Food Priority / Devblog 29th of July

[VVarhead 185]

Sup guys.

 

I just wanted to address something that's quite important to me and wanted to hear a few opinions concerning the priority of food in the loot distribution.

 

I don't think food should be plentiful, in fact the most fun hours I've had with the game was when the stable patch hit where neither wells worked nor any food was to be found.

 

Imo, food should be as rare as civilian firearms, afterall we're in a post-apocalyptic scenario and there's already more than enough ways to find food.

 

Afterall I thought DayZ Standalone was focusing on the survival-aspect, finding food at every shithole isn't survival to me.

[Coheed_IV 381]

Which version are you discussing?

 

I'm playing experimental now and the loot is very evenly distributed.

 

But, :(  food levels on experimental are just too high right now, zero challenge, without infected it's a little sad. I really hope this goes down. Remember they can now change these levels after .58 is released to stable in real time :).

Edited August 1, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[bain 23]

Food is way to easy to find right now. I too feel spoiled by the brief couple of weeks when food was super hard to find. I can't remember the version, but it was the Apple picking period. Loved it. Dayz was real then. I wish that would come back. Or at least close to that.

[call him Steve 46]

Totally agree with that!!

 

I had more fun running inland to starve, then getting shot up in Electro. 

[buddy_cassino 69]

Having almost no infected on the .58 experimental branch servers it feels like there´s too much food around. Having hordes roaming that feeling might change even without changing food spawn settings.

[boneboys 7988]

Having almost no infected on the .58 experimental branch servers it feels like there´s too much food around. Having hordes roaming that feeling might change even without changing food spawn settings.

That may well be a valid point.

[renpab80@gmail.com 41]

i agree, most fun i had was the first implementation of .55....hardcore scarcity and hardcore infected ;) the status report mentioned they tinker with the loot distribution of canned food etc. hopefully they will make some less popular choices and tone down the spawn rate.

 

 

 

Having almost no infected on the .58 experimental branch servers it feels like there´s too much food around. Having hordes roaming that feeling might change even without changing food spawn settings.

 

pardon, but where is the connection between infected and food?

[Sperglord 76]

It probably won't happen because sadly the majority of DayZ players are deathmatch PvP'ers and they don't care about any survival, they would completely eliminate hunger and thirst if they had a chance because it only stops them from never ending fighting.

When food was rare at some point I think it was 0.55 but I could be wrong, there was 10 threads per day with people crying that they go into a house and don't find food.

But there is one solution to this, we make the game hardcore unforgiving survival and they either adapt to it of switch to some easier game aka CoD

Edited August 2, 2015 by Sperglord

[Bororm 1156]

It probably won't happen because sadly the majority of DayZ players are deathmatch PvP'ers and they don't care about any survival, they would completely eliminate hunger and thirst if they had a chance because it only stops them from never ending fighting.

When food was rare at some point I think it was 0.55 but I could be wrong, there was 10 threads per day with people crying that they go into a house and don't find food.

But there is one solution to this, we make the game hardcore unforgiving survival and they either adapt to it of switch to some easier game aka CoD

 

Because those patches were broken.  And people like you who think they weren't do the game a disservice by brushing off legitimate claims as people just wanting it "easy."  Even Hicks is guilty of this and initially said everything was fine, then finally admitted that the loot distribution was straight fucked up.  Entire towns devoid of any single item at all is not a feature.  It has nothing to do with pvpers.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Bororm

[Etherious 907]

I agree completely, however, I don't wanna pick apples and cherries every time I hit a town. xD 

[Volcanogod 28]

 

pardon, but where is the connection between infected and food?

 

With an increase in the amount of infected it would be harder to loot and gather supplies thereby making plentiful loot less of a problem since you would have a harder time accessing it.

[Coheed_IV 381]

I remember them saying in a status report that when you find food it should rate a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, this coming from Dean. I doubt this has changed.

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

I suspect that food levels are currently artificially high so that the developers can actually get some useful data from player actions. "He spawned and Cherno and starved to death there an hour later without ever leaving," does not give them much actionable data. You have to actually survive long enough to get off the coast and test what I'll call some of the 'late-game' options, like military weapons, otherwise they've got no data to work with. Alas, this is exactly what you signed up for.

[VVarhead 185]

I remember them saying in a status report that when you find food it should rate a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, this coming from Dean. I doubt this has changed.

