PC POLL: Would you like to see food spoilage added?
- Thread starter ZombieSurvivor
- Start date
Xtrakicking
New member
Food spoilage could make food and nutrition such a fun mechanic to play with. It could add additional purposes to spend points into farming skills, cooking skills, tracking and hunting skills, fortitude skills, and if that isn't enough, additional benefits for electricity.
The devs could make working coolers and fridges to store food so it doesn't spoil. With food spoilage they could avoid players from literally throwing food and drink items away, as every food and water item could be the difference between survival or death. It would give the devs the benefit of expanding the purity, quality and disease risk level of food items they talked about in the game's kickstarter trailer.
All in all, I don't see why they're so hesitant to consider the concept of food spoilage. The nutrition system in this game feels very bland and oversimplified, which is a bit disappointing, considering that it's a core element in every game with surival and post-apocalyptic themes. This game has struggled with problems regarding food abundancy for the longest time. I even remember some versions of the game where it was literally impossible to die from starvation/dehydration due to a bug, but not many players noticed because food was never an issue.
I just think they either don't want to make a nutrition system that's any more complex than what we have, or they don't feel like dealing with the balancing needed for this mechanic to work.
Honestly though, I thought the whole purity level and chance for disease thing from the trailer would be more than a 4% chance of food poisoning in cooked foods.
[/opinion]
The devs could make working coolers and fridges to store food so it doesn't spoil. With food spoilage they could avoid players from literally throwing food and drink items away, as every food and water item could be the difference between survival or death. It would give the devs the benefit of expanding the purity, quality and disease risk level of food items they talked about in the game's kickstarter trailer.
All in all, I don't see why they're so hesitant to consider the concept of food spoilage. The nutrition system in this game feels very bland and oversimplified, which is a bit disappointing, considering that it's a core element in every game with surival and post-apocalyptic themes. This game has struggled with problems regarding food abundancy for the longest time. I even remember some versions of the game where it was literally impossible to die from starvation/dehydration due to a bug, but not many players noticed because food was never an issue.
I just think they either don't want to make a nutrition system that's any more complex than what we have, or they don't feel like dealing with the balancing needed for this mechanic to work.
Honestly though, I thought the whole purity level and chance for disease thing from the trailer would be more than a 4% chance of food poisoning in cooked foods.
[/opinion]
If anyone has any clue on how to do this, please let me know.
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
I think the same exact thing, it will be Split right down the middle. It will be interesting to see end results.
RipClaw
Well-known member
It always depends on how someone communicates something.My prediction is that it is going to be pretty split. In every discussion we’ve ever had in this forum it has always been so. You either love it or hate it and very few convert over.
If someone is crying the whole time that there is too much food in the game and that he wants to starve and he generally thinks that the player should crawl 20 hours over glass before he feels normal then the concept is more likely to meet with resistance.
If, on the other hand, you explain why food spoilage is positive for the game and the gaming experience and what mechanics are possible in the game as a result, then it is seen quite differently.
For example, in Ark the spoiled meat is needed for narcotic ammunition. This makes it something the player wants to have. There are even mods that allow you to spoil meat more quickly.
Bloodyvixen
New member
Each one of us has experiences and they are meaningful to us individuality. They do not speak for the majority by experience alone. What this means is that claims such as "I don't know anyone who has an issue with this" really has no weight in this discussion. Just because someone has not personally heard discourse does not give them the ground to claim few or no one is really taking issue with it. Echo chambers don't always reflect reality outside their little safe spaces. That it is implemented in other games is somewhat meaningless information. What works in one game doesn't always work with another.
People like me don't like to post here. Our thoughts often get belittled as people seemingly devalue our thoughts by claiming we simply want a game that is too easy, or we don't want challenge. Many people want challenge. That's what makes the game fun, I presume? I challenge people who insist on changes to make any game "harder" to consider if they are asking because it is a meaningful addition to the game, or if it is remedying the problem they created for themselves because they have been playing the game so long that it lacks the original luster.
