Food scarcity is good; Caloric value and time to starve is not

[discipled 62]

7 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

I have my doubts about that. Not that long ago you could live entirely off of mushrooms, as they would spawn really fast and kept you both fed and hydrated. Now the fruit and mushroom spawn is completely different and it makes collecting them quite frustrating in fact, since they rot too fast. The game mechanic has not changed, that is true, but all it takes is changing a few variables and the experience is completely different. So I think they are still tweaking it and if anything tweaking the calories and how fast you burn them should be the easiest thing to change. I still think that they are rebalancing it as they add more and more food options. Do we know if the food palette is now complete? 

I would love to see, instead of changing a whole lot, increasing the number of berries and mushrooms that spawn... The current patch has done something great, and made people actually farm and grow vegetables... I'm loving it. Being as experienced as I am, I still, as a new spawn, have a good chance of starving because I didn't find a way to open a can or vegetables didn't give enough calories... I guess I really need to cook the vegetables now so they give more calories. Is it balanced... idk. I'm seeing a lot of garden plots popping up and vegetables about. As a good guy I'll every once and awhile just go and plant seeds for new spawns along the coast.  That being said, hunting has been good for many patches now, I think vegetables maybe need balance on hydration/calories. And I would love to see more mushrooms and berries but not excessive amounts. Maybe since they spawn dynamically they could increase the range a player needs to be to trigger this. That might solve the problem alone.

[liquidsnake 275]

2 hours ago, discipled said:

You got sick probably because after killing a chicken you didn't wash the blood from your hands, that's Salmonella... When you vomit you lose a TON of Water and Calories... it's highly destructive to your character. If you were cold and wet and sick, yeah makes sense you died. Keep warm, dry and wash your hands. Drinking from a well/spiggot will not get  you sick. You got sick because of the bloody hands or from drinking from anything else NOT a well. if you drink from a found bottle of water you can get sick from that. Dump it out and fill it up from a well... OR if you boil water in a cooking pot that'll sterilize it too OR use chlorine tabs. It's not a bad game, it's lack of knowledge that killed you.

Already said I washed my hands directly after hunting. Maybe you should stop assuming things.

[CharlehPock1 2]

On 9/29/2020 at 6:47 PM, liquidsnake said:

Already said I washed my hands directly after hunting. Maybe you should stop assuming things.

It sounds like you just need a bit more XP with the game. I've been playing about a month or so and I've got the hang of surviving the early game, even with the changes in 1.09 that make it harder to survive. I've not died as a freshie to any exposure/starvation - not unless it was absolutely throwing buckets down from the heavens and I didn't spawn near a town (that's a tricky one). My recent deaths (about 4 in the last few days) have been down to gunfights that I need more experience with (I died in a 2 v 1 twice, first guys had LAR/AK etc so they definitely weren't newbies)

Your priorities should be (in this order):

1. Clothing - being cold absolutely ruins your calories, get warm (hat/coat - any clothing that isn't ripped helps but the best things are obviously biker helmets/gloves/coats etc)

2. Tools - you need a killing implement (splitting/fire axe is best) to kill zombies with, and a knife of some sort to skin if you want to eat animals (the best source of early game food). Even with the long-ass persistence timers, these should be abundant in bigger towns like Elektro etc. Worst case, look for a dirt trail and bang 2 stones together to get a flint knife - stones spawn all over the place on the coloured trails which connect all the towns.

3. Water - get to a pump. Do not drink from anything you found - drink only from the water pump or from bottles you've emptied and filled yourself at the pump. Any type of standing water can give you cholera, and that's an absolute death sentence if you aren't a little bit established. Don't get me wrong, you can survive, but you might as well die and start again at this point. Get full - absolutely full of water until your stomach is full. Water goes through you quick so you can still eat a couple of minutes later.

4. A bag - not essential at this point but useful.

5. Zombies/chickens - kill these with your tools, skin/get cans of the zombies and eat everything. Don't save stuff - eat it all now. If your food isn't fully white, you are hungry. Any less than full white you need to find more food at an early stage.

6. Bigger animals - kill big animals, take the fat. You can survive a good few hours, a few in-game days on a piece of fat.