 

I sure hope it hasn't.

 

I'm talking bout' both versions, food in stable is way to high whereas in experimental it's not that game-breaking and atmosphere-crushing.

[scriptfactory 620]

I would like to see the following changes to food:

• Canned food should be rare.
• Fresh fruit/vegetables should not spawn in houses/buildings. Instead, crops/plots of one type of fresh food should randomly spawn in greenhouses.
• The action "Search for apples/berries" should result in at least one food item always getting found if one is available. Otherwise you should get an empty/not found message.
• Killing wildlife should result in a large amount of food.
• Fishing should be intuitive. Either display a visual indicator when you have hooked/lost a fish OR the fishing action should "auto-complete" when a fish is hooked/lost.
• All food should be destroyed when killing a player unless it is in a protective container. This would lead to banditry for food items.
• The new UI should be implemented so we can know our current food/water usage rates.

Edit: This is in addition to the standard changes like stamina, disease, etc. affecting food consumption.

Edited August 4, 2015 by scriptfactory

[grimlok 77]

I would like to see the following changes to food:

• Canned food should be rare.  Agree
• Fresh fruit/vegetables should not spawn in houses/buildings. Instead, crops/plots of one type of fresh food should randomly spawn in greenhouses.  Agree
• The action "Search for apples/berries" should result in at least one food item always getting found if one is available. Otherwise you should get an empty/not found message.  Somewhat agree, should switch from rotten to pristine pickings
• Killing wildlife should result in a large amount of food.  Somewhat agree only because we don't have the proper equipment for gutting and skinning the animals to get the meat
• Fishing should be intuitive. Either display a visual indicator when you have hooked/lost a fish OR the fishing action should "auto-complete" when a fish is hooked/lost. Display indicator only, no hand holding.
• All food should be destroyed when killing a player unless it is in a protective container. This would lead to banditry for food items.  Head shots won't destroy food
• The new UI should be implemented so we can know our current food/water usage rates.  Disagree.  There Should be no indicator of any kind.

Edit: This is in addition to the standard changes like stamina, disease, etc. affecting food consumption.

[Evil Minion 943]

With an increase in the amount of infected it would be harder to loot and gather supplies thereby making plentiful loot less of a problem since you would have a harder time accessing it.

Same is true when the stamina system goes live and players can no onger sprint all the time. Both result in longer times between "I have found something" events (not related to the gather mechanic that likes to mock you for having to spam a button over and over and finding nothing) adding to the impression that loot is more scarce. Not to mention that a working and nontrivial PvE environment requires you to spend more of the resources you found.

 

On a side not I found food to be overabundant in 0.58 but weaponry was way worse. Guns are a little too common (as if everyone and even the little children were armed before the zombies came), ammo piles are too common and too big on average. And ammo boxes... those things are everywhere! Magazines on the other side seem to be okay at least for civilian guns.

[VVarhead 185]

I agree with the effect of stamina and even zombie population on food. But I don't see how that balances the fact you can craft a fishing rod out of pretty much anything and casually get 20 fish outta there, you can cook them in almost every house now, you can make fire with just an axe and a knife/matches, you can find berries, apples, (soon) mushrooms

 

food is fucking everywhere

 

Food should be the main reason players get killed, food should be as rare as large calibre weapons (which are way too common now, too)

[Whyherro123 2283]

I agree with the effect of stamina and even zombie population on food. But I don't see how that balances the fact you can craft a fishing rod out of pretty much anything and casually get 20 fish outta there, you can cook them in almost every house now, you can make fire with just an axe and a knife/matches, you can find berries, apples, (soon) mushrooms

 

food is fucking everywhere

 

Food should be the main reason players get killed, food should be as rare as large calibre weapons (which are way too common now, too)

Yes, food is everywhere, but it should take time and effort to forage for that food in the wild. In real life, most fighting was done in the Autumn, after the harvest and foraging-season was done with, because only then did the warriors have both 1)enough food, and 2) enough free-time, to actually fight. In Spring, Summer, and Winter, there was too many things to do, like planting, harvesting, and preparing food.

