjust how I operate, but while I was still figuring that out the armor weight change came and suddenly I'm nowhere near as effective as I was before. And one of the few things that I was deriving enjoyment from, moving into high-level hunting areas and getting damn good at skinning and leatherworking, blew up in my face when I was told that going back into Stone Canyon would trigger a war. Which is cool. It's an event. The timing was just personally bad with everything else going on in my life both inside and outside of CLOK and crossed the threshold of how much serious business I had the energy to deal with.

There's no one thing I can point to and say "That's why CLOK stopped being fun." It's more a series of smaller things that piled up the stress to tip the balance away from enjoyment. So I stopped. I'm taking a break, and I figured I'd come back later and try combat when I can fairly evaluate the changes instead of constantly thinking, "This wasn't this frustrating yesterday. Yesterday I was kicking ass and having fun. Today I'm not." And maybe a few changes would happen in the interim.

And for the people who are wondering whether or not Rias really wants us to discuss these things, you should know that I talk to him whenever I make the boards blow up about a game issue. You don't see it because I usually do it via PM, email, or Skype/IRC him, but take this Skype exchange about a previous discussion for example:

[7/25/2014 5:31:25 PM] Elystole: I'm writing a reply to your reply to my post on the boards, but I'm hesitant to post it because I don't like publicly disagreeing so soon after the last disagreement on the church guidelines. Even if I am taking my time writing it to try and make sure I don't sound the least bit snarky.
[7/25/2014 5:38:17 PM] Rias Clokdevski: Go ahead, the BBS has been too quiet anyway.

I've never had Rias tell me not to post something, but I will say that if an issue is of a more delicate nature that I'll email the GMs or even just him directly about the problem instead of use the boards. Sometimes it is a lot easier to get something resolved when you use discretion and give the people involved a chance to fix it without making it blow up in public. And that isn't a CLOK thing but a life thing. The one thing I've never done is complain about something on chat and expect to get it resolved. Chat was the worst option for fixing problems: Completely indiscreet, no guarantee that staff was actually watching, and no permanency.

Oh, right, I forgot something. And I'd usually just edit my original post but it's already been read several times.

Unarmored vs Lightly Armored
I take my cues for how I'm supposed to look, act, and fight from my guild leaders. Wyatt doesn't wear armor. Shadgardians in general, including Samuel (who is not a guild leader, but still someone to look up to), don't wear armor. There's even an in-game rumor about how the local blacksmith complains whenever someone orders armor from him. So, in my mind, the goal is to reach the point where I'm enough of a badass that I don't wear armor like Wyatt doesn't wear armor. I imagine players of characters in the Brotherhood of the Fist, Dwaedn Wyr, the Claw (maybe? I've never seen Shar but I imagine she's unarmored), and whoever else isn't walking around in full plate have similar thoughts. We have guild abilities that promote this.

So, Rias, you suddenly coming down and saying in the Pain Suppression thread that:

Rias wrote:Not the guru, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going into combat, you should wear armor regardless of your guild. Even with, say, thieves - while they have various ways of avoiding getting hit, they're going to get hit at some point. Be smart, take the minor encumbrance (and style) hit, and at least wear some light leather if you're going into an open combat situation. People can choose not to, of course, but it's at their own risk. If you don't wear armor, expect to get hurt when you get hit by stuff.

I can see how Brotherhood guys wouldn't wear armor when brawling with other people and stuff, but if you're going out against things with claws, sharp teeth, big weapons ... yeah, I know you're a tough guy and all, but swallow your pride and wear something protective if you want to live. Considering that, as far as I know, the Brotherhood aren't into anything supernatural, they're going to need to wear armor to get damage reduction. I never really bought into the whole "I'm so tough that my skin is naturally as tough as protective garments" thing (in general, not just with this guild). Otherwise, you can bet Dwaedn would have it.

How about some special gear that doesn't look like your typical armor, to save some face? Leather jackets, vests, pants (light leather), metal-studded jackets and pants (brigandine), junk like that? Then you could be wearing protective gear but not lose cool points since it would still be stylin and not "a leather cuirass" or whatever.

Well, that was a bit of a slap to the face. Like "Really? Then why isn't Wyatt wearing armor? Why don't we have any armor training? Why do some guild have abilities that flat-out don't work with armor?" Even if my guild did offer cool armor, why would I wear it when I can crank out superior quality armor? That was not an insignificant investment of time and riln to get to that point. Heck, I've considered using some of the donation-granted cosmetic alterations you've told me to use to have my superior armor remade into something I'd enjoy wearing, but that brings us back to the durability problem: Why should I use one of my limited alterations and bother the staff for something that is going to fall apart with a few days of use?

