More realistic food system

[scriptfactory 620]

The current era of starving to death made me think about the current energy mechanics. For a game that prides itself on "authenticity" this mechanic is uninspired, tedious and unrealistic.

 

Energy and hydration are essentially the same mechanic; a constantly decreasing variable that that can eventually cause death if not maintained. Maintaining these two bars is tedious and adds little to gameplay. For newer players it is a cause of constant frustration. For experienced players it is an exersice in tedium. And it isn't even realistic. You will not die from starvation in a couple of days.

 

I propose removing energy and replacing it with two separate values; nutrition and hunger. The basics of this system are as follows:

 

• Hunger constantly decreases. It has maximum and minimum threshold values for sated and hungry statuses.
• When characters eat enough food they will reach a sated status. This should be the equivalent of one meal.
• When characters haven't eaten in a while they get hungry.
• Nutrition slowly rises when characters are in a sated status.
• Nutrition constantly decreases when in a hungry status.
• When nutrition is high characters reach a well fed status. They have higher stamina and are more resistant to disease.
• When nutrition is low characters reach a starving status. They have a lower stamina, are more susceptible to disease.
• When nutrition is at its highest characters benefit from reduced weapon sway.
• When nutrition is at its lowest characters reach a starved status. At this point characters can no longer sprint or fast forward run. Characters also suffer from increased weapon sway. Characters no longer gain blood or health.
• Characters never die from starved status. You are just slow and can't shoot.
• Characters still die from dehydration.
• Characters always gain blood and health at a constant rate when not starved or dehydrated.
• Characters gain more health when well fed.

 

I believe a nutritional system would make the game more approachable for new players as well as give a benefit to experienced players while remaining fairly realistic. Let me know what you guys think.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

Beans for proposing this topic.

 

I think they are hoping to dial some kind of system in with these experimental tweaks.

 

I agree that we could use some changes or a complete overhaul for these factors, I honestly would really like to hear what the devs might say about how the current system will be once properly implemented.

 

I also think that stamina might scale back some of these factors we're seeing as OP now.

[Evil Minion 943]

I do not like the "cannot die from starvation" point but otherwise I like it as it avoids the issues you run into when energy is applied immediately (bulimia effect etc.).

[Coheed_IV 381]

Far as I know, its is a little like as you suggest.  Though prove me wrong, or maybe I didn't read you properly.

 

You have a stomach, this is a container, you can fill it with anything you want. Fill it with water, fine but that will provide you no energy (or calories). Once the water is processed, you have room for more. Put food in, it isn't energy (or calories), but it turns into energy (or calories) as it is processed.

 

You start out with little energy (or calories) and lower health, makes sense if you washed up on shore, right? (hope they add evidence of washing up)

 

So it takes awhile to build energy (or calories), once its up you can heal.

 

I've found this to be a lot of fun, because it is tedious for awhile, but once you get health, it is no longer tedious. You gots fats man! Reaching this threshold is a great mechanic, the game then changes a bit, allowing you to be a bit nefarious. :murder:

 

They've never stopped messing with this, and currently its odd, but overall from the start, I think they have a good system.

[scriptfactory 620]

Far as I know, its is a little like as you suggest.  Though prove me wrong, or maybe I didn't read you properly.

 

Your basic understanding of the current energy and hydration system is correct. There is a shared stomach and you can fill this stomach with food or water. The main differences to my proposed system are as follows:

 

1. Currently both hydration and energy are variables clamped to a certain minimum and maximum value. Hydration maxes out at 4000 and energy at 20,000.
2. When either value reaches zero you start to lose blood and health. So you can die if you are well-hydrated but hungry. They are the same gam mechanic implemented twice.
3. In real life it takes an extremely long time to die from starvation (up to 25 weeks in extreme cases) but you will die if not properly hydrated within 3-7 days. So in DayZ, currently, you start off in a starving state and yet you suffer no ill effects.

I would like to change hunger to a motivational force. Something that experienced players must maintain if they want to be effective in combat. I want newer players to have a chance to compete at the game but still suffer from an increased difficulty if they cannot keep their hunger under control. I think farming should be an end-game tool used by clans.

