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IWBUMS Nutrition Feedback - Official Thread


Batsphinx

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I like the concept of a balanced diet, but I feel the current system is overly complicated. To me, pz should be about an average joe, with beneficial, specialized knowledge gained through occupations. Average joes don't really count carbs, rather we know we need meats and veggies (with exceptions of course). So i think simple red and green meters symbolizing (loosely) meat and veggies, with a "sweet spot" in the middle. Then certain foods can fill up a particular meter or a little of both while actions drain them, and going above or below the sweet spot leading to weight changes. It would simplify a lot and lead to , "oh i need more veggies." instead of "wtf is a lipid?"

Edited by TheDreaded1
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The light eater and hearty appetite traits force the opposite player behavior because they still operate soley on the hunger system and don't take calories in to account. Light eater you need to eat constantly to keep weight up and hearty appetite must starve to keep from putting on tons of weight. As stands now I don't see why you should ever put points in to either of them because light eater becomes a huge calorie sink and is more or less a negative trait while hearty appetite becomes way worse than the -4 pts you get for taking it because you are now forced to starve yourself often and deal with the penalties that come with being starved... or deal with being overweight and even more severe penalties.

Hearty appetite should burn calories at a faster rate and light eater slower.

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I'm liking it. And let me say Johnnyonoes said almost everything I created my account to say :)

 

I feel the diverse requirements it imposes have the potential to drive diverse gameplay options - but a lot of those options aren't really *in* the game yet. If you want your players to meet a variety of needs, we need a variety of options. Animals and hunting will complement the nutrition system really well too - high energy expenditure, big reward. As well as introducing seasonal elements. Get animals in the game asap, because you have just introduced a system that demands them. And oh it'll be so good when maybe that rustling in the trees is good... but maybe it's ZOMBIES.

 

I'd therefore oppose adding high-carb plants to the farming options. Forcing players to venture out to hunt, trap, and fish will add depth and fun to the game. I really want Muldraugh and West Point to have more streams and other water sources too - this would also help break the dependence on rain barrels.

 

Consider how many people you know grow potatoes or pumpkins - compared to how many grow wheat or rice. They're the sort of thing a large survivor settlement might get into rather than lone survivors.

 

It has made Obese into an asset. I'm fine with that, but it's not -10 points worth any more. imo Obese is now a must-have, which is pretty wrong. It'll probably stay a must-have for a while, but getting 10 points of perks ON TOP of 35kg of padding omgwtfop

 

And there needs to be a closer relationship between hunger and calories. I don't care much about realism; your players need reliable feedback from their decisions. I was recovering from a broken leg, with Light Eater, and keeping my belly permanently full and doing nothing but read books all day, and still losing weight. I'm a vegetarian who reads all day and let me tell you, maintaining my 85kg is not a problem. Also, once you lose the sugar- and corn syrup-laden processed foods of 'civilisation', high-calorie foods just are more filling. Once all the chips and icecream are gone, there is no way anyone who is eating enough to feel full, is going to lose significant amounts of weight.

 

On the flipside, healing and strength should not be dependent on how full you feel. Those things are related to the amount of protein in your diet over the long-term, as well as the amount of calories in your recent consumption.

 

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8 hours ago, zomboid123 said:

The light eater and hearty appetite traits force the opposite player behavior because they still operate soley on the hunger system and don't take calories in to account. Light eater you need to eat constantly to keep weight up and hearty appetite must starve to keep from putting on tons of weight. As stands now I don't see why you should ever put points in to either of them because light eater becomes a huge calorie sink and is more or less a negative trait while hearty appetite becomes way worse than the -4 pts you get for taking it because you are now forced to starve yourself often and deal with the penalties that come with being starved... or deal with being overweight and even more severe penalties.

Hearty appetite should burn calories at a faster rate and light eater slower.

 

I personally like how these are separate still and would prefer other new traits related to metabolism or something if we wanted traits affecting calorie intake/burn. I've been using hearty appetite in my games since before the new system was released because I always found keeping fed to be too easy, but now I like it because it makes me change the way I eat to get the right amount of food/calories (and it actually mirrors my hunger in real life better than the default setting does). I need to eat a few smaller meals and snacks throughout the day so I don't get weak from hunger but in the end it doesn't make my character get fat or cause them to be hungry all the time. I'm sure the light eater can be more of a challenge, as you need to make your meals count but I've never really had an issue with the well fed moodle sticking around too long, so as long as you're not shoving your face full of leaks and running around the city burning nonexistent calories you should be fine.

