This game has too much food in general.

[Boris7Fingers]

It is hard to advocate for making game harder but I will try.

I have never-never ever starved to death in this game. Also this game never forced me to do something bad or dangerous to avoid starving. And the most notable: I have never starved even when I was new to the game.

As everybody else, I was new to the game. Checking for loot only one house per day was an accomplishment for me. Seeing place with more than 2 zombies was "no-go" for me. And even then I had plenty of food.

So, I feel like we lack of challenge on this part. But other than that, here are some additional reasons why there is should be less food.

Lore:
If I understand lore right, you start this game after week of quarantine. It depends on severity, but quarantine, in general, is very bad for food supply. So, I imagine there is should be panic which lead to overbuying and empty shelves. And empty shelves can't be fixed easily because of quarantine.
People would try to hoard food, yes, But you can only buy as much food as there is in your region. So, there is shouldn't be much in the first place and then people need to eat something for 7 days before eventually they all turn into zombies and game for MC starts.

Occupation and skill balance:
For the lack of better metrics to decide which occupations are the best lets search for game tutorials, tierlists, etc. You will see that the best occupations are not about food and cooking. Food and cooking are at the bottom tiers. They are considered bad because food is not an issue! And it can be improved without touching occupations themselves. Balance is not a problem for solo game but still can be improved.

[EnigmaGrey]

Pretty much. That’s the unfortunate conclusion of “making it realistic” in terms of variety and quantity and has gotten to the point that it’s just too easily to acquire. On the plus, it’ll be straightforward to dial back with sandbox settings. 

 

It’ll be adjusted at as part of build 42. We also have the opportunity to introduce pestilence in the form of rats and so forth. As the game gets closer to completion, they’ll be more competition for that early-game bounty of food, as well.

 

 

Though I’m not sure I agree, re: skills. Cooking, especially when you get to the point of being able to reuse rotten food, it is very OP. Anyone that has food anxiety (and there’s lots of them — half the workshop seems to be about mitigating scarcity entirely, sometimes —  is going to grind the  hell out of it.  Course, that’s no reason to keep it the way it is. :p

[Boris7Fingers]

1 hour ago, EnigmaGrey said:

On the plus, it’ll be straightforward to dial back with sandbox settings. 

Yes, I agree. But I think for many people it feels wrong to reduce resources. And many people who are looking for challenge - they often just increase zombie population

Right now I have very fun run (2 months already) where food amount (both perishable and unperishable) is reduced. Also I halved food from farming, fishing and trapping. Also I made rule to not forage the same place twice. And it feels - more balanced, really.

[Blair Algol]

"That’s the unfortunate conclusion of “making it realistic” in terms of variety and quantity and has gotten to the point that it’s just too easily to acquire"

Just chipping in, as one of the devs, in that I agree with that estimation; hopefully it will be in a better place in b42.

One problem is, as we've all basically said here, is that many people in general think they want "realistic" food spawning (even if they find themselves feeling bored or unchallenged later in a savegame); implementing game balance spawning of any item in the game is always problematic with people's expectations and feedback.

[Cidxgaming]

I have hosted several servers now as the admin (10-15 person playerbase), and all of my servers have had all loot set to ''insanely rare'' and I agree, we have never come close to starving. Even with fishing set to very-poo-yield, and players start farming on very-hard farm settings, we still have ridiculous amounts of food. Even despite 10+ players chewing through the food supply. I have also only ever played the game as a high-thirst and high-appetite character, and never had any problems. I've only ever seen ''very hungry'' before because of being side-tracked building too many base defenses. 

On my current server, i have shut off food loot of all kinds and am hoping that will affect spawn rates. But mid-play-through I'm not sure. What i am sure of is my next server will have absolutely no canned food on it. And the players will have to get food before the power goes out.

I also currently have no-gas on the server, and just from siphoning vehicles + survivor vehicles, we have also never run out of gas yet. It's actually pretty wild. I specifically did not want the players having cars and traveling all over the world so much, but they found a way to do it anyway. lol

[Boris7Fingers]

10 minutes ago, Cidxgaming said:

I have hosted several servers now as the admin (10-15 person playerbase), and all of my servers have had all loot set to ''insanely rare'' and I agree, we have never come close to starving. Even with fishing set to very-poo-yield, and players start farming on very-hard farm settings, we still have ridiculous amounts of food. Even despite 10+ players chewing through the food supply. I have also only ever played the game as a high-thirst and high-appetite character, and never had any problems. I've only ever seen ''very hungry'' before because of being side-tracked building too many base defenses. 

