Change how food works, add a survival mode.

The current food system isn't really satisfying anyone. It has several flaws:

1. People who want Starbound to be a survival mode where you constantly struggle to stay alive are unhappy because it is trivial to get enough food to never be in danger of starving again.

2. People who don't care about struggling to survive are unhappy because it requires that you regularly stock up on food and, maybe more importantly, it makes it impossible to go AFK even in a safe location, because it's impossible to pause even in single-player and your character will eventually starve to death while you're away from the keyboard.

The inconvenience of point 2 could be understandable if the need to eat added something to the game, but it really doesn't -- currently the only ways to starve are by forgetfulness or going AFK.

So as things are now, nobody is really happy with how food works. And it's not easy to fix -- if it were changed to be harder to stay fed, people who are more interested in free-roaming exploring or dungeon-crawling combat would be annoyed at the distraction, while if it were changed to make food optional, survivalists would be upset that the game no longer even pretends to support them.

Therefore, I suggest adding a "survival mode" where food is harder to obtain and stockpile (in one way or another -- there's been several threads for this); and then making it so, outside of survival mode, food serves some different purpose instead. (eg. very slow health regeneration while your food bar is full -- not a big deal, since bandages and other medical items are just as common as food anyway.)

Survival mode could eventually have additional changes added to it (making it harder to access the ship, say.) This could be an option distinct from other challenge-related settings, too, if they're added, so people can customize their gameplay -- I think it'd be a mistake to lump everything into "hard / easy" settings, because different people want the game's difficulty and challenges to come from different areas -- that is, they want to emphasize or deemphasize different parts of the game, depending on their style and what they want out of it.

 

Agreed.

However, this change may take a really long time to develop and it is not of priority now. It is a good suggestion though! Maybe adding a difficulty settings during character creation, similar to Terraria.

 

While I agree with your suggestions, I feel like to solve the problem of dying of hunger while AFK (Aside, from having a bed on you at all times to get in to halt hunger depletion) would be for them to have an /afk command of some sort. Once you set the /afk command your hunger bar stops depleting until you do anything like open a window, move, etc.. The only problem I could see, even though it's very trivial and wouldn't alter much, is people could mass smelt items in a furnace while going AFK to prevent their hunger bar from dropping. Again, that's a trivial problem and it wouldn't ever be a game breaker just a slight exploitation.

Edit: The good thing about this suggestion is that it's simple and I can't imagine it would be that hard to implement. Although, not a game developer so I can't say anything definitively.

Edit 2: Hell, it could even be added on the "escape" button pause menu as "Go AFK".

 

am i seriously the only one here that has not died from hunger ?

 

I have not too. I don't really find it bothering me at all, but I'm not too sure how often the hunger meter appears on my screen. Well, sometimes it does. And when it shows anything other then 'Mmmm, I'm full', I just eat stuff until I max out my hunger meter.
Food are not hard to get at all, anyway.

 

it literately takes a hour or so till my hunger bar starts beeping , i really dont find it an issue

cause earlie game your going to be working for snow infantry armor anyway so you get a CRAP tone of meat at the start to last you for a long time , at least that how it was for me

 

Yeah. Same goes to me. I got a ton of food supply. From plants to meat. Mmmmmmmm

 

Foods is much like pickaxe maintenance right now, trivial and adds nothing to the game in its current state.

 

No, that's my point. Food isn't a threat right now -- unless you're completely careless, there's no chance of it killing you. It's just an annoyance.

And that's bad because it means nobody is happy; people who want to have to struggle to survive day-to-day aren't happy because food is trivial to get, while people who don't want to have to worry about that or who'd find it a distraction from other things aren't happy because even if food isn't a real threat, they still have to occasionally waste time gathering it, and if you forget or go AFK you can still die.

And any change that makes one group happier will annoy the other one.

So I think the best solution is to split into two modes, one where it's actually challenging to keep enough food to survive (so the food mechanic has a purpose rather than just being a minor annoyance), and one where you don't have to worry about it at all.

 

i really dislike the option of multiple modes. because that would mean a lot of problems for balancing of each

*every thread would require indicator of which mode, and that could lead to conflicting reports requiring different balancing to each
(i had more reasons but im blanking out atm)

currently
it should just be considered a place holder system, make recommendations on how it should be changed in the way YOU prefer. its better to have one side happy than both sides unsatisfied in my opinion

 

This is a valid point, but I think that the tweaks here would be minor enough between versions that the game could support both. Minecraft handled food this way between difficulty levels, say -- on most difficulties, you can't die of starvation, but on the highest one you can.

(Personally I would prefer that food be optional, since I think that making food important enough and hard enough to stockpile that continuous survival is a constant struggle would pretty heavily interfere with every other way of playing Starbound, and without that sort of intense difficulty it serves no purpose beyond annoyance.)

 

a valid concern about food being a struggle for anyone not playing it like a survival game.
but even minecraft's hardest difficulty still has farms as away of obtaining large quantities of food.

i think if food vendors were more common, increasing the requirements for food would make it possible for people who dont want to play survival. just splurging will buy you some time to do other parts of the game.
maybe make food have limited stacks (cooked meat at 5, carrots at 20, entrees at 3) naturally foods would have to bee weighted differently (entree fills you to full, meat give few pips, smaller produce gives individual pips)
that way you get i can eat this stake and 2 carrots to be full or just chug this oculmellon stew. meaning that he can choose to take 1 inventory slot, or more with food and thus have less.

that means stock piles are less useful, after all having 1000 meat is nothing if you can only carry 5 in a stack so you need to make inventory choices and bringing less food than expected requirements would make some extended exploration difficult (deep caves)

 

Alternatively you could use the printer to print food, yes.

