Eating and drinking system - Please, just give it up.

[Dagwood 680]

1. You're delusional if you think that the food/hunger system currently in DayZ is complex, it couldn't be any more straightforward. There are even hyper-obvious inventory cues to let you know how your avatar's stomach is doing.

2. You're insane if you think that the current food/hunger system is anything more than an inconsequential afterthought. It certainly isn't a hassle, because it doesn't even factor in to the majority of situations in DayZ.

Your grievance seems to have to do with the timescale, with which you've conflated nebulous ideas like "complexity."

If you're talking about the timescale, then yes, it should be elongated. However, with that, I want the hunger/thirst system to be much more of a factor on day-to-day gameplay than it is right now. I want the pristine fruit and pristine cans of beans to be rare, if not as rare as most weapons. I want to hunt for my food. I want to cook more of my food.

Which also needs to be done in concert with things like reducing run speed to that of the mod.

Hopefully, with the need to boil water, at least the thirst aspect of the nutrition system will be a bit more involved. I think cooked food speeding up the healing process or even just bringing up your core temperature would also improve gameplay.

If the devs want to keep the "cod peasants" happy, I think the thing to do would be to allow us to continue drinking soda and cold canned food like we can now, but also reward the players that choose to take better care of their character. I think this could be accomplished with higher shock cap when you eat and drink healthier, or maybe faster health/blood regeneration. That way, the people who don't have the patience to spend 5 minutes an hour on cooking/boiling/cleaning don't necessarily have to, but the players that do will be better off for it and not feel like they're wasting time.

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

I'll just say it. The hunger/thirst system is absurd. Nobody playing the mod was thinking "You know what this game is missing? An over the top, needlessly complicated, ridiculously overmodeled givestive system".  Certainly nobody was longing for a eating/drinking system that took up all of their attention while they're trying to play a zombie survival game, much less one that requres him to eat every few minutes or die of hunger.

 

Just stop. Give it up. The fixation with this eating/drinking system is ruining the game. With my last two characters, I fresh spawned and immidiately begain looking for food, and both times I died before I could find any. Where is the gameplay in that? Who do you think is going to want to play a game who's point is "Spawn, die of hunger. Spawn, die of hunger"? What was the point of this eating/drinking system anyway? Realism? What's realistic about a human having to eat every half an hour or die of starvation?

 

There was nothing wrong with the mod's hunger/thirst system. The function of hunger and thirst in a survival game is to force players to go about trying to feed themselves.  The mod's hunger/thirst system accomplished this. Overmodeling the system doens't add anything to gameplay except frustration. And hyper-fast hunger doens't accomplish anything but to make it all about finding and eating food. Fuck, pac-man ate less frequently than DayZ characters have to. DayZ was fun when food was something you had to do once in a while, not constantly. And if you were going to make it a constant eating simulator, the least you could have done was make the resources availible to accomplish that. Spawning, then immidiately dying of hunger despite your best efforts is just dumb. Nobody wants to play a game where you're going to die no matter what you do. What on earth made you think anyone would?

 

So seriously, just give it up. Either go back to a simple system, or slow the hunger/thirst down by like 100 times. Because right now, this game is all about your stomach, and that's destroying what the game should really be about, which is zombie survival, human interaction and adventure. Either that, or re-label the game accordingly.

 

Isn't dayZ a survival game?

[artrath96 22]

"Anyone who's done it a hundred times should have no problem doing it again". I know you have a better argument than that! Those thousand+ hours have warped your perspective. You forget what it's like to be a noob.

 

But at any rate...I'll speak on behalf of the OP and say all we're asking is the following:

 

1. Let the player live for a few hours before starving to death. Not 5 days or anything like that. But not 40 minutes either. But we need *some* time to scour at least one large city to find food AND the requisite supplies we need before dying.