Again, individually it isn't a big problem, but it's something that takes me one more step away from who I want my character to be which makes the experience as a whole less enjoyable.

Actually The Claw does seem to encourage light armor use. Not addressing any of your points, just clearing something up.

also to clear up a point, Brofist are encouraged by their abilities if not through rp to not be armored. I don't have an issue with this, as when is the last time you've seen Zarh die. He has reached that point where he can avoid most attacks and when he does take damage he's not so tied down that he can't get away and fix up on the fly.

Not to mention, most of the guild leaders aren't in open combat when you're in their presence. I don't think someone who is in a lounge, office, diner, anything of that nature would be wearing full armor. Like rias said, it's for open combat. I dont' wear armor unless I know what I'm fighting is going to have a good chance of hitting me, otherwise I go with nothing, mainly because I find the dodge penalties and enc penalties to be a real pain in the ass if I can just as easily flat out avoid them.

I haven't been playing Clok for very long, so feel free to disregard this post if you want, but I do agree with the hunger bit. I think it should either be fully put in with everything, (meaning hunger and thirst) or just taken out. The other points that were made I really can't comment on, but I do have a suggestion. Why not as your character moves around the different terrains the energy cost becomes lower? You'd think that as you move around different terrains you'd learn to handle things, so you'd get better as you go traveling more.

blindndangerous wrote:I haven't been playing Clok for very long, so feel free to disregard this post if you want, but I do agree with the hunger bit. I think it should either be fully put in with everything, (meaning hunger and thirst) or just taken out. The other points that were made I really can't comment on, but I do have a suggestion. Why not as your character moves around the different terrains the energy cost becomes lower? You'd think that as you move around different terrains you'd learn to handle things, so you'd get better as you go traveling more.

There are different energy drains for different terrains. In armor I lose 15 energy in forest and in plains I lose 12, and on roads I lose 9. the numbers are high though because my character is usually in plate.

Here are my handful of cents to add to this thread.

* Problem: Armor, encumbrance, energy
I don't claim to completely understand the mechanics of the game. I'm not a mechanics person because I prefer to see cause and effect more than anything else.
It baffle me that I have all this armor skill and I have no benefit from it encumbrance-wise. With as much moving as I do while wearing armor, I would think that wearing it would be much easier on energy levels.
I think of it like this- RL there are heavy coats, shoes, and even dresses that if held in the hands, would feel really heavy. However, when one wears them, the item wouldn't feel as heavy because the weight is distributed evenly for the most part across the body/body part covering it. After a while, you no longer notice it at all unless you weren't comfortable in it to begin with. The link Elystole posted pretty much hit the nail on the head in regards to this.
Solution: The higher the armor skill, the easier it would be to fight and travel in armor, particularly plate. Yes! I completely understand that we're walking long distances at times, but I don't feel it's all that unrealistic to want to walk a handful of wilderness rooms while wearing armor without the fear of getting too tired and have to deal with some MOB that comes out of nowhere.

* Problem: Encumbrance and dodge
My dodge isn't all that high compared to someone like Elystole, but I am happy that I was able to get it to that point. I was doing and feeling fabulous about it and had plans to do some more dodge grinding. Now? What's the point of getting it that high if the instant I slap on the required armor it's going to drop down to sad levels? It's especially sad when I'm doing mounted combat, and like Elystole brought up at the start of this thread, there is conflicting information as to how to raise riding skill.
Solution: The only thing I can think of to suggest is to toss it in with something like Armor Mastery in the case of mercenaries, templar and the like. The ability would give them a not significant, but definitely noticeable ability to dodge while wearing plate. In the case of players that don't have these abilities in their guilds, simply reaching a higher level of armor use could achieve the same, just not as quickly.

* Problem: Hunger and energy
This aspect of the game doesn't bother me all that much as a whole, but it is a little bit frustrating that it has become noticeable to this point. It used to be that having a horse was considered a pretty fun perk to keep hunger at bay. Now one gets hungry much, much faster with even teeny amounts of energy drops that don't last long at all. Not just with wilderness travel, but even with things like herb grinding and cooking. I can grind and grind herbs and not notice I'm hungry at all (mostly because I don't use status prompting) until I'm ravenous. One isn't hungry long enough to actually get any kind of notification.
Solution: I'm really at a loss as to suggestions for this one. I hesitate to state a complaint without a possible solution. It does make sense to me that one would get hungry eventually, but it could still use some definite tweaking still.

There are some other things such as horse energy, the manner in which some roleplay is approached and an interesting unbalance with energy in regards to a few activities that although annoying, aren't that big a deal. The things I pointed out above aren't so bad individually but there is a definite snowball effect that doesn't make CLOK a game that I could be successful at playing right now.