Just my opinion of course but ultimately I would prefer if we still had these hunger traits for the hunger system and maybe added some new calorie related traits to add to the new system. I am however not against tweaking the current hunger traits to help them work with the new calorie system better (even though I'm currently not sure what those tweaks would be) but I like having the two systems separate and would hope they both have traits related to them at some point.

Edited by Kuren
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My playstyle already consists of 90% scavenging and 10% base building, and so far it has been pretty tedious. It plays too much of a role in survival - I'm now worrying more about my carb intake than I am worrying about the zombies.


I think that Cataclysm DDA did this one well - have a healthiness stat given to foods, but don't overcomplicate it. My mobile-base playthrough meant that I had to raid farms and replant them before taking off again, and then scavenging and hunting to fill in for the rest. I cooked some breakfast, I started my engine, and away my death-rig went to carry me to Valhalla. I had to watch my diet, but not to the point where I had to obsess over it.

 

In Project Zomboid, I can't even go from Muldraugh to West Point without losing 10 pounds despite me shoving chips, bacon, and whatever other fattening foods I could shove in my facehole.

 

What the team implemented here is exceptionally well developed, and I'm not disappointed. However, I have two qualms: I feel that the rest of the game isn't currently fleshed-out enough for this to work well, and this system focuses too much on weight.

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I told the devs I'd wait a bit before posting my feedback since they've already seen it. I'm re-posting it now just to see if other people agree with my synopsis/feelings. I have several qualms with the current system, the most important being that I feel the time spent on worrying about this system far outweighs the time spent worrying about anything else in the game, which I feel is overbearing. I also feel like it doesn't mirror reality particularly well and is a bit overcomplex. So, I wanted to (obviously) give some positive feedback in the form of some balance/system changes for a better experience.

 

Been sittin' quiet a bit and stewing on this, but it seems like there's still some issues balancing it. I think we want it to stay meaningful, but without turning PZ into "every day is about food" sim. On that note, I've thrown together some numbers and tweaks that I think might make this a bit more viable. Time to play backseat dev a little.

 

First thing is to split hunger and calories off completely. Hunger goes into a hungriness moodle. Calories goes into a starvation (only negative moodle).

 

Hunger - Gets reworked to separate it. We want players to be hungry roughly twice a day (three times is too much micromanagement). So start the player off with 60 Hunger Value. Hunger Value reduces by 5 each hour (which means the player will get hungry every 12 hours, approximately what we want). Cap it at 70 so that if you eat up to 70 you can't eat any other food until it drops, and you can't eat any food that would take you over 70. Keeps players from stuffing themselves. At 0 Hunger Value the negative hunger moodles start. From roughly 1-45 hunger value the player is just "normal" and has no moodle. Positive moodles start up from there. There'll need to be a new moodle for when you're above 60:

 

Bloated - You're stuffed! You can't eat any more! Movement speed slowed a little.

The rest of the moodles stay the same, except the negative moodles negatives should only be to hurt happiness and make the character depressed instead of physical symptoms.

 

Calories - The main factor in weight gain/loss and starvation. Reset Calories every night at midnight. Each day you need to hit roughly 1500 Calories (to make up for not eating 3x a day, this is slightly less than what a person needs). If you eat under 1250, you lose 1% body weight and gain 1 Starvation (hidden stat). If you eat 1250 to 1750 you lose 1 Starvation (if you have any) and stay the same weight. If you eat 1750+ you gain 1 kg and lose 2 Starvation (if you have any).

 

At 7 Starvation you get a new moodle- Malnourished. This causes you to lose strength/carrying capacity, max speed, and makes you get exhausted faster and heal much slower. At 21 Starvation you get Starving, which causes a continuous but slow loss of health in addition to the other negatives (think roughly 5% health per day) and you stop all natural healing over time. This means roughly 41 days until you die completely of starvation (which mirrors reality extremely accurately) but you'll be almost certainly doomed to die by other means by 21 days (also mirroring reality closely).

