HUNGER POLL

I could see that working.

if hunger meter is not filled upon consumption, eat item with no buff
else
while no food buff is active, eat item and get food buff

Some other things I would like to see if hunger returned is saturation and a visual effect when it get dangerously low. Saturation would make bigger dishes more filling and make the hunger bar take longer to drop below full if you eat them the moment you begin to feel hungry again. Just like freezing, hunger could also have a visual effect instead of that godawful beeping sound. It could cause the screen to slowly black out until the character dies or something.

Of course, as I've mentioned a couple of times before on here, if hunger makes a return, it should be reserved for hardcore/permadeath so the players on normal can be happy too.

 

Yeah, they need to keep hunger. Taking out because a few people said no? Dumb.
It was immersive and added a point to making food and trying to survive, buffs make this feel too much like an RPG. Seriously, if they don't put it back in I will start to question how the developers around here work.. I mean, they've made a lot of questionable decisions. This I find to be the worst of them. I think they should re-add hunger, but revamp it so that actually makes sense. I'm not sure, all I know is;

 

I dont like it as a survival thing, it was annoying in mincraft and everywhere else.
BUT: As a buff system...why not?
In a negative state you would be weaker. mine slower, hit weaker etc
neutral...yeah...neutral
positive would make you obviously stronger

So if you have not eaten in a while, you would not die. but you would be weaker than normal.

 

Honestly, I think that the Starbound Devs took out the hunger system a touch prematurely. Under the old system you were handed a bunch of recipes to start but were limited ingredient-wise to just Wheat and whatever else you happened to start off with. You then had to scour the galaxy to find more recipes, ingredients, and most worlds only had 1-3 different types of plants based on whether or not there were any settlements around or if you got lucky while scouring the underground. Giving different worlds a variety of biome-dependent edible plants right off the bat eases that process immensely, to the point where you can just make a lap or two around the world and come up with enough to eat. That's not even counting hunting since killing monsters with regular weapons occasionally drops raw meat anyway, and killing fish for fillets is now an option. Food is far more abundant than it was before, but since the hunger system got eliminated literally right beforehand there's almost no incentive to actually delve into the cooking system. I mean, heck. It wasn't even that hard to keep your hunger levels high either. A simple human Hamburger filled your hunger bar completely even from near-bottom and gave you a nice regen boost, and cooking was a nice way to keep yourself healthy too if you have the right recipes on hand. Black Current Crumble, Pineapple Upside Crown Cake, ect? All fairly complicated, a little labor intensive, but payed off greatly and helped you stay alive even in the highest tiers.

Honestly, compared to Minecraft's implementation it's a mild thing that only punishes you if you completely ignore it for extended periods of time. Plus it was easy enough to farm for food (using your ship's limited space actually gave you enough to work with) so I, at least, never had a problem with it beyond having to trek all over the galaxy one planet at a time for a given seed.

 

would very much like to see hunger reinstated - it subtly contributed to immersion and I had ideas for 'survival' missions with scarce food..

If the 'eat food don't die' way isn't a possibility then having low hunger making your weaker would be a decent replacement. Though it should probably just be very low or zero gives you weakening debuffs, otherwise no negative or positive effects. Leave the positive buffs for advanced food items as described in Supernorn's blog.

 

Maybe make dying from hunger a thing for hardcore and permadeath, with weakening from hunger for the other difficulties.

I think the main thing about hunger though was about pacing the game. It was an indicator of time passing that I don't think any other mechanic in the game really gives you. If you just idle, talking with friends or playing with the instruments it didn't really drop, but when you were active, running about, mining, fighting - it made you aware of all the energy your character was expending.

..like I said, a subtle peice of immersion

 

Or just let us have it as a sub-option for difficulty, if that's possible. That way people can decide whether they want it on or not since it seems like it's a somewhat divisive topic.

 

As of now, hunger does not play a big part in gameplay. Every 5 minutes your hunger bar pops up, you press a food button, and 5 minutes later, the bar comes back. You don't think about consequences, whether or not you should eat different things, you just robotic-ly press a button.

I will not miss the removal of hunger. On the other hand, I am glad to see the changes coming to crops and cooking. I hope cooking will have notable value for gameplay purposes rather than pressing a button for the sake of having it there.

This goes along the same reasoning why we don't implement sneezing in the game. There are some aspects of real life that are best not incorporated into this particular game. Go play Sims if you're dying to need to use the virtual toilet every few minutes.

Perhaps if there was a biome that gave you a hunger bar while you were in the area, that might work.

 

Yes, it is a relatively minor part of the game but that just means it doesn't affect any particular playstyle by being there.
I don't see it as incompatible with the new foodstuffs. If anything it would encourage people to try new combos and see what they do. Without it, many players will simply not bother with food at all - unless combat gets hard enough to make it necessary. Which I don't see happening.

Biome-triggered hunger doesn't make a lot of sense. Though that brings up another point - hunger could be an attackable stat eg. poison or illness status affects causing your character to vomit, or just lose a bit of hunger over time while affected.

It's worth keeping, imo. What's the harm?