I do have one suggestion I want to make in addition to all the others I mentioned previously. I was wondering if there could be some kind of poll done so GMs know if the bigger ideas they plan on implementing would go over negatively or positively on the playerbase. If there are negative reactions, compromises and the like could be suggested.
It could go something like this:
Q1 How would you feel if we disabled depart altogether?
A) Great! Two thumbs up!
B) Absolutely not! Don't do it!
C) I like limiting it to XX times a month.
D) Other
If other, please tell us why?

This way, you do give us an idea if you're considering or have considered implementing something and you get to gage reactions. It doesn't really have to do with specific or new implementations, but maybe with something you're thinking of changing something to the degree to where it will affect players. The poll doesn't have to be done all the time, but maybe once or twice a year just to gage how players are feeling and we don't feel like mean ungrateful gamers.

Thank you Rias for allowing us to express ourselves.

I have been sitting on a lot of frustration over recent changes for quite a while now. A few urged me to post what was bothering me, but I have hesitated because, let's be honest, no admin enjoys having players [witch] about changes they're making. I was already getting the sense that some of the gms were getting a bit burned out, and I didn't, and don't, want to contribute to that.

However, I can also see the point that feedback can be very important and that a game isn't a game without players. So I will try to put some of my thoughts down in a constructive manner because when it comes down to it, I think clok still has a lot of potential.

First, I can agree with pretty much everything that Elystole said in his first post here. In fact, he covered almost everything I would have. In a word, overrealistic. Sure, realsism can be an important part of a game, and too unrealistic just feels weird. On the other hand too much realism really dampens the fun for me because I end up spending more time working around all of the various limitations than I do just playing the game--roleplaying or building up skills or whatever.

To add to Elystole's list of things that I feel contribute to too much realism is the whole needing both hands free to pull a handcart thing. I'm having trouble understanding what that positively contributes to the game, while it certainly does create problems for the players. It just feels very unnecessary and silly and annoying.

Along the same lines are the changes the druids and the gaiya. Now let me say that, if there were ways to detect when a situation might be leading to the gaiya getting stressed before it happens, if it were a bit more predictable, then I would have no problem with the druids feeling the pain for it, and even the animals setitng it off if severely overhunted. But from my experience when I was playing, and from what I've heard from others since, this is not the case. Instead, you have a situation where anyone hunting a creature or cutting down a tree might set off a distress, they have no way to know that it could happen or to prevent it aside from just not doing the action, and the druids feel it and therefore are icly expected to respond. What are we supposed to do, though? Tell people never to log or hunt animals? How fair is that, really, when tasks and crafting things require those very things to be done? Several of us have made multiple requests to have a way to detect when a problem could be about to occur in an area, but my impression is that this isn't in the gm's game design.

All of this makes me not really want to play my druid at all, because I can't think of a fair way to really make it work. Plus, she had a pretty good business going making armors, although I very much agree that they get damaged way way too easily, but even that she's had to stop because why am I going to risk having her be the cause of unpredictable distress?

Guild tasks. As Elystole said, the solution people keep giving is, get your defense up to equal your offense. Well, Faylen has done just that. I don't have her wearing armor because of the encumbrance and other issues mentioned previously, even though rpwise she'd rather wear light armor as seems to fit her class and well, who wouldn't want some protection? But anyway, she got a task to go to the thermal tunnels and died twice trying to complete that task. I finally gave up, and took the guild point hit which is yet another ouch, but it sure wasn't for her lack of trying. I just think between armor penalties, encumbrance penalties, guild task removal penalties, energy loss and hunger, we're being buried in penalties and limitations that become draining very fast.

Now, having said all of that, I see from the latest changelog that a few of the recent limitations have been lessened a bit, so that seems like a step in the right direction. Perhaps it's more of a matter of tweaking things, I don't know. I'm certainly not opposed to some limitations, but I do think the having fun aspect really does need to balance it out much more.

Ok, I'm going to weigh in on the grievances Elystole has written about, with which I fully agree.
A lot of you probably won't find this as any surprise, but I'll do it anyway and it something actually comes out of this, fantastic.

