Remove/improve hunger system?

When in life have you ever been full and been capable of moving faster or fighting better? Adding that mechanic would be unrealistic. Currently, in Starbound, I get hungry three or four times per game day. In real life, the only thing that stops me getting hungry four times a day is that I spend a quarter to a third of the day sleeping. So three to four is accurate.

 

Meh, I can go either way on this.. Hunger as is right now is a tedium task that adds nothing of value to the game.

I think making food heal more and provide "well fed" (wow quotes) bonuses is the best way to go with food. The actual hunger mechanic is just an annoying thing... Might be something worth making toggleable at the server level.

 

When has real life ever been an accurate measure for a game that moves on a pixel level. Tell me you didn't just use that argument.

 

I just don't see the merits of making a game's hunger system do the opposite of what hunger/fullness is actually like.

 

Some good ideas on this thread. Personally, I'd change it to something the player wants to do rather than something they need to do.
Some ideas.

- Can only eat when hungry.
- Food spoils over time (refrigerators slow this process.)
- Cooking actually takes several minutes or requires more preparation and multiple workstations (Might help encourage homesteading.)
- Food is expensive or low in stock.
- advanced recipes give health bonuses and are more filling (example, +30 health for 10 minutes.)
- Easy recipes aren't beneficial.
- Different food groups have different bonuses (Candy gives speed boosts, breads and pastries give health boosts, meats give energy boosts.)
- Eating when full debuffs the player (makes them move slower, makes them ill, cannot gain buffs from food for 30 minutes, etc.)
- Starvation weakens player ( more susceptible to cold, slower weapon swings, more bullet spread, hallucinations.)

Starbound doesn't give me much of a survival feel at the moment so some of these ideas might help. If the devs want to add more survival mechanics they should take a page out of Don't Starves book.
I think a forgiving approach would be to make a hunger mechanic that only benefits players who take advantage of various foods and new recipes while remaining subtle to those who don't care for it.

 

I support so much of this, and especially taking a page out of Don't Starve's book. Except that I find it difficult to play now with how much is going on. It's just not for me now. But yes. Good mechanic, they had.

 

Food has always been my favorite part of sand box games. In Minecraft, I immediately make it my goal to make a large farm and organized food bank. I don't think hunger needs to be removed. It would make all the food items useless, and most of the food items do have buffs (the later ones, anyways).

However, it would be nice if you had health regen when your hunger was full. It'd probably be more useful than bandages. God, I hate making bandages.

 

These are good ideas, but... I feel worrying about all this stuff could put you off things like spelunking (cos it takes ages to return to the surface), just as an example

 

I understand why you'd be concerned, that's why I thought it should be something on the side. You could go around eating cooked alien meat and not even bat an eye at a cooking table, but learning to cook would be beneficial in the long term.

 

Yeah man, it's a good idea. But you also mentioned food spoiling.

I currently just live off alien meat. I don't cook foods, though I might start doing it because bandages become useless, medkits cos 1k pixels (seriously, what the hell man) and a food/health bonus in one is good.

If food could spoil, it'd be one more thing I would have to worry about. It's not too much to handle, but if I had the choice, I'd just prefer to not need to think about it, and just be able to go on with my endless spelunking and cultivating.

 

Simple, you can just mod it out if possible. If there's a hunger system chances are someone will mod it out which gets hilarious because I was able to remove hunger from don't starve once. Looks like I beat that game.

 

You can mod it out, but what if there was an option? Like a custom difficulty mode, one of the boxes to tick being "disable hunger"

 

Then we just need to discuss how quickly it would spoil. if it takes you about 3-4 days to go through 15 pieces of meat (random numbers) then we make it so food spoils in about 3-5 days. Making food spoil quicker would give it more of a survival feel while making food spoil slower than you could eat it would only make sure you aren't stockpiling foods. Personally I'd have 15 pieces of meat spoil quicker than I could eat them, then introduce refrigerators and coolers to help save the meat for longer.

 

2. In its current form, it's basically a "do this every so often or die" and serves no purpose at all.

You mean like in real life?

 

Portable coolers. If those are a thing, no worries.

Sometimes I'm lazy. Right now, hunger feels... empty. It's just there. It exists. It doesn't have an impact. But I can't tell if I'm okay with that or not. On one hand, it has an impact and I have one more thing to worry about, which I'll probably get bored of. But on the other hand, you stay with a system that's just there and that servers no purpose other than to seem survival-ish. Nothing against those who implemented the system, but at the moment, it's the absolute slightest of inconveniences.
But do I want it to start being an inconvenience?
If it does become fully fleshed out as suggested, it's not a bad thing. I'd go without it if I could, just cos I'm lazy when it comes to things that don't really serve a big purpose, unlike killing mobs, which yields pixels and food, or exploring, which yields big finds and ores and such.
But if it stays as it is, it's lightly pointless.

I think I just said the same thing like ten times. It's late and I'm trying to draw. I dunno.

Edit: I swear to god I posted this already. Did I double post? I'm so confused.

 

i hate to say it, but i think there's something you all missed.

currently, there's no particular downside to just letting your character die, in order to reset your hunger bar.
in fact, if you're, say, exploring an asteroid field and keep running into tough mobs, you'll probably be dying often enough that you never need to eat.

that, right there, is an indicator that something's not quite right with the system. i don't ever feel like i need to carry meat or eat anything, because i usually don't spend longer than the time it takes for my hunger bar to deplete spelunking.

i could quite easily do without the hunger mechanic. in its current form it just seems to get in the way (and for sure, the Glitch should be exempt altogether from hunger).

on the other side of the coin, i think punishing people for not paying attention to hunger is wrong. positive reinforcement is more effective every time, so bonuses for keeping fed (i.e. health regen, faster walk speed, higher jump etc.) would be something i'd like to see.

and to that one guy saying it's not realistic to get bonuses from being well fed, just try not eating for two days and then go for a 5 mile run. you'll very quickly see how much of a difference being well fed makes. derrrrrr

 

Stage 1 beta. This topic has come up time and time again, the answer has always been stage 1 beta.

 

True, on higher tier planets I find myself dying before hunger sets in. Pixel loss isn't a big deal because when I need pixels I just dump all my useless ores into the refinery to get pixels.

I think I'd enjoy a different kind of punishment in the form of stats dropping instead of dying. Hunger shouldn't really reset on spawn, in fact, respawning with a full stomach is a little odd in the first place.

I guess the real problem is that cooking isn't fun rather than hunger being annoying. If we wanted to cook in the first place the problem wouldn't exist.

 

I did this. it bit me in the ass later on.

 

well..... yes, but that's not an answer.

there are many mechanics in this game. they are all there for us to try, experience and feed back on (regardless of how incomplete they may be). if, at this point, everyone ignored it or said it was great, i'm sure the devs would leave it as it is. feeding back that it feels incomplete or needs tweaking is exactly what the Beta stage is for.

so don't be an arrogant smart arse about it.