 

 

In my humble opinion this is both simpler than what we have now and more accurate, as well as more fun and less micromanage-y. You can keep the other things in with lipids/fats, etc. to cause different diseases/issues to give it depth, but I think as far as the caloric nourishment itself a simple but powerful system is extremely important. This way is easy for the player to understand, keeps extreme weight gain/loss at bay, but keeps things meaningful. I really hope we'll consider something more along this route than what we're at now or just nerfing it until it doesn't matter.

 

 

Edit: Obviously this would require rebalancing meal calories and hunger amounts, but that's having to happen anyways.

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First of all, I like the "starvation points" system and that it would require you to eat well for a prolonged period of time to get rid of malnourishment.

 

I have a few concerns, though:

 

6 hours ago, Rathlord said:

So start the player off with 60 Hunger Value. Hunger Value reduces by 5 each hour (which means the player will get hungry every 12 hours, approximately what we want). Cap it at 70 so that if you eat up to 70 you can't eat any other food until it drops, and you can't eat any food that would take you over 70. Keeps players from stuffing themselves.

 

The way I see it, it does not change the "I stuff myself with food and yet lose weight" problem (especially visible when trying to survive off the land), unless Devs decide to lower "-hunger" values of cooked food significantly so we can eat more of low-calorie food before stuffed.

 

6 hours ago, Rathlord said:

Bloated - You're stuffed! You can't eat any more! Movement speed slowed a little.

 

Bloated - a new chronic disease that goes with mid to high level cooking?

 

6 hours ago, Rathlord said:

Calories - The main factor in weight gain/loss and starvation. Reset Calories every night at midnight.

 

This idea I don't like. What if I choose to sleep during day and be active at night? What if I choose to stuff myself unconscious at 23:59? (11:59 PM) Will all my calories go to waste then?

 

6 hours ago, Rathlord said:

If you eat 1750+ you gain 1 kg and lose 2 Starvation (if you have any).

 

Minor issue: 1 kg straight away (strange)? Or spread out over a longer period of time?

 

 

Edited by Geras
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Quote

overcomplex

If you count calories and make it a science or not, its up to the players type of gameplay. Or not? Everyone is free to ignore the calories and do usual zombie-stuff and only watch weight from day to day only.

Its always good to have a choice how to play and to have a certain deepness than to simplify everything. This actually could make the game boring for experienced players that like to have a challange in survival besides usual zombie-slaughter.

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What I'm seeing here is a lot of people saying it takes too much effort to avoid a death-spiral. Realistically, it takes much less food to maintain 60kg than 80kg. So slow rate of weight loss as weight decreases..

 

Shift the penalty onto the physical effects of malnutrition - weakness, low fitness, poor co-ordination.

 

Because lower weight takes less food to maintain, your rate of food intake determines your stable weight level - NOT your rate of weight loss. With the penalties for different levels of starvation, you can make it so being badly fed (most survivors) is pretty bad, but can be kept from descending into famished, malnourished, and starving - though a sizeable % of survivors should end up in those bands at some point. And attaining the wondrous goal of *gaining* that weight back and keeping it - that's a survivor that's looking goooood.

 

The point is, make weight stabilise at some point determined by the rate of eating.

Edited by Leith McLean
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On 4/20/2016 at 2:41 AM, TheDreaded1 said:

I like the concept of a balanced diet, but I feel the current system is overly complicated. To me, pz should be about an average joe, with beneficial, specialized knowledge gained through occupations. Average joes don't really count carbs, rather we know we need meats and veggies (with exceptions of course). So i think simple red and green meters symbolizing (loosely) meat and veggies, with a "sweet spot" in the middle. Then certain foods can fill up a particular meter or a little of both while actions drain them, and going above or below the sweet spot leading to weight changes. It would simplify a lot and lead to , "oh i need more veggies." instead of "wtf is a lipid?"

 

I agree that the average joe prolly wouldn't count carbs, but that where the nutritionist trait comes in to separate people who want to play as someone who does and who doesn't. Ill be honest I've never gotten to the point I've been worried about the new system, It does appear complex at first look but its surprisingly nonimpactful on my gameplay if i mostly ignore it beyond the first month or so while I try to get my weight up from the "very underweight" tallent. I might get more from the system if i do calculate carbs/lipids/calories but I certainly don't feel penalized if i don't.

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14 hours ago, Geras said:

The way I see it, it does not change the "I stuff myself with food and yet lose weight" problem (especially visible when trying to survive off the land), unless Devs decide to lower "-hunger" values of cooked food significantly so we can eat more of low-calorie food before stuffed.