My personal opinion on the hunger system is, if it's going to be affective, do it right.
Currently, hunger serves no purpose other than to roleplay. Right now, a ration is equal to waybread, is equal to a pie, is equal to a strip of meat. The only difference is, it takes more of that thing to fill you. There are no other benefits from eating whatsoever. Obviously if you don't eat, after a while, you will die, and then die. That's only because it's been coded that this will happen as a result of you not eating.
No matter which food you choose, you fork out the riln for the quantity of that item, but you'd better by it in bulk, because whether you eat one pie, one waybread, two rations, three of four piece of meat, you'll be hungry again within 10 minutes, 15 minutes tops, if you're doing something like exploring, fighting, foraging, etc. The only things that lengthen the intervals in which you get hungry are sitting still doing nothing, or doing something on horseback. Oh yeah, and if you're in a guild that gives you a boost to moving around in the wilderness, which isn't very much anyway.
If we're going to code in hunger, I would certainly think that different items of food will keep you filled longer. It has this affect in real life and that what the GMs are trying to do right? Make this as real as possible without overdoing it?
In regards to pies, I don't know if there's a way to tell if a pie is small, medium, or large, because that too, should affect how much of it you eat, and how long that keeps you filled. a large pie would keep you filled longer than a small pie. It's a darn good thing you guys haven't coded in overeating, cause that would just kill the RP of sitting in a diner with your friend, eating a meal. You'd have to stop after you reached fully satisfied, regardless if you had food left on your plate or not.

Minor taming for udemi
Now here's something that I feel should be tweeked just a wee bit.
Minor taming.
Here's what the wiki says for it.
Druids are able to draw upon their connection to the gaea, influencing animals' behavior, in this case causing them to become temporarily loyal to the
ranger.
Causes an animal target to temporarily become the ranger's ally. If the target was originally hostile to the ranger, it must first be calmed (or asleep)

In order to get this ability, a udemi must first train their druidry skills up to 100.
That takes a lot of work, and they first must have hibernate in case the target is hostile to begin with.
Now, up until just recently, when you cast this spell at the target, 9 times out of ten, the target was tamed and came immediately over to the side of the druid.
I guess the GMs saw Hughe doing this a lot, so they tweaked it. Now, 9 times out of 10, the target refuses or rejects the spell and shakes the feeling off. Before the tweak, if the target shook off the attempt to get it to be loyal to the druid, the druid just had to try again, and again, and again. Sometimes, it took three tries, four tries, five tries, or more, depending on the target. smaller animals did seem to fall under the spell easier than the bigger animals.
Now however, if you try again, the animal will get pissed and come after you.
I have no problem with that part of it. animals, just like people, have a right to say "I don't want to help you right now". The problem is, instead of falling under the spell nine out of ten times, it is now the reverse, where the spell is rejected nine out of ten times.
You all might say so what! You didn't work hard to get your druidry skills up that high to obtain that ability, only to have your attempted rejected repeatedly. Why have the ability at all, if you can't use it enough to make it worthwhile. The animals have a right to refuse as I said, but the spell also has to have a chance of success. One out of ten tries is not a chance, it's a frustration. Please GM... please tweak this a bit more so that the spell has a better chance of actualy being useful?


Hibernation
I have bugged this, because I find it very strange that suddenly, one can not hibernate anything at all in the Tarueka farmhouse, or in the town.
My roles come up saying, 323 vs 100, but the animal does not drop into a coma like they do outside the tarueka area.
I have see no changelog entries saying that somehow, the creatures of tarueka have suddenly refused to hibernate, period.
I can hibernate anything anywhere else, except in tarueka.

I think that's all I can think of currently.

One final note. Over hunting and overlogging are more of a nuisance than a help in finding out which areas are being logged or hunted too much. More evidence needs to be available that there's been too much of something happening in an area, so the person in that area can make the conscious choice to go ahead and pissed of the gaea, or be respectful and move on to a different area.
Sending out warnings does do a thing. a lot of times, people just keep right on what they're doing. Be sending out a warning, I mean the warning argument used with the commune command.
what is a udemi suppose to do... go to that area and teach the gaea violator a lesson?
There's no sense in coding in the druids feeling the pain of the gaea, if there's no good solution to it.

Clayton

I'd just like to say that I think the new armor and mounted dodge penalties are the best thing to ever happen in CLOK, and in line with what happened to stealth users a long time ago with the addition of terrain penalties and paranoia effect. People used to wear full plate and walk around like it wasn't bothering them at all, and be assured that they were completely protected from everything with almost no penalties. It's nice to see a system that makes you carefully consider whether it's a good idea to constantly be traveling around like you're running into a full blown war. My advise to all those that have an issue is what I always told myself after I strongly voiced my dislike of a new system. Adapt.

I don't say this often when penalties come up, but I just wanted to say thank you to Rias and the other GMs that made this possible. I think the game is a lot better because of it.

I just wanted to offer a clarification...

You do get hungry while sitting down doing nothing. It just doesn't take as long. Jilliana was sitting somewhere yesterday and idling and she got down to hungry from content.