for medieval MMOs, more than just shape meaning. weight as an effective stat. it affects to damage calculation and delay calculation (also movement speed, if possible) if you're caster, you will want to be slim for lower delay if you're melee, you will want to be heavy for powerful damage but some people will want rapid attacks than one big shot. case by taste if you're thief, you will want optimum weight for both damage and delay. so there might be some eating/exercise(running,fighting etc) system to let them control their weight themselves it offers diversity of looks. (3-5 levels of shape by weight would be ideal) and playstyle customization in same class (powerful,normal,rapid) my 2 cents

Sounds like San Andreas. Customizing your character is fun and it's even more interesting when it also changes how they play. I don't know if your examples of how it affects gameplay are the most realistic representations of how fat and skinny would play into it.

So here you have given us an idea which may be a good one if implemented effectively, but isn't exactly breathtaking. I award you a B-

Man play swg (well dont actually they ruined it with the NGE) but you can customize your characters pretty well, including weight and chest size lol (not boob size like the musculature lol). You can come up with some pretty funny looking avatars, really fat wookies or even belimic (sp) lol.

I liked in GTA:SA when you got too fat and couldn't climb fences anymore. Heheh. Too much linguini.

It would be a pain in the butt to balance the system, though. Either feeding your character becomes an obnoxious chore (GTA), or a central part of gameplay (The Sims). Neither seems appropriate to this task.

If you make it something like a balance between healing items and physical exercise, you'll get some very chunky mages.

Weight wouldn't be very realistic in a medieval RPG - up until a few hundred years ago being fat was a sign of wealth. No one else could afford to eat in the quantity, or quality (variety of foods i.e. meat, vegetables, fruit) to get overweight. The back breaking labor also helped keep everyone who had seconds thin.

A more realistic difference would be between the well fed fighter, and the malnourished fighter.

You'd also want to have all kinds of things that different builds can do.

For example the heavy tough guys can do a lot of strength type things, but the smaller spry people can fit through narrow gaps and tunnels, and speed climb and such. That would be interesting.

A vicious heterosexual conspiracy against fat women?

In EQ1 the monk class had to keep thier weight (of carried items & coin) below a very small value or they would suffer AC penalties.

If anyone wants my 2 cents, I think ALL characters in every game should be fat.

And not Oprah 'fat'...we're talkin Susan Struthers 'fat'!!! The bigger they are the better! ...I think I am talking about games...

In my current mmo, if you dont take the diet correctly, your char will be fat. Fat char just looks *FAT* and it affects atleast your running speed. Some say it affects the dodging chance as well but cannot be confirmed since noone knows the inner formula.

Anyway, it's amusing to see a player looks slim today but fat several weeks later.

Correct diet is calculated by lvl*lvl/50, for instance, if you are a level40 char, the value of your diet per dim is 40*40/50 = 32. So you need to prepare a combination of foods with sum up value 32 to keep your toon fit. Say, "steak" is of value 12, "cheeze cake" is of value 8...etc. The correct diet for a level40 is 2 steaks + a cheeze cake each meal. So you just place like 20steaks+10cheezecakes in your backpack, they will be consummed automatically and timely. For the sake of convenience, some players just buy 30steaks instead of 20steaks+10cakes, as a result, they'll get fatter and fatter.

Diet recommended for various levels,
http://delight.ath.cx/nol/index.php?%BF%A9%A4%D9%B9%E7%A4%EF%A4%BB%C9%BD

[Edited by - Hawkins8 on February 22, 2006 3:53:44 AM]