More authentic foraging system

[Beizs 186]

Currently, the foraging system is pretty unrealistic and not enjoyable at all. It's really just a grind.

 

What I would suggest would, in my opinion, be pretty awesome, though I'm not sure of the feasibility of it considering how many apple trees and berry bushes there are in the world (tracking every single one, though it could simply be a 1 or 0 for each one - 1 being foraged and 0 being unforaged, then a timer). Most of this has been suggested in various, fragmented areas. I thought I'd put it all together and put in some actual numbers.

 

In stead of being able to search each tree infinitely and randomly getting an apple/berry every now and then, it's more like farming.

 

So, each tree has a chance of dropping 5-10 apples when you search it. Once this has been done, searching the tree instantly returns the message 'there's no apples on this tree' - same thing for the berry bushes, with the words changed.

 

Once a tree has been searched, it takes anywhere between one and three hours for the tree to regrow anything. This prevents people from just using a single tree to stock up, looting in between.

 

Now, this would make foraging a lot quicker and not as much of a pain in the ass. But it could also make it OP. So, nerf the apples and berries. At the moment, they're not very nutritious. What I would recommend would be to increase the nutrition of both maybe 50%, along with the hydration, then double the stomach space. This prevents people from keeping themselves constantly in good condition with apples/berries, but makes it possible for them to survive on them fairly easy in the early game.

 

This idea, in my opinion, would make foraging more viable for the early game, but not really worth it later on as you can't stock up with energy/hydration. Maybe, with a bit of balancing, it could be impossible to get second level hydration or energy with just apples or berries (numbers game).

 

I feel like this shouldn't really impact server performance much, as only foraged ones would need a timer running.

Edited May 21, 2015 by Beizs

[Coheed_IV 381]

I have the feeling rotten apples will be back at sometime. This will be how they balance it out.

[gannon46 788]

i wish the foraging and stuff could be kinda like life is feudal just not as hardcore with skills on there is you find apple trees you can take sprouts from them and then you get fertile soil and you can plant them around your village/town and you got food on hand. i would also like to see some herbalism where we could get a mortar pestle and mix herbs we find in the woods maybe we could find a book with the formulas in it and use that to make medicines and ointments.

[ebrim 998]

There's no question that foraging isn't "fun". That said I think there are a few things to be said for the current system:

 

1) It's limitless which means that starvation is never definite. If a player manages things right, he never has to feel like there is no hope, that may be useful from a gameplay perspective. Making trees/bushes exhaustable could lead to problems of exploitation and abuse where people specifically take all the available food from spawn areas, for example.

 

2) Foraging is tedious. This may not sound like a good thing but it also reduces dependency upon foraging. A game where everyone forages for all or most of their calories instead of seeking other sources isn't fun. Foraging is a last resort right now and a supplement at most unless you have a lot of patience. It works but it's not desirable. I think that's actually a good thing as it gives an incentive to seek out better and more interesting energy options.

 

3) No barrier to entry. This works hand in hand with #1. Everyone can forage and you need literally nothing but time. This means that if you're a newspawn or even some poor bastard who gets robbed of everything, you always have a chance to make it.

 

4) Let's see what happens as other foragables are introduced. See the mushroom models!

Edited May 21, 2015 by Ebrim

[xalienax 621]

1. fruit/berries/etc should be visable, Physical objects

2. If there is none, there is none. button mashing and hoping RNG is nice to you is a horrible mechanic for something like dayZ. FAR to gamey. it needs to be "What you see is What you get".

3. When fruit is generated (perhaps at restarts?) it should vary between primarily ripe fruit, Primarily raw/non-Ripe fruit, and pramarily rotting fruit/no fruit. simply looking at the bush should tell you if its worth bothering.