    

2. Give me at least one other option for starting a fire. Finding an axe is hit-or-miss. Fires existed well before modern axes did so I should be able to make a fire by snapping off a few branches and using rocks to light it. The requirement to have a wooden log before you can light a fire is excessive.

    

3. Give me at least one other viable food source that doesn't require a firearm to kill and a knife/machete to skin. Goats and chickens exist but are so rare (in my findings) as to be impractical. I'd eat a corpse if I could before dying...but not in "realistic" DayZ. Can't do it. Can't even eat that chicken without a knife.

 

I love the challenge. But like many, the undue harshness does little but frustrate.

 

 

Personally, I'd love to see a more friendly Regular version with lighter requirements in these areas and then some jacked up requirements on Hardcore for all you nuts.

Alright, someone has probably said this, but I had to stop reading to address #2. Sticks work in .50 in place of logs. Plus you have the option to stand other trees and search for kindling.

 

My two cents for now. Back to reading.

[Ham_Sandwich27 108]

Isn't dayZ a survival game?

Why does a suvival game need the requirement to eat every thrity minutes in order to consitute a suvival game? It would still be a survival game if it had a reasonable hunger/thirst system.

[pilgrim* 3513]

Dat metagame, bro....

..//..

 

Metagame ?

IRL I'd do the same if I ate something bad or poisoned (and I have done that). Works in real life if you do it soon enough (ya know.. it's quicker than waiting for the stomach pump?). In the game, charcoal had no effect. Throwing up two times and building strength again, worked.

 

First time I was ill it was from eating raw meat ..

Second time I was ill - I don't know.. thought maybe it was from being wet and cold for too long ? I don't see how emptying your stomach could help that kind of sickness, but 7 antibiotics made no difference. the upchuck technique worked again.

I'm still alive ain't I?. I was just worried for a while.

 

Some clothes: if you take them off and put them back on again immediately they are dry. Other clothes you have to take them off, wring them out a couple of times, then put back on they are dry

(That is - IF your clothes don't vanish as soon as they hit the floor - that's kind of worrying, with all your gear in the pockets too)

And other clothes - the down jacket - just stay damp till you build a fire and gradually dry out. But if you take off your down jacket next to a fire and put it back on it is dry immediately.

 

AND does anyone know if you can shelter under trees in .49 please ?. That seems to have gone? After 4 minutes under a GOOD tree I was soaked to the skin.

Is this why all these strange little sheds with doors that don't shut are scattered around? For shelter?

Does sheltering under trees work??

 

But .... "metagaming" ? - I think I have heard of this place, Where is it?

 

Isn't that where you spawn in the same room in the barracks on 30 servers until you find the one with the gun in it? (or you hope you find it before before you spawn in on the three other metagamers all fighting zombies and each other, and you're dead before you arrive? ) Drinking until you throw up because you ate a bad banana is not my idea of 'metagame' Noticing there are no zombies left in the whole village when you arrive is 'metagame' but that's the kind of thing you can't help noticing. Anyway - one or two will turn up in a while.

 

I mean dude, in real life, that throwing-up is what I DO and I've DONE it and it worked, and no one's accused me of "meta-living".. but it wasn't a banana.

Emptying your stomach fast is a technique, useful to know, as long as you really CAN empty it, and do it when you need to.

 

Anyone know about tree shelter? Doesn't seem to work for me at all.

 

[ps - I thought in general the survival stuff is STARTING to get quite OK in DayZ .49, it's BEGINNING to get closer to my general IRL feeling/ideas about 'survival']

 

xx pilgrim

Edited October 19, 2014 by pilgrim

[Whyherro123 2283]

Metagame ?

IRL I'd do the same if I ate something bad or poisoned (and I have done that). Works in real life if you do it soon enough (ya know.. it's quicker than waiting for the stomach pump?). In the game, charcoal had no effect. Throwing up two times and building strength again, worked.

 

First time I was ill it was from eating raw meat ..