 

Basically, hunger/nutrition could be one end-game mechanic. If you combine this system with a good soft skills mechanic then you have effectively created a reason for people to want to keep their characters alive. Older, well-maintained, characters would implicitly have more value than other characters all without the need for display these in-game statistics to characters. You just have to let players know when they are hungry or thirsty.

[ebrim 998]

I like the thought you put into this but I'm just not sure the basic mechanics as they are need or want to be changed all that much. There are too many systems yet to be implemented to start reworking a system that is already in place without seeing how it will fit into a future set of conditions.

 

Also the whole "it takes so so long to die from starvation" thing is a bit of a red herring. If you are an active normal person (not to mention the sprint all the time/vaulting over walls/super fast army crawl DayZ nonsense) you start to run out of energy and will just to do basic things within a couple days of having no food. Yes in certain situations you can not eat anything for weeks by just sitting still in a room where your only energy demands are basic metabolic functions but that has absolutely nothing to do with how characters behave in the game. Without a crazy amount of calories considering usual DayZ activities a person would be effectively useless without food in only a few days. Effectively useless in a game is as good as dead.

 

Let's see how the current system works in tandem with a stamina system, with revisited damage system, etc.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Ebrim

[scriptfactory 620]

Without a crazy amount of calories considering usual DayZ activities a person would be effectively useless without food in only a few days.

 

When I was still religious my dad made me fast. No food, only water. I did it for a week and was just fine. For a normal, healthy, person you can fast for extended periods of time and suffer little to no adverse effects. You will eventually start to slow down (which is why I deliberately added those starvation effects) but you are just fine.

 

And yes, that was child abuse.

Edited June 1, 2015 by scriptfactory

[ebrim 998]

When I was still religious my dad made me fast. No food, only water. I did it for a week and was just fine. For a normal, healthy, person you can fast for extended periods of time and suffer little to no adverse effects. You will eventually start to slow down (which is why I deliberately added those starvation effects) but you are just fine.

 

And yes, that was child abuse.

 

How many zombies did you kill in that week with a fireaxe while sprinting from house to house with 20 kilos of equipment? :D

Edited June 1, 2015 by Ebrim

[scriptfactory 620]

How many zombies did you kill in that week with a fireaxe while sprinting from house to house with 20 kilos of equipment? :D

 

I didn't kill any zombies but I hallucinated once. xD

 

I do feel that DayZ is a game and game mechanics should be fun! We should WANT to eat, just like we want to eat in real life. It shouldn't be yet another chore that we have to take care of or die. I want to see people specialized in the medical field that have to perform a game equivalent of surgery for broken legs and not just inject themselves with morphine. People that don't take care of broken legs should be forced to amputate that shit. And to deter people from just respawning we should have soft skills that improve automatically as your character ages.

 

This game is missing non-intrusive progression mechanics. I would rather see that than a barrel that lets you dye clothes...

[Coheed_IV 381]

I still don't get the OP, you say remove [energy] and replace with [hunger and nutrition]. That's already in game, [hunger and energy] (or calories). Your list of changes are also mostly in game.

The main differences to my proposed system are as follows:

 

1. Currently both hydration and energy are variables clamped to a certain minimum and maximum value. Hydration maxes out at 4000 and energy at 20,000. 

This is not a difference, right? This explains what is in game. Though I agree this could be expanded. Hydration should be able to max out (like it is), because we are not camels.

 

But, energy (or calories), we do store! So this part could be expanded. Currently, (I think) when food is processed into energy, but energy is full, it disappears.  :(  This could be put into a fat container variable, then if starving, fat container would deplete. So some players would take longer to starve, that would make sense. If your fat raises too high you cant wear jeans, Just kidding :D

 

Right now, we don't know when the energized sign is given, I think it is around 10,000, which means you can keep eating to get it maxed out 20,000(which can act like fat), most players don't get they're energy this high, because the symbol is vague. That is why they would like to get the HUD statuses in. It shows a stomach and energy level, everyone would understand that you can build energy up very high.

When either value reaches zero you start to lose blood and health. So you can die if you are well-hydrated but hungry. They are the same gam mechanic implemented twice.

You cant die from being hungry. Your just hungry. You die from energy (or calories) being fully depleted, which I think then depletes you health, then death. Blood is there so you can die from wounds. Health can also be affected by disease.

I think farming should be an end-game tool used by clans.

