PC The eating requirement is breaking emersion

[meganoth]

(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:

You are completely right with assuming that the icons were probably made before they balanced the food they should contain about 3 or 4 times.

And further on there might be more balancing steps changing the values to something else and even if the icon showed the right amount now that soon would be wrong again.

So what do you propose, oh great Adminstrator : TFP changing the icons every time they change their food value? So that players don't need to check the numbers that are there and show exactly what they get? How much useless rework do you want to finance?

So, in the meantime the icons are just a depiction to give you some inclination what you are eating, not how much you are eating. Which is exactly what I have been saying.

Maybe your confusion is that further up I said "Gameplay reasons". For gameplay reasons the food is NOT adjusted to be what the icons look like. Because of limited dev resources the icons are now also not adjusted to look like the food value the stuff gets. Result: Icon is not showing the correct amount

 

[Solomon]

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.

I dont even take a look at the icons, i use the amount i loot as guidelines.

I kill a deer and gain 6 pieces of meat from it, if we assume that im an idiot who doesnt know how to use a full deer that means i can still scrap down atleast 2 kgs of meat from a deer. One piece of boiled meat consist of 5 raw meat pieces, so i can assume that its easily over 1kg of food.

I know that we talk realism here with gameplay related manner but it only takes some basic take on to generate an idea how much food we consume in this game in the current system.

 

[Ralathar44]

"Perception is reality"

Nope, reality is reality.  Perception is just how people see things and is obtained by filtering what they experience through their own biases and formed via their own limited knowledge.  If perception is reality then reality has millions of states of "reality" at a time and thus the entire concept becomes pretty irrelevant.

Gameplay feel matters and adjustments often do get made based on feel.  But perception/what people express and what makes people play more are often two different things.  If perception was really all that important then EA would have been broke a decade ago.  They won worst company in America multiple times in a row, they often release the same game over and over again with almost no changes (their sports games), this always has a huge negative reception around it.  Yet people keep buying untold millions of copies of the very games they complain about.

Here is a good example of the difference between perception and reality.  Perception was that there were too many skags in an area and the feedback was that they should remove some skags.  The developer doubled the amount of skags and people were happy.  The perceived reality of the problem was not the actual problem.  And other problems people perceived were not problems at all.  THAT is game design.  I work in QA, I've been in the game's industry before and I'm going back into it now.  I've done alot of tech support before too where perceptions often radically differed from reality there too.  I wouldn't say this is my wheelhouse, but it's close and I have significant experience in this area.

This is why gaming is so heavily metrics driven.  Metrics are much more reliable than player perception/feedback .


But let's give one last example, World of Warcraft's "rest" system.  Did you know it was originally an exp fatigue system where after earning too much exp they lowered the exp you gained?  Players HATED it.  So what did they do?  They changed zero mechanics and they rebranded it as bonus exp and reintroduced it later.  Players loved it.  Same exact system .  THAT's how perception works haha.


 

I dont even take a look at the icons, i use the amount i loot as guidelines.

I kill a deer and gain 6 pieces of meat from it, if we assume that im an idiot who doesnt know how to use a full deer that means i can still scrap down atleast 2 kgs of meat from a deer. One piece of boiled meat consist of 5 raw meat pieces, so i can assume that its easily over 1kg of food.

I know that we talk realism here with gameplay related manner but it only takes some basic take on to generate an idea how much food we consume in this game in the current system.

Let me show how silly this is:  I chop down a tree and get 50 wood.  The average pine tree weighs 5,232 kg (11534.59 lbs).  I don't dry or season the wood so in game so I must be using it raw.  Let's say I'm wasteful and lose 75% of the wood (1,308 kg or 2,883.64 lbs left).  That means each piece of wood must weigh at least 78kg (171 lbs).  Even if we half that to account for properly drying the wood that's still 39kg(85.5 lbs) per piece of wood. 

And 1 piece of wood in the forge lasts about 1 minute.  So my forge is plainly burning 85lbs - 171lbs of wood an hour!

 

[Solomon]

Let me show how silly this is:  I chop down a tree and get 50 wood.  The average pine tree weighs 5,232 kg (11534.59 lbs).  I don't dry or season the wood so in game so I must be using it raw.  Let's say I'm wasteful and lose 75% of the wood (1,308 kg or 2,883.64 lbs left).  That means each piece of wood must weigh at least 78kg (171 lbs).  Even if we half that to account for properly drying the wood that's still 39kg(85.5 lbs) per piece of wood. 