Second time I was ill - I don't know.. thought maybe it was from being wet and cold for too long ? I don't see how emptying your stomach could help that kind of sickness, but 7 antibiotics made no difference. the upchuck technique worked again.

I'm still alive ain't I?. I was just worried for a while.

 

Some clothes: if you take them off and put them back on again immediately they are dry. Other clothes you have to take them off, wring them out a couple of times, then put back on they are dry

(That is - IF your clothes don't vanish as soon as they hit the floor - that's kind of worrying, with all your gear in the pockets too)

And other clothes - the down jacket - just stay damp till you build a fire and gradually dry out. But if you take off your down jacket next to a fire and put it back on it is dry immediately.

 

AND does anyone know if you can shelter under trees in .49 please ?. That seems to have gone? After 4 minutes under a GOOD tree I was soaked to the skin.

Is this why all these strange little sheds with doors that don't shut are scattered around? For shelter?

Does sheltering under trees work??

 

But .... "metagaming" ? - I think I have heard of this place, Where is it?

 

Isn't that where you spawn in the same room in the barracks on 30 servers until you find the one with the gun in it? (or you hope you find it before before you spawn in on the three other metagamers all fighting zombies and each other, and you're dead before you arrive? ) Drinking until you throw up because you ate a bad banana is not my idea of 'metagame' Noticing there are no zombies left in the whole village when you arrive is 'metagame' but that's the kind of thing you can't help noticing. Anyway - one or two will turn up in a while.

 

I mean dude, in real life, that throwing-up is what I DO and I've DONE it and it worked, and no one's accused me of "meta-living".. but it wasn't a banana.

Emptying your stomach fast is a technique, useful to know, as long as you really CAN empty it, and do it when you need to.

 

Anyone know about tree shelter? Doesn't seem to work for me at all.

 

[ps - I thought in general the survival stuff is STARTING to get quite OK in DayZ .49, it's BEGINNING to get closer to my general IRL feeling/ideas about 'survival']

 

xx pilgrim

I was referring to your referring to beans (and other canned food) being an arbitrarily "better" food source because it (right now) is easier to find, easier to "get" (open, etc, requiring only 1 tool vs hunting requiring 3), as well as taking up less space. It is the same type of thinking that arbitrarily assigns weapons into "tiers". I dislike it on general principle, and view that is removes the "game" from "video/tabletop" game. Did I quote you by mistake?

 

I have no problem with charcoal tabs treating sickness. Hell, I've done it after eating some bad foraged berries (only eat it if you know what it is, kids!). Powdered charcoal from my fire, mixed with water, downed the lot. Threw up EVERYTHING in my stomach, and neutralized whatever I ate that remained in my digestive tract.

[dfixrobert 1]

Also, something to add onto imo is, how come you always reach a stuffed status before light green hydrated and energized? Doesn't make much sense to make your player sick from eating too much food to have to become healthier....

[Mor (DayZ) 57]

Isn't dayZ a survival game?

You can say that life is survival game, but obviously there is more to life than eat\sleep\poop and there is certainly more to a "zombie" apocalypse game than having to feed\water your character every few minutes, spending the rest looking for that food drink.. I don't want to play sims, nor a time filler like farmvile.

Balance is the key here, and while balance is matter of WIP, I think that the point against excessive realism should be reinforced, despite the "hardcore" vocals.

 

Also, something to add onto imo is, how come you always reach a stuffed status before light green hydrated and energized? Doesn't make much sense to make your player sick from eating too much food to have to become healthier....

You just don't understand the mechanic... just like in RL it takes time for your food to digest. It wasn't implemented so to be realistically anal, but avoid people becoming magically healthy whenever they want by stuffing a truck load of food down their throat. You make yourself sick by over eating. So don't be hoarding on your food, eat it when ever you get it or pace it out. Over time your energy -> Blood -> health should recover with time.

Those mechanics was implemented to encourage a much slower game pace. I believe that right now it should take you about an hour to recover your health after a bad fire fight.