 

Fishing should take time, and be almost mind-numbingly boring, when using a rod (in a real-life survival situation, I would set up a net, or a bunch of traps, instead), trapping small game should take time, and it actually should have a rather high failure rate ( I've set up 3 different snare lines, of a style more effective than the one we use in Day Z, 7 snares to a line, and caught 2 rabbits), and hunting large game should take a signifigant amount of time, as well as being significantly harder. There are several different edible plants that would be readily available (ESPECIALLY cattail. Gods own survival food, right there), but they require digging, getting wet, and fire. So, there would be a lot of food, but in order to get it, you would have to expend a lot of time and effort, something that part of the playerbase might not want. This is why there is canned food, for those mouthbreathers.

 

There was a reason that Native Americans used many different methods of food procurement. They raised crops, hunted for large game, trapped small game, and foraged for wild plants and such.

[Evil Minion 943]

I hope they will bring back the Ashwood stick. Crafting a bow or fishing rod from every arbitrary branch shouldn't really be possible as most branches would simply break and not flex. So it's reasonable to require higher quality wood for everything that is supposed to withstand some physical force - or at least make items made of weak material break very easily. However, for "cooking" every stick should do.

 

Living from nature is pretty easy right now but this might change with changes to the system - for example fishing could get a visual clue but also take much longer on average. Gathering is pretty annoying right now (the game basically mocks you for getting unlucky) but is a infinite food source - maybe it should be changed to a limited amount of fruits per plant. Horticulture should be much slower (several ingame days) - a feature to secure future food supplies but not one to quickly save people from starvation. And finally hunting should be high risk/effort for high reward - this depends on animal AI though.

[Whyherro123 2283]

I hope they will bring back the Ashwood stick. Crafting a bow or fishing rod from every arbitrary branch shouldn't really be possible as most branches would simply break and not flex. So it's reasonable to require higher quality wood for everything that is supposed to withstand some physical force - or at least make items made of weak material break very easily. However, for "cooking" every stick should do.

 

Living from nature is pretty easy right now but this might change with changes to the system - for example fishing could get a visual clue but also take much longer on average. Gathering is pretty annoying right now (the game basically mocks you for getting unlucky) but is a infinite food source - maybe it should be changed to a limited amount of fruits per plant. Horticulture should be much slower (several ingame days) - a feature to secure future food supplies but not one to quickly save people from starvation. And finally hunting should be high risk/effort for high reward - this depends on animal AI though.

Ah ... not exactly.

 

You can make a self-bow from basically any type of wood that grows in a temperate forest, including pine. All you have to do is vary the "depth" and "width" of the limbs, and add things like "cable-backing", or just strap two weak bows together. Woods like Ash and Yew were popular because they were 1) the "best" available, and 2) easy to work, and easy to differentiate between the heartwood and sapwood.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-backed_bow

 

That bad boy is a "Penobscot"

 

I made a self-bow out of a Birch sapling. The thing draws 60+ lbs at 10 inches, easy ( I can draw a 45lb no problem, I can't get this thing back to my usual nock-point, and have to use my nose instead!)

 

I actually agree with you with regards to foraging from plants. It shouldn't be random; instead, you get access to the "inventory" of the plant, where you can choose between the "best" parts, all the way down to rotted bits. Whoever gets there first gets the best choice, so if you take a while, you get soft, slightly-squishy apples! This could apply from everything from apples and berries, to cattail and chicory/dandelion.

 

I also agree with you with regards to agriculture. I like "a weeks-worth" of real time as well, with the added caveat that you also have to "check up" on your garden regularity: weed it, water the plants, chase away (or build a quick fence) animals, etc. I love me some "Three Sisters" (http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html  Add some potatoes, and you have all the nutrients you need)

 

As well as large-game animal AI: hunting a deer should take a significant amount of time, from the spotting, to the stalking, to the final shot. Of course, with that investment of time, there should also be a commiserate reward: an average deer should provide enough meat, both lean and organs, to feed a single person for a week. This would, of course, require you to preserve some of that meat.  I prefer smoking: easy and always effective.

 

http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=96193

Edited August 4, 2015 by Whyherro123

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

Excellent points there, sir. I didn't know those goddamn cattails were so edible.

[VVarhead 185]

 

 

I actually agree with you with regards to foraging from plants. It shouldn't be random; instead, you get access to the "inventory" of the plant, where you can choose between the "best" parts, all the way down to rotted bits. Whoever gets there first gets the best choice, so if you take a while, you get soft, slightly-squishy apples! This could apply from everything from apples and berries, to cattail and chicory/dandelion.

 

 

That's a great idea, it really is. Also, shouldn't be hard to do.

 

Please, Dev's..