Cooking Pots should not be allowed to store water while in your backpack

[aaronlands 55]

Now this suggestion might piss off some of you camels (aka water hoarders) out there but hear me out:

Players should not be able to store cooking pots with water on their characters or in their backpacks.  Instead, when the cooking pot is filled with water it should not be able to be placed into your inventory.  This allows the cooking pot to still be used as a cooking device and storage device but precludes it from being used as a superior water container. 

Cooking pots in real life are not typically made with sealable lids and even if that is the case the icon and object in DayZ just appears to be a regular cooking pot.  In reality, if you stored such a pot in your backpack you would have a wet bag pretty quickly.

The current state of cooking pots as water containers reduces the usefulness and/or increases the redundancy of the canteen and the water bottle.  Implementing the above change would bring more value to the other items mentioned.  Of course, a jerry can would still be allowed to carry water and be stored in your inventory because it is a sealable container.  

Currently, running around with a cooking pot filled with water makes little sense and discourages frequent water runs as the pot can keep you hydrated for such a long amount of time.  I think this small change, if it could be easily implement, would do much to balance the water situation in the game. 

Can anyone comment on the technical possibility of this change? Would this limitation (cooking pot being unstorable when filled with water) be possible with the current game configuration?

[Brother Hao 28]

It shouldn't be too technically demanding to make it so that the cooking pot couldn't be stored with water in it. I love this idea!

[cj187_berlin 23]

Other idea, when I put a filled Pot in my inventory I will lose the water over short time and get wet and then soaked.

I also want to prevent the Pot as a Fluid-Container and as Item-Container at the same time. 

Or the water will get dirty and unhealthy, when I put my shoes, tools or ammunition inside.

 

[drgullen 597]

@aaronlands

I would actually like to see them take it even one step further and change it such that the cooking pot is no longer able to store water at all.

As you've pointed out, currently, staying hydrated becomes way too easy once you've found a cooking pot.  You go to the well, drink until your stomach icon appears and then fill up the cooking pot and store it -- at that point, you're essentially hydrated for the rest of your play session with that character.  No need to even think about water anymore, much less loot items like water bottles or canteens.

Make it so the cooking pot is only that -- a pot to cook things in.  You can place animal fat and meat together and bake it without the need for water.

I like any changes that make survival more difficult.

[William Sternritter 449]

If you know what you're doing it's not a problem to place cooking pot full of liquid to your backpack and carry it. 

Stashing it in your inventory and moving on is just the same "gamification" as not having to pluck a chicken for 30 minutes over boiling water, but instead using skin and quarter action which lasts for 10 seconds and gives you perfectly cut breats. Totally unrealistic, but I get why killing and cooking animals is extremely simplified.

As for staying hydrated, you certainly are not as thirsty IRL as you are in the game. So, some actions are easier, some actions are harder and overal this is what makes the game. Storing water in cooking pot is not an issue. Because you could also say that you should not be able to store a cooking pot at all, except in a backpack, right? Same as many other item that you just would not be able to carry in your pants or hoodie. But again ... game. Beauty of Day Z lies elsewhere. 

[Derleth 1357]

5 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

If you know what you're doing it's not a problem to place cooking pot full of liquid to your backpack and carry it. 

Stashing it in your inventory and moving on is just the same "gamification" as not having to pluck a chicken for 30 minutes over boiling water, but instead using skin and quarter action which lasts for 10 seconds and gives you perfectly cut breats. Totally unrealistic, but I get why killing and cooking animals is extremely simplified.

As for staying hydrated, you certainly are not as thirsty IRL as you are in the game. So, some actions are easier, some actions are harder and overal this is what makes the game. Storing water in cooking pot is not an issue. Because you could also say that you should not be able to store a cooking pot at all, except in a backpack, right? Same as many other item that you just would not be able to carry in your pants or hoodie. But again ... game. Beauty of Day Z lies elsewhere. 

Aye I agree - but with the way your average survivor moves about there's not a chance in hell the water would stay in the pot for long. There are canteens and water bottles for holding water, and I very much doubt the thought behind the cooking pot containing water went beyond the purpose of actually boiling stuff in it, or as a means to move water temporarily (to water plants or fill radiators etc). That it works as an uber water container in your backpack is just a side effect. I would prefer the variant where the water would leak into your backpack (or any other part of your inventory holding it) drenching it and all items in it. I also liked the idea where water kept in a pot along with random items would cause the water to get contaminated.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Derleth

[William Sternritter 449]

5 minutes ago, Derleth said:

Aye I agree - but with the way your average survivor moves about there's not a chance in hell the water would stay in the pot for long. There are canteens and water bottles for holding water, and I very much doubt the thought behind the cooking pot containing water went beyond the purpose of actually boiling stuff in it, or as a means to move water temporarily (to water plants or fill radiators etc). That it works as an uber water container in your backpack is just a side effect. I would prefer the variant where the water would leak into your backpack (or any other part of your inventory holding it) drenching it and all items in it. I also liked the idea where water kept in a pot along with random items would cause the water to get contaminated. 

