Hunger and Thirst not realistic?!?!?!

[Thehairyosama 0]

In DayZ you can last 30mins until you have to drink or eat. DayZ is mainly based on realism. In real life you can go a couple of days without food or drink in DayZ 30MINS!?!??!!?

[Ribano 46]

you run across mountains for 30mins and tell me if you'd like a drink at the end

[g12oome@hotmail.com 6]

If they had the feature taking 2 days play time before needing to drink or eat, the majourity of the people wouldn't even stay alive that long.. If your that picky about realism, why aren't you complaining about the zombies? ;)

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

I understand you're excited, but please try to limit yourself to two terminating punctuation marks per sentence. People will be more likely to respond to your questions and concerns as though they are legitimate thoughts rather than the rantings of a child.

As to your question, the accelerated hunger and thirst in the game is designed to compel you to approach settlements or water sources more often and thus encourage player interaction and "action" in the game.

It's not realistic.

But neither is the fact that you don't have to poop out all those beans.

Realism is sometimes trumped by gameplay.

Edited July 24, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[TyRobot 100]

I understand you're excited, but please try to limit yourself to two terminating punctuation marks per sentence. People will be more likely to respond to your questions and concerns as though they are legitimate thoughts co rather than the rantings of a child.

As to your question, the accelerated hunger and thirst in the game is designed to compel you to approach settlements or water sources more often and thus encourage player interaction and "action" in the game.

It's not realistic.

But neither is the fact that you don't have to poop out all those beans.

Realism is sometimes trumped by gameplay.

As always, well said. It all comes down to the fact this is still just something you play on your computer.

@OP: Mind you, this topic has been brought up dozens of times... :|

Edited July 24, 2012 by TyRobot

[Ivanuvo (DayZ) 117]

If you live in the diet that you live in on DayZ, while running constantly, you won't last 2 days, because you need to maintain a level of fitness to aim your rifle, which is hard when your hands are shaking due to hunger.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Ivanuvo

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

To add to ZedsDeadbaby's correct response in regards to 'gameplay', there is also the difference between 'realism' and 'authenticity'. Realism is exactly as it is for real, a 1on1 translation from the real world into the game. Authentic is 'like it is for real', the line between both is thin, but a miniature collectable car can only be 'authentic' it's mirrored after reality for as far as it can be, but the miniature car will never be 'real' in that it has working parts, starts and that you can sit in it (unless you can shrink yourself to 1/2 an inch size) ...

As you may have noticed Rocket tries to always use 'authentic' instead of realism for exactly this reason. I personally prefer 'believable' in regards to games, because believable can include a whole lot more as long as it falls within the context of the gameworld, and believable is also a simpler word that is likely to be understood by most non-native english speakers.

There is a last thing i would like to mention that likely has had a great impact on why thirst and hunger are so fast to appear, besides the gameplay aspect that it makes you visit higher risk places more often (because once you have some gear you can totally live out near a lake & clearing for water and meat). The frequent occurance is actually to put 'realism' in the game, but this realism is not in regards to the need for food/water, but the 'WANT' for food and water. If you ever watched any survival show on TV or take a more 'realistic approach to live', there are pretty much only 3 (possibly 4) things you need to survive, food/water/shelter(/fire). And in a survival situation (or generally IRL) these will be the things that will occupy your day to day activities. Most people nowadays grew up in a situation where they have running tapwater, live in a house with central heating and where food is only a visit to the shop away, meaning that the drive for these basic needs hardly occupies our minds anymore. But once these conveniences fall away, the drive for food and water WILL occupy your mind almost 24/7, to mimic this situation in the game the timer is set on a very short cycle, giving that psychological drive of needing food/water ...

To the above i would like to add, please try and not eat for a day or two, you can drink all you want, but try and not eat. And you will find that while you can survive for 3 weeks without food (approx), going a day without eating is NOT easy. Sure you won't die, but from my own experience of worse economic situations i can tell you that if you only have half a loaf of bread and a can of peanut butter that needs to last you 4 days, there is NOTHING pleasant about not having enough to eat, the things that drive you as a person also completely change ...

So while the food situation may not be entirely 'real', the frequency of food/water needs does mimic a psychological state & ingame situation that is VERY real were this to be an IRL situation...

Edited July 24, 2012 by L0GIN

[Ivanuvo (DayZ) 117]

To the above i would like to add, please try and not eat for a day or two, you can drink all you want, but try and not eat. And you will find that while you can survive for 3 weeks without food (approx), going a day without eating is NOT easy. Sure you won't die, but from my own experience of worse economic situations i can tell you that if you only have half a loaf of bread and a can of peanut butter that needs to last you 4 days, there is NOTHING pleasant about not having enough to eat, the things that drive you as a person also completely change ...

If you mean me with the above, I know how not eating can affect you. I'm underweight for my height, so if I skip lunch, my hands will start shaking. I can't imagine how I'd be after two days.

[robosheriff 13]

you run across mountains for 30mins and tell me if you'd like a drink at the end

Yes but you don't die from thirst after 30 mins of excersie

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

If you mean me with the above, I know how not eating can affect you. I'm underweight for my height, so if I skip lunch, my hands will start shaking. I can't imagine how I'd be after two days.