Edit: To answer your question directly Supernorm - if it really isn't going to come back then I would appreciate the gesture. But I would argue that it should stay at all levels - you start to attach a lot of different mechanics to difficulty levels then people will complain eg "I would like hunger, but don't want to lose all my gear on death"

 

I think Xri has the right idea here. Please consider this devs!

 

NOOOOOooooooo!! WHY??

 

And Skyrim would be disappointing in 2D so we should scrap all visuals and code for them from this game and add few years to development time so Starbound will be either 3D or Ascii? I don't think it'd work out well.

In other words, I'd like to point out that we are not on Minecraft forum. You should, should it really be problem, register and suggest change of hunger there if it bothers you. How it's made and problematic it may be in Starbound is a different thing and - I should point out - we had hunger till not long ago, and apparently, no matter if it is or not annoying in Minecraft, it was an important feature in eyes of many here even if, let's be honest, not all of them - and it was expected to be improved and built upon (rather than cut out).

Not that I mind it in Minecraft either, but that's beside the point.

Solution? Maybe. As huge number of your community's users seem to claim, it should be integral part of the main game, that's why this sudden backslash against development team's decision to take it out. Especially since lot of the issues with hunger in general was in the fact that it was actually underdeveloped and would benefit greatly from having bigger role (and it certainly could use the new statuses, with all the visual effects and whatnot). There's plenty of ideas in the thread from 7th November if one seeks details.

However, having hunger back even as an afterthought is certainly better than not having hunger at all without having to fiddle with game files, and if it's such an important change both devteam and the users who aren't fond of that feature are adamant about, then by all means - leave it in as an optional choice. While it may not change all of the bad aftertaste, it certainly should ease the worries of most of currently disappointed users. I know that I will at least be far less unhappy with the direction certain elements of the gameplay seem to be taking and far more eager to enjoy the game.

I wonder though, why not to make it simply a separate server toggle-able setting unconnected to difficulty? I already read opinions where people claimed they value survival elements and hope for hunger to remain part of game's mechanic even though they play at all difficulties. Many people enjoy the challenges and immersion things like hunger provide, but they do not really want all other things (death) affected by difficulty settings to get harder.

 

I see where you are coming from, but I feel like if enough people in the community want a feature, but not enough to cause/force the devs to implement it, a mod will be created and updated frequently by its creator, and if/when the creator abandons it, someone else would likely step up to the plate.

I could be wrong tho.

 

It would be a compromise but I'd take it.

 

Any chance of it being added in as an optional choice upon character creation?

 

Or, could it be added as an easter egg to the vanilla game? Then, you could create the first official Chucklefish-produced mod, called "Snickers", which eliminates the hunger bar.

 

Are you kidding me?? That would be flippin' amazing!

More on-topic: Yes @Supernorn, I think that is a marvelous idea. I don't enjoy the hunger bar, but there are many here who do.

 

I wanted to take a second to say hello as this is my first post here.

That being said I think you guys are making a pretty big mistake in killing hunger in the main game.

I've been closely watching the debate on the couple daily blogs where you guys discussed hunger. From what I have seen most of the people against hunger have said that its just an annoyance.

To be honest I have to agree with them. It is an annoyance in its current form. I however didn't see you as the developers actually try to balance and fix it either. Instead you just decided to rip it out.

The way you setup the the hunger bar to "pop up" every once in a while, to me was the most annoying part. EVERYONE hates pop up's. We don't like pop up windows on the internet and we don't like them in games as they are often immersion breaking. This to me was was a setup for failure. If you are going to "require" something of someone (mainly us keeping a hunger bar filled) you should let us see it all the time. I know that a simple ALT press would show it but it made it feel hidden.

It popping up and the length of time between having to eat are easy fixes. How do you fix hunger? Easy, don't make it life threatening until it is ignored for 5 in game days. After 2-3 in game days make the persons movement speed and attack speed slower. Also make sure the hunger bar is always shown. To me this seems like a "soft" and realistic hunger system that could work really well with the buff system you are implementing. With hunger taking to long to deplete it gives you ample time to grow ingredients and experiment with foods in the crafting window.

If the hunger system is "soft" why keep it in the game at all?

I have a couple answers for that. First it gives you a reason to leave the house. Exploration is a good reason in itself to leave the house but the added hunger requirements gives the player another reason to get out and beat up some critters.

The second reason I have is that it gives the player a reason to use different weapon play styles. You had certain weapons that were used for hunting. You could even make it more fun and give us an actual stat for the hunting weapons where upgrading them or getting better ones actually gives you more or better quality meat. Meat or plant quality could be another determining factor in food recipes. That being said you can actually give us meat types based on the random creatures "types." Collecting the different meat types would give us even more "ingredient's" to play with.

The third reason is that it helps suck you into the game. Immersion. It makes you feel like your character is a part of the world because you are required to take parts of that world and ingest them to keep yourself healthy.

I hope I'm not being rude or anything but I felt that you really didn't give hunger a fair chance. Perhaps you discussed it internally but we as the players didn't get to see any of your ideas come to life so we feel cheated.

I hope you consider my words.

~Serene