And 1 piece of wood in the forge lasts about 1 minute.  So my forge is plainly burning 85lbs - 171lbs of wood an hour!

Dude, if you follow my calculations i wasted away a 200kg avarage stag and got 2kg of meat out of it, thats 99% of the stag wasted!

If we follow my ratios that means you got approx 52kgs of raw wood after drying thats approx 40kgs so each piece of wood weights 1.25kg.

-------------------------------------------------------

Dont get me wrong i know its silly to try to gauge in the weights of stuff ingame but i wanted to show that its entirely possible to be feeling full from eating 1 grilled meat for atleast 4 ingame hours.

 

[meganoth]

I dont even take a look at the icons, i use the amount i loot as guidelines.

I kill a deer and gain 6 pieces of meat from it, if we assume that im an idiot who doesnt know how to use a full deer that means i can still scrap down atleast 2 kgs of meat from a deer. One piece of boiled meat consist of 5 raw meat pieces, so i can assume that its easily over 1kg of food.

I know that we talk realism here with gameplay related manner but it only takes some basic take on to generate an idea how much food we consume in this game in the current system.

Yes, that is a good reality argument and actually was brought up a few times by forum users. And if TFP could ignore balance then it would be a good reason to immediately change the amount of meat you are getting from a deer.

BUT 7D2D is not a simulation and gameplay is a lot more important to the developers than simulating reality. A deer would actually feed a player for days or even weeks if he knew any preservation technique or lived in the snow biome.

Now there are possible solutions to this dilemma, but all are not ideal:

1) Make deer and other big animal really scarce or difficult to hunt. So that in the first 14 days you get at most one big animal to feed on. Disadvantage: Hunter perk becomes obsolete and hunting is an activity you do once every 10 real time hours, hardly there in the game.

2) Remove big animals completely, only have slightly starved rabbits and chicken in the game

3) Spawn a pack of cojotes immediately when the deer has been shot. They run away with 90% of the deers meat and you get 10% off it.

4) ... (I'm sure there are more ideas, but they all have disadvantages, especially in terms of developers resources to pull it off)

Remember, TFP is still a small indie developer. They have to pick their fights.

 

[Ralathar44]

Dude, if you follow my calculations i wasted away a 200kg avarage stag and got 2kg of meat out of it, thats 99% of the stag wasted!

If we follow my ratios that means you got approx 52kgs of raw wood after drying thats approx 40kgs so each piece of wood weights 1.25kg.

-------------------------------------------------------

Dont get me wrong i know its silly to try to gauge in the weights of stuff ingame but i wanted to show that its entirely possible to be feeling full from eating 1 grilled meat for atleast 4 ingame hours.

That's because everything in game is just representative, which is exactly my point.  It's all gameplay and was never intended to be realistic.  If you want realistic butchering, quartering, cooking, and eating then go play the Long Dark.  The Long Dark is a realistic survival game, 7DTD is and has always been an arcadey one.  Though in the Long dark actually carrying that meat and the calories used to harvest it and etc are also much more realistic.  It was a legitimate issue to carry the meat harvested in TLD and the calories/time spent to harvest it was also a significant consideration.  The meat also deteriorated and rotted over time...becoming more dangerous to eat.  In 7DTD you can store your meat in a box unrfrigerated indefinitely.  If you want things to be more realistic, don't cherry pick or you're just making it unrealistic in different ways.

When we have realistic carrying weights, butchering calories/time spent, food rotting, and etc I'll gladly advocate for more meat returns.  But asking for the benefits of realism without the detriments has nothing to do with realism at all.  It's a package deal or you're just asking for the game to be easier as a gameplay consideration.

 

[FileMachete]

So what do you propose, oh great Adminstrator : TFP changing the icons every time they change their food value? So that players don't need to check the numbers that are there and show exactly what they get? How much useless rework do you want to finance?

heh, "who is that behind the curtain!?"

Nope. Nope. and none, but you'd have to define "useless" right?

I mean there's been quite a bit of icon/item _art_ rework that didn't have anything to do with the underlying mechanics, they just made the game look more in line with TFPs/MMs vision.

And remember, I said "polish". That, at least from my experiance with a few 'alpha' games, indicates near the actual end of the alpha stage (if not it's own 'stage'. definitions vary). So, to me at least, that would be when all the mechanics are in, balance is generally done, that kind of thing.

To be fair, I was a bit harsh regarding your earlier comment about ignoring the icons. It was/is valid.

