PC Stamina, Health, Food, Water logic, or lack thereof

[hotpoon]

I've tried many different survival games because it's my favourite genre of game, and for the most part, they all tend to keep Health, Stamina, Food and Water pretty logical and straightforward.

How most other survival games do it:

Stamina

You start out with a modest pool of stamina (but enough to chop a few trees down) and you grow it with attribute points. The pool of stamina is never gimped by any other effects. Your stamina is only affected by you drawing from it to do specific things that require stamina, and then immediately starts to refill when you stop or slow down to a walk.

Health

You start out with a modest pool of health and you grow it with attribute points. Your health is never gimped by anything other than actually taking damage, or true starvation/dehydration (i.e. when food and water levels actually reach zero).

Food

You start out full and as you perform tasks, your food drains. Some tasks, biomes, or states (e.g. being injured) may drain food quicker. You never start starving to death until your food falls to zero.

Water

You start out fully hydrated and as you perform tasks, your hydration drains. Some tasks, biomes, or states (e.g. using a lot of stamina on high intensity tasks) may drain water quicker. You never actually dehydrate until your water level falls to zero.

How 7DTD does it:

Backward and unnecessarily convoluted. Your health and stamina pools start shrinking as soon as your food and water levels start dropping. It's also not obvious that this is what is going on, or how to fix it. If drinking fixes your max stamina cap, then why shouldn't eating fix your damaged health cap. Why bandages now? Am I bleeding? I don't know why 7DtD are trying to reinvent the wheel on mechanics that should be so simple and logical.

I've seen MadMole defend this system by saying something along the lines of "Oh you haven't played Scum then have you". Yes, I know about Scum - where it's apparently even more involved. I haven't and will not play it. If I wanted to spend time balancing my macros, I'd rather do it in real life where it will actually benefit me, not waste my leisure time. My point is that most other survival games follow the most logical route because it is user freindly, easy to understand, and not grindy.

Personally, I think the previous wellness system was more straightforward, with the added bonus that it gave you an actual incentive to make and eat more complex dishes. It also wasn't constantly punishing you like the new system where you have to make sure your food and water are always full. Isn't it enough that we will eventually starve to death or die of thirst if our food and water falls to zero? Why make it a constant nag for the player to be glutinous? It's not fun, Fun Pimps. It's not fun.

 

[RestInPieces]

I've tried many different survival games because it's my favourite genre of game, and for the most part, they all tend to keep Health, Stamina, Food and Water pretty logical and straightforward.How most other survival games do it:

What other survival games, Minecraft...?

From the top of my head:

-The Forest caps stamina according to your energy which you get from eating sleeping etc.

-Project Zomboid has 10 times more debuffs and effects which effectively not only reduce the ability to do many actions in the game straight away but gradually gimp the character in far more annoying ways.

Either say "I believe it would be better this way" or say which survival games you mean, if you do want to compare this game with a completely different one, without taking into account anything else.

7D's system is not half bad actually - a gradual decrease is much better than outright starting to lose health. And they even raised the thresholds to 150% so that there are no effects until you have criminally neglected your needs. Have you played the game recently?

Why bandages now? Am I bleeding? I don't know why 7DtD are trying to reinvent the wheel on mechanics that should be so simple and logical. If drinking fixes your max stamina cap, then why shouldn't eating fix your damaged health cap.

Eating raises your max stamina cap... At least understand the system before criticizing it? Drinking raises your stamina regeneration. And they both affect health, it's just that they don't magically heal you to full health anymore and there is a reason for the existence of medical supplies.

Isn't it enough that we will eventually starve to death or die of thirst if our food and water falls to zero? Why make it a constant nag for the player to be glutinous? It's not fun, Fun Pimps. It's not fun.

Yes, two bacon and eggs per ~30 min which are 12 default in-game hours, to keep yourself in shape is clearly an unrealistically huge amount of food. Reminds me of those complaints that said "your character getting tired so unrealistically fast". Only the "I can do better in RL" is missing here. Besides realism though the amount of food you have to eat in real time is ridiculously small compared to other survival games (e.g. Don't Starve, that game would really annoy you).

I think the previous wellness system was more straightforward, with the added bonus that it gave you an actual incentive to make and eat more complex dishes.

The system obviously still needs balancing but saying that the previous one was more straightforward is hilarious. The reason some people found it more "straightforward" is because they just didn't need to eat/drink at all - not with inconsequential death resetting everything.

I haven't and will not play it. If I wanted to spend time balancing my macros, I'd rather do it in real life where it will actually benefit me, not waste my leisure time.