Edited October 20, 2014 by Mor

[pilgrim* 3513]

I was referring to your referring to beans (and other canned food) being an arbitrarily "better" food source because it (right now) is easier to find, easier to "get" (open, etc, requiring only 1 tool vs hunting requiring 3), as well as taking up less space. It is the same type of thinking that arbitrarily assigns weapons into "tiers". I dislike it on general principle, and view that is removes the "game" from "video/tabletop" game. Did I quote you by mistake?

 

I have no problem with charcoal tabs treating sickness. Hell, I've done it after eating some bad foraged berries (only eat it if you know what it is, kids!). Powdered charcoal from my fire, mixed with water, downed the lot. Threw up EVERYTHING in my stomach, and neutralized whatever I ate that remained in my digestive tract.

 

OK got you on that Whyherro123 - sorry I mistook the "metagame" thing because its a term of disrepute - my misunderstanding.

[5mirkeh 98]

From that one interview once I heard a dev say that the DayZ standalone is "In flux" and that everything was basically was in experimental, Probably the stuff in stable too but I am really not sure . . . but personally I feel that the op should be patient and wait on more iterations and giving feedback with respect to the devs who create this game.

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

Why does a suvival game need the requirement to eat every thrity minutes in order to consitute a suvival game? It would still be a survival game if it had a reasonable hunger/thirst system.

Because making you eat at least once every 48-96 hours of gameplay is not interesting.

[Ham_Sandwich27 108]

Because making you eat at least once every 48-96 hours of gameplay is not interesting.

Where did you get 48-96 hours from "reasonable hunger/thirst"? Edited October 20, 2014 by Ham_Sandwich27

[Lady Kyrah 1109]

Where did you get 48-96 hours from "reasonable hunger/thirst"?

I start to get hungry when i stop eating for a couple days.

[Ham_Sandwich27 108]

I start to get hungry when i stop eating for a couple days.

I never suggested a true to life hunger system. I suggested a reasonable one. Dying half an hour after spawn if you don't find food is not reasonable.

And besides that, feeling hungry and dying of hunger are two very different things. You can go 2-3 weeks without food before you die.

Edited October 20, 2014 by Ham_Sandwich27

[Tupoun 65]

I start to get hungry when i stop eating for a couple days.

I start to get hungry in cca 3 hours after the last meal and feel the thirst definitelly in less then 3 hours. I'm not talking about starvation of dehydration of course ;). So your 48-96 hours without food would drive me mad and I'm no fatso, quite the opposite.

 

But the need to eat/drink every 10 minutes or so, like it is in the experimental right now, is driving me crazy. There's no food spawning and I actually have to live under the tree stuffing one apple after another down my throat (well it takes time to find an apple on the tree, not talking about multiple apples). So is this simulation of real life? Or even close to it? No. The game is turning in one of the things I feared - hunting/farming simulator, etc. (the same with sickeness - from getting sick to dying took me 10 mins. - how the hell should I find medicine in this short time on the server, what spawns only books?).

 

I just hope for private hives with possibility to adjust all those things to real life timings and play on some RP server, where the actuall goal will be to survive the ZOMBIE apocalypse, with the help of others (I'm not a fan of PvP, I always sucked at it, always will).

[Whyherro123 2283]

 You can go 2-3 weeks without food before you die.

 

Yes, you can "live" for about 3 weeks before you die. At that point, you will be almost a useless lump of flesh from degradation and malnutrition.  You will be alive, but you most certainly be not OK. Your muscles will not repair damage, wounds will take longer and longer to heal, your immune system will shit the bed, and your mental facilities will become slower and slower, as will your reaction times.

 

Seriously, did you not read my post? In an honest-to-goodness survival situation, you should be eating more than you usually would. Survival is very stressful on the body, and stress often can make your metabolism kick into overdrive.

