Food Preferences and Hunger

[Okamikurainya]

I'm not sure about anyone else but I've been through periods where I've been pretty near starvation and let me tell you, if you were fussy before then for a little while at least that's all gone.

 

What I'm proposing is a slight tweak to how you gain happiness from food, having it instead be based on your current hunger level. The current system kind of makes me feel that the character is sent into a pit of self loathing for munching on a rat or rotten food when there's nothing else left.

 

That said, I was also thinking that the boredom should also be based on how much of the same stuff you've eaten in a row, to keep your diet diverse and hopefully healthy. This shouldn't be too bothersome since that could become a schlep, maybe each time you eat something the boredom is decreased by one until you eat something else so good food would still be good but things like packs of chips everyday would soon become a boring meal.

 

The last two suggestions I have that would wrap all of this together quite nicely are food preferences and the addition of the negative Fussy Eater trait and the positive (Omniphage?) trait.

 

Food preferences could be sorted out at the character creation stage divided into Meat, Fish, Vegetable and Other. The character would then choose one that they like and one that they dislike, or even place them in a list from the top being that which your character likes the most and the bottom being the one they hate. This could add a unique flavor (ba dum tchish) to each play through where the amount of happiness gained from a meal will be dependent on your preferences. You'd gain a lot more happiness from the food type you placed at the top, the second would just be what it would be normally, the third would have a mild happiness penalty and the fourth a large happiness penalty.

 

The Fussy Eater trait would increase the happiness penalty for all food that isn't in your top food preference slot as well as increase the chances of feeling nauseous when not eating your top food preference.

 

The Omniphage trait would remove any penalties from the bottom two food preferences, making them equal to whatever is in the second slot.

 

A bit of a mouthful, eh? XD
What do you think? Does it suit your tastes?

Edited May 2, 2016 by Okamikurainya

[winterpyre]

Its a good idea but would be actually pretty tough to really implement in a fair way.

The reason being is that farming really is such a dominate and easy method of getting renewable food that simply choosing that you can simply choose vegetables as your top food choice to circumvent any drawback which counteracts the purpose of having food preferences.

fishing and trapping are harder to get going unless you start with points in them on top of that fishing requires you be near water and trapping requires bait typically gotten from farming.

 

the closest thing I can think of is a system, similar to what you said, that gives you diminishing returns on happiness if you eat the same thing for a long time. This has the issue of making the game tedious though and possibly becoming more of a chore than fun or interesting

 

[Demonic_Kat]

Honestly I'm just very confused with the unhappiness debuff on "okay" food at all. It may be just me, but I've never eaten leftovers and become depressed to the point I wanted to kill myself over it. Bored yes, unhappy, no.

 

Anyways, back to you... Going in line with what I've seen of traits so far, the fussy eater and omniphage would be very nice. A more simple way of implementing it could be with fussy eater your character rolls at the start of the world 5-10 (is that a lot?) food types they don't like, much like the poisonous berry/mushroom is rolled. They get a large unhappy debuff from them and perhaps nausea.

 

An omniphage could get 0 debuffs from non spoiled foods, but of course still debuffs from rotten foods.

 

This would be simpler, more interesting for the player to learn the food types if fussy eater is taken, and a good buff for a world full of rotting food if omniphage was taken. I'd think the point values would have to be significant though +/- 4 to 6.

[EnigmaGrey]

It'd probably be possible to generate a random list of food preferences on player creation and penalize or improve player's mood that way. It doesn't necessary have to be very difficult, and having it influenced by traits would be pretty neat? Forgo it when starving aside from some normally offensive things.

 

Along with boredom from frequently eaten food, at least boredom/depression from food might then make more sense, not to mention develop more of a sense of character. Right now boredom is just kind of there.

[Okamikurainya]

11 hours ago, winterpyre said:

Its a good idea but would be actually pretty tough to really implement in a fair way.