That's why I have said so many times and I will keep saying that the game needs a "survival-lite" mode in which players can relax in their leisure time without those annoying consequences.

 

[meganoth]

If drinking fixes your max stamina cap, then why shouldn't eating fix your damaged health cap.

You might have gotten this (wrong) idea from Red Tea. Its description says it increases max stamina cap. In reality it does nothing. To make sure, I looked into the xml and tested it in 7D2D. No effect to stamina at all. Either a description bug or an xml bug.

Generally though drinking does not give you max stamina, like RestInPieces said.

 

[Guest]

Red tea slows the rate at which your max stamina degrades. It's useful early game if you're going to chop/mine/wrench a bunch of stuff and don't have lots of food yet to restore your max stamina.

More to the OP's points: I kind of agree that the current approach to food and stamina is a bit of a miss. As of A17.2, I find I barely have to worry about finding/growing food, aside from the earliest days if my spawn is less than ideal. But in earlier versions of A17, stamina management felt like an obstacle to actually playing the game. Exploring, fighting, gathering resources, everything became tedious because you constantly had to stop whatever you were doing to gobble down your umpteenth meal of the day.

I think tying food and drinks to stamina AND having the stamina cap lower through activity makes for really tough balancing. Either you barely have to worry, or you're constantly micromanaging hunger and thirst levels to avoid feeling gimped. Maybe if food were more scarce, but gave longer lasting effects, it could help. Two meals a day to prevent debuffs that slowly increased with time could maybe work?

 

[Roland]

I've tried many different survival games because it's my favourite genre of game, and for the most part, they all tend to keep Health, Stamina, Food and Water pretty logical and straightforward.
How most other survival games do it:

Stamina

You start out with a modest pool of stamina (but enough to chop a few trees down) and you grow it with attribute points. The pool of stamina is never gimped by any other effects. Your stamina is only affected by you drawing from it to do specific things that require stamina, and then immediately starts to refill when you stop or slow down to a walk.

This perfectly describes 7 Days to Die. After reading this I wanted to be sure so I booted up a new game made a stone axe and promptly chopped down 4 trees and a boulder as well. I never ran out of stamina. I had to repair my stone axe three times but never had to rest or stop chopping because of stamina even once and as soon as I stopped chopping my stamina started immediately to refill.

I keep hearing the same people say things like you must take multiple rests before even chopping down a single tree and I wonder if they are being dishonest, aren't playing the current version, or being afflicted by some weird bug. It really is confusing to me why their experience with stamina is so different than mine.

In 17.2 stamina is really a non-issue in my experience. It could be a bit more restrictive even so that the growth differential could be more dramatic. Honestly, if I had used the creative menu to give myself a purple tier stone axe I probably could have chopped down 7 or more trees without stopping once.

 

[RestInPieces]

This perfectly describes 7 Days to Die. After reading this I wanted to be sure so I booted up a new game made a stone axe and promptly chopped down 4 trees and a boulder as well. I never ran out of stamina. I had to repair my stone axe three times but never had to rest or stop chopping because of stamina even once and as soon as I stopped chopping my stamina started immediately to refill.
I keep hearing the same people say things like you must take multiple rests before even chopping down a single tree and I wonder if they are being dishonest, aren't playing the current version, or being afflicted by some weird bug. It really is confusing to me why their experience with stamina is so different than mine.

In 17.2 stamina is really a non-issue in my experience. It could be a bit more restrictive even so that the growth differential could be more dramatic. Honestly, if I had used the creative menu to give myself a purple tier stone axe I probably could have chopped down 7 or more trees without stopping once.

One reason is power attacks, which block regeneration for a moment. People just expect to spam them and never run out. Needless addition (at least when it comes to mining materials) if you ask me.

Another reason is people getting used to infinite stamina in previous versions, especially by abusing water use. 'Member when simple water replenished your stamina and all you had to do was spam it a bit to replenish your pool?

Yet another reason is that people aren't used to "maintaining" their character (hunger/thirst). Wellness did nothing for stamina simply because max stamina hardly matters when your minimum pool is large enough and you have/can maintain infinite stamina.

As for misinformed feedback, the UI/tooltips are also at fault here. Not enough info if you don't look at the character sheet and the UI could use some more visual feedback to reflect what is changing (like the hot/cold effects just less "intrusive/spam-y"). It could use some improvement and show more info while staying minimal.

 

[n2n1]

Max Health and Max Stamina - generally incomprehensible nonsense.

And they still say that they make all clearer for new players....

