PC About the food system

I would rather see the Devs devote time and resources to more types of food like fish, chicken, vegetables and the means to harvest them than deep dive into a "Spoilage" system. There is so much else they can improve upon "IMHO" than the concept of "Spoilage".

The impact on Quality of Life that refrigeration brought to civilization is not debatable and in a game like 7Days, should impact players with the same influence that gaining your first vehicle. Gathering food on a daily basis would no longer be a matter of Survival and give the players time to invest in other improvements.

 
Find spoilage SOUNDS like a great idea, EXCEPT when you talk about multiplayer servers. My wife and I play on the weekends, so I don't want to go back to our MP server after 4 or 5 days to find all my food spoiled. The only fix to that would be for the game to know what food was yours and turn off spoilage when you are logged out.

 
Found fridges should be off, as electricity is hardly available so long after the apocalypse. Or it will be available for some time until it gets cut off (like in project zomboid). This way it gives incentive to find food quickly, as it will spoil in some time, making mid to end game food acquisition harder.

I think the most important thing for TFP would be to implement optional variables for items and possibilities to work on their values - update on intervals, initiate something on values, etc. This would allow modding or implementing into vanilla not only food spoilage, but also many other things.

 
Project Zomboid is "THE" game that got me interested in Zombie Survival games and I still play it on occasion.

If TFP could manage to pull some of the "Scavenge" variety /workings from Zomboid and the NPC systems from State of Decay and make it all work with the RWG, this game would be a hit IMHO.

 
About finding food:

Realistically the player would only find canned/preserved eatable foods that long after an apocalypse.

Fresh food is always there in the form of plants (farm) and animals.

A special locked (player-bound) cooler-box in MP could preserve any foods when logged off without electricity.

Food can only be placed and removed by the player who placed it. (this could still be exploited, unless the food is bound to that player too)

 
The problem of finding food in the late game is something that specifically affects players who prefer a nomadic playstyle as they usually don't have a garden.

Food that is specifically tied to one player would be a problem on cooperative multiplayer servers. Here often a single group member takes over the role of the cook and takes care of the garden.

 
Like i mentioned, having a framework for managing item variables (in this example every food item would have something like durability and spoilage speed) it would be easy to make a modlet adding a no-spoilage, lockable container. This could be used in both MP and SP, allowing to put things inside and their expiration date not moving a single digit.

 
I think it'd be cool to have a nutrition system. Certain foods give certIan nutriants, like carbs, vitamins, sugars, etc. Gotta eat things from certain food groups like grains, fruits, meat, etc and having adequate levels of each will provide bonuses or stave off illness etc

 
Agreed. But he didn't say prevent it he said reduce it and I think using a cooler as early game way to mitigate spoilage a bit is fine. Salt could also be used as something to extend the life of meat but not prevent spoilage altogether.

....but nothing. Cooler boxes should be able to help to a degree that raises the QOL a little from having no preservation. Playing with zero preservation techniques from the start until electricity would be too long a time to suffer and even if intermediate solutions like coolers and salt were used they wouldn't diminish the awesome tech of a fridge connected to electricity. I'd even say that if someone wanted to store their stuff in regular crates in the snow biome, that should almost be on par with an electric fridge so that there is that alternative for those who don't want to get into the electricity part of the game.
I agree re the coolerbox, snowbiomes, and salt, but also, I think drying meat easily should be an option for nomadic play style. In Conan Exiles you can make an inexpensive drying rack fairly easily. If they added this, then as a nomadic player, you could set up a drying rack when you stop for the night, and by morning you have yourself biltong or jerky (whatever you want to call it) and can continue with the trip.

Also, as I've harped on about before, canned food should not give you food poisoning. In reality potentially undercooking a pig over the fire in the wilderness (unsanitary conditions) is way more risky than cracking open a can of beans.

 
I actually liked the wellness system in that regard.

Low quality food lowers some wellness stat, (by a margin)

Normal quality food keeps it.

High quality food raises it (up to a certain point)

Death lowers it to the lowest level.

The impact of the wellness stat does not need to be substantial. It could be like affecting the top 20% of the endurance.

But its a long term reward to keep it up by pocuring good food (farming, hunting, fridge) and raise the wellness / keep it at top level.

As food has fullness, there is always only so much food the player can eat during the day.

Bonus: wellness only raises if you eat a type of food you did not eat this day (or 48 hours) before.

-> this keep the player from only preparing the same kind of food in bulk, but try to create a variety.

With food spoilage this would require a long term strategy to optimize farming, hunting and preserving.

-> and planning in a beer for the evening.

 
Last night i put a few more points into master chef and holy cow! the food you can make is AMAZING and is no doubt worth it. the hobo stew is probably THE BEST food item to have in the game, followed by the meat stew. This is why it takes roughly 10 minutes per stew to make, it is sooooo worth it. The only thing i see as a negative now is all of the canned food you get in supply crates. I kind of notice that it is lesser the further in the game you get though. Ive finally gotten a rocket launcher with ammo and some med kits rather than just all food.