Calorific values are pretty decent in this game - trust me, eating one chicken breast in real life when you are almost starving to death is not going to keep you going for long.

Most people IRL are well fed/full of nutrients (even though it's mostly big-macs), so will survive several days without food - in DayZ, you are already starving at the start of the game. 

I take every death as fun - it's the only way you can. Don't get frustrated - just make up a story for that character in your head and how they met their untimely end! I find it more interesting to have random characters instead of a pre-made one because it means all the people I play as are unique 🙂

[discipled 62]

On 10/1/2020 at 9:52 AM, CharlehPock1 said:

It sounds like you just need a bit more XP with the game. I've been playing about a month or so and I've got the hang of surviving the early game, even with the changes in 1.09 that make it harder to survive. I've not died as a freshie to any exposure/starvation - not unless it was absolutely throwing buckets down from the heavens and I didn't spawn near a town (that's a tricky one). My recent deaths (about 4 in the last few days) have been down to gunfights that I need more experience with (I died in a 2 v 1 twice, first guys had LAR/AK etc so they definitely weren't newbies)

Your priorities should be (in this order):

1. Clothing - being cold absolutely ruins your calories, get warm (hat/coat - any clothing that isn't ripped helps but the best things are obviously biker helmets/gloves/coats etc)

2. Tools - you need a killing implement (splitting/fire axe is best) to kill zombies with, and a knife of some sort to skin if you want to eat animals (the best source of early game food). Even with the long-ass persistence timers, these should be abundant in bigger towns like Elektro etc. Worst case, look for a dirt trail and bang 2 stones together to get a flint knife - stones spawn all over the place on the coloured trails which connect all the towns.

3. Water - get to a pump. Do not drink from anything you found - drink only from the water pump or from bottles you've emptied and filled yourself at the pump. Any type of standing water can give you cholera, and that's an absolute death sentence if you aren't a little bit established. Don't get me wrong, you can survive, but you might as well die and start again at this point. Get full - absolutely full of water until your stomach is full. Water goes through you quick so you can still eat a couple of minutes later.

4. A bag - not essential at this point but useful.

5. Zombies/chickens - kill these with your tools, skin/get cans of the zombies and eat everything. Don't save stuff - eat it all now. If your food isn't fully white, you are hungry. Any less than full white you need to find more food at an early stage.

6. Bigger animals - kill big animals, take the fat. You can survive a good few hours, a few in-game days on a piece of fat.

Calorific values are pretty decent in this game - trust me, eating one chicken breast in real life when you are almost starving to death is not going to keep you going for long.

Most people IRL are well fed/full of nutrients (even though it's mostly big-macs), so will survive several days without food - in DayZ, you are already starving at the start of the game. 

I take every death as fun - it's the only way you can. Don't get frustrated - just make up a story for that character in your head and how they met their untimely end! I find it more interesting to have random characters instead of a pre-made one because it means all the people I play as are unique 🙂

I agree with MOST of what you said. But calories need a small tweak and abundance. I love the direction that the early game is going. I love finding all the garden plots now. Before 1.09 unless someone seriously wanted to, gardening was never done.  This necessity for food and moving toward vegetables is great. I think pumpkins needs to be fewer per square BUT give at least 2x the amount of calories. I want to see more mushrooms and berries in the wild.

@ImpulZ I really think the late game needs better balance food wise. I think meat gives WAY too much hydration. Seriously cut that back a lot. Eating a lot of meat in real life can actually dehydrate you due to the necessity for more water during digestion. That being said, meat should be the opposite of vegetables. That would increase a more realistic need for diverse food consumption and/or meat and lots more water in the late game. You can literally not need a canteen or water bottle or pot and just eat meat and not need to drink again once you're in that later game portion. I think this balancing isn't right. Make the late game more about needing water more or vegetables.