The idea of food spoilage had massive implications for multiplayer. This is already the game that thinks that one solution to being poisoned by food that may have been served by a Master Chief (with all 5 points!) is to eat more food. I'd laugh save it's a waste of food and aggravating after all the effort in multiplayer to get the farm up and for looters to bring back the correct canned goods. Don't worry, you can always pop a pill (vitamins is it?) before eating because that totally makes sense. Or you could spend precious points into Iron gut....or just eat canned food. Save now every other vending machine is just wrench fodder.
This is also the game that has made it a requirement to use rotten flesh for farms (I see no issue with that), and it's a collective effort multiplayer to put a community farm up managed by those who either specced into it, or found the right schematics (The RNG gods must have happy). The solution if there isn't enough to go around especially if not everyone is cozy with each other is to tell the people running the server its their responsibility to adjust the server settings. Okay so that's how it is right? Oh wait, now this is the game that people are considering putting in FOOD SPOILAGE.
That's right, after you put the effort into making a farm and wrestling the canned food out of your player's hands, your reward is food that not only has a chance to make you puke regardless of the skill of the one who made it, but now progressively spoils and can make you puke more, and possibly other side effects? Oh the food has special powers, so it makes the risk worth it?
For multiplayer this means you have to consider how many people need food per play-through, and try to not make too much beyond that. If any food is made you better hope that no one logs in after everyone else is gone dealing with life. Would suck to log in and that meat spoiled because of one person. Speaking of which what happens to the food people carry on person? Does that spoil while they are logged out and others are still playing, advancing time? How does that work? Let me tell you a secret. If you don't make the food spoil in inventory you will have people whining a bit claiming that is cheesing a mechanic. So what else? We could get electricity powering containers to refrigerate food to lower spoilage. That means prioritizing your electricity and parts to a fridge over being more mobile, or getting stuff up to build your Horde Base. This is where this becomes a little bit of a sore thumb. Right now the best solution to Horde on multiplayer is run and gun on your bike (which many people on this forum raged against in the past as a viable mechanic) to building separate bases so you don't get overwhelmed on Horde Night by Demolishers or lag. Mechanical parts get used up quickly as well as other resources. It's going to be another strain to consider powering your boxes to keep food from spoiling unless a really careful re balance for multiplayer is done.
I have a better idea than this. Don't do it. It's a lot headache ultimately for a bit of realism that isn't needed. It's time spent re-balancing many things that could be used to make something more dynamic. Or, at least make sure to branch out fully with well thought changes/new implementations. Instead you could tie the food poisoning to cooking skill. The higher the skill the cooker has, the less food poisoning chance. Then add in the ability to salt and dry meat, and jar/can your farmed goods to prolong their use. Add salt mining, and new books to the game, as well as a new cooking mechanism for meat that dries/preserves it. You can have debuffs such as eating salted preserved foods causes you to lose some hydration so you have to drink more. Canned/jarred foods may not have a high satiety. Maybe high sugar foods make you lose some stamina if you eat too much of it. The Pimps can do better than "Food spoilage". Unless I see a full plan before implemented I don't want to see it at all. We don't need another adding a borked system that will be fixed eventually with balancing and more additions.
People like me don't like to post here. Our thoughts often get belittled as people seemingly devalue our thoughts by claiming we simply want a game that is too easy, or we don't want challenge. Many people want challenge. That's what makes the game fun, I presume? I challenge people who insist on changes to make any game "harder" to consider if they are asking because it is a meaningful addition to the game, or if it is remedying the problem they created for themselves because they have been playing the game so long that it lacks the original luster.
The idea of food spoilage had massive implications for multiplayer. This is already the game that thinks that one solution to being poisoned by food that may have been served by a Master Chief (with all 5 points!) is to eat more food. I'd laugh save it's a waste of food and aggravating after all the effort in multiplayer to get the farm up and for looters to bring back the correct canned goods. Don't worry, you can always pop a pill (vitamins is it?) before eating because that totally makes sense. Or you could spend precious points into Iron gut....or just eat canned food. Save now every other vending machine is just wrench fodder.
