PC The eating requirement is breaking emersion

[hotpoon]

The devs said multiple times that Gameplay trumps realism. Try to bring up a realism arguement to Gazz and I promise you he will just make fun of your argument. Bring a gameplay reason something is not working and you actually have a change to get heard

Gameplay trumps realism. And that is why cans give so little food and hobo stew so much. 

If you post on the forum you have to accept hearing others with different opinions. If you think that is reason to spam your opinion you'll only land in ignore lists.

By the way, are you still unaware that animals spawns are already tuned down again in the next patch? Because your post in the dev dairy makes it obvious that you seem to have missed all helpful replies and are still making points that are no longer valid.

I'm with Lorca on this one.  The only person spamming their opinion is Liezel. She's been arguing the same thing with each person who has brought up the issue in this thread.  And you have been a vocal advocate of more difficult survival aspects from since before you were a mod, so I think you might have a little conflict of interest here.

Both of you keeping harping on about how realism isn't a factor, but we all know that is is to a point.  A game with zombies requires imagination, and of course, some aspects must be gamified to make it less tedious, but we are still on earth and nobody eats that much food in one sitting.  Well, I won't say nobody.  There's those people who eat a table full of burgers at eating competitions, and maybe Michael Phelps, but the average Joe certainly doesn't.  It is not fun at all. It is stupid in fact. And the minute I find someone who will make a mod to reduce food drainage, I'm on it.

But I'm done with this thread now. Sorry Lorca, it's up to you now.

 

[meganoth]

I'm with Lorca on this one.  The only person spamming their opinion is Liezel. She's been arguing the same thing with each person who has brought up the issue in this thread.  And you have been a vocal advocate of more difficult survival aspects from since before you were a mod, so I think you might have a little conflict of interest here.

Both of you keeping harping on about how realism isn't a factor, but we all know that is is to a point.  A game with zombies requires imagination, and of course, some aspects must be gamified to make it less tedious, but we are still on earth and nobody eats that much food in one sitting.  Well, I won't say nobody.  There's those people who eat a table full of burgers at eating competitions, and maybe Michael Phelps, but the average Joe certainly doesn't.  It is not fun at all. It is stupid in fact. And the minute I find someone who will make a mod to reduce food drainage, I'm on it.

But I'm done with this thread now. Sorry Lorca, it's up to you now.

"not fun at all" is actually a reason the devs might listen to. That is all the point I was making.

And I post my opinion not as a mod but as a normal user. I told him he would probably land on filter lists of indivudual users, which has nothing to do with moderation.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

And I post my opinion not as a mod but as a normal user. I told him he would probably land on filter lists of indivudual users, which has nothing to do with moderation.

You told me? Haven't seen that. But it's ok, if people put me on their filter list. That's what it is made for. I use it also.

 

[meganoth]

You told me? Haven't seen that. But it's ok, if people put me on their filter list. That's what it is made for. I use it also.

Told Lorca

 

[Ralathar44]

I'm with Lorca on this one.  The only person spamming their opinion is Liezel. She's been arguing the same thing with each person who has brought up the issue in this thread.  And you have been a vocal advocate of more difficult survival aspects from since before you were a mod, so I think you might have a little conflict of interest here.

Both of you keeping harping on about how realism isn't a factor, but we all know that is is to a point.  A game with zombies requires imagination, and of course, some aspects must be gamified to make it less tedious, but we are still on earth and nobody eats that much food in one sitting.  Well, I won't say nobody.  There's those people who eat a table full of burgers at eating competitions, and maybe Michael Phelps, but the average Joe certainly doesn't.  It is not fun at all. It is stupid in fact. And the minute I find someone who will make a mod to reduce food drainage, I'm on it.

But I'm done with this thread now. Sorry Lorca, it's up to you now.

Most people on earth don't stay awake 24 hours a day, never get a cold sick, never get exhausted, carry thousands of lbs of stuff, heal broken legs in a day, etc.   So how do you explain all of these feats?  Our Player character is plainly not a normal human.  They are superhuman.  And it makes sense considering their capabilities that their metabolism would be much higher than normal.