 

However, starvation is really not the killer in a survival situation: dehydration is. 3 days without water, and you are dead. This is laying around all day, moving as little as possible. Go for a few hours without drinking anything,alongside strenuous activity and stress, and tell me how you feel. You are going to feel like complete and utter shit.

 

I hope dehydration and "clean water sources" becomes more of an issue in the future, because if you can't find water right now, just quit the goddamn game. Almost every settlement has a well (maybe more!), and even if you spawn in the middle of nowhere, you can still drink from the 10000s of streams and ponds around Chernarus. If you can't find a stream, head downhill, and check the sides of roads.

[r.pitura@live.com.au 12]

Why does a suvival game need the requirement to eat every thrity minutes in order to consitute a suvival game? It would still be a survival game if it had a reasonable hunger/thirst system.

Ok do this then and report back how long it took you to get to starving please..

This is the test,eat and drink as much as you can and stop b4 you spew in game mind you,not irl...

Then just sit there till you die of starvation keep a timer on this mind you...

Then respawn do the first 2 parts with eating and drinking again then run and i mean run none stop till you die then report back...

 

Then do this in real life eat till your full lay round all day,see how many times you need to eat keep a time on how long you have to wait to eat b4 your starving again...

Then do the same again then run round and keep a log of when you need to eat again....

 

The issue is you can connect with the in game running because YOUR not doing it....its a game but if you did the very same thing in real life you would find the very same things would happen...

Oh and i love the thing about the can opener in the pic bloody awesome..

[Jex 1104]

OK I have a problem. I get hungry in RL when I eat in DayZ and now I'm getting hungry just talking about eating in DayZ - help!

[blunce 991]

BadAsh, Nobody's suggesting eating and drinking be done away with.

 

I thought you were saying they should give up? lol

[Just Caused 423]

I dont think that balance should be changed, for me its fine. You cant just roam around doing nothing, maybe devs wanted to make game more zombie roleplay game. In real life, you would struggle to find food,  not to go around Cherno pantless and swing a fire extinguisher at people.

[CJFlint 357]

THANK you.

 

Ok, well in that case, let me run and collect food at a correspondingly fast/compressed rate.

 

You're not reading what I posted. Two characters in a row, I spawed and immidiately began looking for food in all the structures in the nearest village, then the next nearest and so forth, and starved to death. Twice in a row. I don't care how good you think you are at DayZ, if there's no food within your starving radius, you're dead. That is a problem with the starvation radius (read - the distance you can go without food), the amount of food spawning, or both. That happening two spawns in a row is an issue. And no, it's not that I don't know how to look for food. And it's certainly not a question of "patience". I'm playing until I die of starvation.

 

Once again, re-read the OP. Getting fed is a little difficult when there's literally no food within distance at which you can search before starving.

 

Oh, that'll be nice. They'll surely make it so you have to poop once every half an hour. And they'll make it so you have to use a toilet to do it, but not put any toilets around. Then when you find that one toilet after 20 spawns, there will be no shit paper and you'll die anyway.

 

Why don't you actually try reading the OP, not just healdine. From the length of you post, it's clear that you can write past ten words. One would therefore assume that you can read past ten words. Unless of course you had your mom type that dribble out for you, which I guess is entirely possible.

Hey, and this is ment as a peice of advice, I'm sersouly trying to help. If your a fresh spawn say for example at Cherno, and you begin looting and there is no food anywhere. Try a dif server. Don't wait to long either, just log into a new one. Becuase if your at one of the larger citys, and theres no food....anywhere...something is not right. Every server is dif. Presist servers can be a pain, that maybe whats going on in your case. It maybe that your logging into servers that just arn't spawning anything. Not sure.

 

I just don't buy the fact your just starving to death everytime, something isn't adding up. Your not doing something right...my theory is your logging into persist servers. And to your defence, if your new to DayZ it can be vary unforgiving to new players. There's really no manual or anything like that comes with the game. Theres really only 3rd party videos, DayZTV and the wiki you can resort to learn anything about the game. Which leads to frustration. So take a breath, and read carefully on what people are telling you.  Theres allot of tribal knowlege in this game, there really is. Its 50% common since 50% knowing the mechanics(whats broken and whats not).