This is also the game that has made it a requirement to use rotten flesh for farms (I see no issue with that), and it's a collective effort multiplayer to put a community farm up managed by those who either specced into it, or found the right schematics (The RNG gods must have happy). The solution if there isn't enough to go around especially if not everyone is cozy with each other is to tell the people running the server its their responsibility to adjust the server settings. Okay so that's how it is right? Oh wait, now this is the game that people are considering putting in FOOD SPOILAGE.
That's right, after you put the effort into making a farm and wrestling the canned food out of your player's hands, your reward is food that not only has a chance to make you puke regardless of the skill of the one who made it, but now progressively spoils and can make you puke more, and possibly other side effects? Oh the food has special powers, so it makes the risk worth it?
For multiplayer this means you have to consider how many people need food per play-through, and try to not make too much beyond that. If any food is made you better hope that no one logs in after everyone else is gone dealing with life. Would suck to log in and that meat spoiled because of one person. Speaking of which what happens to the food people carry on person? Does that spoil while they are logged out and others are still playing, advancing time? How does that work? Let me tell you a secret. If you don't make the food spoil in inventory you will have people whining a bit claiming that is cheesing a mechanic. So what else? We could get electricity powering containers to refrigerate food to lower spoilage. That means prioritizing your electricity and parts to a fridge over being more mobile, or getting stuff up to build your Horde Base. This is where this becomes a little bit of a sore thumb. Right now the best solution to Horde on multiplayer is run and gun on your bike (which many people on this forum raged against in the past as a viable mechanic) to building separate bases so you don't get overwhelmed on Horde Night by Demolishers or lag. Mechanical parts get used up quickly as well as other resources. It's going to be another strain to consider powering your boxes to keep food from spoiling unless a really careful re balance for multiplayer is done.
I have a better idea than this. Don't do it. It's a lot headache ultimately for a bit of realism that isn't needed. It's time spent re-balancing many things that could be used to make something more dynamic. Or, at least make sure to branch out fully with well thought changes/new implementations. Instead you could tie the food poisoning to cooking skill. The higher the skill the cooker has, the less food poisoning chance. Then add in the ability to salt and dry meat, and jar/can your farmed goods to prolong their use. Add salt mining, and new books to the game, as well as a new cooking mechanism for meat that dries/preserves it. You can have debuffs such as eating salted preserved foods causes you to lose some hydration so you have to drink more. Canned/jarred foods may not have a high satiety. Maybe high sugar foods make you lose some stamina if you eat too much of it. The Pimps can do better than "Food spoilage". Unless I see a full plan before implemented I don't want to see it at all. We don't need another adding a borked system that will be fixed eventually with balancing and more additions.
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I play on a multiplayer server as well and food is a struggle. We play MP to play together and hate that we have to build separate bases for horde night because of the demolishers. We don't need another system of screwing the players, focus on fixing what needs fixed and working on the more content please. Would love to see vehicle mods (how about a muffler for the stupidly loud 4x4), expanded trader quests or bandits finally added instead of time wasted to make something that is already difficult harder.
theFlu
Well-known member
I slapped a vote on "yeah sure".. plenty on the road map before this one, but some attempts at alleviating "I've now raided bob's boars once or twice, I'll never have a food issue again" would be great.
Spoilage in the form of just deleting your stockpile would be unimaginative, but better than none. The better the system, the better the long game.
And more importantly, even if it was never used in vanilla, I'd love the game to support good ways of modding it in. By having a computing-resource-optimized system to track such things, and plenty other such dreams..
Spoilage in the form of just deleting your stockpile would be unimaginative, but better than none. The better the system, the better the long game.
And more importantly, even if it was never used in vanilla, I'd love the game to support good ways of modding it in. By having a computing-resource-optimized system to track such things, and plenty other such dreams..
HungryZombie
New member
I voted didn't really care but there's nothing you said I can disagree with. Well said.
Voted #2
I would much rather see food be harder to come by than deal with food timers. I've played a few games with food spoilage (Mist, Green Hell, and Conan) and it's a system I universally do not like.
1.) It might (heavy emphasis on might) make the hunt for food more challenging in the beginning, but eventually the player(s) can out produce the mechanic, or can manage it pretty easily from start, rendering the mechanic an annoyance instead of anything like a challenge.
2.) Or managing that mechanic takes away from the other things I'd much rather be doing.
3.) Never do I feel like it makes the game more challenging, it - at best - forces me to redirect efforts into picking berries from bushes or bludgeoning some poor animal on a time table set by whatever the timer is on the food most convenient for me to get.
4.) I play a lot of MP and getting into that level of micromanagement with food with multiple people sounds like I'm being forced to play Overcooked instead of playing 7d2d. Now, I like Overcooked, but that's not the goal I want here.
If the abundance of food is a problem and one the devs think needs to be solved, I'd rather see things like longer growing times, crop failure, a chance to harvest less from animals, etc. Those things, I personally, would find more enjoyable.
I would much rather see food be harder to come by than deal with food timers. I've played a few games with food spoilage (Mist, Green Hell, and Conan) and it's a system I universally do not like.
1.) It might (heavy emphasis on might) make the hunt for food more challenging in the beginning, but eventually the player(s) can out produce the mechanic, or can manage it pretty easily from start, rendering the mechanic an annoyance instead of anything like a challenge.
2.) Or managing that mechanic takes away from the other things I'd much rather be doing.
3.) Never do I feel like it makes the game more challenging, it - at best - forces me to redirect efforts into picking berries from bushes or bludgeoning some poor animal on a time table set by whatever the timer is on the food most convenient for me to get.
4.) I play a lot of MP and getting into that level of micromanagement with food with multiple people sounds like I'm being forced to play Overcooked instead of playing 7d2d. Now, I like Overcooked, but that's not the goal I want here.
If the abundance of food is a problem and one the devs think needs to be solved, I'd rather see things like longer growing times, crop failure, a chance to harvest less from animals, etc. Those things, I personally, would find more enjoyable.
I voted no because throwing that into the already broken hunger system will be too annoying. You eat too much, you die of starvation after one day not eating and it's annoying enough as it is.
That said, if the whole hunger mechanic was reworked "slow starvation" I'd be all for it but as is, no.
That said, if the whole hunger mechanic was reworked "slow starvation" I'd be all for it but as is, no.
Jugginator
Tester
Honestly, I think making food heavily tie into a revamped weather survival would take care of the food adbundance that i mentioned in a post a little while back.
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
I voted yeah sure because I would like to see this be a thing but if it never does, I doubt I'll look back and think...man only if they added spoiledge.
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
Now I know next to nothing in what does and does not use a lot of computer resources but I had this idea. I've heard the arguement that all the timers needed to keep track of food would have a negative impact, especially on dedicated servers.
What if, not even sure this is possible or would work, at a specific time maybe even twice a day the game checks an index. This index will have all the food in the game listed with day created. Lets say at 4:01am the start of a new day the game checks this index and ages food accordingly. This "timer" would only need to be ran once every game day instead of having a constant ticking clock like Ark. Maybe this way would be easy on system resources.
There is a lot more to this idea but thats the short version, again I have no clue about these things or how it all works...
What if, not even sure this is possible or would work, at a specific time maybe even twice a day the game checks an index. This index will have all the food in the game listed with day created. Lets say at 4:01am the start of a new day the game checks this index and ages food accordingly. This "timer" would only need to be ran once every game day instead of having a constant ticking clock like Ark. Maybe this way would be easy on system resources.
There is a lot more to this idea but thats the short version, again I have no clue about these things or how it all works...
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Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
What are some good games out there that do food spoilage well and why? Perhaps reflecting on that may lead to some good discussion.
Right now, food spoilage to me just seems like another time sink activity to make cooked food more difficult to maintain. In order to make such a system worthwhile there needs to be a good design behind it.
For example, along with food spoilage, should there be a way to preserve food longer? (E.g. refrigerator) Or like someone mentioned earlier, when food does eventually spoil, will it have a secondary use such as fertilizer? How much of a players day (60 min by default) should be consumed (pun lol) by the spoilage system in week 1? Week 5, week 10? SP, Coop, MP? Keep in mind, the more complex design will also make balance more difficult.
Adding spoilage is not as easy to implement as one would think.
Right now, food spoilage to me just seems like another time sink activity to make cooked food more difficult to maintain. In order to make such a system worthwhile there needs to be a good design behind it.
For example, along with food spoilage, should there be a way to preserve food longer? (E.g. refrigerator) Or like someone mentioned earlier, when food does eventually spoil, will it have a secondary use such as fertilizer? How much of a players day (60 min by default) should be consumed (pun lol) by the spoilage system in week 1? Week 5, week 10? SP, Coop, MP? Keep in mind, the more complex design will also make balance more difficult.
Adding spoilage is not as easy to implement as one would think.
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I voted "Yeah Sure" because it seemed the most middle of the road choice to me. I really wanted to vote that it depends on how it is implemented.
First, if food spoilage is added to the game then in game creation options I want the ability to adjust it (percentage based like other options, so 150%, 100%, 75%, etc.)
Second, different cooking recipes or methods should be changed to effect food spoilage (for example, historically smoking or salting meat was used to preserve it. could even add jar preservation or working frigs)
Third, I think before adding food spoilage, it would be important to balance cooking, farming, and food looting.
Fourth, while a potentially good mechanic, in my opinion the challenge of food spoilage would diminish over time. So it would be challenging earlier to mid-game but once established I think it would be more of a nuance than a challenge.
Fifth, I want to second what someone else posted earlier in that I feel that there are higher priorities in the game right now then food spoilage.
First, if food spoilage is added to the game then in game creation options I want the ability to adjust it (percentage based like other options, so 150%, 100%, 75%, etc.)
Second, different cooking recipes or methods should be changed to effect food spoilage (for example, historically smoking or salting meat was used to preserve it. could even add jar preservation or working frigs)
Third, I think before adding food spoilage, it would be important to balance cooking, farming, and food looting.
Fourth, while a potentially good mechanic, in my opinion the challenge of food spoilage would diminish over time. So it would be challenging earlier to mid-game but once established I think it would be more of a nuance than a challenge.
Fifth, I want to second what someone else posted earlier in that I feel that there are higher priorities in the game right now then food spoilage.
kuratowakiru
New member
vote no. reason due to both technical reason and I dislike micromanagement.
Let say food spoilage are implement.
No more stack of food, each individual food and ingredient is now on a timer till food spoilage.
e.g harvest a pig: +3 raw meat (time till expire 3 days), + 3 raw meat, NEW stack of 3 meat with it own timer. Or finding an egg and 2 minute later finding another egg (with a new timer)
And now cooking, imagine have to stand next to the campfire because it can't stack food and only can cook 6 items at a time until it remove, late game is fine, but imagine cooking 6 corn bread at a time or something like that.
And now imagine having a warehouse just to store your food because nothing stack. On top of that, you're now in constant finding food mode because you HAVE to eat food that about to expire instead of saving it for later.
Ah, you COULD implement something to help preserve food... to basically undo the food spoilage that just implement. Then why even put it in the first place?
when making a game, you need to balance between fun and boring "just like real life" simulation.
Let say food spoilage are implement.
No more stack of food, each individual food and ingredient is now on a timer till food spoilage.
e.g harvest a pig: +3 raw meat (time till expire 3 days), + 3 raw meat, NEW stack of 3 meat with it own timer. Or finding an egg and 2 minute later finding another egg (with a new timer)
And now cooking, imagine have to stand next to the campfire because it can't stack food and only can cook 6 items at a time until it remove, late game is fine, but imagine cooking 6 corn bread at a time or something like that.
And now imagine having a warehouse just to store your food because nothing stack. On top of that, you're now in constant finding food mode because you HAVE to eat food that about to expire instead of saving it for later.
Ah, you COULD implement something to help preserve food... to basically undo the food spoilage that just implement. Then why even put it in the first place?
when making a game, you need to balance between fun and boring "just like real life" simulation.
SenpaiThatIngnoresYou
New member
the best one i can think of, is project zomboid. In emperyon you just don't harvest the food until you need it. Also energy is easy to get. In project zomboid food will spoil, and growing food will die on the vine if not harvested. So that trick does not work.
But project zomboid is a hard game, that actively hates everyone that plays it.
Xtrakicking
New member
And is actively one of the most in-depth and one of the most engaging zombie games out there as well.
