2 hours ago, theFlu said:And then you have to imagine that your character _just won't_, when it comes to lakes?
Filling a nonexistent jar from a toilet bowl is "fine and unrealistic", but filling a nonexistent jar from a lake would be "wrong", how?
I see I couldn't explain it for you to understand: For me the water changes we are talking about are two distinct changes with two distinct main reasons:
1) Removing jars from the game. Reason: TFP wanted all containers equally gone, no-shows, not simulated. A clean-up
2) Preventing the player from getting water from lakes except by drinking with heavy side effects. Reason: They wanted water to be scarce in early game and for the player to overcome this shortage over some time.
Note that each one of the changes is independent enough to be realized without the other:
1) You could have jars removed but using E on a lake would create say 10 units of water in your inventory. Just like E on a gasoline pump gives you a few units of gasoline.
2) Or the other way round you could have unlimited water jars like in A20 and just not be able to fill them from lakes or snow (in this case the dew collector would be slightly different, it would need you to insert empty jars to be filled).
I was talking about the first change and it clearly is not unrealistic but just leaving the details to your imagination. Many of you want to talk about the second change because it irks you, but then you pounce on the vanishing jars instead. That will only muddy the issues and not help you.
This is as if I wanted to have a broken thermometer fixed but complained about the bad weather.