Maybe as a, "just for now", or could be a, "yeah, those icons are misleading, just ignore them, TFPs couldn't get to them prior to Gold".

The comparison I made to a weapon icon being really 'wrong' wasn't great. I'm sure lots of folks wouldn't be able to tell the difference between an icon for an M60 vs. an M2. Was attempting to point out that there are some icons that I think we could all agree would be unlikely to survive to Gold.

Edit: clarify, if the Pistol had a tennis racket as an icon.

Whether canned food falls into that category is entirely up to the Pimps.

Nope, reality is reality.

Yep, but Ral, you went ahead and made my point for me with the rest of your post!

The World of Warcraft debuff-to-buff is a perfect example. They just changed the packaging.

I was suggesting to change the -perception- of the canned foods, just like Blizzard did

 

[Ralathar44]

Yep, but Ral, you went ahead and made my point for me with the rest of your post!

The World of Warcraft debuff-to-buff is a perfect example. They just changed the packaging.

I was suggesting to change the -perception- of the canned foods, just like Blizzard did

Honestly i'd be in support of that if the rest of the game ran on the same rules OR if the base argument being made was new, but neither of those is true.  The entire game runs off of that same sort of abstraction and people have been yelling about not getting enough meat from deer or food from x any time that food is less than effectively infinite early game.

So changing the packing in this case won't actually change anything because the problem is not the packaging in this case since the complaints predated that packaging.  They're just using the packaging (canned food in this case) as an excuse.  Just like they made the argument before or "I only get X meat from deers, this is the dumb!"  The problem is just people who don't want food to be a mechanic they have to worry about asking for food buffs, like they have every single time 7DTD has made food a concern for early game.  There is a small continent of people who have made these complaints since before A14 any time hunger actually becomes a concern early game.   The deer complaints largely went away because they never got any traction but they flare up here and there before quickly petering out again.  But now they are attacking canned food using the same exact song and dance because canned food used to be ridiculous good early game and now it's not anymore...but it's still ridiculously good mid and late game.

 

[Blaster_Yoda]

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!"

Ok, they made the game tougher to survive early on, well, that was the point. Stretch out the early game. Make being someone who was held captive and suddenly dumped in the middle of nowhere and required to fend for yourself with nothing more than a backpack full of mostly useless items and a note. Oh so sad you can't survive 2 days without water, guess what, you wouldn't survive the real world two days without water either.

Welcome to a more realistic start of the game.  Fight for your life and enjoy it.

Blaster

My mistake, I probably overlooked your real issue pointed at people living off welfare, food stamps or even WIC. I wish you all the luck of anything but the Irish.

 

[FileMachete]

Honestly i'd be in support of that if the rest of the game ran on the same rules OR if the base argument being made was new, but neither of those is true.  The entire game runs off of that same sort of abstraction and people have been yelling about not getting enough meat from deer or food from x any time that food is less than effectively infinite early game.

Ok, I get that. And have seen/participated in the '#deer-gate' discussions, heh.

My general thoughts on 'food' in 7dtd is that the Pimps simply don't have the tools/mechanics to make food an issue for more than a couple few days. Not a criticism, just an observation that without the game somehow being able to track individual player food consumption and then spawning animals/loot-food in response that it's simply inevitable the player/s will wind up with surplus.

And that's ok for me at least. I honestly wouldn't want to have to spend say half of each day, every day, dealing with food. Spending all day for the first couple few days in a new game I could deal with, but I know what the game offers further on. Not certain how I'd feel about it if food was like that as a brand new player. But that balance is up to TFPs. And as a 4+ year player I honestly don't think that TFPs will ever make food a major long term chore, that'd just be 'grind' and MMs various statements about grind over the years have been generally consistent that he doesn't view that as 'fun'.

On this part, "Honestly i'd be in support of that if the rest of the game ran on the same rules" could be we just view things differently or just disagree, either of which is perfectly fine of course. To me the icons are consistent in the rest of the game, they match what the 'thing' is. Except, imo, some of the canned food. Obviously I don't mean that a Beef Ration isn't beef, it's that the icon leads me to think that it's going to be a 'lot of food', when it's food value is more like a small bit of jerky. So, imo, these few cans are good candidates for a polish pass. But that's totally up to TFPs.

Oh so sad you can't survive 2 days without water, guess what, you wouldn't survive the real world two days without water either.