On my current server, i have shut off food loot of all kinds and am hoping that will affect spawn rates. But mid-play-through I'm not sure. What i am sure of is my next server will have absolutely no canned food on it. And the players will have to get food before the power goes out.

I also currently have no-gas on the server, and just from siphoning vehicles + survivor vehicles, we have also never run out of gas yet. It's actually pretty wild. I specifically did not want the players having cars and traveling all over the world so much, but they found a way to do it anyway. lol

That is pretty wild. Hard to imagine how you find enough gas. But my point here is that there is too much food even for new players.

[puppers]

3 hours ago, Cidxgaming said:

I have hosted several servers now as the admin (10-15 person playerbase), and all of my servers have had all loot set to ''insanely rare'' and I agree, we have never come close to starving. Even with fishing set to very-poo-yield, and players start farming on very-hard farm settings, we still have ridiculous amounts of food. 

 

Same here I have ran a few servers and food was never really a problem and even setting the farming/nature abundance to very poor we had no problems. 

[Blair Algol]

I would say that players should expect to find less food spawning, as well as less gas in gas station pumps, including some completely empty pumps, in default b42 play.

Food spawns have been drastically reduced, and there are two different procedural systems for eliminating food over time.
The sandbox settings will provide more fine-tune control over loot spawning and gasoline spawning.
Farming and Fishing have both been reworked, and should be more challenging as food sources.

We also have more dev and debug tools for tracking exactly how much stuff spawns, so we can see exactly how many of what food items are spawning as loot, use that information as a tool for adjusting loot spawns, and will be using that for further fine tuning during the b42 beta period.

 

[getstoopid]

Jup same here... insanely rare food and we practically drown in it. With foraging, farming and fishing plus the canned food we find on our scavenging trips we actually are able to select what we food we take and what not.

 

My char is the cook of our group (of four) with farming occupation and nutritionist trait, so I also know using rotten ingredients is simply not worth it as those provide near to nothing in calories and hunger-decrease. Especially since farming, foraging and fishing provides way more fresh food than we'd ever need... the only troubles we go through in winter is to grab enough high calories food that my soup hit the 2k for maintaining the golden weight of 85kg.

[Blair Algol]

I encourage anyone who believes that too much food is spawning in the build 42 beta, when it is available, to make that known.

We've known that too much food spawns in vanilla apocalypse for a while now, and have attempted to address it in b42, so hopefully it will be in a better place for you.

[odizzido]

I really like the start of this game with the abundance of food. It makes the game feel very real. Personally I would have even more around. The vast majority of it will spoil though, and that's when I think the game might be too abundant.

 

I played for a while and I was able to get all the food I needed by fishing. It did feel strange though, I would get so heavy with fish that I couldn't even walk without taking damage yet I was able to eat it all in just a few days. There are some strange things like that in this game, but it's early access so I expect it.

 

I never got to experience winter though and since steam stopped working on W7 I likely won't be finishing that game. Maybe food would have been more difficult during winter I am not sure. I am mostly waiting for this next update to come out anyways, it looks great. I am hoping the trapping and land animal stuff is fun to do. I found I didn't like the current build's traps.

[Boris7Fingers]

Honestly, when b42 drops, you can't expect 4-man squad of seasoned players will struggle to find food. Food is basic necessity, it is basement of Maslow Pyramid.

Sorry for bringing up another games. But I remember playing Don't Starve a few years ago. This game has a sweet spot in terms of food supply. When you start a new game and you know nothing about this game - you actually do what title says you not to do. But later on you figure everything out - sources of raw food, recipes, etc. And this eventually becomes not a problem. So, later on, game entertain you with different challenges: season change, bosses, main quest, caves and so on.
Or look at Sims. Yes, you can manage eating and peeing of your sims. And actually fail doing so. It would be boring though if game only revolved around eating. So, your goals evolve - now you want to farm a ton of money, make perfect house or make perfect family.

(I feel bad for comparing PZ with Sims and DontStarve)

And Project Zomboid is off from this sweet spot. But you can theoretically overdo this to the point where everything you do - is to find food. 

[EnigmaGrey]

You start two weeks in to a world ending event. It should not be a land of plenty.

[Blair Algol]

Okay less food, but also not too less food.

got it.

[Boris7Fingers]

54 minutes ago, Blair Algol said:

Okay less food, but also not too less food.

got it.

nah. less food.

[getstoopid]

6 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

You start two weeks in to a world ending event. It should not be a land of plenty.

It isn't in many aspects, but food is definitely not one of them. I guess that's pretty realistic though and ok, at least for me.

My post was not meant to critize this fact, it's just as it is.