I hope so too. I cant really see this staying once game is being completed and persistence reliable. Growing pumpkins in 10 minutes makes no sense, standby for changes, I would suspect.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[ebrim 998]

I didn't kill any zombies but I hallucinated once. xD

 

I do feel that DayZ is a game and game mechanics should be fun! We should WANT to eat, just like we want to eat in real life. It shouldn't be yet another chore that we have to take care of or die. I want to see people specialized in the medical field that have to perform a game equivalent of surgery for broken legs and not just inject themselves with morphine. People that don't take care of broken legs should be forced to amputate that shit. And to deter people from just respawning we should have soft skills that improve automatically as your character ages.

 

This game is missing non-intrusive progression mechanics. I would rather see that than a barrel that lets you dye clothes...

 

I definitely sympathize with the motivation. I just think that if hunger gets tied to how long or fast you are able to run, or how much weight you are able to carry (which I expect it will), people will start to care about hunger more than just as a way to stop themselves from dying without needing to rejigger the whole thing. I also think that some sort of nutritional system (like you mention above) could be really interesting. Eating just one source of food may be enough to keep you from dying but it could have other complications. Maybe in addition to your snared rabbits you have to pick some berries and eat some animal lard or maybe just eating pumpkins is good to keep you from dying but you will eventually need some protein to reach peak physical state.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Ebrim

[Evil Minion 943]

I would rather like to keep starvation as a direct threat and something to worry about especially early in the game where a good amount of your effort should be put into getting a full belly. In a survival game food should matter a lot and not just give you a "combat debuff".

 

However, a really good point about this suggestion is energy not being applied immediately but keeping your belly full to slowly increase your nutrition over time. This would prevent people from stuffing themselves or even vomiting to consume extreme amounts of food. This could even help adding more depth by giving different types of food different nutrition properties.

 

Now it might be possible to combine some concepts and keep "starvation" more of an early game issue just like it is now while also introducing a (relatively hard to reach) "well-fed" aspect as an end game mechanic. As energy needs time before it is usable you cannot really reach this state by grinding for food for half an hour and then forgetting about it. Also "well fed" should disappear rather quickly if you cannot sustain it.

[scriptfactory 620]

You cant die from being hungry. Your just hungry. You die from energy (or calories) being fully depleted, which I think then depletes you health, then death.

 

Currently hunger just means your current energy level drops below a certain threshold.

[Whyherro123 2283]

When I was still religious my dad made me fast. No food, only water. I did it for a week and was just fine. For a normal, healthy, person you can fast for extended periods of time and suffer little to no adverse effects. You will eventually start to slow down (which is why I deliberately added those starvation effects) but you are just fine.

 

And yes, that was child abuse.

Fasting is different from starving in a survival situation. When you fast, you (usually) are not doing heavy labor. In a survival situation, your metabolism is already kickstarted higher than usual, due to fear, adrenaline responses, etc, on top of doing heavy labor; hiking, carrying heavy loads, processing wood, etc. 

 

The "average" sedentary male in the US is recommended to eat about 2000-2500 kCal per day. In a survival situation, I recommend you (try to, at least. And it is possible with proper foraging [hint: starchy tubers are your friend!]) eat between 5000-8000 (roughly the same amount eaten by soldiers) kCal, just to keep homeostasis going.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=CYnM99cLNgYC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=caloric+content+of+cattail+tubers&source=bl&ots=s0u_S8Qi85&sig=aJYZHMktRSue2wMnQ9yEbzmQsx4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZH5sVbL9HcKHsAWE4YCYBw&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=caloric%20content%20of%20cattail%20tubers&f=false

 

In the above link, it is stated that cattail tubers, which is where the starch (everyone knows starch is a complex carbohydrate, AKA "really really awesome", right?) contain about 3670 kCal per kilogram, and it is remarkably easy to get A LOT of cattail tubers. Plus, they tend to grow together in massive clumps.

 

And, I would like to comment on the whole "3 weeks before you starve to death" thing. Yes, in the right conditions (namely, temperate ecosystem [meaning, you have to burn energy to keep warm], with a fire and shelter [sleeping most of the time], and avoiding too much labor), you can live for about three weeks before dying. However, it isn't "in good shape till three weeks, then die", it is more of "slowly go insane due to hallucinations, get a whole slew of diseases (immune system will get shut down due to the body "prioritizing" homestasis), wounds won't heal and get infected (lack energy for healing processes), and be too weak to move". 

