Goonhub
01-14-2024, 02:47 PM
I'll try to keep it somewhat short, but TL;DR- Hygiene creates roleplay opportunities and is generally a good way to incentivize players to leave their department and meet new people. It shouldn't be removed.
To elaborate, hygiene creates forced moments of isolation from your department- assuming you don't decide to dump out some water on the ground and fall over onto it 50 times. I think these moments of walking from your department to the bathroom are important for creating RP in some circumstances, even if you don't think about them much. There've been a few times where on my walk from medbay to the showers, I see something cool happening in the bar or kitchen, or get clued into an arrest by security, or see a gadget an engineer is putting together. On the way back, I'll stop by for a drink, get some food, maybe talk with security, check out an engineering project, whatever! Getting told by the game to take a walk outside my bubble and interact with the crew is always a good reminder that there's more than just medbay, mining, or science!
What's important is that "forcing" players to leave their department and interact with the station creates these moments where you can see what's going on outside your department and roleplay with others. I think that stuff like hunger, thirst, and hygiene are all only as "roleplay conducive" as you make them. I should also say that hunger and thirst do not encourage roleplay any more than hygiene does, coming from someone with many hours on chef and bartender. You can easily go to a snack machine and buy yourself two candy bars and a water bottle and your motives will be satiated, just as you can run to a shower, shower for three seconds, and run straight back to what you were doing. If you treat showering as a chore, eating food as a chore, or getting drinks as a chore, you will think they are obnoxious and pointless instead of using them to create RP. I think it's vital to look at every motive as exactly what they're called- a motive. It should be a source of motivation to seek out roleplay opportunities. No, hygiene doesn't tell you "go look at that project that engineering's been talking about all shift", and no, hygiene doesn't tell you "walk around and see what's going on", but it creates moments to do those things if you seek them out.
Ultimately, you can talk about the decay problems, the annoyance of the smell lines, the spam of stink-related chat messages, the tendency of players to leave mid-conversation, etcetera, but the reality is that as Lord_earthfire pointed out: Hygiene is the only motive that actually compels players to leave their departments and engage with other players. I think removing it because it's considered "annoying" or "disruptive" by some players would be a grave mistake because it's the only motive that actually compels you to go out and roleplay- no matter how indirectly that is. We should instead look into fixing the grievances expressed in this thread to make hygiene a more compelling and immersive motive to roleplay around.
Sorry for the (accidentally) long post, but I feel really passionate about maintaining these systems which make players leave their departments and interact with random people. RP already has a problem with people isolating themselves from the crew and forming their little groups amongst one another in their departments, removing hygiene would only make it easier to do that.
To elaborate, hygiene creates forced moments of isolation from your department- assuming you don't decide to dump out some water on the ground and fall over onto it 50 times. I think these moments of walking from your department to the bathroom are important for creating RP in some circumstances, even if you don't think about them much. There've been a few times where on my walk from medbay to the showers, I see something cool happening in the bar or kitchen, or get clued into an arrest by security, or see a gadget an engineer is putting together. On the way back, I'll stop by for a drink, get some food, maybe talk with security, check out an engineering project, whatever! Getting told by the game to take a walk outside my bubble and interact with the crew is always a good reminder that there's more than just medbay, mining, or science!
What's important is that "forcing" players to leave their department and interact with the station creates these moments where you can see what's going on outside your department and roleplay with others. I think that stuff like hunger, thirst, and hygiene are all only as "roleplay conducive" as you make them. I should also say that hunger and thirst do not encourage roleplay any more than hygiene does, coming from someone with many hours on chef and bartender. You can easily go to a snack machine and buy yourself two candy bars and a water bottle and your motives will be satiated, just as you can run to a shower, shower for three seconds, and run straight back to what you were doing. If you treat showering as a chore, eating food as a chore, or getting drinks as a chore, you will think they are obnoxious and pointless instead of using them to create RP. I think it's vital to look at every motive as exactly what they're called- a motive. It should be a source of motivation to seek out roleplay opportunities. No, hygiene doesn't tell you "go look at that project that engineering's been talking about all shift", and no, hygiene doesn't tell you "walk around and see what's going on", but it creates moments to do those things if you seek them out.
Ultimately, you can talk about the decay problems, the annoyance of the smell lines, the spam of stink-related chat messages, the tendency of players to leave mid-conversation, etcetera, but the reality is that as Lord_earthfire pointed out: Hygiene is the only motive that actually compels players to leave their departments and engage with other players. I think removing it because it's considered "annoying" or "disruptive" by some players would be a grave mistake because it's the only motive that actually compels you to go out and roleplay- no matter how indirectly that is. We should instead look into fixing the grievances expressed in this thread to make hygiene a more compelling and immersive motive to roleplay around.
Sorry for the (accidentally) long post, but I feel really passionate about maintaining these systems which make players leave their departments and interact with random people. RP already has a problem with people isolating themselves from the crew and forming their little groups amongst one another in their departments, removing hygiene would only make it easier to do that.