 

I mentioned at the end hunger values need to be tweaked some. But to a certain extent, this should still exist- just not as badly as it does now. You can't take a person who's starving to death and shove 10,000 calories down their throats and have them be better. There's a very real cap to how many calories you can transfer to fat in a day, so this makes sense. Also a limited amount of room in your stomach.

 

14 hours ago, Geras said:

Bloated - a new chronic disease that goes with mid to high level cooking?

 

 

Again, hunger values need to be tweaked and more of the above- but this actually means you get a slight buffer when nearing the upper limit of how much you can eat in a day, which means less food going to waste. Since you can't eat at 60 but can take nourishment up to 70, this means even eating a large meal near the cap won't be terribly wasted.

 

14 hours ago, Geras said:

This idea I don't like. What if I choose to sleep during day and be active at night? What if I choose to stuff myself unconscious at 23:59? (11:59 PM) Will all my calories go to waste then?

 

 

None of that actually matters to this system. The hunger values don't reset at midnight. The game just calculates necessary weight changes then. No calories can possibly go to waste. I think you might have misunderstood what I meant here- the time of day you chose to play and when you eat are utterly irrelevant. It's just making a calculation once each 24-hour cycle to determine what impact your choices have had. When playing there will be no noticeable difference between this and calculating every second.

 

14 hours ago, Geras said:

Minor issue: 1 kg straight away (strange)? Or spread out over a longer period of time?

 

 

I'm stupid about metric system. I probably should have said about half a kg. And yes, it would simply calculate once per day like the above. Similarly, this has no impact on gameplay. It's purely a behind-the-scenes change. The point is to hard cap the amount of weight gain and loss in a day to avoid shenanigans. Like I mentioned above, there are mechanical hard caps to how much fat can be burned or produced in a day.

 

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12 hours ago, Snorrsenkel said:

If you count calories and make it a science or not, its up to the players type of gameplay. Or not? Everyone is free to ignore the calories and do usual zombie-stuff and only watch weight from day to day only.

Its always good to have a choice how to play and to have a certain deepness than to simplify everything. This actually could make the game boring for experienced players that like to have a challange in survival besides usual zombie-slaughter.

 

Complex is fine. Overcomplex is bad. My issue is right now you're not free to ignore the calories and do zombie-stuff, because you'll end up in either a weight-gain or weight-loss unescapable spiral that doesn't mirror reality. That's the problem, not having a robust system. I'm all for a robust system.

 

EnigmaGrey has mentioned to me that instead of having a basic 1750 calorie target, it could be a sliding scale based on player condition. I'm fine with that as well. In reality, the system I'm proposing is no less robust than the one currently implemented (or the one you suggest in another thread). Easier to understand doesn't mean oversimplified or boring. This still keeps hunger an important part of gameplay without it eating a disproportionate amount of your game time. And I'm not sure how you think it will be boring, as the consequences to mishandling the system I'm proposing are actually much more severe than ignoring the one in game. If anything, it's more challenging. It's just not as hard to understand and confusingly not-reality matching.

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Bonjour;


Je pense que la nutrition prend une place trop conséquente dans la gestion de la journée.

 

Je ne peux pas me baser sur la mécanique de la faim et les effets secondaires de la nutrition sont invisibles, pas de statut qui me prévient du bonus-malus.

 

J'ai quand même la désagréable impression de jouer à la ferme.

 

Bonne chance

 

------------------------------------------------------

 
 

Hello;

I think nutrition takes a too important place in the management of the day.

I can not base myself on the mechanics of hunger and side effects of nutrition are invisible, not status that prevents me from the bonus-malus.

I still have the unpleasant impression of playing on the farm.

 

Good luck

 

 

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On 4/23/2016 at 6:53 PM, Snorrsenkel said:

110% support on this!
 


I also really like the ideas EG has put out there. I think with his purposed changes, some bonuses and penalties related to protein/carb/fat intake, along with a few tweaks to hunger (or hunger values and recipes), the system could be real user friendly, fun and realistic at the same time :)

 

Edit: Also, why do all my characters start at 80kg (175 lb)? Seems heavy to me personally. I'm a lean 6' tall guy and I only weigh about 140lbs at the most (and I'm always trying to put on muscle mass by eating a lot, about 1500-1700 calories a day and part of that being 80 to 110 grams of protein per day at this point to keep building strength and mass while going to the gym).

