Goonhub
04-15-2024, 06:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-15-2024, 06:10 AM by Kamikaze Mongoose. Edited 2 times in total.)
Hygiene rarely makes you leave your department since water is as plentiful as vending machines, but what makes this okay for hunger and thirst is that every setting where you can get food or drinks is a realistic social area and public hygiene areas are not.
Bars? Fantastic place to meet new people or catch up with friends over a bite and a drink. Vending machines or a break room water cooler? Normal places to walk to with a coworker or chat with folks already there. If you didn't have in-game needs players would still go out of their way to these places and perform these activities because they're realistic places to socialize.
...but showering and washing hands? Do you go to these places and mingle with strangers in real life? Would you invite your coworkers or friends to do these activities with you? No, you wouldn't. It's weird.
Hygiene is a mechanic that looks great on paper but is detrimental in-game for the purposes of roleplay enhancement. Any time spent having to remove stink lines is time that could be spent in areas where socializing realistically happens.
TL;DR Hygiene removes social interaction instead of improving it
Bars? Fantastic place to meet new people or catch up with friends over a bite and a drink. Vending machines or a break room water cooler? Normal places to walk to with a coworker or chat with folks already there. If you didn't have in-game needs players would still go out of their way to these places and perform these activities because they're realistic places to socialize.
...but showering and washing hands? Do you go to these places and mingle with strangers in real life? Would you invite your coworkers or friends to do these activities with you? No, you wouldn't. It's weird.
Hygiene is a mechanic that looks great on paper but is detrimental in-game for the purposes of roleplay enhancement. Any time spent having to remove stink lines is time that could be spent in areas where socializing realistically happens.
TL;DR Hygiene removes social interaction instead of improving it