Just being pedantic here but as written that's simply not true. Sure some folks might not live 48 hours out in the summer desert heat, but others have lived 4+ days in the summer desert without water. There's a long time survival phrase, "3 minutes, 3 days, 30 days" referring to how long an average person in "average" conditions can survive without Air, Water and Food. Though the Air part now a days is more likely to be stated as "1 minute".

Sorry, like I said, just being pedantic.

 

[Lorca]

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. 

I agree gameplay trumps realism, but eating, eating, eating is not good gameplay, at least not for me.  Someone mentioned before that this isn't just a survival game.  A thing Pimps seem to forget sometimes I think.  If you make a pure survival game, your much smaller audience will be happy with complexity and want you go all the way, but when you are catering to other markets too, then you need to balance for everyone.  

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.

No, I was aware that animal spawns were going to be turned down when I wrote that comment - I was giving my 2 cents on the post that I quoted.  Thanks for the poo emote on that comment though, but I don't need it. You can have it back.

It is not fun at all. It is stupid in fact. 

This

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.

Not going to lie, man. That makes sense.  Same reason I get triggered having to use 5 meats to make 1 steak. Unless you are using meat glue, that isn't the way you make a steak.  If you use 5 pieces of meat to make a kebab, sure.

 

[David]

I killed a bear... 50 meat... and a wolf... 25 meat. I cooked everything and ended up with 13 grilled steaks and 2 boiled meats. I was at 0 food and ate until I was at 105 food... so... 1 day's hunger literally represented a bear! That is my main complaint about the game so far. The time spent hunting for food and antibiotics naturally precludes any other activity so far.

Gameplay regarding the enhanced fun of food: The current hunger meter is diminished far far too quickly in my opinion and takes away from the fun of the game significantly. My point of comparison is the PS4 version, I've only recently acquired the PC version. I get that a can of peas can represent a full can or a few remaining peas forgotten in the bottom, but if a bear is going to spawn on day three and consume every shred of ammo you've collected to point, it should take care of your food problems for a week at least. Killing a bear represented a three day activity when you think of all the salvaging and ammo crafting required to kill the damned things.

Reality: a 1/2 ton bear is only worth twice a wolf? Come on now...

Summation: The early game should not be so heavily focused on just making sure you have food. If I had my way, the liquid bar would diminish from full to 0 over the course of about 24 hours while the food meter would diminish from full to 0 over the course of 2 to 3 days. The average human will die in about 7 days without calories, but will die in 2 to three days without water.

Cheers!

 

[Roland]

I killed a bear... 50 meat... and a wolf... 25 meat. I cooked everything and ended up with 13 grilled steaks and 2 boiled meats. I was at 0 food and ate until I was at 105 food... so... 1 day's hunger literally represented a bear! That is my main complaint about the game so far. The time spent hunting for food and antibiotics naturally precludes any other activity so far.

That same bear would represent a lot more if you had used the meat differently. Just like using a tier0 tool is going to take longer than a tier3 tool, eating tier0 food is going to be less effective than tier3 food. 
 

It is the way the game is designed. Stop grilling and boiling all your meat and at minimum make eggs and bacon and as soon as possible move on to the better foods. THEN that bear will feed you for longer than a day. 

 

[David]

That same bear would represent a lot more if you had used the meat differently. Just like using a tier0 tool is going to take longer than a tier3 tool, eating tier0 food is going to be less effective than tier3 food. 
 

It is the way the game is designed. Stop grilling and boiling all your meat and at minimum make eggs and bacon and as soon as possible move on to the better foods. THEN that bear will feed you for longer than a day. 

I definitely get that perspective and don't have an objection aside from the spawn rate of things the game used to give you readily, like eggs. I don't think I've found more than 6 in the first three days, so the eggs and bacon thing isn't really an option. The fact that zombies have occasionally dropped somewhat high end weapons but can otherwise no longer be harvested for anything makes the early game much harder and far less interesting than it was. I can see why, with a long standing character you might not care, I quit playing the PS4 version B/C it became ridiculously easy and every day was really about grinding for metals and harvesting/planting food... in short I had "won" I guess... but the PC version I downloaded makes daily survival a grind in the extreme. I'm advocating for balance changes to allow fresh players to actually enjoy it. I love the game generally, so please don't misread me.

 

[Roland]

Not at all. I think suggesting an increase to the egg drop rate would be a good balancing suggestion. Not too much because then players could just stall at bacon and eggs for the rest of the game as that recipe is pretty adequate. 
 

