Hunting Bow discussion - Should food drops be limited to hunting weapons?

Last week's update introduced hunting bows. As seen by Leth's stream from a few days back, the Hunting bow is the only weapon (out of those demoed in the stream) that causes monsters to drop meat.

Personally, I don't really like the mechanic, because it feels artificial and arbitrary. You may argue that a hunting weapon is a specialized tool like any other, so it makes sense for it to have unique abilities, just like a pickaxe is a unique tool that can break tiles normal weapons can't. But I'm still not convinced by this argument. I think specialized tools should make sense from the game immersion perspective, and this particular mechanic doesn't make sense to me. Why does an arrow from a Hunting Bow leave a clean corpse, but a kill using a normal sword or a crossbow bolt doesn't?

I understand the reason behind limiting food drops -- food shouldn't be so common as to make hunger a trivial matter -- but I think there is a better approach to this. I propose a two-prong solution:

1. Limit the types of mobs that drop meat to "meaty" game animals, like deer, chicken, boars, etc. Humanoids shouldn't drop meat (let's assume all races consider eating other sentient species, even of different races, as cannibalism and therefore it's taboo*), nor should monsters like slimes or skeletons or other creatures that aren't "gamey". Once this is done, the amount of "gamey" animal spawns can be tightly controlled per planet, to have just enough of them on the planet to make hunting them a challenge. Certain barren planets would have less gamey animals than others (or even none at all), making food security on those planets an extra challenge.
2. Limit meat drops to specific weapon types (as opposed to individual weapons). For example, killing an animal with a poisoned weapon should not leave edible meat (since it's posioned now, duh), and killing an animal with explosives likewise shouldn't leave meat. But basic swords/hammers/etc would all leave meat. This would give you a natural tradeoff choice between powerful weapons that destroy the corpse, and usually-weaker weapons which don't damage the corpse and thus leave meat behind.

The two solutions above would effectively control the food supply without making it trivial, and would still sometimes restrict weapons players use to hunt, but it would feel more immersive and natural, and less artificial and arbitrary, than having specific weapons like "Hunting Bow" which you use to gather meat, being unable to use anything else for this.

What do you think?

* Except perhaps Florans. Would be a nice race bonus to be able to eat other races! Thanks to Forever for the idea.

 

The thing about hunger, is that it doesn't care whether you want to use it or not. It just comes and kills your dude.

 

The solution is simple. A kill with a hunting bow will drop meat far more often than a kill with a sword.

 

I think having the meat only be produced when killed by a bow or hunting weapon could possibly be in a "realism" setting. I could see how realistically if you blew your food up, with shards of metal, well you wouldn't want to eat that. Shooting animals should yield meat though.

 

Well, nobody would use the hunting bow if other weapons were just as good with hunting. I mean, you get a sword and a gun at the very start, why would you need to waste resources on a bow? Thinking about this, they made it so only the bow would get meat so people would actually use it.

My suggestion is, they make it so hunting weapons drop more meat than regular weapons, but regular ones still drop meat. The logic behind that is when you shoot the monster, you get energy bullet thingy holes all over him and you can eat only the bits that aren't damaged. As for the sword, the cuts probably mangled some of the meat and you can't eat it because you're a very picky eater. Now, the bow makes a neat little hole on the monster and that's enough to kill it, so you can eat most of the pieces.

 

I think most non to extreme weapons should drop meat, choice three makes sense to me. Unless better hunting bows drop more meat would make the trade off worth it to me.

 

Florans.

 

From the looks of things, it may not be toggleable in the beta. So you may have to endure for awhile.

On the subject of dropping meat, I'd like to see other hunting weapons, as well as a hunting TECH you equip so any weapon can make monsters drop meat

 

Bows and hunting knifes only the end. Do not underestimate bows, they can fuck shit up hard.

 

I don't want to get raw meat from everything I kill when I use any weapon.
Only when I use a bow/knife would I want to get meat.

Though I do like Darthkitten's idea
" A kill with a hunting bow will drop meat far more often than a kill with a sword."

Normal Wep: 1 meat in 5 kills
Bow/Knife: 4 meat in 5 kills

 

I haven't seen a hunger option in the more recent bits of gameplay footage we've seen. They might not have implemented a method of toggling it on and off yet, same thing for control scheme configurations

 

I think certain weapons should have a "hunting" prefix/suffix that makes it able to collect meat.

I guess it doesn't matter too too much since you could always just farm, but meat is probably going to be a much more common source of food just judging by the few streams i've seen.

 

I like both the choices but I still don't see the problem with having a specific tool (weapon) to collect a resource.
I chose the second option:

'Yes, but also make other dedicated "Hunting" weapons like Hunting Knife.'

This makes it so that you still need a specific tool (weapon) for collecting the resource. You could have
hunting knives, bows, and rifles all with different levels of potency in each type. This way you can choose
either a melee or a ranged hunting tool to collect meat.

Good thread Gene.

 

Just because I blew that thing up with an RPG has very little to do with how much meat I can scrape off it. Admittedly the meat may be a bit more... scattered, but it's still there.

 

I agree that other weapons can be just as capable at meat-gathering as a bow. And bows have traditionally been hard to use in games, so it creates a high difficulty barrier for an essential game skill.

How does slicing something with a sword not produce meat? Or shooting it?

Now using explosives and/or poison could produce "Spoiled meat" instead. That would also reduce the confusion as to why meat isn't dropping to new players.

 

Pretty much all weapons should drop meat. Instead of a 100% drop, there should be a chance, like 10%. I don't want to be forced to use an inferior weapon because "arrows produce meat and a laser through the brain doesn't".