Now, I of course understand that, and it does make perfect sense to have it spill water when in inventory. Finetuning the interaction of other items while a pot occurred to me as well. I personally take pot only as a temporary measure of water storage. Dragging it around just for that is largely impractical, but let me also be blunt about the other topic. You would never ever have any issues finding bottles and canteens in the real world. This call to make also bottles and canteens rare makes absolutely no sense. I take it that purification supplies can be limited, but not the containers themselves. We could even have glass bottles that would weight more and would perhaps be more prone to breaking when taking damage, either from hits or falling etc. This is perhaps more important, because while there is abundance of bottles in the real world they can also be quite fragile, even the plastic ones. However; just dying of thirst every 30 minutes is just stupidly artificial. 
While we have what we have, the subject of carrying water in a pot effortlessly does not bother me that much, but it certainly can be overhauled in conjunction with other changes which will overall re-think the hydration mechanics. 

[Derleth 1357]

49 minutes ago, William Sternritter said:

Now, I of course understand that, and it does make perfect sense to have it spill water when in inventory. Finetuning the interaction of other items while a pot occurred to me as well. I personally take pot only as a temporary measure of water storage. Dragging it around just for that is largely impractical, but let me also be blunt about the other topic. You would never ever have any issues finding bottles and canteens in the real world. This call to make also bottles and canteens rare makes absolutely no sense. I take it that purification supplies can be limited, but not the containers themselves. We could even have glass bottles that would weight more and would perhaps be more prone to breaking when taking damage, either from hits or falling etc. This is perhaps more important, because while there is abundance of bottles in the real world they can also be quite fragile, even the plastic ones. However; just dying of thirst every 30 minutes is just stupidly artificial. 
While we have what we have, the subject of carrying water in a pot effortlessly does not bother me that much, but it certainly can be overhauled in conjunction with other changes which will overall re-think the hydration mechanics. 

Yep. Glass (vodka) bottles are actually in the files I believe, for a brief while they were even in types.xml so you could activate them on your server, but after 1.0 they were gone for some reason (along with the sword and some other stuff). I've seen them unlocked on some modded servers so they're still there. I'm hoping we'll be able to make molotov cocktails with them at some point. 😄

[William Sternritter 449]

2 minutes ago, Derleth said:

Yep. Glass (vodka) bottles are actually in the files I believe, for a brief while they were even in types.xml so you could activate them on your server, but after 1.0 they were gone for some reason (along with the sword and some other stuff). I've seen them unlocked on some modded servers so they're still there. I'm hoping we'll be able to make molotov cocktails with them at some point. 😄

Hah cool, I missed that 🙂

[Parazight 1599]

Seems fine.  Not a big deal to have a container that can do this.   Not an issue for overall balancing.   This isn't about realism, if it were, we wouldn't have zombies and it would take months for plants to grow.

[aaronlands 55]

14 hours ago, cj187_berlin said:

Other idea, when I put a filled Pot in my inventory I will lose the water over short time and get wet and then soaked.

I also want to prevent the Pot as a Fluid-Container and as Item-Container at the same time. 

Or the water will get dirty and unhealthy, when I put my shoes, tools or ammunition inside.

 

I had thought of this as an alternative option.  The only downside I can think of is that this might be a more technically demanding solution which requires the server to keep track of all the levels of water in players backpacks.  Might be a bit much but I honestly know very little about the coding of the game and this is just a guess.  If it were easy to implement without any performance impact then this idea is ideal.

 

 

10 hours ago, drgullen said:

@aaronlands

I would actually like to see them take it even one step further and change it such that the cooking pot is no longer able to store water at all.

As you've pointed out, currently, staying hydrated becomes way too easy once you've found a cooking pot.  You go to the well, drink until your stomach icon appears and then fill up the cooking pot and store it -- at that point, you're essentially hydrated for the rest of your play session with that character.  No need to even think about water anymore, much less loot items like water bottles or canteens.

Make it so the cooking pot is only that -- a pot to cook things in.  You can place animal fat and meat together and bake it without the need for water.

I like any changes that make survival more difficult.

I agree except that I still want cooking pots to store water but only if it is not in storage.  In other words, the cooking pot will only store water if it is in the player's hands or on the ground.  I think players should still be able to collect water from a pond and boil it to make clean water and perhaps distribute the water to canteens and I still think players should be able to boil food as this is a legitimate means of cooking .  

As to the other comments by posters, I see your points about how arguments grounding in realism are not effective as it is a game after all.  I agree that ideally there shouldn't be an overall rarity of water storage containers.  Perhaps the cooking pot is acting as a placeholder in lieu of the fact that you would be able to find tons of bottles. 

