Fridge full of food, but not hungry

I'm on Winter of Year 5, about ready to wrap up this save file (probably), and its been weeks since I ingested anything other than coffee. I've maxed all my skills, completed the community center, upgraded all my tools, have plenty of iridium sprinklers, have my reward statue cranking out more iridium than I know what to do with, and have completed all the monster slayer goals, so I have no more reason to visit the mines. I stopped fishing the moment I completed the aquarium, because I don't like killing animals and I'm not going for the master fisher achievement. So the only energy I use is a minimal amount for hoeing and clearing debris.

I'd been carrying around plates of food for the various defense and attack buffs, but now realize they're just wasting inventory space. Nearly all of the veggies and fruits in my fridge are just superfluous at this point, even for villager gifts; I've maxed friendship with everyone except for Krobus (who is at 8/10 and should be at 10/10 with a few more pumpkins or iridium bars). I'm not complaining, just think it's amusing that I'm living on no food other than coffee, and that only because once you've gotten used to coffee speed, walking around at normal speed feels godawful slow.

 

You sound like a doctor on their first year of a medical residency.

I have always had some mixed ideas regarding mandatory hunger/thirst in the game. One the one hand, it would be additional immersion. On the other hand, it would add a level of grinding to the game, making a continual food supply necessary. On the other other hand, it would be good for role-playing purposes. On the other other other hand, it would be a terrible burden to place on a starting farmer, having to use so much of what they grow or so much of their budget just to keep fed. On the other other other other hand, I have too many hands.

Tying food to energy use has the obvious dis-advantage you've already noted-- once you've had a few Stardrops, and upgraded your tools and skills enough, you hardly burn any energy at all, and food becomes useless aside from role playing your farmer, healing in combat, or for the buffs.

 

I can still remember party members crying out that they were hungry every 24 game hours in Ultima VI. It was one of the least well-regarded features Richard Garriott added to that game, though friends of mine who worked for him said he was absolutely impervious to suggestions of any sort on anything. Personally, I've never liked mandatory food consumption in a game, since. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a slower progression towards high energy, or even dropping out a couple of Stardrops to make food more important. Or the addition of new areas with special trees that are much more difficult to chop down, and soil that's more resistant to hoeing, using up more energy as a result.

 

I enjoy hunger/thirst systems in some games (FO:NV comes to mind), but I can't see it working well in Stardew. I suspect you'd be crushed by the requirements for the first season or two when you don't have a kitchen or cash to buy food, and then it would cease to be anything but a nuisance as soon as you got the kitchen and the Sashimi recipe from Linus. Also, the game doesn't have enough beverage options to make hydration a logical requirement; it'd need the addition of water, which would probably be too easy to get since you can build a well and all that.

 

These hang proudly upon my wall five feet from where I am sitting at the computer:


So you can see where /my/ computer game loyalties lie.

 

Island of Happiness an Sunshine Islands has it, and it's okay but kinda a pain in the butt too.

 

The two games I played the most before Stardew were Nethack and The Sims, both of which require regular consumption of food under most circumstances. I knew that Stardew wasn't like either of those, though I still sometimes try to harvest fruit trees by using the Nethack "kick" shortcut by mistake ;-) Anyway with regard to food and other normal human needs (Sims also has bladder and hygiene in addition to sleep), I think the amount of realism/roleplaying desired is very player-dependent. While many Sims players take all the bonuses/perks to reduce needs as much as possible, I always thought it was more realistic to play with them, because I wasn't just looking to earn a huge amount of money as quickly as possible. I play Stardew the same way.

 

I'm vegan both in the game and real life, so I haven't cooked the sashimi or any other dishes including animal products. I didn't even want to fish or raise animals, but did the former to complete the community center, and the latter because I got dinosaur eggs and thought it would be fun to have dinosaurs on my farm. Then I adopted some other animals for items to complete the Full Shipment achievement. I just pretend that I'm running a sanctuary rather than a farm.

 

Vegetarian here. I wrestled with the comfort level of catching and eating fish in the game, but after a few days decided that it hurts no one and nothing to do so. While I certainly agree you've got the right to stand by your principles even in a virtual world, remember that it's only ones and zeros-- and I presume you still fight and kill monsters and craft lightning rods out of bat wings? I wouldn't worry so much over the ethics of pretend critters. (Not that I would want to see anyone treat their farm animals badly even in Stardew; that's just going to get a bunch of sad bunnies and ducks out of it.)