 
As much as I hate to say it, I think farming probably needs to be removed from the game.

I love farming, don't get me wrong. But I think it makes food too easily available and removes the need to scavenge, to the detriment of the game. So, I'd rather see the farm crops show up sporadically in the biomes only and have recipes make heavy use of canned foods (without the food poisoning chance that makes them useless right now).

Meat probably needs to be nerfed a bit, too. Eating predators is generally not a great idea - there are dangers associated with it. So maybe wolves and bears shouldn't give meat (if we don't want multiple kinds of meat) or predator meat should come with a health risk. Maybe hobo stew could be made from predator meat and not be such an uber food but just okay, as an idea. Right now, wolf pack hordes are meat delivery services that dwarf all other sources of food.

 
As much as I hate to say it, I think farming probably needs to be removed from the game.
I love farming, don't get me wrong. But I think it makes food too easily available and removes the need to scavenge, to the detriment of the game. So, I'd rather see the farm crops show up sporadically in the biomes only and have recipes make heavy use of canned foods (without the food poisoning chance that makes them useless right now).

Meat probably needs to be nerfed a bit, too. Eating predators is generally not a great idea - there are dangers associated with it. So maybe wolves and bears shouldn't give meat (if we don't want multiple kinds of meat) or predator meat should come with a health risk. Maybe hobo stew could be made from predator meat and not be such an uber food but just okay, as an idea. Right now, wolf pack hordes are meat delivery services that dwarf all other sources of food.
They may be but a wolf pack also represents a real threat. As such, a good reward is certainly called for.

 
They may be but a wolf pack also represents a real threat. As such, a good reward is certainly called for.
When a pack of dire wolves becomes something you run toward instead of run away from, I think the reward is probably too good.

 
When a pack of dire wolves becomes something you run toward instead of run away from, I think the reward is probably too good.
The meat isn't that important to me. I am more interested in the bones. I am also happy about a pack of dogs.

By the way. The wolves and dogs are already enough threat for an average player. I wouldn't know a player who hasn't been killed at least once by a pack of dogs or wolves.

And if you want to abolish farming then only over my dead, reanimated and again killed body. I don't have much desire to wander around in the desert for hours to always have enough aloe to cover my need for healing bandages.

 
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When a pack of dire wolves becomes something you run toward instead of run away from, I think the reward is probably too good.
If you are running towards them then it is likely you have passed the point that anything at all is a threat.

At that point, the meat is mostly irrelevant anyway.

 
If you are running towards them then it is likely you have passed the point that anything at all is a threat.
At that point, the meat is mostly irrelevant anyway.
I suspect I just want the game to be weighted more toward the survival genre and less toward the shooter genre than it is. Food ought to be a consistent pressure that eases up in mid- to late-game but never goes away, and there should be enemies that you never want to encounter unexpectedly because you'll be dead, regardless of weapons, armor and meds.

 
I suspect I just want the game to be weighted more toward the survival genre and less toward the shooter genre than it is. Food ought to be a consistent pressure that eases up in mid- to late-game but never goes away, and there should be enemies that you never want to encounter unexpectedly because you'll be dead, regardless of weapons, armor and meds.
Meh - I don't want impossible enemies. That really is not that fun. I would like to see more of a survival aspect though and that is directly tied to the reward for killing. Personally I don't think that zeds should give you anything at all - no drops and certainly no experience. Survival is AVOIDING dangers - not running 10 forges for no other reason than summon giant xp bags.

In that respect I understand not liking the wolves all that much though I think that aspect is fine as hunting fits right in with the game. It is the zeds that kill the survival aspect as they are more of a resource than a threat. It is worth noting that them being a resource was cited, iirc, as a good reason to take out general zombie looting.

 
Meh - I don't want impossible enemies. That really is not that fun. I would like to see more of a survival aspect though and that is directly tied to the reward for killing. Personally I don't think that zeds should give you anything at all - no drops and certainly no experience. Survival is AVOIDING dangers - not running 10 forges for no other reason than summon giant xp bags.
In that respect I understand not liking the wolves all that much though I think that aspect is fine as hunting fits right in with the game. It is the zeds that kill the survival aspect as they are more of a resource than a threat. It is worth noting that them being a resource was cited, iirc, as a good reason to take out general zombie looting.
Not impossible enemies, just enemies that are so dangerous you will always have to weigh significant risk vs the reward before taking them on. I don't feel like there's anything like that in the game anymore (and I'm not a particularly good player). You can become too powerful. It used to feel that way with the cops and ferals because our characters couldn't get uber strong/fast/protected.

I agree that zombies should be a threat, not a resource. Taking loot away from them for that purpose would have been fine, except that they completely negated it by making them experience loot bags instead.

 
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