My 5 weeks (game time) of the nutrition system. Feedback and suggestions

[Quigleyer]

Hope this is in the right place, sorry I'm new here.  I will abide happily by any moderating decisions made about the proper place for this and apologize ahead of time.

 

Hey folks, I'm back to playing this after a long break.  Survival mode is umpteen times more fun for me now and after 10+ dead characters I'm starting to get to the point that I'm playing with the nutrition system and living long enough to see the results.

 

My 5 weeks broke down like this:

 

First 3 weeks:

 

I needed to gather and stay quiet, I ate on the run a lot.  This time period was one spent eating entire bags of chips and pies in one sitting.  Every morning I got myself "well fed" and went out to gather.  I never let myself be any kind of hungry for too long.

 

After day 14 I noticed I had gained a lot of weight, by day 21 I was up to 89 kg and had the overweight trait.  Gaining 10 kg (22 pounds?) in three weeks is a little insane for someone who is running around, bashing zombie brains in, jumping through windows, chopping trees, and in constant "fight or flight" mode through sheer panic.   For comparison the guy who did the Super Size Me documentary gained 24.4 pounds (~12 kg?) in his first month (four weeks) of eating nothing but giant McDonalds meals and living a nearly entirely sedentary life.

 

QUESTION: does anyone know the cap for calories burned per day?  

 

Week 4:

 

It was time for a change, and I had enough materials to begin truly fortifying.  I had two safe houses and chose one to move all of the food to and began constructing a log wall.  Because I was relatively safe the whole time I let myself get hungry (and very hungry).  Only twice did I lose the hunger moodle, and it was from eating a lot of low calorie canned food.  Within a matter of days I was down to 84.X kg and had lost my overweight trait.  If you just let yourself get hungry and run the timer quickly you'll see the kg just melt away... and keep melting... and melting...  

 

Week 5:

 

Log wall is constructed, I'm pretty safe, I have a medium-sized stash of canned and dry food, and I started to get crops coming in.  I'm currently trying to maintain weight and finding it incredibly difficult.  In real life I am a very efficient dieter and have lost 180 lbs (90 kg) through diet and exercise in my lifetime- calorie counting and approximation is something I can do in my sleep.  But obviously this is a game and it comes with hidden mechanics and caps that aren't entirely obvious to the player in the game's current state.  

 

I have some suggestions on things I think could improve this portion of the game:

 

1)  Starvation mode (a moodle?)

 

This is a real thing- a lot of people call it "hitting a plateau" in weight loss.  Your body essentially thinks you're in for a long starve and starts to covet your body's excess fat- sometimes you will even eat muscle away in lieu of fat in more prolonged instances.  Losing weight becomes incredibly difficult, you become very agitated, and if you go long enough EVERYTHING HURTS.  

 

The human body can only metabolize so much of itself within a given time.  I don't know the exact numbers behind it, but I do understand a lot of it is based on the weight of the individual.  If you think you're still losing weight it's probably water weight and you're actually de-hydrating yourself.

 

---- So if we look at it like that I think "starvation mode" can work as a cap on the amount of weight one PC can lose in a given amount of time- let's just say one week right now.  The limit doesn't necessarily need to apply to real-world numbers and the number would more reflect what was balanced in the game world (so we can hit that sweet spot of realism and balance).

 

---- Since this would essentially cap some negative effects from not eating for that given week (after you've lost the allowed amount of weight) you could start to accumulate other negative moodles that apply so it's not overly abused.  The longer you're starving the more moodles you get.  ON EDGE, IN PAIN, and QUEASY  would apply perfectly here- but I'm sure there are other options as well.

 

The idea here is just a bit less of a fall for slacking on your micro-management, and it even adds some "realism".  You can't just steadily lose weight, it doesn't work like that.  Realism and balance!

 

Doing it this way (and not adjusting the cap on calories allowed to be burned per day) is better, in my opinion, because the more you would reduce the cap of calories burned the less of an impact doing activities has on your need to eat, which is NOT good, IMO.