[kopo79 426]

On 9/26/2020 at 4:24 PM, liquidsnake said:

I think having players limp early but for a much longer time is a good idea. It could simulate how after a few days of not eating we can still move on just fine, yet don't have the energy to go around running for food. The limping itself could prove a challenge, which I'm up for. 

yes.
character is limping in game when death is allready certain.
you never see anyone limping and fighting for a survival cos they kill them selfs....its faster if things got bad to give up

but dayz is still too fast when its come everything...everything should be slowed down.
dying
fishing
primitive firemaking
growing food(but other hand,if character dies in hypotermia,how you would grow anything?)
etc...
but if you see the workshop in steam...faster running/better calories/no stamina/bigger inventory.
where is the opposite?
in dayz,its faster to make fire with firedrill in rain than drink one pepsi.

you skin the enormous cow faster than eat can of beans
you can put the cooking pot in your t-shirt:D
can we have some hardcore mods allready?..please?:D

 

Edited October 2, 2020 by kopo79

[liquidsnake 275]

On 10/1/2020 at 3:52 PM, CharlehPock1 said:

It sounds like you just need a bit more XP with the game. I've been playing about a month or so and I've got the hang of surviving the early game, even with the changes in 1.09 that make it harder to survive. I've not died as a freshie to any exposure/starvation - not unless it was absolutely throwing buckets down from the heavens and I didn't spawn near a town (that's a tricky one). My recent deaths (about 4 in the last few days) have been down to gunfights that I need more experience with (I died in a 2 v 1 twice, first guys had LAR/AK etc so they definitely weren't newbies)

Your priorities should be (in this order):

1. Clothing - being cold absolutely ruins your calories, get warm (hat/coat - any clothing that isn't ripped helps but the best things are obviously biker helmets/gloves/coats etc)

2. Tools - you need a killing implement (splitting/fire axe is best) to kill zombies with, and a knife of some sort to skin if you want to eat animals (the best source of early game food). Even with the long-ass persistence timers, these should be abundant in bigger towns like Elektro etc. Worst case, look for a dirt trail and bang 2 stones together to get a flint knife - stones spawn all over the place on the coloured trails which connect all the towns.

3. Water - get to a pump. Do not drink from anything you found - drink only from the water pump or from bottles you've emptied and filled yourself at the pump. Any type of standing water can give you cholera, and that's an absolute death sentence if you aren't a little bit established. Don't get me wrong, you can survive, but you might as well die and start again at this point. Get full - absolutely full of water until your stomach is full. Water goes through you quick so you can still eat a couple of minutes later.

4. A bag - not essential at this point but useful.

5. Zombies/chickens - kill these with your tools, skin/get cans of the zombies and eat everything. Don't save stuff - eat it all now. If your food isn't fully white, you are hungry. Any less than full white you need to find more food at an early stage.

6. Bigger animals - kill big animals, take the fat. You can survive a good few hours, a few in-game days on a piece of fat.

Calorific values are pretty decent in this game - trust me, eating one chicken breast in real life when you are almost starving to death is not going to keep you going for long.

Most people IRL are well fed/full of nutrients (even though it's mostly big-macs), so will survive several days without food - in DayZ, you are already starving at the start of the game. 

I take every death as fun - it's the only way you can. Don't get frustrated - just make up a story for that character in your head and how they met their untimely end! I find it more interesting to have random characters instead of a pre-made one because it means all the people I play as are unique 🙂

Mate, this discussion is about food. You're rambling all over the place about basic survival stuff to someone who you can see has joined this forum in 2012... That and I have repeatedly stated that survival even in this patch is not a problem for me, but that I think the current food dynamic has realism issues that are troublesome IMMERSION-wise. 

And back to food specifically... starvation is an extremely slow moving process where you gradually go from fed to near-death, limping and running on reserves being quite literally just skin and bones. The notion that our characters in DayZ are already starving to the point of being an hour from death at spawn is ridiculous. Just something you're telling yourself to rationalise the insane rate at which starvation happens, but ultimately it is completely disconnected from realism and that remains my point. Reality is that humans that start out decently fed can survive up to a literal month without food. Reality is that when even remotely close to death by starvation, a human will already be limping and looking seriously malfed. And none of that is the case in DayZ. It being a game requires the process of starvation to be hastened, naturally, but the current dynamic just goes too far for it to remain believable.

As I've said before, to better simulate starvation I recommend our energised state to impact our mobility much sooner. No or severely diminished sprinting unless food is white, limping at red food, even slower limping at flashing empty food. Meanwhile health diminishes relatively slowly, but fast enough to be a serious threat in combination with slower movement. This much more realistically simulates the impact of starvation on a human IRL. And most importantly, it remains a challenge, especially when you consider mobility is important to properly deal with PvP and certain PvE factors. 