 

[Scyris]

Op also forgot to mention you can eat/drink up to 150% on the food/water bar, so if you do it right you'll never lose stam at all. As for food, I have to ask, do you people just sit in 1 spot huddling there or something? I've never, once had issues with food or water in 7 days to die. Not once, even when I was a complete noob. Its even easier in a17 for food due to the vending machines. Honestly I feel the vending machines should be taken out entirely, as it makes it far to easy.

That said I haven't really touched the game in the last month and a half plus. I like some of the stuff a17 did, but on the other hand I find I get bored way to fast, steel comes far to early, it should be lv 70 or 100, not.. 30. Once I have steel tools (You can craft tier 5 tools around char lv 20 if you do it right), migh tonly be 4 now if the goggles that granted +1 to crafting tier was changed I don't remember if they were or not.

The main problem with 7dtd is its far to easy to get established and once you do, the game loses most of its meaning. Once you can craft steel tools, you can craft guns, this takes away most of the reasons to bother exploring the world. Its not like the combat is anything great either. I personally find the zombies boring because its the same carbon copy zombies that are all identical to each other, i'd like randomized looks and stats, so each is diffrent in some way. I know I know performance issues, but still, I don't really see it mentioned that this is a thing they wanna do that I remember seeing, though I may be wrong.

 

[JCrook1028]

Max Health and Max Stamina - generally incomprehensible nonsense.

Seriously? If that's true and it's really beyond your ability to comprehend then I can't imagine how simplistic the game would become if fixed to your desired level of complexity.

 

[n2n1]

Seriously? If that's true and it's really beyond your ability to comprehend then I can't imagine how simplistic the game would become if fixed to your desired level of complexity.

Yes indeed - i can't (and now don't want - i'm not interested) to understand what actions/food raise these values. This complexity of the system does not increase the interestingness of the gameplay.

It's clumsy! The old "Wellness" - worked better.

Despite the fact that i not a supporter of simplification - this complication seems useless to me.

(of course I'm talking about dark backgrounds, not the actual cap, sorry if that wasn't clear)

 

[hotpoon]

What other survival games, Minecraft...?From the top of my head:

-The Forest caps stamina according to your energy which you get from eating sleeping etc.

-Project Zomboid has 10 times more debuffs and effects which effectively not only reduce the ability to do many actions in the game straight away but gradually gimp the character in far more annoying ways.

I said 'for the most part', and as I was typing that, I thought to myself, "I'm sure some argumentative individual is going to name the very few survival games that don't fit with what I'm saying". :|

Off the top of my head, here are some survival games that have logical stamina, health, food and water systems: Conan Exiles, Ark Survival Evolved, Empyrion, Subnautica.

7D's system is not half bad actually - a gradual decrease is much better than outright starting to lose health. And they even raised the thresholds to 150% so that there are no effects until you have criminally neglected your needs. Have you played the game recently?

150% is illogical. The fact that they have done this hints at trying to balance a broken system.

Eating raises your max stamina cap... At least understand the system before criticizing it? Drinking raises your stamina regeneration. And they both affect health, it's just that they don't magically heal you to full health anymore and there is a reason for the existence of medical supplies.

"At least understand the system before criticizing it"...

You're proving my point for me. A system should be logical and obvious and user friendly. I shouldn't have to make an effort to understand it. Illogical design.

Yes, two bacon and eggs per ~30 min which are 12 default in-game hours, to keep yourself in shape is clearly an unrealistically huge amount of food. Reminds me of those complaints that said "your character getting tired so unrealistically fast". Only the "I can do better in RL" is missing here. Besides realism though the amount of food you have to eat in real time is ridiculously small compared to other survival games (e.g. Don't Starve, that game would really annoy you).

I've played Don't Starve, but I lost interest after a few hours. That is neither here nor there though. How much an item of food satiates me is not what I'm arguing about. If I have to eat frequently because my food bar is running low, then that would be annoying but fair. What I don't want, is to have my stamina cap start shrinking just because I'm not 100% topped up on food or water.

The system obviously still needs balancing but saying that the previous one was more straightforward is hilarious. The reason some people found it more "straightforward" is because they just didn't need to eat/drink at all - not with inconsequential death resetting everything.

If somebody wanted to play that way, then why stop them? They would be sacrificing their wellness points to do it. Personally, I found myself trying to avoid death and cooking top tier food to increase my wellness in previous iterations of the game. In this iteration, snacking on boiled eggs every now and then is the only effort I will make, because there is no wellness reward. No reward, only punishment. Bad game psychology.