Edited by Kuren
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Needs to be easier to get fat if you sit around in your base all day eating chips.

 

Losing weight should be tied directly to physical activity, past the energy you require to keep your body functioning.

 

I play on New Dawn, a lot of people on that server sit in their base and eat chips, they should get fat.

Edited by Jack Bower
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On 4/22/2016 at 6:09 PM, Rathlord said:

I told the devs I'd wait a bit before posting my feedback since they've already seen it. I'm re-posting it now just to see if other people agree with my synopsis/feelings. I have several qualms with the current system, the most important being that I feel the time spent on worrying about this system far outweighs the time spent worrying about anything else in the game, which I feel is overbearing. I also feel like it doesn't mirror reality particularly well and is a bit overcomplex. So, I wanted to (obviously) give some positive feedback in the form of some balance/system changes for a better experience.

 

 

 

 

I like this idea a great deal. It reminds me of the way  UnrealWorld RPG handles it. 

 

Hunger for your daily strength.

 

Nutrition dictates your xp gain and resistance to illness.

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I went and recorded my latest character during a day in the weight gain cycle. 10 months on survival mode.

 

To maintain a cadence of 5 stirfrys per day with 2 cabbages 2 potatoes 2 rabbits providing an average of 1 kg a day worth of weight gain, requires 12 hours of chores.

 

Please note. I am testing the ability to gain weight without the usage of the non-renewable foods.

 

Started day at 7am

Finished checking traps and harvesting at 10am (3 hours of harvesting)

Finishing cooking food at 2pm (4 hours of cooking)

Finished eating food at 4pm (2 hours of eating)

Rearming of traps and carrot maintenance finished at 7pm (3 hours)

Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Dm-iqukrs

 

 

Suggestions brought up in the video.

* Provide a way to preserve farmed food. This would reduce chore time by ~4-5 hours

* Simplify cooking, by either allowing meals to be saved and repeated, or by reducing action timers. ~3 hours saved

* Allow high calorie foods to be renewable (wheat, rice, big game hunting) would reduce the need to eat so many stirfrys. 

 

Hopefully this data helps with deciding what to tweak! Thanks!

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
Quote

I eat a big meal with meat, got to sleep, lose weight, eat meat again, go to sleep, still lose weight. It is not realistic.


Size of the meal does not matter. You have to watch for the calories of your food.
Big Meals consisting of vegetables only and a bit of meat have around 300-500 kcal. Its just not enough energy to hold your weight, like in real life.

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1 hour ago, Snorrsenkel said:


Size of the meal does not matter. You have to watch for the calories of your food.
Big Meals consisting of vegetables only and a bit of meat have around 300-500 kcal. Its just not enough energy to hold your weight, like in real life.

Yeah with this update a day of low skill fishing has gone from feeding a battalion for a week to maybe meeting your caloric requirements for a day or two. On that same token the act of generating calories has taken something of a hit. This is something I'm not against as in all of my multiplayer games with friends we've amassed a stock of food that we never touched as a diet of whatever we could pull out of the ground was more than sufficient even if we were living on what was essentially 200 calories a day of cabbage.

 

That brought much of the game to a standstill as the incentive/drive to scavenge food from the neighboring cities was largely deflated.

 

If there is one thing that I've seen crop up a lot in this and the other thread is that there's a lack of feedback between players and this new system. The nutritionist perk communicates food values of items in your inventory but doesn't do much to inform on what you have already consumed and where you are in terms of diet, for yourself or your party. Furthermore there's no real way for the player to assess how they're "feeling" beyond the moodle and observing the weightometer fluctuate. The result seems to be some confusion and frustration. 

 

While I feel that systems of generating food could use additional review (looking at you, trapping) a future expanded map and its promised throngs of untold numbers of canned foods and the far distant promised hunting system should hopefully equalize everything out. How that'll balance with some of Zomboid's emphasis on building a static base, especially with the upcoming metalworking stuff, will be interesting to see. Maybe the ideal co-operative long game of Zomboid is going to look like a single player Banished in the long run. 

 

But, with, you know. Zombies. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Lord Gonfalon said:

Is this not working for Mac users?  I see no weight on my characters.  

I had this problem as well. I turned on nutrition in sandbox and no weight was shown in the character screen. But it was working as expected after I reinstalled PZ.

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