[drgullen 593]

2 hours ago, liquidsnake said:

I recommend our energised state to impact our mobility much sooner. No or severely diminished sprinting unless food is white, limping at red food, even slower limping at flashing empty food.

I kind of agree with this, but I also think this would frustrate the player base too much.  It's a survival game, so there needs to be some challenges and difficulties to overcome for sure, but it also still needs to be a fun game to play.  It would swing the pendulum too far towards the tedious side.

If I were to change one thing, I would have the health indicator go one arrow down as soon as you go yellow energy or yellow hydration (it currently only does that when one of those turns red or you're freezing to death).  As I said previously, I think most players gloss over the fact that if they are yellow hungry or thirsty, they are already in trouble.  They treat that yellow like most drivers treat a yellow traffic light -- shit, it'll be red soon, floor it as opposed to apply the brakes and come to a stop.

I think tying limping to energy/hydration state as opposed to health state would be too extreme for the fun aspect of the game.

[Parazight 1594]

4 hours ago, liquidsnake said:

Reality is that humans that start out decently fed can survive up to a literal month without food.

Well, this game isn't about realism.  You should know that by now.  Sure, a human may be able to live a month without food, but if we were going for realism then food would take months to grow in game, there wouldn't be zombies, and we'd have to find a way to disable Discord.  It's also not realistic that when I get shot in the head that I instantly respawn again.

There has to be some credible gameplay balance.  There can only be so much immersion. Right?  IMO, that's what this thread fails to grasp.  It's a game, and it cant be realistic.  PVE is not hard at all for players with experience.

Whenever I see arguments that there isn't enough realism, I always think that the poster isn't getting shot at nearly enough.  That's the pinnacle challenge.  PVE is just frosting and decoration, as intended.

[liquidsnake 275]

18 hours ago, drgullen said:

I kind of agree with this, but I also think this would frustrate the player base too much.  It's a survival game, so there needs to be some challenges and difficulties to overcome for sure, but it also still needs to be a fun game to play.  It would swing the pendulum too far towards the tedious side.

If I were to change one thing, I would have the health indicator go one arrow down as soon as you go yellow energy or yellow hydration (it currently only does that when one of those turns red or you're freezing to death).  As I said previously, I think most players gloss over the fact that if they are yellow hungry or thirsty, they are already in trouble.  They treat that yellow like most drivers treat a yellow traffic light -- shit, it'll be red soon, floor it as opposed to apply the brakes and come to a stop.

I think tying limping to energy/hydration state as opposed to health state would be too extreme for the fun aspect of the game.

That is definitely the main risk of having your food state impact mobility much sooner. Players might get frustrated. One of my fresh spawn lives in which I got very unlucky with food/tools, I got stuck on yellow health in a town and I knew I couldn't travel to the next one without starving. So basically that town was my last chance at survival. I spent an entire day there just trying to survive and eventually with my health at red and food/hydrated stat full, I just went into a house, lay down on a bed (it had just become pitch dark) and "slept" there all night to let my health recover to the point where I could travel normally again. I actually found this a really interesting experience myself and I enjoyed the feeling of really being stuck until I was at full health again. I love moments like that. But for others I understand that there is a serious risk they won't enjoy being locked in a town by mobility issues and forced to survive there. Especially the part of actually having to rest in a house for considerable amount of time. I certainly think you have a point there. Players tend to call this game a walking simulator as is. The sprinting restriction is probably something that could easily be implemented though. 

16 hours ago, Parazight said:

Well, this game isn't about realism.  You should know that by now.  Sure, a human may be able to live a month without food, but if we were going for realism then food would take months to grow in game, there wouldn't be zombies, and we'd have to find a way to disable Discord.  It's also not realistic that when I get shot in the head that I instantly respawn again.

There has to be some credible gameplay balance.  There can only be so much immersion. Right?  IMO, that's what this thread fails to grasp.  It's a game, and it cant be realistic.  PVE is not hard at all for players with experience.

Whenever I see arguments that there isn't enough realism, I always think that the poster isn't getting shot at nearly enough.  That's the pinnacle challenge.  PVE is just frosting and decoration, as intended.