The reason being is that farming really is such a dominate and easy method of getting renewable food that simply choosing that you can simply choose vegetables as your top food choice to circumvent any drawback which counteracts the purpose of having food preferences.

fishing and trapping are harder to get going unless you start with points in them on top of that fishing requires you be near water and trapping requires bait typically gotten from farming.

The way I see it is that although you can get a lot of vegetables, storing them isn't easy and when winter comes it would be even harder. There's also the nutrition factor to think of, you'll probably be a bit underweight if all you eat is vegetables and the boredom factor of eating the same food over and over will encourage you to rotate which crops you plant which will make things a bit more interesting. I don't really see it as unbalanced, just see it as natural, everyone has preferences and if you like your greens and become a successful farmer after the apocalypse then of course that would be good for you.

If you prefer meat then you'll be required to become a hunter or a maniacal overlord hoarding all the cans of corned beef and chilli in Kentucky, slaughtering all that threaten your stash.

 

12 hours ago, winterpyre said:

the closest thing I can think of is a system, similar to what you said, that gives you diminishing returns on happiness if you eat the same thing for a long time. This has the issue of making the game tedious though and possibly becoming more of a chore than fun or interesting

Like I said, it wouldn't be a large hit with the boredom and maybe the effect would be negated over time if you don't eat that thing rather than resetting after eating something else. Like with nutrition, it won't have that big of an impact so it shouldn't effect the casual player but for the long term hardcore player it would add a bit of mental exercise to the daily drudge of the later months.

 

2 hours ago, Demonic_Kat said:

Honestly I'm just very confused with the unhappiness debuff on "okay" food at all. It may be just me, but I've never eaten leftovers and become depressed to the point I wanted to kill myself over it. Bored yes, unhappy, no.

Yeah, that always annoyed me once I'd gotten to the farming stage and my cabbages became pretty much useless except for trapping. >_>

 

2 hours ago, Demonic_Kat said:

Anyways, back to you... Going in line with what I've seen of traits so far, the fussy eater and omniphage would be very nice. A more simple way of implementing it could be with fussy eater your character rolls at the start of the world 5-10 (is that a lot?) food types they don't like, much like the poisonous berry/mushroom is rolled. They get a large unhappy debuff from them and perhaps nausea.

 

An omniphage could get 0 debuffs from non spoiled foods, but of course still debuffs from rotten foods.

 

This would be simpler, more interesting for the player to learn the food types if fussy eater is taken, and a good buff for a world full of rotting food if omniphage was taken. I'd think the point values would have to be significant though +/- 4 to 6.

That would actually be a pretty good way to implement it but I'm personally looking for more character customization. I'm not a fan of the fact you pretty much like all food in the game. I'm not a fan of fish but I do love my meat and veggies. (I forgot all about fruit! Would that be a separate category?)

 

2 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

It'd probably be possible to generate a random list of food preferences on player creation and penalize or improve player's mood that way. It doesn't necessary have to be very difficult, and having it influenced by traits would be pretty neat? Forgo it when starving aside from some normally offensive things.

Yah, it probably is the easier way to go about it, and I'm definitely an advocate of foregoing any mental penalty for eating normally offensive things if you're starving.

 

2 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Along with boredom from frequently eaten food, at least boredom/depression from food might then make more sense, not to mention develop more of a sense of character. Right now boredom is just kind of there.

Exactly!

[blackteapie]

I think it's better give more content to the happiness system first. In the current game, player don't get any useful boost for keeping their character happy. And there is no formidable punishment for making the character feeling really sad. So the happiness system should give players more incentives for keeping their characters happy, before introducing more complexity into the happiness generation mechanism. For example, a happy character can sleep less, or less likely to catch cold, or generate exp faster. And the characters may suicide, if they are really unhappy.

I like your idea of giving characters a food preference at the character creation stage. I think it maybe better to make the food preference like a trait. 

Edited May 4, 2016 by blackteapie

[winterpyre]

On 5/3/2016 at 11:53 PM, EnigmaGrey said:

It'd probably be possible to generate a random list of food preferences on player creation and penalize or improve player's mood that way.