 

2)  Calorie Counting devices (items)

 

I think the game would really benefit from devices that specifically make the nutrition side of things easier.  Devices like calorie counting watches, both for estimated calories burned and for calories consumed, would really be a cool way to help micro-manage the numbers game.  The idea here is that we keep the system complicated, but we can get some aid from rarer items scattered around the world to make it less tedious if we are lucky enough to find one.

 

http://www.keepinspiring.me/10-best-calorie-counter-watches/

 

---- One of the biggest issues I'm having with this portion of the game, despite diet-watching being a thing I do well in real life, is that I'm at a total loss as to how many calories I'm burning doing any one activity.  Without an external way to tell the players approximately how many calories they're burning doing stuff they will NEVER know.  Does chopping trees burn calories?  Does walking?  Sprinting?  I don't even know which activities burn calories, let alone how many calories.   That's what this idea is supposed to solve.  

 

---- I would suggest that week 1 players (the first week?  The game-learning scenario) get this as a starting device, personally.  New players need to be able to have access to these numbers quickly, or else they'll just be entirely overwhelmed.

 

CONCERN:  This game takes place in 1993.  I was too young in '93 to know if devices similar to these were around, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to think they were.

 

 

From what I've seen playing this IWBUMS build I'd say the developers are totally on the right track.  This is a fantastic addition to the game and only brings in more depth to a genre that's typically lacking in things to do.  This system only has minor shortcomings in my opinion and is looking really solid.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Quigleyer

[Kelefane]

I think if you eat for example, a whole hamburger and a bag of chips, your character shouldn't be getting any "hungry" messages at all that day. Even if that that burger and bag of chips is all you ate that day. My character has before (same day after eating the burger/chips) 

 

I felt like I was spending my entire time maintaining my characters hungriness at all hours of the day during my last play through. And keep in mind, this started at the very beginning of the play through when food was still abundant. 

 

So I feel if your character eats a nice hearty meal once a day, it should keep hungriness away until the next morning when you wake up. Unless you're just go go going 24/7 and don't sleep that night, then yeah, I could see another round of feeding before your next sleep cycle. But if you're on a regular sleep schedule in the game, then I think eating a nice meal once a day should suffice for rest of that day without getting any hungry icons. 

 

Just my 2cents

Edited March 20, 2016 by Kelefane

[Quigleyer]

Are you talking about with the IWBUMS nutrition system build?

 

I think hunger is a lot less of a problem to deal with, despite those negative effects, than it was previously.  Currently being hungry only hurts your strength and healing (right?), but the real game is now in the place of calories consumed versus calories required/burned.  Maintaining weight is exceptionally difficult and you see pretty wild swings of weight loss and gain within a relatively short amount of game time (at least I am).  I would say that I'm pushing it to the extreme, but the system is TOO responsive, IMO.

 

If you're a little hungry that's really no big deal now.  Even if you're REALLY hungry that's only a big deal if you're underweight (and need to gain) and carrying a lot or healing.  Actually starving is a slower process now, though I think it would be much faster than it should reasonably be given what I saw with ease of weight loss (hence my starvation mode suggestion).

 

Generally speaking I don't have a problem with the amount your character gets hungry, I find it to be pretty sensible given the activities mine is always involved in.  But that's just my opinion, your's is just as valid obviously.

Edited March 20, 2016 by Quigleyer

[EnigmaGrey]

Wrote a break down of the nutrition system earlier, here:

As to weirdly rapid weight changes . .  .That's kind of the issue with the current system: we have realistic calorie amounts for food items and activity is tracked, but it's then altered by this odd weight gain/loss mechanic, where -3500 cal is max weight loss, -1500 to + 1500 is no change (?) and +3500 is maximum weight gain. This is applied every update in-game.

 

This mechanic also doesn't take into account your weight. Instead, weight loss/gain rate is scaled by weight.

 

So you'll get weird situations where you eat three entire pies and gain the maximum number of weight gain per minute, rather than gain the weight the calories of the food item should give you. Same with loss, of course.  In testing, I ate some ice cream and a pie and gained a kilogram or two my first day, despite the the caloric content being only equivalent to about one or two lb.

[Slice985]

Maybe this is a stupid opinion, I have not played with the nutrition system. But watching threads like this and seeing pictures. It all seems really complicated with lots of numbers. When i look at a can of something and decide whether to eat it or not IRL. I really just look at the fat content and the calories and I don't even pay attention to the #s, I just look at the daily values. 