[Survivalist Much 0]

you know someone's pissed off when they make a extremely detailed picture in photoshop about it.

 

 

I agree tho. the system should be more real. they might also try to make hunger/thirst a current thing so players wont spend too much time killing each other ;) haha

[Mor (DayZ) 57]

Yes, you can "live" for about 3 weeks before you die. At that point, you will be almost a useless lump of flesh from degradation and malnutrition.  You will be alive, but you most certainly be not OK. Your muscles will not repair damage, wounds will take longer and longer to heal, your immune system will shit the bed, and your mental facilities will become slower and slower, as will your reaction times.

 

Seriously, did you not read my post? In an honest-to-goodness survival situation, you should be eating more than you usually would. Survival is very stressful on the body, and stress often can make your metabolism kick into overdrive.

 

However, starvation is really not the killer in a survival situation: dehydration is. 3 days without water, and you are dead. This is laying around all day, moving as little as possible. Go for a few hours without drinking anything,alongside strenuous activity and stress, and tell me how you feel. You are going to feel like complete and utter shit.

Seriously, what is your point? He didn't suggest that you should go for 3 weeks before you die, but that "Dying half an hour after spawn if you don't find food is not reasonable", with part you nit picked being a reply to Lady Kyrah RL example, he also specifically noted that he don't suggest a true to life hunger system.

Because you post boils down to energy and thirst being far more critical in survival situation than in RL i.e. "few hours without drinking anything, alongside strenuous activity .. [will make you].. feel like complete and utter shit" - not addressing what he said.

Also on the point of balance, I have personal experienced how much water intake our bodies need while, dressed up, active and in warm and humid environment. The game isn't trying to be realistic, it tries to balance it with gameplay. So to reinforce something from my previous posts: having hunger and thirst play an important part is authentic, but having hunger and thirst the only things you need to do in zombie apocalypse is bad gameplay.

[Ineedscoffee 464]

I don't know,mood and water system seems fine. Stop coast humping and head north, where finding these things is less a problem. Now the hypothermia systems could use tweaking. Grew up in southern alaska, in fifty below zero weather. Thirty below was considered tshirt, gloves, blue jeans and all day out on the snowmachine with friends.

 

its a bit odd to spawn and be slapped with instant freezing status in an above zero climate considering my upbringing.

[Whyherro123 2283]

Seriously, what is your point? He didn't suggest that you should go for 3 weeks before you die, but that "Dying half an hour after spawn if you don't find food is not reasonable", with part you nit picked being a reply to Lady Kyrah RL example, he also specifically noted that he don't suggest a true to life hunger system.

Because you post boils down to energy and thirst being far more critical in survival situation than in RL i.e. "few hours without drinking anything, alongside strenuous activity .. [will make you].. feel like complete and utter shit" - not addressing what he said.

Also on the point of balance, I have personal experienced how much water intake our bodies need while, dressed up, active and in warm and humid environment. The game isn't trying to be realistic, it tries to balance it with gameplay. So to reinforce something from my previous posts: having hunger and thirst play an important part is authentic, but having hunger and thirst the only things you need to do in zombie apocalypse is bad gameplay.

The thing is, you have no idea what shape your character was in before washing up on the beach. For all we know, it has been 2 weeks since your last meal, and you are on your last legs when you spawn into the game the first time. 

 

Same thing about found food: we actually have no idea about how long it has been since the collapse of society, corresponding to the amount of packaged food we will find. Most supermarkets only stock about 3 or so days of supply, so if it has even been only a week, guess what? Coupled with the total shitshow of looting that follows a TSC, there would be little premade food left. Fruits and vegetables would have rotted by then as well.