Another possibility: make food and water and other survival stuff completely optional.
An additional layer of difficulty, kind of "RP realism mode" you could switch on and switch off as you wish. You want your character to require food and water, to gather and cook your meals, to get exhausted if you run all the time? Enable your "realism debuff" and it'll take care of it; it'll make you hungry and thirsty, sleepy and tired. When you don't want to be bothered with such a mundane stuff anymore, you can easily remove the realism debuff.
To incite people into playing in realism mode, there could be some small bonus included... perhaps some sort RP points that could be used to buy RP outfits and items?
An additional layer of difficulty, kind of "RP realism mode" you could switch on and switch off as you wish. You want your character to require food and water, to gather and cook your meals, to get exhausted if you run all the time? Enable your "realism debuff" and it'll take care of it; it'll make you hungry and thirsty, sleepy and tired. When you don't want to be bothered with such a mundane stuff anymore, you can easily remove the realism debuff.
To incite people into playing in realism mode, there could be some small bonus included... perhaps some sort RP points that could be used to buy RP outfits and items?