From a gameplay perspective I still see  a few issues.  First, the redundancy of water bottles and canteens in comparison to cooking pots is not effective game design.  Second, if you really hydrate yourself (like where you see the icon as white and full but you keep drinking) AND you have a cooking pot full of water, the player's need for water seems almost unintentionally diminished.  Third, while I know appeals to realism are not always effective given the inconsistency of design decisions within the game , it makes very little sense that you can store items in a cooking pot when those items should conversely take up volume and reduce the amount of water storage.

Also another thought, the speed of the plucking of chickens was used an example of another unrealistic element of the game.  But surely, this doesn't really bring us any closer to analyzing these gameplay mechanics in a critical way.  Of course there are going to be unrealistic decisions: it is a game!  But water consumption/depletion is a very finely tuned part of the experience and is very close to the character's survival. I think where survival and core mechanics (blood, food, water, health, sickness) are concerned, upmost attention should be paid to the objects and processes which directly affect these mechanics.  

[William Sternritter 449]

14 hours ago, aaronlands said:

Second, if you really hydrate yourself (like where you see the icon as white and full but you keep drinking) AND you have a cooking pot full of water, the player's need for water seems almost unintentionally diminished.  

Now this, has nothing to do with cooking pots. Back before 0.63, when that status was in text you would have status of full (I think) which is today's white and full indicator and then you could get one above, stuffed. 

As in real life, this means your hydration and hunger barely diminish for prolonged time. This is still the argument to add also green indicator above white to indicate this status. IRL you can tell, in game not so much.

Normally when I get hydrated and fed, if I can, I drink ad eat practically until the stomach icon appears to ensure that I'm stuffed. For the same reason I always munch small food like mushrooms and fruits as I find them. It does help to keep you perpetually fed and hydrated. There is no need to wait for your indicators to drop. 

[aaronlands 55]

9 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

Now this, has nothing to do with cooking pots. Back before 0.63, when that status was in text you would have status of full (I think) which is today's white and full indicator and then you could get one above, stuffed. 

As in real life, this means your hydration and hunger barely diminish for prolonged time. This is still the argument to add also green indicator above white to indicate this status. IRL you can tell, in game not so much.

Normally when I get hydrated and fed, if I can, I drink ad eat practically until the stomach icon appears to ensure that I'm stuffed. For the same reason I always munch small food like mushrooms and fruits as I find them. It does help to keep you perpetually fed and hydrated. There is no need to wait for your indicators to drop. 

True and I concede that it isn't directly related.  But the water storage amounts of the cooking pot combined with their portability and combined with water needs creates a situation where the player can too easily remain in a status of 'fully hydrated and on the move.'  These are value judgements so there is room for disagreement on this point.  I think it's just a bit unbalanced and I think players should be able to collect water in storage containers and such but I don't think the cooking pot is the appropriate mechanism.

I also generally play where I get saturated and move from point to point.  The cooking pot is very helpful in allowing me to sprint long distances because half a cooking pot generally gets you close to the 'stuffed' stage of fullness.  It allows me to effectively ignore wells for long periods of time in way which I find is unrewarding and a bit too easy.    

[William Sternritter 449]

5 minutes ago, aaronlands said:

True and I concede that it isn't directly related.  But the water storage amounts of the cooking pot combined with their portability and combined with water needs creates a situation where the player can too easily remain in a status of 'fully hydrated and on the move.'  These are value judgements so there is room for disagreement on this point.  I think it's just a bit unbalanced and I think players should be able to collect water in storage containers and such but I don't think the cooking pot is the appropriate mechanism.

I also generally play where I get saturated and move from point to point.  The cooking pot is very helpful in allowing me to sprint long distances because half a cooking pot generally gets you close to the 'stuffed' stage of fullness.  It allows me to effectively ignore wells for long periods of time in way which I find is unrewarding and a bit too easy.    

Yeah, I fully get what you're saying. But again, as soon as you have at least one canteen and usually it is no big issue to have more than one, cooking pot no longer plays that much of a difference. It really is a "cheat" only early on. My current char also got "saved" by cooking pot, but I long since discarded it because I found bottles and canteen. Two canteens are normally more than enough to get you around and you can carry one on your belt. Chlorine tablets are the real enabler to stay off well and towns altogether. 

[aaronlands 55]

Also I should mention, that in a recent 1.06 experimental I believe they are considering two changes  to water mechanics:

1)  The water bottle will hold twice as much water (50 changed to 100); and
2)   the canteen will only take up a 2x2 space (smaller)

  from the patch notes (https://forums.dayz.com/topic/246782-dayz-livonia-pc-open-beta/?page=1)

These changes will increase the water storage capacity of players.  As seen in this topic, whether this makes the cooking pot's water storage a further redundancy or a unbalanced mechanic is an area of debate .  I am amused by the idea of carrying a cooking pot filled with water and two full canteens and a full water bottle inside.  I am become Waterboy©.

 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by aaronlands

[William Sternritter 449]

That is a legit post-apo profession 😄