I’m inclined to believe that early game hardship is actually more appealing to new players who are discovering things for the first time more so than longtime players who’ve seen the early game multiple times already and may just want to skip past it. 
 

There probably needs to be a better communication to players that they really should move on from the basic foods and canned food to the better foods as evidenced by many who complain about Having to eat all the time but then continue to consume the lower end foods. 
 

For me, when I open that buried supplies box and get my first recipe that becomes one of my goals to start getting the supplies to make that recipe and start eating that. 

Maybe it would be cool to have the recipe for a chili dog (for example) plus a chil dog that they can eat. When the new player sees how much more his fullness is affected by the chili dog and also knows they can make them now, they won’t keep eating cans of chili any longer. 

 

[hillbilly]

yeah the food and water is another gimmicky game mechanic. I'll check out A20, I can't wait! Hopefully they remove some of these silly mechanics.

 

[Roland]

yeah the food and water is another gimmicky game mechanic. I'll check out A20, I can't wait! Hopefully they remove some of these silly mechanics.

Maybe in A21...

 

[Snip3s]

Well i have no gripe of emmersion, i like how the game is harder now and all that but the hunger dynamic thats seriously steep you dont find animals anywhere, you grow vegetables so you make vegi stew but thats not enough i actually enjoy dying so that i dont have to worry about when i have to eat, god its like every minute my character is starving (below 10% food) it makes me want to stop playing because of how irritating this new so called balance is fun pimps fix it. The food drain was reasonable before patch you still had to hunt and survive but not every minute 19. This happened so much more frequently at day 15. This is very unbalanced.

 

[Psychodabble]

I'm not sure why people complain about food issues. I play pretty close to vanilla settings...slightly more restrictive because of no loot respawn...and I never have food issues. I also play dead is dead, so I frequently repeat the early game as I try to establish myself in each new build.

Are you guys playing on settings that make this aspect of the game harder? I want to empathize, but I really don't see the problem. Food is super cheap from traders and vending machines. A few basic quests will get you the Dukes to buy enough to stay alive long enough to get your own production going, plus you often find food during the quests. That said, I'm not a farmer really...I don't put points in it or start building a farm until I'm quite well established...week 3 or later...but I've still never once starved.

The only thing I can think of is food tier...are you guys trying to survive on @%$# tier food? That 1 point in Master Chef is totally worth it just to be able to cook some better stuff. Quality definitely trumps quantity in this game, so invest in tiering up your food immediately. Once you can make chili dogs or spam chowder or fish tacos, you'll never be hungry again. Of course, you have to learn which canned foods are prime ingredients to be saved and which ones are to be eaten immediately.

 

[Snip3s]

I'm not sure why people complain about food issues. I play pretty close to vanilla settings...slightly more restrictive because of no loot respawn...and I never have food issues. I also play dead is dead, so I frequently repeat the early game as I try to establish myself in each new build.

Are you guys playing on settings that make this aspect of the game harder? I want to empathize, but I really don't see the problem. Food is super cheap from traders and vending machines. A few basic quests will get you the Dukes to buy enough to stay alive long enough to get your own production going, plus you often find food during the quests. That said, I'm not a farmer really...I don't put points in it or start building a farm until I'm quite well established...week 3 or later...but I've still never once starved.

The only thing I can think of is food tier...are you guys trying to survive on @%$# tier food? That 1 point in Master Chef is totally worth it just to be able to cook some better stuff. Quality definitely trumps quantity in this game, so invest in tiering up your food immediately. Once you can make chili dogs or spam chowder or fish tacos, you'll never be hungry again. Of course, you have to learn which canned foods are prime ingredients to be saved and which ones are to be eaten immediately.

I have nearly maxed out my master chef thats how i can make vegi stew, however,  my issue is the irritation that although im in a forest and i go to a nearby town with loot respawn enabled as well as care packages my character eats like a fat man before i can even max my hunger out or over eat the character without fail will be hungry within a minute after eating at 150 food. Its just the whole food dynamic feels unbalanced i mean seriously 5 pieces of meat to make 1 steak that litrally makes very little sense even by game standards its also that i can be idle and my food is depleated well before i can even harvest my vegies. Thats just sitting down doing nothing camping with a marksman rifle wearing light armour waiting for a wayward zombie. I just think the drain is too quick and food to scarce, not much of a change i just think they had it perfect in previous patches you will hunt and you would survive barely. Its now like you can hunt or farm or even scavenge and you without fail die i know thats there aim but i just like the enjoyment of a survival game that i dont have to concentrate on.