 

I know it's just a game, but since I became an activist (for human as well as animal rights) a few years ago, my ethics began to influence my gaming activities. My justification for killing monsters in the mines and Skull Cavern is that they are (mostly) fictional creatures and they are attacking me, whereas fish are just going about their business when they are yanked out of the water.

In any case, the developer himself is a vegetarian, and I appreciate that he does not allow slaughtering of farm animals in the game, although in real life animals raised for eggs and milk are routinely killed. (And real-life cows and goats don't produce milk when they're not pregnant.) Regardless, fishing to me is simply aquatic hunting, and if I hadn't gotten impatient with waiting to get every fish from the traveling cart I would have avoided that activity completely.

 

While I don't dispute your information, that is the first time I've ever heard that CA himself was vegetarian, and I am curious as to where you read/heard that bit of trivia. He did very much include slaughtering animals and meat for much of the game development and only removed it late in the development process. (A few mods that add meat to the game make use of his original sprites and textures for meat products, as he made them available for people, even though he is adamant that he will not be adding them back in himself.) I am personally glad he came to that decision, as it made the game much 'friendlier' for me to use. (Please, this is not a thread to debate the pros/cons of re-adding animal slaughtering to the game, as there have already been numerous ones debating that in the suggestions sub-forum. I am just mentioning it out of curiosity at learning that CA himself may be vegetarian.)

EDIT: After a few searches online, I find some cursory mentions of CA being vegetarian, but nothing conclusive. Interesting to know.

 

Here is the interview with Barone that I read (in Vulture). Relevant paragraph:

Still, during the development process Barone made plenty of decisions that were more about attaining the feel he wanted for the game than maximizing player freedom or fun. Butchering, for example. Being a farming simulator, Stardew Valley allows you to buy and raise animals which then produce resources for you — chickens produce eggs, cows produce milk, and so on. Beta testers had asked Barone to include a feature that enabled users to butcher their animals and harvest the meat, and he listened to them at first, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to include the mechanic. “I didn’t want to have that sort of violence. You give the animals names, pet them, and a little heart goes above their head and stuff, and then you butcher them?” he said. “It just felt wrong. It didn’t jibe with the feeling I was going for with the game, so I cut that, and I don’t regret it.” (Unsurprisingly, Barone is a vegetarian.)
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Are you sure that butchering animals can't be imagined to be in the game? I mean when you raised animals, cared for them and finally sold them, you get profit. Where does this profit come from? It can't be the heart rating since it doesn't translate to the new owner. If that were the case, why has no animal bought from Marnie's farm any hearts?
So my only explanation for profit of selling good animals was, that they are bought by the food industry.
On my last farm I only used animals to get the greenhouse. After that I sold my coop and barn and turned my farm farm into an orchard. So I don't sell aninals to the chopping block either. It's just a theory...

 

Players can imagine whatever they like, of course. But domestic animals like dogs and cats are bought and sold without necessarily being for consumption, so the same could be true of the farmed animals in this game. When I sold off my dinosaurs I imagined that they went to a Jurassic Park like environment. When I sold off two chickens I imagined that they went to a larger sanctuary.

 

^ That's how I always imagine it too - I just figure I'm rehoming them to another farm that was in need of whatever animal it is, and I'm selling them back to Marnie so she can arrange for them to be picked up by their new owners.

 

Or, perhaps they have been rehabilitated back to health in the sanctuary, and are ready to be released back into the wild with all the other wild... cows and chickens. ;p

 

I don't put too much thought into where my animals go when I sell them, so I guess I just assumed it was either back to Marnie's or (in the case of my dinos) to people interested in exotic pets.

 

The Sanctuary...could be a nice add-on to the valley, or perhaps a better use for that desert, hm? lol

 

Well, modern-day domestic chickens are descended from jungle fowl, so those aren't entirely out of place on my forest farm I suppose

 

I suspect that down around the 700th level of SC you encounter long-toothed chickens and their ruler, The Monarch of the Chickens, who is training them day and night in Prussian army tactics that will lead to their overwhelming the village and ultimately, the world...!