IMO the main problem is a perceptual one, canned food went from being god tier food to being tier 1 in just a few updates and people are experiencing friction as they adjust.  It's a rather alrge gameplay adjustment that has happened fairly quickly.  Treat canned food like you do grilled meat.  You're intended to survive off of recipes.  Either skill into master chef or just survive long enough to find recipes in the wild or on the trader.  Canned food is tier 1 food when eaten on it's own, but when used in it's own recipes it becomes top tier.  There are multiple recipes that offer over 100 hunger satiation.  Your food problems should very quickly go away, especially now that we cannot throw up anymore.

 

[gcomerfo]

So many posts, can't read them all, but maybe some of you agree with me...

Yes, too much eating - exactly. You are supposed to spec into Perks to either eat less, or gain more meat, or grow more vegs, or make hardier stews to cook.  That is what perks are for.  OR... you can buy the Trader and Vendor good foods, if you don't want to spec.  I mean, that is the point of Perks!

You know what breaks the "immersion" for me??  people who keep whining about their "immersion" getting broke!  LOL  Use the Perks dingle-heads!

I have so much food that I can't eat it all!!   And I don't have any Farm Perks, and only one level of Huntsman, or the one that harvest more meat.  What are you people, like total snow-flakes??

 

[Boidster]

Replace the canned foods, which are all the low-level, barely surviving stuff with "handful of berries" and "four crackers with moldy cheese" and people will stop carping. This is like the great sealed crate kerfluffle. People see the in-game character eat four cans of peas and instead of understanding that the game requires a range of food quality and canned foods are low quality, they think about literally eating four cans of peas IRL and say "that isn't fun."

TFP needs to change the labels so people who can't see why the game acts like a game will instead see something "realistic". Like a half-finished Sham-A-Lama Ding Dong. Exact same identical game mechanics, including availability in vending machines. Just change the names so people stop complaining.

 

[gcomerfo]

I have an idea...

Instead of whining about the food, and the fact that you didn't use the Perks, Traders, etc. to your advantage...

Just go mod the game how you want it, and let The Fun Pimps balance the game that they want to play.  You can mod the game into Pokeman, or Easy Peasy Non-Pocalypse, Minecraft endless farm, if you want!  Try that instead!

Let the rest of us actually play the game that was meant to challenge your resource and time mangement, and ability to customize your Perks, and buy critical items at a Trading Post.

 

[gcomerfo]

Wait!  This just in...

Trader Joel is now offering a Food Assistance Program, where you can acquire Food Stamps for being such a Wuss, but then you have to go and fetch his coffee, do his dishes, and clean his Terlet and can't leave the compound until you work off your Trader Joel Food Stamps. 

After leaving the Trader compound, you will get s "Shame" Debuff for 1 game day, until you can learn to survive.  Zombies will leave you alone out of pity for your lazy @%$*#!.

[Zombie be like]

"Look.. Braiiiinnss!...mmmmmmm" 

"Wah, nooooo... Lazzzzeeee Braiiinnnssss!  No Taste as Good!"

 

[Jeraal]

Wait!  This just in...

Trader Joel is now offering a Food Assistance Program, where you can acquire Food Stamps for being such a Wuss, but then you have to go and fetch his coffee, do his dishes, and clean his Terlet and can't leave the compound until you work off your Trader Joel Food Stamps. 

After leaving the Trader compound, you will get s "Shame" Debuff for 1 game day, until you can learn to survive.  Zombies will leave you alone out of pity for your lazy @%$*#!.

[Zombie be like]

"Look.. Braiiiinnss!...mmmmmmm" 

"Wah, nooooo... Lazzzzeeee Braiiinnnssss!  No Taste as Good!"

When rational thought fails, resort to childlike insults.

 

[FileMachete]

Ya know, for 7dtd & TFPs I think you're onto something @Boidster. The cans icons are quite misleading. The Beef/Chicken/Lamb ones in particulr; they look bigger than a 'normal' ~15oz can, which the Chili looks like.

Don't think I've ever eaten a can of Peas in my life, but have eaten a lot of canned chili, and a can of Dennisons at least used to be (until a few years back, now it sucks) a full meal.

---

This'll never happen in 7dtd but the one "food system" that to me could be both a real struggle and not simply a pita would be _more_ realism, not less.