 

When I get to play with the system, maybe I'll "get it" but right now it just seems overly complicated and unintuitive. Maybe a daily value would be cool. Instead of like fats 5, it just says fats 10% so you get a real quick idea how much of that you need. 

[Kelefane]

I work construction in real life. Its a lot of manual labor. There are a lot of days, especially on hot days during the summer, where I simply do not feel like eating lunch because it makes me lethargic and tired when mixed with hard laborious work. I always wake up and eat a big breakfast in the morning and that is always good enough for me on a lot of days until I get home in the evening. 

 

So is PZ's food system based around 3 meals a day or something? If so, that isn't completely realistic. A lot of people only eat 1-2 times a day and are fine with it no matter what they are doing. 

 

Now water, yeah, I can understand the need to always maintain water. But food? One big hearty meal a day should be enough for the majority of people out there. 

[EnigmaGrey]

It's based around 2 meals a day.

 

You should be able to go a day without eating, simply to be much hungrier the next day in the current system.

[Quigleyer]

8 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Wrote a break down of the nutrition system earlier, here:

As to weirdly rapid weight changes . .  .That's kind of the issue with the current system: we have realistic calorie amounts for food items and activity is tracked, but it's then altered by this odd weight gain/loss mechanic, where -3500 cal is max weight loss, -1500 to + 1500 is no change (?) and +3500 is maximum weight gain. This is applied every update in-game.

 

This mechanic also doesn't take into account your weight. Instead, weight loss/gain rate is scaled by weight.

 

So you'll get weird situations where you eat three entire pies and gain the maximum number of weight gain per minute, rather than gain the weight the calories of the food item should give you. Same with loss, of course.  In testing, I ate some ice cream and a pie and gained a kilogram or two my first day, despite the the caloric content being only equivalent to about one or two lb.

 

(I understand your time is limited, please don't feel the need to continually respond to me if I'm getting annoying.)

 

Thanks for pointing me there! So it's like a constant meter of -3500 to +3500, and then weight loss/gain/maintenance is applied depending on where in that scale you fall?

 

With my recently deceased character above (he died last night, fifth scratch is the charm) I was seeing the loss of nearly 1 kg (~2 lbs) a day, which would mean by starving myself I could lose about 7 kg (14 lbs) a week!  I think that whatever the number for max weight loss and gain is it should be roughly 1/3 of that so that the average person can lose or gain ~4 pounds a week.   That is still a bit extreme, but would probably work okay in a video game.

 

EDIT:  Just saw the Mondoid announcement that days will be changed in length.  So I guess those numbers (for potential loss/gain in a week) will be lower if the max weight loss/gain value remains the same?  That'll probably help.

 

But I guess on the other end that could easily nerf weight loss to the point it isn't a big deal anymore.  I honestly don't know how "realistic" this needs to be. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Slice985 said:

Maybe this is a stupid opinion, I have not played with the nutrition system. But watching threads like this and seeing pictures. It all seems really complicated with lots of numbers. When i look at a can of something and decide whether to eat it or not IRL. I really just look at the fat content and the calories and I don't even pay attention to the #s, I just look at the daily values. 

 

When I get to play with the system, maybe I'll "get it" but right now it just seems overly complicated and unintuitive. Maybe a daily value would be cool. Instead of like fats 5, it just says fats 10% so you get a real quick idea how much of that you need. 

I'd say there are no stupid opinions personally.

 

Just like in real life your weight loss and gain is determined ONLY in your calorie loss or gain.  The composition of foods is just fluff, and I hope it remains that way.  If you eat MORE calories than you use you will gain weight.  If you eat LESS calories than you consume you will lose weight.  Without calorie content fat, carbohydrates, etc. is all unimportant.

 

Don't let those numbers intimidate you in the game, just look at the calories (90% sure).

Edited March 21, 2016 by Quigleyer

[McGrizzle]

damn, Multiplayer this is going to be a real pain, everything is scavenged most of the time already... I wonder how this will work out with it... not everyone is into farming, I get farming but hopefully this calorie counter game doesn't take up to much time in game.