I mean the OP and anyone in general that feels the food/water situation isn't 'real' ... like i was only in this situation for like 4/5 days i think i had some sugar aswell, and 2 bags of instant soup, and like two ounces of coffee. While i could have gone to the bank to withdraw money and go in the red, for some reason i felt it may also be a good experiment to see how i would do with such limited supplies (and i knew it wouldn't last for to long, as a paycheck was comming at the end of it). Why did i want to put myself in such a situation (?), well because there are literally millions of people that have 1 to 1,50 dollar a day to live on, and i just wanted to know in case i ever got in such a situation again, or in a survival situation for that matter. And while i could just do it at any time in my life, this just happened to have come my way and i decided to live through it ... and the experience realy opened my eyes, without it I may have even agreed with the OP (and others that bring this up frequently), but knowing first hand what very limited supplies do to your mental state and how it changes priorities in your live, i think the current situation with food/water is actually more real than you would think at first.

And it also realy changed my views on poverty and the amount of respect less fortunate deserve, and ofcourse how lucky you have to considder yourself NOT having to deal with it on a day to day basis. I am not a religious person, and will likely never become one, but the 'not eating' (don't know the exact english word for it) for a period of time during the year is something i considder rather valuable for pretty much any one on earth, especially in a world that is becomming ever more 'convenient' and 'plentyfull', to an extend that some people frown upon poor and homeless people (without knowing the why behind it), and just walking a mile in their shoes would likely change the views of many people with half a brain ... though i do think that instead of the 'you can eat all you want after sundown, the experience should just be having very little to eat over a certain period of time. Having experienced it once in my live opened my eyes, and given a choice i would not like to repeat it, the experience itself though was realy valuable ...

[Vertisce 158]

Take out death from hunger system entirely. Replace it with the exhaustion system and allow food and drink to be used to help you keep your energy up to be able to run farther, faster.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Vertisce

[thatcommiekid 57]

Most people don't play the game for a full 14 hours a day. You must understand that right?

[wolfstriked 143]

You do not sleep and you run forever which makes the world feel smaller than it really is and so they have to compensate.If you would play for 16 hours straight,as you would trying to survive in real, then 3 meals would make sense but since you play for a few hours it tries to simulate a days passing.IMO of course......could be that Rocket is just a sadist though..

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

could be that Rocket is just a sadist though..

Rocket joined the army and part of this mod was born in indonesia (or some other asian country) where he had to survive for 3 weeks on a 2 weeks 'asian' ration. If you read my posts above, then i am fairly sure you can understand that he must have gone through something similar as myself (though in an entirely different environment), and transferring that 'survival' state of mind where you live from meal to meal can only be achieved by making hunger a frequent event.... Edited July 25, 2012 by L0GIN

[Heiduk 265]

I like the idea behind the hunger/thirst mechanic but agree that right now it operates much to quickly. Having the ticking clock is great and adds a lot to the tension but the drastic penalty for not acquiring food and water every couple of hours takes away from the authenticity and artificially limits different playing styles.

Right now, with a new character working alone it is fairly difficult to adopt a patient low-risk strategy, retiring to the hinterlands, exploring, and raiding isolated buildings until strong enough to try higher risk targets. If you are a new player who hasn't played enough to know where the spawns are this strategy is almost impossible without looking at a loot map. You're much better off playing dash and grab in the cities, knowing that you can exploit bugs in the zombies' path finding to escape with little or no damage. With the recent ARMA patch that crippled SMGs and pistols, this strategy looks even better as now you also stand a reasonable chance of escaping a close range encounter with a hostile player too. If it fails? Just respawn and try again, you've lost very little. I don't see much authentic about that.

Rather than blood loss, I would rather see hunger/thirst implemented as status effects that degrade your operational effectiveness, with blood loss only occurring after a long, but not necessarily physiologically realistic time period. From experience with hiking long distances without enough water, one of the first things that sets in is tunnel vision. All you're thinking about is getting to that next drink and situational awareness goes down hill fast. So maybe after that red canteen starts blinking, instead of losing blood, your vision is permanently zoomed in. Getting hungry, a little low blood sugar maybe? Now you've got the shakes and can't aim accurately no matter how much you try to steady yourself. Haven't eaten for a couple of days? Guess what, now you can't sprint anymore and can barely swing your hatchet.

Status effects might not kill you outright, but if done right, could add new challenges and provide plenty of incentive to keep stocked up on supplies. I think they could also introduce some interesting choices. I could try to murder that survivor creeping through the opposite tree line for his beans but my hands are shaking so much I'm not confident I can take him down from this range. It might be better to try sneaking into that cabin over the next hill, but if I agro any zombies there is no way I'll be able to out run them...

As an aside, you have to try pretty hard to actually die of dehydration in a temperate climate like Chernarus, now if the plague ever makes it to Takistan that might be a little more plausible.

[jwo7777777 7]

I like the idea of the screen shaking from hunger to simulate low blood sugar. This effect can be similar to the one that needs painkillers, but would be fixed instead by eating.

[cintecian 4]

Simple version > Increase the amount of time between having to eat or drink to more realistic values. In real life you can still live for days w/o food. Water 2-3 days.

More complicated version:

Surprised there havent been more people chime in on this. The current food system goes way too fast. In reality you don't need to eat every hour (or 1.5 hrs) to stay alive. It's very annoying to have to eat that often and it's not realistic. In real life you can go for days without food and still live, but as the OP said you will suffer effects such as weakness and cramps. On the other hand water you need every day in real life or you suffer the harsh effects of dehydration - splitting headaches, dizziness, weakness, tunnel/blurred vision etc.. It would be much more entertaining (which is the goal of any game right?) to suffer these effects first before actually starting to die just like in reality. So you go 48 hrs without drinking water? Then you start to die.. slowly. 3 days without food? Then you start to die... slowly (which is still a vastly increased timescale vs. reality.)