Fleeing people will pack some rations for sure but the rumpsteak in the fridge or the ice cream in the freezer will be left behind.. so it's ok to find a ton of fresh food in the first few days.

Maybe we should actually find a little less canned food but that's not immersion breaking I suppose?

[murdererman]

Having Excess Food is Normal. Imagine There Are 100 Types of Food in a Market.

[Blair Algol]

Everybody is getting less food in build 42.

[DiegooLoquii]

11 minutes ago, Blair Algol said:

Everybody is getting less food in build 42.

Finally! I am glad to hear it.

[Axiomatic]

I think a good solution here that remains realistic and makes the game harder over the long run, is that more food should go bad over time. Cans of food should last months to a year, but not forever. Many of the junk food items found should also go bad after some time. 

 

At a more general level, I think to make the game harder and more realistic, almost ALL items should lose durability either over time or over use . Clothing, tools, you name it. If you use your scissors to rip clothing, that pair of scissors should not last forever. Each use should have a chance to reduce its durability. Hammers, screw drivers, sledges....same thing. Socks should wear out, shirts should tatter, etc. All things need to fail eventually and realistically so that hoarding is constantly being eroded.

[getstoopid]

I agree with all you said BUT if you talk about realism than you also have to talk about the time frame. Fact is all the things you mentioned last years... cans of food have an exp.date of usually 2 years (and could be still safely eaten for a few years after this date).

Wooden constructs if done by a capable person hold for years to decades depending on the quality of the wood... though we could argue that we use fresh cut planks all the time and they will deform and break sooner but not in the next two years either and therefor way out of the "default run". 

T-Shirts also hold for years and quality jeans much longer.

TIS would need to decrease the durability of those things to an absurd level to be game-play-relevant (like the tools are at the moment) but then again it has nothing to do anymore with realism but just making the game harder or better "more tedious" as you would need to constantly repair your stuff.

[EnigmaGrey]

immersion aside, it’s just antithetical to the game’s genre to give things up easily and immediately. We just can’t have so much stuff be so easily accessible, even if we personally agreed on what is realistic or not. (Consider, even in “disaster” prone like where I live right by the Atlantic Ocean, we struggle to get people to have 3 days of supplies, let alone enough to survive their town being walled in, trapped with the undead, as the rest of the country falls around them. Some will have plenty, most won’t.)

 

Durability isn’t a bad idea, but it’ll get pretty tedious if you’re cycling through stuff like that, no?  People complain so much about crowbars breaking, without considering (or because of! Lol) the implication of finding one weapon and basically being done. Imagine if that applied to everything and/or was based on a timer? Not a bad idea by any means, I just wanted to illustrate that this stuff is never as easy or straightforward as it seems. And it doesn’t help that  audience is so wide and varied in opinions about what the game is to them vs. what it set out to be.  (Personally, I think the amount of moaning it would cause would make it worth it though. :p)

[Hugo Qwerty]

One thing I think would help is if rotten food was set to despawn after a few weeks as the default.

 

The last time I tested it, rotten mayonnaise actually adds *more* calories to a salad than fresh mayonnaise does.  I think this happens because when it rots it loses hunger reduction but not calories, so it still has 3000 calories but less uses meaning each use adds more calores.

 

The only down side to rotten food despawning is that it takes the container with it - so I've modded my game to swap sacks of food for empty sacks in the loot tables, as the sacks are more valuable to me than the food anyway.  I expect this problem goes away in B42, as we know we can craft more bowls & I expect we'll be able to craft anything else we might want as well (pots, pans, sacks, etc).

[EnigmaGrey]

41 minutes ago, Hugo Qwerty said:

One thing I think would help is if rotten food was set to despawn after a few weeks as the default.

 

The last time I tested it, rotten mayonnaise actually adds *more* calories to a salad than fresh mayonnaise does.  I think this happens because when it rots it loses hunger reduction but not calories, so it still has 3000 calories but less uses meaning each use adds more calores.

 

The only down side to rotten food despawning is that it takes the container with it - so I've modded my game to swap sacks of food for empty sacks in the loot tables, as the sacks are more valuable to me than the food anyway.  I expect this problem goes away in B42, as we know we can craft more bowls & I expect we'll be able to craft anything else we might want as well (pots, pans, sacks, etc).

Yeah, that’s a fair point.

[getstoopid]

I guess that this "problem" will be solved with the coming NPCs all by itself as the reason we all have plenty is that there is noone we have to share with (willingly or not). Even on small servers with a handfull of (coop) players this is not a problem but with more than a few and hostiles too? I think that food actually can then be a problem or at least something to be considered on scavange runs.