Yes, I understand that, but there are choices that can be made within the context of gameplay balance. DayZ can choose to simulate starvation by having the process be extremely quick, but it can also simulate this by having food be much rarer than it is now and making agriculture take longer, coupled with slower starvation, or by having your food stat impact mobility sooner to make searching for food more troublesome unless you plan ahead. These are all different options to simulate starvation and we can have a discussion about which would work best in terms of both gameplay balance and immersion/realism. There is no one 'correct' choice here and it's also not a matter of extreme realism versus gameplay. There is a middle ground to be found there. Even the present system tries to find such a middle ground between realism and gameplay. Question is, what is the sweet spot that allows for both gameplay balance and high immersion? Opinions will differ on that.

[discipled 62]

On 10/4/2020 at 7:02 AM, liquidsnake said:

That is definitely the main risk of having your food state impact mobility much sooner. Players might get frustrated. One of my fresh spawn lives in which I got very unlucky with food/tools, I got stuck on yellow health in a town and I knew I couldn't travel to the next one without starving. So basically that town was my last chance at survival. I spent an entire day there just trying to survive and eventually with my health at red and food/hydrated stat full, I just went into a house, lay down on a bed (it had just become pitch dark) and "slept" there all night to let my health recover to the point where I could travel normally again. I actually found this a really interesting experience myself and I enjoyed the feeling of really being stuck until I was at full health again. I love moments like that. But for others I understand that there is a serious risk they won't enjoy being locked in a town by mobility issues and forced to survive there. Especially the part of actually having to rest in a house for considerable amount of time. I certainly think you have a point there. Players tend to call this game a walking simulator as is. The sprinting restriction is probably something that could easily be implemented though.

Yes, I understand that, but there are choices that can be made within the context of gameplay balance. DayZ can choose to simulate starvation by having the process be extremely quick, but it can also simulate this by having food be much rarer than it is now and making agriculture take longer, coupled with slower starvation, or by having your food stat impact mobility sooner to make searching for food more troublesome unless you plan ahead. These are all different options to simulate starvation and we can have a discussion about which would work best in terms of both gameplay balance and immersion/realism. There is no one 'correct' choice here and it's also not a matter of extreme realism versus gameplay. There is a middle ground to be found there. Even the present system tries to find such a middle ground between realism and gameplay. Question is, what is the sweet spot that allows for both gameplay balance and high immersion? Opinions will differ on that.

I too find it very interesting that you had to wait around in a town til enough spawned for you to survive. That's very interesting to me and I too find that fun. I don't know if I agree at making the character limp sooner or more, if I'm understanding what you're saying. I don't know why that should be and to what point.

 

My main frustration is with current food and water balance are two things. One, not that it's hard but that no matter how much experience a player has survival is still totally up to chance. Maybe that is part of survival, i guess, and this game. I just know that in real life there are things I can do to survive in desperate situations. I just want to see more gathering necessary to survive, mushrooms and berries. Speaking of immersion, it's quite the antithesis to immersion to have to kill zombies to find cans of food on them.

 

My second issue is what I said in an earlier post. late game, fully gear characters, have it too easy. Water should be a MUCH bigger issue and needing to drink it or consume it from vegetables. Meat,except for fish, shouldn't give you the amount of hydration is currently does. Fishing is perfectly balance imo. It takes a lot of resources and effort and fish give a lot of calories and water.

['AZAZEL' 109]

Nothing really matters as long as the Fat is the most overpowered food item in the game which makes literally everything else obsolete. In its current state, it's more than 5x effective than any other meat or food item in the game. Horticulture is a waste of time, unless you are doing it for funzies.

It should either be removed completely or nerfed more than 50%. Once you have killed a pig, herd of sheep/goat, pack of wolves/cow ... you literally do not have to worry about starting or food in general for multiple game sessions. When you consume a fat or two, you are currently able to do a lap around the map basically.

Edited October 9, 2020 by 'AZAZEL'

[maxon-69 35]

I played somehow on a hardcore server with a minimum of food, where I was constantly dying from lack of food. Yes, cool, but tortured. As a result, except for the production of food, I did not have time to do anything else.

And increasing the calorie content of food on vanilla servers is also not interesting, it will kill the gameplay.