That's why I have said so many times and I will keep saying that the game needs a "survival-lite" mode in which players can relax in their leisure time without those annoying consequences.

It's not the consequences I'm complaining about. It's the illogical system. I'm starting to sound like a Vulcan.

 

[Scyris]

Seriously? If that's true and it's really beyond your ability to comprehend then I can't imagine how simplistic the game would become if fixed to your desired level of complexity.

Sadly a lot of todays gamers quite frankly are quite poor at games. Because of this, games have had to dumb themselves down so these people can play them. Ever see those videos of a teen today trying to play like super metroid on snes or something? they get no where because they are so used to a guide arrow showing them exactly where to go and what buttons to push etc. They seem unable to think for themselves and actually explore. This "problem" is only going to get much worse most likely before it gets better. Casuals is where the money is in gaming these days. We get the odd games like Sekiro and Dark Souls that plays more like a classic videogame that doesn't hold your hand, but those are rare and far between. Its just how gaming is today, devs have to either join the bandwagon or lose out on potental profit.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

This perfectly describes 7 Days to Die. After reading this I wanted to be sure so I booted up a new game made a stone axe and promptly chopped down 4 trees and a boulder as well. I never ran out of stamina. I had to repair my stone axe three times but never had to rest or stop chopping because of stamina even once and as soon as I stopped chopping my stamina started immediately to refill.
I keep hearing the same people say things like you must take multiple rests before even chopping down a single tree and I wonder if they are being dishonest, aren't playing the current version, or being afflicted by some weird bug. It really is confusing to me why their experience with stamina is so different than mine.

In 17.2 stamina is really a non-issue in my experience. It could be a bit more restrictive even so that the growth differential could be more dramatic. Honestly, if I had used the creative menu to give myself a purple tier stone axe I probably could have chopped down 7 or more trees without stopping once.

Try it with a stone shovel. Then try a lvl 1 iron axe/pickaxe.

Different tools use different amounts of stam, and yes, you will run out.

(and that's what sexrex is for)

I do think the hidden extra 50% is weird though. Better to leave it at 100% so you can see where you are,

but not have detrimental effects until you drop below 50 (not percent, 50) in the food/water.

There, silliness solved.

 

[Dimpy]

I do like that the max stamina and stamina regeneration rate will go down after doing hard work in the game. In theory, it should offer an incentive to eat and drink water. However, hotpoon is making a pretty good case for the decoupling the max stamina from the food meter.

How about this: Instead of taking a day to completely drain, the food meter takes about 7 days (time you might expect a normal person to survive without food) to drain. The max stamina bar is still a thing, but it naturally regenerates over time, maybe taking half a day to recover, instead of just instantly refilling when you eat food. The speed at which the max stamina bar regenerates is proportional to the hunger meter.

What this does:

1. After, say, cutting wood for half a day, eating would only have a 7.14% impact on your stamina, as opposed to the current system, where it would have a 50% impact; Food would be effectively removed from the mining metagame.

2. Even if you were starving (maybe three days without food), you'd still be capable of a rare short burst of energy.

3. You'd be encouraged to take time and rest for long periods of time every once in a while, instead of a bunch of "tedious" 15 second micro-rests every.

4. This might be a little hard for players to understand, but the beauty is that they don't need to. All they need to know is they need to eat a certain amount of food occasionally, and everything will be fine.

 

[RestInPieces]

I said 'for the most part', and as I was typing that, I thought to myself, "I'm sure some argumentative individual is going to name the very few survival games that don't fit with what I'm saying". :|
Off the top of my head, here are some survival games that have logical stamina, health, food and water systems: Conan Exiles, Ark Survival Evolved, Empyrion, Subnautica.

Even if every other game worked this way, it's not prudent to compare them as every game has its own peculiarities, penalties, mechanics and goals. Better to stick to arguments around the game itself.

150% is illogical. The fact that they have done this hints at trying to balance a broken system.....

....You're proving my point for me. A system should be logical and obvious and user friendly. I shouldn't have to make an effort to understand it. Illogical design.

I can't argue that they take some awkward decisions. Should have set the no-penalty-threshold at, say, 50, and just keep the max at 100%. Also hunger/thirst UI elements with visual indicators of how they are connected with stamina wouldn't hurt. A nice UI design wouldn't make it feel cluttered.

I've played Don't Starve, but I lost interest after a few hours. That is neither here nor there though. How much an item of food satiates me is not what I'm arguing about. If I have to eat frequently because my food bar is running low, then that would be annoying but fair. What I don't want, is to have my stamina cap start shrinking just because I'm not 100% topped up on food or water.