[Whyherro123 2283]

In reality, foraging is a simple and relatively quick way to ensure you have enough food. Hunter-gatherers only needed about 20 hours of work per week to ensure their caloric needs were met, while farmers need about 60-70. However, being a hunter-gatherer required encyclopedic knowledge of plants, not only what ones where edible, but also what time of year they grow in and where to find them, as well as keeping a small population and being really REALLY mobile. (no heavy loads for hunter gatherers!). On the other hand, farmers could stay in one place, raise large families, and essentially "set down the roots of civilization" (Human "civilization" is widely taken to have started in the Neolithic period, when agriculture was developed)

 

The thing is; humans very rarely depended on one "method" (hunting [lumping together hunting and trapping], farming [lumping together agriculture and animal husbandry], and foraging) of food procurement. They would farm, raise animals, pick wild foragables, trap small game, hunt large game, etc, all so that if one food source fell through, they could depend on the others.

 

This is how I envision Day Z being. You would only really have to stick to foraging in the beginning, and when you are settled, you have a little garden set up somewhere. However, you don't just raise crops: you also pick fruits and berries, wade through streams to pick cattail and lily-tubers, fish in those rivers, snare rabbits and squirrel, as well as keep an eye out for a deer to walk through your section of woods.

 

In reality, the type of environment Day Z takes place in, Temperate Deciduous Forest, is probably the 2nd most hospitable ecosystem for humans to live in. Plenty of food, plenty of fresh water, etc. The only reason it is #2 is because of the seasons: we can't live naked year round like we could in the tropics.

[Beizs 186]

I have the feeling rotten apples will be back at sometime. This will be how they balance it out.

 

I'm looking forward to the reintroduction of rotten apples, but it doesn't really solve anything. It's just something that could be used to help balance out a better foraging system.

 

i wish the foraging and stuff could be kinda like life is feudal just not as hardcore with skills on there is you find apple trees you can take sprouts from them and then you get fertile soil and you can plant them around your village/town and you got food on hand. i would also like to see some herbalism where we could get a mortar pestle and mix herbs we find in the woods maybe we could find a book with the formulas in it and use that to make medicines and ointments.

 

I agree that there should be more forageables, with a wider range of uses (example, aspirin from willow bark in lieu of painkillers).

 

 

There's no question that foraging isn't "fun". That said I think there are a few things to be said for the current system:

 

1) It's limitless which means that starvation is never definite. If a player manages things right, he never has to feel like there is no hope, that may be useful from a gameplay perspective. Making trees/bushes exhaustable could lead to problems of exploitation and abuse where people specifically take all the available food from spawn areas, for example.

 

2) Foraging is tedious. This may not sound like a good thing but it also reduces dependency upon foraging. A game where everyone forages for all or most of their calories instead of seeking other sources isn't fun. Foraging is a last resort right now and a supplement at most unless you have a lot of patience. It works but it's not desirable. I think that's actually a good thing as it gives an incentive to seek out better and more interesting energy options.

 

3) No barrier to entry. This works hand in hand with #1. Everyone can forage and you need literally nothing but time. This means that if you're a newspawn or even some poor bastard who gets robbed of everything, you always have a chance to make it.

 

4) Let's see what happens as other foragables are introduced. See the mushroom models!

 

While I agree, to some extent, with the overall tone of your post, I'm not sure about some of the points you made.

 

1) The suggestion I gave is, in effect, limitless too. There's a whole lot of berry bushes and apple trees in game. It'll never be particularly difficult to find one. Two, people can already chop down berry bushes and apple trees, and it takes longer for them to reappear (a whole server restart). Three, removing all of the apples/berries from the bushes/trees in any area, even a tiny one, would be incredibly difficult. Your stomach and your inventory only has so much space. Seems like it would take far too much time for anybody to bother - and a server hop (which, in this case, I think would be justified) would fix that.

 

2) Hence my suggestion about stomach space making it impossible to actually be healthy just from eating apples and berries. They just need to stop you from starving. Wouldn't be as much of a last resort, but also would definitely not be preferable.

 

3) Well, the same goes for my suggestion.

 

4) Can't wait for that. I want as much of a variety with as many applications (as stated above) as is possible. :)

 

1. fruit/berries/etc should be visable, Physical objects

2. If there is none, there is none. button mashing and hoping RNG is nice to you is a horrible mechanic for something like dayZ. FAR to gamey. it needs to be "What you see is What you get".

3. When fruit is generated (perhaps at restarts?) it should vary between primarily ripe fruit, Primarily raw/non-Ripe fruit, and pramarily rotting fruit/no fruit. simply looking at the bush should tell you if its worth bothering.

