Originally Posted by
Aielyn
Let's be honest, using evolution to justify things in ADoM is just a little bit silly, given the nature of the game.
It's not silly at all. We have basic biological and physical constants present in the game.
Characters need to eat and have variable metabolism. We have gravity and all objects in the game have mass.
Stuff is heavier or lighter and depending on strength (and a bunch of other things), different amounts can be carried.
There are different states of matter - solid, liquid, gas.
There is light and darkness, so there are photons and electromagnetic radiation in this world.
Magic is nice and fine, to justify things like fire/frost/lightning bolts, invisibility, teleportation and flying but we need some point of reference.
If you subject everything to magic and the fantasy nature of the gameworld then the only thing you achieve is chaos, because of lack of rules that affect things.
I realize magical world can explain and justify a lot of flexibility in game mechanics but some things need to be consistent and a single larger eye being better than two smaller ones for the purpose of measuring one's overall perception is very, very far from consistency.
Single eye would be able to collect more information due to being higher resolution
Research shows that this is completely untrue. Larger eye simply means the tissue is composed of larger cells, the scale remains the same.
Elephants have significantly larger eyes than humans, yet it is known they do not perceive more than us, perhaps even less.
Predatory birds have significantly smaller eyes than bipedal beings yet their vision acuity is far superior, as is their prediction of movement and depth perception.
I can cite relevant work in this regard but I don't think it is necessary.
You say that you don't lose all depth perception having a single eye, but this again is untrue.
You do lose ALL depth perception. You make up for it solely with past experience of perceiving the world with two eyes.
There are humans that have been born without sight - specific group of them have their nerve endings but due to genetic issues, the eyes themselves have not developed properly.
Modern medicine managed to build artificial eyes for several of them, one per person. It has been discovered that they are completely unable to function in three dimensional environment using their single artificial eye.
Without depth perception and no previous experience, it is impossible.
Conclusion is simple - there are only drawbacks (and severe ones) to having a single larger eye versus two separate ones. Magic or not.