Hear me out. The old real world; 3-minutes, 3-days, 30-days bit.

Would guess a lot of folks have seen a Naked & Afraid or Alone episode. The folks are usually starving the whole time.

If starving in-game took 10+ days then canned food could be -really- rare, it'd be a better find than an AK, heh.

Also then a Deer could give several days worth of food, and also be rare enough that you'd instantly stop whatever you were doing to chase it down.

Gradually lower Stamina, and Run speed as the player gets hungrier and hungrier.

Cooking Pots aka water purifier could also become the early games single most important find because dying of dehydration would be the real first few days threat.

Change over to that kind of long-game mechanic would/could be a lot more impactful, and for a longer period, than what I've read about a19's eating & how it seems fairly straight forward, at least for those that have either adapted or have read something like this thread.

Additional bonus would be that it'd be easier to explain, and, since it would match rw, should be more intuitive.

Just my .02 cents.

 

[Ralathar44]

Ya know, for 7dtd & TFPs I think you're onto something @Boidster. The cans icons are quite misleading. The Beef/Chicken/Lamb ones in particulr; they look bigger than a 'normal' ~15oz can, which the Chili looks like.

Don't think I've ever eaten a can of Peas in my life, but have eaten a lot of canned chili, and a can of Dennisons at least used to be (until a few years back, now it sucks) a full meal.

For normal people prolly, but for the super human player character we control prolly not .  I'm pretty sure if I could carry literal tons at a time, operate at full efficiency without ever sleeping, fall dozens of feet to the ground and land without injury, and heal life threatening injuries with minimal medical care that I'd also have much higher caloric requirements.

People use their own real life examples of eating constantly as an example of how there is a disconnect, but I'll accept that when people share their own real life examples of all the superhuman activities our character does without a similar disconnect.

 

[JCrook1028]

Replace the canned foods, which are all the low-level, barely surviving stuff with "handful of berries" and "four crackers with moldy cheese" and people will stop carping. This is like the great sealed crate kerfluffle. People see the in-game character eat four cans of peas and instead of understanding that the game requires a range of food quality and canned foods are low quality, they think about literally eating four cans of peas IRL and say "that isn't fun."

TFP needs to change the labels so people who can't see why the game acts like a game will instead see something "realistic". Like a half-finished Sham-A-Lama Ding Dong. Exact same identical game mechanics, including availability in vending machines. Just change the names so people stop complaining.

But the cans are ingredients in recipes. I shudder to see the recipe that includes "four crackers with moldy cheese" . Also, we already have 2 different kinds of berries.

 

[Scyris]

The food is fine, stop being lazy and go loot, or use vending machines or traders, the devs caved though, you now get daily animals for poor/lazy players. Day 1 was a tad harder than normal but by day 2 in my first a19 game? I had more food than I know what to do with. Between buying off trader, vending machines, and doing tier 1 buried supplies quests. I tend to prioritize block damage and getting food as my day 1 task, get str to 3, then miner 69'er to 3 asap. So busting into things/digging for the treasures is much easier, give it a shot on a new game. You don't really need the weapon skills much till your dealing with ferals mostly, a wooden club/stone sldge or blunderbuss is enough for most normal zombies, or rather all of em. I do fear wolves though, they are FAR more dangerious than zombies and have much more hp than the 125/150 non-feral/fatties have. Which in a19, on day 16, I still don't really get ferals in poi's yet and I am level 30+. Day 7/14 horde, can be fought in pretty much any poi with a tiny bit of work removing stairs and such. I fought them inside a poi with 1 cobblestone block between me and them. I just repaired it as they damaged it, and I never got hit once standing 2-2.5 blocks away from the zombies.

Oh also, I have never taken the iron stomach perk or anything that reduces food or water use, never felt it was ever needed, and still is not needed in a19.

If I stand perfectly still and just watch my food meter I lose 1 food every 130 seconds. Is that how it's supposed to work?

The body naturally uses energy just to function even if your just standing there irl. if it didn't you'd not die of starvation as you'd not need food.