At 17.0 the max hunger/thirst was 100% and stamina started to go down immediately, plus better foods didn't have much value (they still somewhat don't). That wasn't great neither from a realism nor a gameplay perspective. The 150% threshold did improve things.

If somebody wanted to play that way, then why stop them?

Because sometimes you have to stop players from ruining their gameplay experience themselves. Yes, sounds awfully condescending but every game dev tries to avoid that. Wellness could be salvaged if they made some changes, but the A16- system holistically was a mess with death being inconsequential and worked against much of the game's own features. Medicine for example is much more valuable now.

It's not the consequences I'm complaining about. It's the illogical system. I'm starting to sound like a Vulcan.

I am all for the system becoming more intuitive. Not less demanding though. It already accommodates a carefree, resource-abundant playstyle (which, personally, I don't enjoy), and in general there are quite a few people who don't care about the survival elements as much as the sandbox elements of the game, which is why I do believe a more sandbox friendly mode would be a good thing.

 

[angrymonkey_13]

Well I'm kinda glad there's some ' tricks ' and ' tips ' out there to help us poor dumb bastards out. :chargrined: Pardon the language, but that's all us ' lousy gamers ' know .. :upset:

 

[Gazz]

7D's system is not half bad actually - a gradual decrease is much better than outright starting to lose health. And they even raised the thresholds to 150% so that there are no effects until you have criminally neglected your needs. Have you played the game recently?

150% is illogical. The fact that they have done this hints at trying to balance a broken system.

Exactly. It is not 150%. That would be illogical.

It is the current value +50, not *1.5.

Car manufacturers having adding rubber tires also hints at "car" being a broken system. They shouldn't have to do this!

Wellness was a bad system.

Once you hit the low cap there were zero consequences.

In the mid range it was hard to raise it up, late game (also due to exponential increases in skills/armor) you were immortal and it pretty much stopped mattering.

A system that is working neither at the low end nor the high end is not "good" by any stretch of imagination.

 

[n2n1]

Wellness was a bad system.

When there is no better system, the concept of "bad" is relative.

At least it was clear and not confusing as new.

///A system that is working neither at the low end nor the high end is not "good" by any stretch of imagination.

I agree, it's true

But now there's Max Health which are purchasable perks - they also make players unkillable...

Killing the player on the lower levels is now handled by other systems.

Now, if you're going to take a risk , it's hard to predict what your weakest part is.

Usually the cause of death is completely unexpected. It's annoying.

Usually after the screen of death, you are left thinking:

- "ok, i was killed that way, but what was i supposed to do this hadn't happened?"

Even if the new system is really workable - it is difficult to understand and confuses the player unlike the old one.

It is not intuitive.

Is that what you want to achieve? At least you always say that you want to simplify, and do - the opposite.

Eating raises your max stamina cap... At least understand the system before criticizing it? Drinking raises your stamina regeneration. And they both affect health, it's just that they don't magically heal you to full health anymore and there is a reason for the existence of medical supplies.

Very clearly explained. Realy...

Hmmm...Yes this really cool! But i didn't know that. Now i know.

Why didn't i know? - I didn't want to delve!

But if i want - i will not have problems with understanding this. (If i need - i'll read Wikipedia ).

What about the rookie who plays for the first time?

In truth, I don't mind complex systems for my gameplay. I love the challenge....

But they say what they do for beginners. I think they're just covering for something

 

[RipClaw]

Wellness was a bad system.

It was at least much more understandable and logical than "I haven't eaten for 5 minutes so I haven't had any stamina left".

Just because I haven't eaten all day I don't fall off the chair because of all the weakness.

Once you hit the low cap there were zero consequences.

Who stayed at the lowest cap was either an extremely bad player or just fooling around.

For my part, I have always tried to stay as high as possible so that I always had enough stamina and HP for the close combat available.

In the mid range it was hard to raise it up, late game (also due to exponential increases in skills/armor) you were immortal and it pretty much stopped mattering.A system that is working neither at the low end nor the high end is not "good" by any stretch of imagination.

Immortal is relative when in the horde night a dozen radioactive zombies attack you because the base doesn't work as you imagined. 250 HP will be gone pretty quickly.

 

[RipClaw]

But now there's Max Health which are purchasable perks - they also make players unkillable...

Tell that to my base. I have 200 HP and a full set of armor. When I wanted to check the function of a trip wire I unfortunately had to find out that I had not unlocked the ammunition in the dart traps.