 

1) Either that, or the texture on the bushes/trees should change to reflect their status.

 

2) Absolutely agree, RNG does not fit well with DayZ, especially with something like this. Actual loot makes more sense, as stuff would have been scattered about after the apocalypse due to looting, though I think that would leave more lootsplosions and more empty places. Also, there'd be just about no consistency to it (military bases wouldn't be where you'd find good guns), except when it comes to dynamic events like helis and police cars (I'm assuming they're supposed to be crashing 'currently', if you get what I mean.

 

3) While I think that simply having rotten apples would be enough, I would like ripeness too, which could maybe have more than just a food poisoning effect (less ripe = less energy, until its not ripe enough and poisons you). However, identifying and handling this could be a massive pain in the ass.

 

 

In reality, foraging is a simple and relatively quick way to ensure you have enough food. Hunter-gatherers only needed about 20 hours of work per week to ensure their caloric needs were met, while farmers need about 60-70. However, being a hunter-gatherer required encyclopedic knowledge of plants, not only what ones where edible, but also what time of year they grow in and where to find them, as well as keeping a small population and being really REALLY mobile. (no heavy loads for hunter gatherers!). On the other hand, farmers could stay in one place, raise large families, and essentially "set down the roots of civilization" (Human "civilization" is widely taken to have started in the Neolithic period, when agriculture was developed)

 

The thing is; humans very rarely depended on one "method" (hunting [lumping together hunting and trapping], farming [lumping together agriculture and animal husbandry], and foraging) of food procurement. They would farm, raise animals, pick wild foragables, trap small game, hunt large game, etc, all so that if one food source fell through, they could depend on the others.

 

This is how I envision Day Z being. You would only really have to stick to foraging in the beginning, and when you are settled, you have a little garden set up somewhere. However, you don't just raise crops: you also pick fruits and berries, wade through streams to pick cattail and lily-tubers, fish in those rivers, snare rabbits and squirrel, as well as keep an eye out for a deer to walk through your section of woods.

 

In reality, the type of environment Day Z takes place in, Temperate Deciduous Forest, is probably the 2nd most hospitable ecosystem for humans to live in. Plenty of food, plenty of fresh water, etc. The only reason it is #2 is because of the seasons: we can't live naked year round like we could in the tropics.

 

I agree pretty much 100% with you here. I just think that foraging, honestly, should be more than enough to survive (though it'd be difficult to be truly healthy living only on foraged food, hence my suggestion with stomach space - forcing you to have some variety in your diet, without going in to specific nutrients, which would be overkill for DayZ). In all realism, with modern weaponry and knowledge of hunting, fishing, foraging and farming, it would only take a few books for somebody to completely avoid starvation in a climate like Chernarus, especially given free reign over the land.

 

Really, the threat should not be starvation, or even dehydration (death via dehydration should be more likely than starving, but you should be able to filter water through a cloth then boil it). The only things that are actually likely to cause your death in this game should be the harsh weather, the people, the zombies, or the wildlife (sure, wolves and bears irl aren't actually that much of a threat if you're not stupid, but they'd probably be a lot more likely to attack you after being attacked regularly by zombies. Also, packs of wild dogs that are hungry as they can't do any of the above methods of gathering food besides hunting - and also the zombie thing would piss 'em off, too.

 

I get authenticity in this game and all, but honestly, I feel like the difficulty to acquire food in this game is just too far removed from reality and doesn't really add that much in ways of gameplay, either. Avoiding starvation really is just a grind, whatever way you go about it (other than hunting - that's genuinely fun imo, though animals are a bit too rare still) and honestly, it just shouldn't be difficult. The sheer number of plants in the world that you can eat is enough to prevent you from starving.

 

As for requiring knowledge of plants, well, we'll all have to learn what we can and can't eat in DayZ. So long as they add more things that can kill you and make it difficult to distinguish between the edible and inedible in some cases, I feel like that'll be reflected just about as well as it can be in a game. Would be nice to see time of year on a server reflect the plants that are available to eat, among other things.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Beizs