Also, if the common player is having issues. the solution is to well. git gud, you can do fine in a19 with no -food/water use perks, there is so many sources of food its stupid. Catering to them and not having them learn is never going to make them, get better as a player.

 

[Scyris]

I also feel its kinda silly we need a perk or schematic to grill or boil meat, its not hard to boil meat in a pot, or toss it on a grill till its cooked, doesn't take a rocket scientist to do that, these recipes should be unlocked by default, same for bacon n eggs. I usually just survive on charred meat for a while, since water is never ever a problem.

 

[FileMachete]

For normal people prolly, but for the super human player character we control prolly not .  I'm pretty sure if I could carry literal tons at a time, operate at full efficiency without ever sleeping, fall dozens of feet to the ground and land without injury, and heal life threatening injuries with minimal medical care that I'd also have much higher caloric requirements.

People use their own real life examples of eating constantly as an example of how there is a disconnect, but I'll accept that when people share their own real life examples of all the superhuman activities our character does without a similar disconnect.

I get what you're saying Ral. But as you validly point out the non-realism(?) of carrying tons of stuff, etc., there are understandable 'gameplay trumps realism' reasons for those that, if perhaps debatable, are at least generally readily apparent.

I didn't do a good job conveying my thought process or provide an example of what I was thinking, so here goes

I thought of the Bacon & Eggs Icon as a comparison for the can of Chili. I think the B&E is 1 or 2 sunnyside up and 1 strip of bacon? To me that alone would be a bit skimpy for breakfast. With me not being superman of course, heh. In comparison the can of Chili looks like one we can buy in a store and my experiance with such cans leads me to think that the Chili would be more filling than the Bacon & Eggs.

Talking strictly the visuals of the icons.

Just going off of a18.4 here but B&E provided 36 food while the Chili provided 15 (I think). So that alone can result in a, "what?" disconnect, for no readily apparent reason. Certainly could be that there were/are balancing limitations involved, or could be a work in progress or the result of kind of going 'nose blind' and simply not really seeing the icons anymore and just seeing than as "low tier cans", etc.

So what Boidster said made me think, "um, yeah. why not simply change names & icons of cans?" "or just add a few new ones"

Could go a couple different ways.

1) could go the , 'no more new items' route and just rename/re-icon some of the cans like the Chili & Beef/Chicken/Lamb rations, Salmon, etc., to more things like the can of Peas. Could be Olives or Brown Gravy. Relish, Salsa, Tomato Paste, what have you. Things that most folks would normally think of as part of a recipe but not a meal by itself. Then the lower food values would make more intuitive sense.

2) or, they could add a few, new, low-cal ingredient items while keeping the Chili/Beef etc. Bump the Chili/Beef/etc to a mid-tier food value but also decrease their frequency, while having the new ingredient ones be more common. (or not, whatever they need to balance the high qual food)

Basically just 'polish' of course, but since TFPs generally mimic reality when it doesn't hurt gameplay this bit seems pretty cheap time wise and I'd guess it might quell a few comments.

 

[Solomon]

The devs said multiple times that Gameplay trumps realism. Try to bring up a realism arguement to Gazz and I promise you he will just make fun of your argument. Bring a gameplay reason something is not working and you actually have a change to get heard

Gameplay trumps realism. And that is why cans give so little food and hobo stew so much. 

Gameplay wise it would make sense too, that big amounts of food fill you up for more.

It doesnt make much sense, gameplay or realism wise that you have eaten 1 kg of meat and got hungry 2 ingame hours later.

 

[meganoth]

Gameplay wise it would make sense too, that big amounts of food fill you up for more.

It doesnt make much sense, gameplay or realism wise that you have eaten 1 kg of meat and got hungry 2 ingame hours later.

Where did you get the 1kg from? There is never any indication how much a "portion" in the game is

Don't look at the icons, an icon of a full cake may still mean just one piece of a cake or a minitature cake. Cans of food might mean smaller cans than you are used to or just a portion of a real can. A meat stew obviously can't be a full pot of meat stew (you couldn't eat one full pot in one sitting), it is just an arbitrary portion, maybe a full plate, maybe just 3 or 5 spoons full of meat stew.