But fundamentally, I don't find the food system as it is now particularly interesting (and from the comments, I don't think anyone does, though some people want it to be harder so it has a purpose, and other people want it to just go away.) That's the problem. What does it add to the game to buy food, waste a hot slot on it, and regularly remember to click it? It's a meaningless chore with no strategic depth or thought, because the game isn't (and, I suspect, unless it's in a separate game-mode, never will be) designed to be one where facing starvation is a real or serious threat. It's just an annoyance to have to eat every so often.

 

In my opinion there should be different types of alien meat, depending on the size/difficulty of the creature.
Bigger meats take longer to cook, heal more, stay healthy for longer
To keep your food healthy store it in a fridge or it will go bad and potentially poison you.
meats go bad quicker than vegetation because then it gives an intensive to farm.
Cooking recipes replenish your hunger more than basic meat or vegetables.

 

I hate the idea of removing food.
I hate teh idea of removing hunger,
why not just make it so that in multiplayer you can "Go afk" which disables everything about your character.

Hunger should be made more of an issue when you ar eplaying.
Like how mine-craft did it, moving and fighting makes the hunger bar go down faster but not moving slows it to an almost halt no one complains about thsi system. So starbound should do that.

 

As I mentioned, though, Minecraft has something like what I'm suggesting here -- you can only die of starvation on the highest difficulty. That's why nobody complains about it. (Also, in minecraft, food is basically used to heal, which changes its context a lot, and makes carrying / collecting food seem less like pointless busywork. There's also some strategy in terms of which kind of food you rely on, because they operate in different ways.)

My problem, though, is that right now food in Starbound is mostly a useless mechanic. It's not a real threat; it doesn't add any gameplay, because it's mostly trivial to carry enough food to never be at any risk of starving as long as you don't get absent-minded. It's just a distraction from the rest of the game, making you open your inventory every so often to manually eat, and making you repetitively grind for food every so often. Neither of these activities have much excitement or risk to them, so I don't think it's enhancing gameplay at the moment.

What do you want out of food as a mechanic, basically? Do you like the idea that you can starve to death, and if so, why? Do you want starving to death to be a serious threat (again, it isn't, right now)? Do you just like the thematics of it?

There are various ways the food system could be worked to satisfy the different parts you might like about it without removing it entirely, but I'm baffled as to how anyone could like the way it is now (although I gather from your suggestions that you don't, and want it to be more of an issue? But just increasing the hunger rate wouldn't change much, because it's still trivial to accumulate food.) Maybe describe the interesting situations or choices or gameplay mechanics you want to come out of the food system?

 

I personally like details that you as a player have to worry about, no matter how trivial. It makes the game have more depth. Which is a good thing.

As I said, change it to how minecraft does it (Moving and fighting reduces the hunger bar at a decent rate, but lack of movement slows it to a halt.) this would make it more of an issue when you are not adk and are moving around, building would not decrease hunger unless you are moving around a lot which satisifes those "Easy mode" people. And satsifies those who like a challenge, like myself and others.
Also add an option in multiplayer to "Go AFK" or make the game load where you are on a planet so people can simply leave and come back in a few minutes again, just like minecraft.

 

I'd prefer to see a craftable item. Back item maybe, that's a portable replicator. It's silly to have to worry about food when you can neutralize gravity or teleport.

Other alternatives: food in inventory is automatically consumed. Annnd... you should be able to add a hydroponics lab to your ship w/ an NPC who can resupply you, if you'd prefer not to hunt forever.

 

First, I object to your implicit assertion that this is a matter of some people who "like challenges" and other people who don't. I love challenges. But what I like are interesting challenges -- challenges that make the game more fun, rather than less. Asserting that everything that obstructs the player should stay in because challenge isn't good game design; you need to consider what challenges are fun and which ones aren't, and design the game around the fun ones while discarding the unfun ones.

That's also why I very much do not want an easymode. I want the ability to turn off starving to death while keeping the enemies (and other "fun" challenges) as hard as they are now. That way, people who want to focus on a survivalist game as their main challenge can turn it on; while people who want to spend the time they would spend worrying about food challenging dungeons or other parts of the game can do that instead. Do you understand what I'm saying? I won't be facing fewer challenges than you, just different ones, because while you're grinding for food or pixels or whatever, I'll be in a dungeon facing dangerous monsters. That lets each player play the game the way they want and focus on the aspects that are fun and exciting for them.

That aside, my issue is that worrying about food doesn't, in my opinion, add any depth or challenge (not even the 'fake' unfun challenges of additional mindless grinding or the like), because it's not a serious threat. It's trivial to produce enough food to survive; the only thing the food system adds at the moment is a constant, annoying distraction.

 

Hope I'm not offtopic since it's a much different approach but it would be interesting if a specific food could grants you said buff, maybe under circumstances like player's race and/or actual hunger bar, that's at least what the huge variety of food makes me think because there are too many to fill different survival purposes like stack ability/hunger bar value.