Remove/improve hunger system?

After playing for many hours, I can safely say that I believe the hunger system should be removed. These are my reasons why.

1. You don't receive any bonuses when full or any reductions when hungry.
2. In its current form, it's basically a "do this every so often or die" and serves no purpose at all.
3. In normal play it will never affect anyone. It only punishes players who go afk for about 3-10 minutes. Wanna cook a hot pocket? Your character is dying in the other room for no reason!
4. It can be removed and absolutely nothing will be lost from the game except an annoying system that accomplishes nothing.


Now, the alternative is to make hunger actually do something. Maybe when you're full, you do more damage/move faster/regenerate energy faster? Maybe when you're hungry the opposite?

However, the fact that you can die of starvation just for not playing the game is stupid. Yeah you can just log off, sure. But what about when you've been trekking around the planet core for the last hour and don't want to save and quit because that'll start you back at the ship? Well you better cook that food really fast or your character will die!


So yeah. Remove it or... "improve" it. In its current form it's useless.

 

then all the 100s of food have no purpose =/

 

you know you can just plop a tent or chair down and use it. That freezes your hunger

 

The food is there because the devs wanted a cooking system. The lame hunger system is there because if it weren't then cooking would be pointless.

And frankly, both are pointless. Food would be better served as a way of making items that give various bonuses (Like steak maybe giving 2 extra dmg for a minute or something idk), rather than cooking food just to satisfy some "do this or die" mechanic that still, as I said, serves no purpose.

 

yah but if "do this or die" is a pointless addon then why even play games
isnt that the point of a game? to do something to not die?

 

I already said it in your other thread, but I say it again. Base food only satiates your hunger, but cooked food actually gives you a pretty buff life regen. A hamburger/nanopatch combo can heal an impervium armor infused health from half to full in a few seconds. Not to mention that all sweet stuff you make (cakes, etc) also gives you a speed boost along the health regen.

 

Or they can make the system more meaningful? I like the food being in the game, the system just needs to be more balanced. That will most likely happen in stage 2 of beta.

 

Give me credit here.

I did suggest this much :/

 

Food is an AMAZING way to heal yourself if you take the time to farm and cook. Im guessing theres more to come for the food system as well. No way they should get rid of it.

 

In my opinion, when you're above half hunger you should regen health naturally. The amount you regen should slow as you get less and less hungry, and when half hungry or less, you should not regen HP. The fact that the player doesn't naturally regen HP anyway bugs the shit out of me in this game and it would lend some subtle meaning to the hunger system. Then you could take it a step further and make energy regen faster at higher full levels, and lower regen at higher hunger levels. Etc.

 

I'll give you some credit, but I think it's a little unrealistic to consider dying from not playing the game a con because someone wants to take a break without playing the game while the game game is still going. I understand that function would be negated if there was a pause button implemented (not that I care about there being a pause button).

 

Esc should pause the game lol (I originally thought it did for my first time through then came to a hard discovery later...) and that would solve all the issues in this thread.

 

Well Darklight already posted that sleeping in a bed or tent freezes the hunger bar. If ou need to go afk, you just wall yourself in with your biouvac and presto. Otherwise I do like the hunger system, and initially I too thought it is tied to health regen. But seeing how many items, and the foods themselves bestow regen, I see no problem in not having auto life regen. On the other hand because we don't have regen by default, we don't have cooldown on health packs, nanopatches and food.

 

I think it's fine the way it is without the Esc button as a pause button, but that's just me. I can agree that the food system needs reworking though.

Right, processed foods almost always bestow health regen to the user. I think some of the buffs need to be longer, and that maybe they should be percentage based instead of statically based, but that's a part of the balancing aspect the devs will tackle.

 

I love the fact that the hunger system is there (as I love cooking in most games) and would loathe to see it go. However I do agree it could definitely be improved. The fact that there's not even a little bit of natural health regen in this game seems a little obnoxious to me; a full food bar could be the answer to that. I mean, at this point in the game, the hunger bar is even more arbitrary and less meaningful than Minecraft, and that's saying something.

But I would be surprised if a more robust cooking/food system were not something ever planned to be implemented.

 

Hopefulyl when that comes the roulette containers get an overhaul too. I mean right now even if the buffs worked, it doesn't last enough to notice what I got xD The food system is a good base though, and I agree on room for improvement. A good example is oculemon, which to my knowledge is the only food that does what it says, and poisons everyone except Florans. Would be nice to see that the different foods do different things to the player. And on that note, could put in the RNG roulette, by not telling what it does Like the potions in ADOM "Do I really want to eat this?"

 

Why do people seem to forget this is merely phase 1 of the beta?
Stuff is unfinished, instead of making random forum threads, about stuff that's not fully implemented yet, Why not play the game, and try to find bugs, Report those.
If you don't know what it means to play a game in beta, or if you don't like to play an unfinished game, Just don't play it.

 

Yes - Because whenever I eat a red steak, I start knocking over cows with my pencil.

 

I agree with your post Klokinator, currently the hunger system seems rather pointless. It does seems it is just a basic system placed ingame, and i can't see how the devs wont be improving it through the later stages of the development. I like your thoughts of a full hungerbar giving certain benefits, and a near empty one giving some drawbacks. That could be a great improvement to the hunger system.

 

Phase 1 is feedback time, looking the other way or assuming that anything that isn't perfect is planned to change when it hasn't been stated so by the devs is counterproductive. Honestly, I'd say it's better if people give feedback about things that are going to be changed anyway than fail to do so because they assumed it was going to be changed when it wasn't.

To my knowledge, new foods might get added but the base system is done. That means if there's an issue with the base system, now is the time to address it before more things get added that would have to change along with it.

And I agree with the OP. The hunger bar is honestly little more than an annoyance. Run around using your bow for 10 minutes or stumble into a town and you'll find more food than you could need. It doesn't even matter if they add more effect to the foods at that point, because the whole mechanic of needing to find food goes out the window in the first few minutes of gameplay. After an hour or so the hunger bar becomes a formality instead of something you really need to worry about when you're at the keyboard.

A survival game, sure. But as far as survival mechanics go, most games will try to make it a bit more challenging and interesting than "click this button every 30 minutes".

The problem with the hunger system in SB that makes it feel unnecessary and redundant is that there's no actual difficulty to it. If you find a town you can pretty much buy a lifetime supply of food for a couple thousand pixels. The food never decays, and it only takes up one slot if it's all of the same type. Once you reach that point, the system isn't fun, just tedious.

(All told, I use burgers as a healing item currently, so I rarely have to worry about hunger. But it's still going to be there if I AFK for whatever reason.)