 

On 5/3/2016 at 11:24 PM, Demonic_Kat said:

A more simple way of implementing it could be with fussy eater your character rolls at the start of the world 5-10 (is that a lot?) food types they don't like, much like the poisonous berry/mushroom is rolled. They get a large unhappy debuff from them and perhaps nausea.

the only issue I have with randomness is that it could spoil a players plan, like making a park ranger for the trapping and foraging bonus but then being rolled a dislike for rabbits and berries <.<

and that it kinda lends itself to the "remake until you get the roll you want" mentaility

 

Ive been thinking of "omniphage" and "picky eater"

what if instead of just as a static good and bad trait omniphage lowered all mood changes from food to show a generally impartiality to the quality of food eaten(rotten aside) and picky eater does the opposite where it increases both the benefits and downsides of food(rotten included)

 

this could be further augmented if we could tie the number of days a food is considered fresh to the player. For example say a food rots in 30 days, for an omniphage you have 20 days fresh, normal is 15 days, and picky eaters have 10 days but everyone rots at day 30.

 

picky eater would still be the - trait as it causes you to need more maintenance

[Demonic_Kat]

4 hours ago, winterpyre said:

 

the only issue I have with randomness is that it could spoil a players plan, like making a park ranger for the trapping and foraging bonus but then being rolled a dislike for rabbits and berries <.<

and that it kinda lends itself to the "remake until you get the roll you want" mentaility

 

Ive been thinking of "omniphage" and "picky eater"

what if instead of just as a static good and bad trait omniphage lowered all mood changes from food to show a generally impartiality to the quality of food eaten(rotten aside) and picky eater does the opposite where it increases both the benefits and downsides of food(rotten included)

 

this could be further augmented if we could tie the number of days a food is considered fresh to the player. For example say a food rots in 30 days, for an omniphage you have 20 days fresh, normal is 15 days, and picky eaters have 10 days but everyone rots at day 30.

 

picky eater would still be the - trait as it causes you to need more maintenance

I'm thinking this would be okay, however the positive buff on a negative trait would have to go. In even in single player a person with trapping would be able to get around having any stale or rotten food. I think it should just increase the negative buff as you said.

[CaptKaspar]

On 5/2/2016 at 3:20 AM, Okamikurainya said:

I'm not sure about anyone else but I've been through periods where I've been pretty near starvation and let me tell you, if you were fussy before then for a little while at least that's all gone.

 

What I'm proposing is a slight tweak to how you gain happiness from food, having it instead be based on your current hunger level. The current system kind of makes me feel that the character is sent into a pit of self loathing for munching on a rat or rotten food when there's nothing else left.

 

That said, I was also thinking that the boredom should also be based on how much of the same stuff you've eaten in a row, to keep your diet diverse and hopefully healthy. This shouldn't be too bothersome since that could become a schlep, maybe each time you eat something the boredom is decreased by one until you eat something else so good food would still be good but things like packs of chips everyday would soon become a boring meal.

 

The last two suggestions I have that would wrap all of this together quite nicely are food preferences and the addition of the negative Fussy Eater trait and the positive (Omniphage?) trait.

 

Food preferences could be sorted out at the character creation stage divided into Meat, Fish, Vegetable and Other. The character would then choose one that they like and one that they dislike, or even place them in a list from the top being that which your character likes the most and the bottom being the one they hate. This could add a unique flavor (ba dum tchish) to each play through where the amount of happiness gained from a meal will be dependent on your preferences. You'd gain a lot more happiness from the food type you placed at the top, the second would just be what it would be normally, the third would have a mild happiness penalty and the fourth a large happiness penalty.

 

The Fussy Eater trait would increase the happiness penalty for all food that isn't in your top food preference slot as well as increase the chances of feeling nauseous when not eating your top food preference.

 

The Omniphage trait would remove any penalties from the bottom two food preferences, making them equal to whatever is in the second slot.

 

A bit of a mouthful, eh? XD
What do you think? Does it suit your tastes?

 

I love all of these suggestions! I would be thrilled to see all of this in game!