 

[Ralathar44]

Where did you get the 1kg from? There is never any indication how much a "portion" in the game is

Don't look at the icons, an icon of a full cake may still mean just one piece of a cake or a minitature cake. Cans of food might mean smaller cans than you are used to or just a portion of a real can. A meat stew obviously can't be a full pot of meat stew (you couldn't eat one full pot in one sitting), it is just an arbitrary portion, maybe a full plate, maybe just 3 or 5 spoons full of meat stew.

Yeah, people don't get that UI icons are representative because what people understand/interpret via the picture and the reality often diverge.  UI design is a tricky area because of things like this.  If they showed a few scraps of meat instead of full cuts as the icon it'd be less clear for the user what that icon represented.  Clarity of communication > realism when it comes to UI elements.

And I'm sure some folks will say "but surely anyone would realize blah blah blah".  No...they don't lol.  For example when they were designing the Fortnite Trap Icon they went through many different icons until they settled on the one that looks like a bear trap (despite not having a bear trap in game) because users just were not getting it.  When they designed their pickaxe "sparkle target" for faster mining they tried time and time again to get the user to aim for the sparkle to mine faster and nothing worked so they finally made you unlock the faster sparkle mining to force users to understand what it was and that finally worked.  There are literally THOUSANDS of examples like this in gaming we never hear about because it all happens internally.  I actually attended a full panel on the developers covering these kind of things at SXSW a year ago.

As it turns out designing a game for us is hard .


Oh and for folks going "but I only get like 2 meals out of a deer! I should get like 20!".  You can get 20 meals from a deer when cutting and carrying that meat has real gameplay implications.  You wanna know how that feels go play the Long Dark.  The Long Dark is a fantastic illustration of how impactful that kind of thing is when realistic and the mechanics serve the story mode well but the survival mode of that game is shallow AF and quickly gets old once you master basic survival because that's all that game is.  It IS however much more realistic .

 

[FileMachete]

(chuckling) come on guys you're seriously stretching on those

Don't tell me you didn't have to think for at least a few seconds to come up with the Cake icon comparison @meganoth   "a picture tells a tale" or "a picture is worth a thousand words". Saying, "Don't look at the icons..." 0_o ... what now? So that would apply if the icon for the M60 looked like a Ma Deuce (M2 .50cal)?

And TFPs/MM themselves counter the amount of meat from a deer @Ralathar44 by their actions for balancing wildlife in current patch. Fewer large game but more plentiful small game. And I'd guess the panel talk covered things like making things as intuitive as possible, within design/gameplay constraints.

"Perception is reality" as they say and it's just silly to challenge peoples reality without reason. (kind of like what I'm doing here to an extent lol)

There's a gameplay reason in 7dtd that deer don't provide a "realistic" amount of meat. (not a great one imo but ok)

Also gameplay reasons we can carry tons of materials, etc.

But there's no gameplay reason for the current confusion created by the names and icons of the canned food.

Yes, there could certainly be -time/dev/art-resource- constraints, no question. But do either of you seriously think that if TFPs were _just_now_ adding in canned food & recipes, knowing what niche they're intended to fill, and the supporting mechanics of recipes as schematics/perks, desire to make food scarece, etc., that things would be exactly the same? H3ll no. They're better designers than that.

There's also another supporting bit I thought of for #2 in my earlier post: other survivors could reasonably be expected to have picked things like Chili, cans of Meat/Salmon/Spam over things like Tomato Paste.

Like there aren't any jars of Peanut Butter in the game right? PB is super dense in calories, doesn't need cooking, eat out of the jar, no refrigeration needed etc., it'd be a highly sought after item.

Anyway. TFPs will do what TFPs will do. They know their goals & resources. If this gets polished in some manner then good. If not, that's up to them. And not saying that in a, "screw them!" way, not at all. I certainly have -no- idea how much is on their plates vs. timelines.

I'm just "doing my part" as a volunteer alpha player; providing feedback where I think it might be helpful.

I have no expectations of what may come from it.

Now I'm off to cook a really good breakfast after going shopping yesterday.

Thinking a glass of OJ, 3 eggs, 4 sausage links, potatos & gravy with a fresh toasted buttered bagel. That'll do for a few hours :biggrin1: