PC Spoilage of building materials

So, I understand that food spoilage is realistic in the sense that it is something that you see in the real world, but the link between that and better gameplay seems kind of tenuous. The biggest reason I see for adding it is it encourages players to continuously harvest food, rather than just stockpiling it. How does that make the game more fun though?
If it does make the game more fun, Why not apply spoilage to other things too, such as building materials?
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That would actually be super easy to do, mod wise, too...

 
Food spoilage is coming? Man they really try hard to make the Zombies redundant. Same as i said in the dog´s thread: More Z´s instead of such artifical tedious challenges. Go and put UMA in the trashbin so we can have more Z´s.

 
Food spoilage is coming? Man they really try hard to make the Zombies redundant. Same as i said in the dog´s thread: More Z´s instead of such artifical tedious challenges. Go and put UMA in the trashbin so we can have more Z´s.
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Can you explain to me what enhances the difficulty and what is just tedious artificial challenge?

Because for me the survival aspect is as big a part as the zombie apocalypse.

So I don't know what you mean by artificial. Why is another survival aspect artificial.

And there are ways to combat it and help balance the games progression, so why is it tedious?

Like what makes this more tedious then say... looting 50 corpses after hordenight?

I'm absolutely against artificial tedious ways to enhance the difficulty.

Stamina in .0 was one of them. It only served as a reduction in gamespeed and didnt give any new challenges.

I dislike falling floors like in the library skyscraper or mines on top of cranes.

But this is an intricate system that will make food a ressource you have to balance out.

No longer is farming an optional fun sideactivity but actually something you might want to have.

 
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Food spoilage is coming?
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Why do you think that food spoilage is coming?

So far only players discuss the pros and cons but I haven't heard from the developers that something like this is planned. More precisely, I got the impression that madmole is currently rejecting the idea.

One of the reasons is that you can't prepare well enough for the Horde if you're constantly busy getting food. There are also problems with multiplayer servers. Even if you don't play yourself, the game continues to run on the server as long as someone is logged in. If you log back in after some time all food would be spoiled.

 
Even if food spoilage would be the better game mechanic, I doubt they want to take the risk implementing another relatively complex system into their networking architecture.

Its not that trivial to keep track of food spoilage, handle decay and how food-stacks work.

It would be a dynamically changing (over time) property on an inventory item, something that is not in the game yet.

 
Why do you think that food spoilage is coming?
So far only players discuss the pros and cons but I haven't heard from the developers that something like this is planned. More precisely, I got the impression that madmole is currently rejecting the idea.

One of the reasons is that you can't prepare well enough for the Horde if you're constantly busy getting food. There are also problems with multiplayer servers. Even if you don't play yourself, the game continues to run on the server as long as someone is logged in. If you log back in after some time all food would be spoiled.
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Roland´s post on the first page of this thread. Sounds like it is coming.

And yes spoilage is very importnant if you talk about RL survival. But in game this is a thing where it´s too much of realism. It´s nice that we can´t go out at 4:00 and come back at 22:00 now without the need to eat anymore (you could even do that on a 120min day). That was a very good move. But spoiling food really adds nothing to the gameplay, no fun and no challenge included there. Just checking the "best before" date.

Also they will kinda overdo it. See Rolands post about having to eat it the day you made it. No thanks. I am gonna play some stupid cooking browsergame if i wanna deal with that crap.

This game has horde in it´s title. It should start to contain real hordes now that we are already in A17. Not micromanagment "challenges"

 
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Not micromanagment "challenges"
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Have played quite a lot of games with spoilage and it's like zero extra micromanagement, because after a while you just learn what's what and get used to doing things a certain way without looking at the "best before" date. Food becoming non-issue so early in the game, makes for more boring gameplay and and a game that is more oriented towards shooting stuff than trying to survive. I can understand that this is not how a lot of people may see it, but others would really enjoy this option - I know I would.

 
I'm in favour of food spoilage.

I have 250 meat in my chest. I'm next to a lake, so boiled meat is always on the menu. With this, hunger and thirst are a non-issue to me, and that's a bummer.

 
To me, the only material that could even apply to material spoilage is wood. Wood would make sense because termites should still exist and would eventually get to your untreated supply of lumber. Maybe some aid items could also be roped in but I'm unsure which ones would make sense.

 
I'm in favour of food spoilage.
I have 250 meat in my chest. I'm next to a lake, so boiled meat is always on the menu. With this, hunger and thirst are a non-issue to me, and that's a bummer.
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Try to get that much meat on a crowded MP Server. Good Luck.

Food Spoilage may work in SP but on MP servers it´s just going to be a huge pain in the butt.

 
if they bring food spoilage i certainly hope they repair basically the entirety of every other part of the game being imbalanced because adding a new untested mechanic to what the game is now would probably set it back quite a bit. as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them. honestly...balancing how quick you can gather food should also be a decent method of controlling how much food a player has. what alot of people miss is that hoarding large amounts of food and materials are something that a TON of players love . it appeals to their OCD and is part of the fun....nerfing the amount of stuff people can hoard would just add another negative tick to the game where there are several allready

 
as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them.
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Me neither. Construction materials certainly do degrade over time... but to condense decades, if not centuries, of natural degradation into game days is a bit too much for my taste. As for food spoilage, I can understand it. I think adding it into the game would be too much for it to be worth any benefit it could bring. If they did, I would accept it though. Probably wouldn't bother me. I think the same effect can be achieved by simply making it so it was possible to burn food. It wouldn't solve stockpiling tons of food, but it would solve stockpiling food that is immediately ready to be consumed.

 
if they bring food spoilage i certainly hope they repair basically the entirety of every other part of the game being imbalanced because adding a new untested mechanic to what the game is now would probably set it back quite a bit. as for resource spoilage, ive never heard of this in any other game so im unsure why youd want it or what the benefit would even be. i think resources are better managed just by balancing how quick you can gather them. honestly...balancing how quick you can gather food should also be a decent method of controlling how much food a player has. what alot of people miss is that hoarding large amounts of food and materials are something that a TON of players love . it appeals to their OCD and is part of the fun....nerfing the amount of stuff people can hoard would just add another negative tick to the game where there are several allready
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No matter how you try to balance it with the distribution of fooditems in the world,

either its too sparse (making the game impossible to play without constantly running into hunger) or too abundant (always leading to an oversupply after a while).

There is no middle ground really. it will always end up with food being a non-issue, as balancing it too scarce would be a blocker to the gameplay.

Food is also a different thing than ammo for example.

There can never be enough ammo, but the game still works just fine without any ammo available (player then using melee or bows).

A large supply of ammo would just make the player change his fighting style, thus using up more of it.

Same with building materials: more materials, just build bigger base... , too few materials: re-purpose an existing POI.

With food there is no such alternative, and there is also no way to just consume more (as would be the case with building materials and ammo)

The only way too keep it from stockpiling (as consumption is a fixed static amount per time) would be to remove it dynamically, either by spoilage or by using it for some other purpose. (like incrementally more resource demanding recepies for dishes, that use up more lower level foods per dish)

... drains are important in an ingame economy, overabundance is not fun in the long run.

 
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but again i ask...why is later game food stockpiling bad and an issue at all to begin with?
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I don't think it's an issue. I think it was just brought up as a mechanic to introduce more difficulty, as little as it would bring.

 
leads me to an interesting train of thought....they increased difficulty by bloating the amount of zombies in POI's to ridiculous levels...and also nerfed mining speed AND nerfed the amount of coal and nitrate you could find underground and nerfed a players ability to move more easily with backpedaling plus also increasing the damage it takes to kill a zombie.

i think all of this was a bit (a lot) too much

 
but again i ask...why is later game food stockpiling bad and an issue at all to begin with?
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Because stockpiling means there is no shortage and that this game element is no problem to solve anymore, it might then just not be in the game anymore.

Its the job of the gamedesign not to let that happen.

(Its not even late game, its basically after a few days no issue anymore)

 
leads me to an interesting train of thought....they increased difficulty by bloating the amount of zombies in POI's to ridiculous levels...and also nerfed mining speed AND nerfed the amount of coal and nitrate you could find underground and nerfed a players ability to move more easily with backpedaling plus also increasing the damage it takes to kill a zombie.i think all of this was a bit (a lot) too much
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Agreed. While nerfing some things for difficulty is probably unavoidable, it shouldn't be the go-to solution for everything. It just slows things down without any fun added in to compensate. It's all been one giant nerf. Looking forward to some real content in A18.

 
"Tedious", "Micromanagement", and "Artificial Difficulty" are the trifecta of excuses people give for anything that increases the survival aspect of the game. All it means though is that they are not fans of actual survival games.
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I call BS.

Food spoilage in this game would be all 3 of those things and that has nothing to do with how I feel about survival games. It has everything to do with the fact that this system would not change any of the behaviors I have in my games at all. IOW, extra steps without any perceived benefit as far as the game and depth of play go. It all comes back to farming - if you want food to have a deeper impact in game play spoilage will not address this. Farming is the source of food stockpiles and food stockpiles will remain until you change the fundamentals of farming in this game.

 
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