 

This is why in "real survival", you sleep for literally as much as possible, so your body only has to run at its "basal metabolic rate", that is, the rate of metabolism where you are using as little energy as possible, by doing as little as possible, and avoiding injury as much as much as you can. By running around with heavy loads (hell, just hiking through rough terrain with a load on your pack is highly "expensive"), fighting, and healing from injuries, you burn energy faster (aka have a higher metabolic rate), and thusly, cut that timeframe for survival right down.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Whyherro123

[Coheed_IV 381]

Currently hunger just means your current energy level drops below a certain threshold.

I'm not sure about currently, because it has been all across the board since forever. But, I'm sure that was not always the case.

 

And if it is, they're not using their own system to full purpose. Yeah, that would not make sense. :huh:  Stomach should be connected to hunger, that's it. I'm betting they changed this because people find it annoying that they are hungry (even though they have energy), and feel they have to do something about it.

 

Guess that's why they are looking into the HUD to explain mech., abit.

 

The other part is, that its been constant changing. These seem to be connected to server frames and engine ticks, every server in experimental had different timing to these. They probably cant fully settle in until everything is more stable.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[ebrim 998]

I was thinking a good and very basic nutrition system could look something like this:

 

3 pretty abstract "groups" to track:

Protein (primarily from animal sources)

Fat (more of a mixture from animal sources, some crops)

Starch (primarily all from crops/foraged food)

 

All food gives some amount of the three groups (that some amount could be zero). As one or more of the groups is drained from metabolic activity (similar to energy/hydration loss) or gained from diet you get various nutrition status effects with various effects upon gameplay and character performance. While simply trying to stay alive is the most obvious and primary goal of any survivor as you get more successful, gaining better nutrition stats will be a useful "end-game" goal for a character to achieve the best possible physical shape. While just running out of energy becomes unlikely at a certain point of progression, keeping a balanced diet could be a more enduring aspect of the game to keep track of that doesn't threaten death in the same way.

Edited June 1, 2015 by Ebrim

[BeefBacon 1185]

 

And yes, that was child abuse.

 

Sorry to hear that, man. Religion is a pox.

 

I like this idea, but I don't think that players shouldn't die from starvation. Certainly it should be difficult when compared to hydration, but not impossible. There should perhaps be two stages of starvation; the one that slows you down and - much later on - one that causes the player to lose blood/ health eventually causing death.

 

I very much like the idea of slowly healing provided you're fairly well-nourished. Always annoyed me that you had to be, like, turbo charged in order to regain blood and health - especially in recent patches where food can be a lot more difficult to come across. Healing should be very, very slow of course (faster when energized+hydrated) but present nonetheless.

 

I'd really like to see a proper nutritional system, where different foods have different health values. Living off cans of tinned bacon, for example, should provide a whole slew of disadvantages. Similarly, one shouldn't consider a diet of courgettes and pumpkins to be healthy either. Ideally players should have a diet of meat, fruit and vegetables to receive dietary benefits. Having a crappy or non-varied diet shouldn't be fatal, but having a good diet could perhaps increase disease resistance or running speed.  

[Whyherro123 2283]

The thing is: both the type of ecosystem (temperate deciduous forest), as well as the time of year, Day Z takes place in, there is practically no reason to starve. Maybe if you are trying to rely on canned food...

 

As I outlined above, cattail is an excellent food source (equal to farmed potato, if not superior due to not having to grow it), as well as being abundant, easy to gather (AKA use less energy), and multipurpose. If not cattail, then acorns would be available from numerous oak species (pretty high in carbohydrates, but they have to be boiled multiple times to remove tannins. Said tannins can be used to... tan leather), as well as grass seeds (which is effectively primitive wheat), wild roses (which can be found on ocean beaches, etc etc

 

Food is there, and pretty abundant. It just requires work and knowledge. Things some members of the playerbase apparently don't want.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQMyLZxoXL8

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6raxZiiCJo

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deqFF8Gz1LE

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwUd-xq0W-E&list=PL3n-_mp3iJeg0upL5F27QFPuqBRySL08n&index=12