Starvation Mechanic Suggestion

[1Macready]

Hello,

I started a new sandbox game recently and decided to try the "starvation tactic."  For those unfamiliar, it involves not eating all day, thus losing condition, and then eating ~700 cals at night before sleeping so that you heal back the ~14% condition you lost during the day.  It is extremely efficient, as it allows you to significantly trim down your daily caloric intake.

But: it's too powerful.  I have some suggestions for your consideration as you mull your next sandbox update.  I don't mean to suggest all of these things, but to offer some alternatives that might help.  Playtesting would be required to see which works best.

• Do not allow condition recovery unless the player's calorie store is >= 25% of maximum (625 calories).  The reasoning here is that beyond a certain point, the body goes into "keep the lights on" mode and can't manage to heal itself.  The meta is that this would force the "starvers" into nearly doubling their daily caloric intake.  This seems a nice balance: you'd still realize a caloric savings from controlled starvation, but it would be balanced by the fact you are constantly running around with degraded condition.
• Allow negative calories (-500 to -750).  This is simply another way to achieve the same result as the first bullet.  It has the advantage of being easier to perceive without explanation (the UI would clearly reflect the deficit), but more gamey and less refined in concept.
• Consider accelerating condition decay when starvation is coupled with exertion.  In other words, walking around like normal means you'd experience the current rate of condition loss.  Sprinting, climbing, being overweight, and perhaps even harvesting would accelerate condition loss.  Instead of going for a forced increase in caloric consumption, this route instead amps up the risks of playing games with your body.

Feedback and discussion encouraged.  Thanks for listening.

 

[Mroz4k]

By starving, you are losing energy (exhaustion level) at a faster rate.

Besides, there is currently an affliction in works, called malnutrition which basically does what you suggest - if one goes on for long enough without eating, they will obtain the malnutrition affliction (atm its a work in progress which got into one of the updates, but was removed in the next one again) - which caused the player exhaustion indicator to turn around, and instead of having a red strip of left energy by the bottom of the "eye", it was displayed up. 

The affliction caused this: While you have malnutrition, you cannot regenerate exhaustion by sleeping. I believe you can still sleep but it will provide no energy. In order to cure malnutrition, you need to spend some time well fed, I believe it was about 1/4 of the time you were starving for. So the more you starve, the longer recovery it was.

It's still clearly a work-in-progress but thought you might want to know that the Devs are already working on battling these starvation tactics. 

[Fuarian]

Along with the malnutrition affliction that @Mroz4kmentioned I think it would be also cool to have it where when that affliction is present actions take longer to complete. Even breaking stuff down. And you'd get tired quicker.

[StrayCat]

Every way that abuse of the condition system should be "punished". I could imagine many ways to do that :
 - when thirsty : blurred sight
 - when exhausted : the screen can go black for 1-2 seconds at an increasing rate, as the player fight against sleep
 - when condition goes too low too often, or when wolves/ bears struggles come too often : hallucinations (barkings behind, or a sudden attack then the wolf suddenly disappears, anything that could play with our nerves).

Staying well-fed, well-hydrated and in a good shape should become really important.
 

[Fuarian]

7 minutes ago, StrayCat said:

Every way that abuse of the condition system should be "punished". I could imagine many ways to do that :
 - when thirsty : blurred sight
 - when exhausted : the screen can go black for 1-2 seconds at an increasing rate, as the player fight against sleep
 - when condition goes too low too often, or when wolves/ bears struggles come too often : hallucinations (barkings behind, or a sudden attack then the wolf suddenly disappears, anything that could play with our nerves).

Staying well-fed, well-hydrated and in a good shape should become really important.
 

I agree except for the hallucinations.

Maybe even fainting from exhaustion.

[1Macready]

3 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

By starving, you are losing energy (exhaustion level) at a faster rate.

This may be true, but if it is, the accelerated rate is completely negligible.  At present, I can have a full, active day at zero calories.

As for the new mechanic, I'm happy to hear it.  Just knowing that it's on the roadmap to be addressed is very encouraging.  Hopefully they find the right balance between discouraging the exploitation of "zero cal play" while not making things overly onerous at the start of a run, when everyone is scrambling to meet their basic needs.

[Mroz4k]

Figured I should probably link in my reference. 
 

The OP of that post shows how the icon looks.

[StrayCat]

15 hours ago, Fuarian said:

I agree except for the hallucinations.

Maybe even fainting from exhaustion.

Fainting could be a great addition ! Like a forced sleep. This would be very dangerous if happening outside (cold + wolves), so players would pay a lot of attention to this. I really like the idea.

But I would really appreciate if "mind sanity" would have to be managed too. Well, Will gets dropped alone, in a freezing inferno, with all technologies KO, and furious wolves and bears attacking him non-stop... Will is just a random commoner thrown into this hell, not a survival specialist used to everything. So it would be 100% normal that he must also manage the mental stress. By exemple, staying in a good condition in a warm cozy house would lighten the burden. On the opposite, eating raw meat while freezing in a cave after a wolf attack and twisting many rabbit necks would stress him more.

[Prestermatt]

1 hour ago, StrayCat said:

But I would really appreciate if "mind sanity" would have to be managed too.

Yes.  "Cabin Fever", as it is implemented, isn't really enough to capture something that would be very important IRL.  It might be too hard to implement in the game at this point, but when The Long Dark 2: Even Longer, Even Darker comes out, I hope for more mental state mechanics.

[Mroz4k]

Starvation feigning happens only at the most advanced, long-term starvation. If anything, prolonged periods of moving around with fatique should cause short feigns.

Working on an FA suggestion super thread with bouncing several new ideas, will use these ideas for feedback, thanks folks.

[MarrowStone]

I believe the simplest way to prevent starvation tactics is to just allow calories to go in the negatives to represent body mass lost from the body using up reserves, codition recovery would stop and stamina recovery slowed as well as some exhaustion capped. The only way to "cure" is to being the calories back to positive.

This prevents players from using the "free calories" from starvation because theyll only accrue more calorie debt the longer they go without food.

[AZHockeyNut]

All you need to do is watch survivorman Les Stroud and see how he reacts when he can't find calories on his survival show. 

[StrayCat]

10 hours ago, MarrowStone said:

I believe the simplest way to prevent starvation tactics is to just allow calories to go in the negatives [...]

So the only way to get back from starvation would be to suddenly eat tons of food ? That's a little akward...

[Wade]

Dear Hinterland,

Please don't mess with the game on this account.  Changing the game because people are "cheating the system" is how we ended up with the unrealistic misery known as cabin fever.   Let people play the game as they see fit.  Who cares if people choose to starve themselves?  That is their choice.  It is not some competition against online trolls, but a competition against yourself.  People who want to try and cheat the system are going to anyways.  Adding more senseless restrictions and ailments is not going to stop it, but only ruin the game experience for those already playing it as it was intended.

As for those who think things need to be changed....  Do you intentionally starve yourself?  Have you asked yourself why?  To what end?  If you don't like it, its your choice not to starve yourself.  That is the simple fix.

[Balamute]

13 hours ago, Wade said:

[...] People who want to try and cheat the system are going to anyways.  Adding more senseless restrictions and ailments is not going to stop it, but only ruin the game experience for those already playing it as it was intended. [...]

By this logic they should just add a special "Win The Game" button. In my experience the best way to get bored with a game is to start cheating. People just cheat themselves really since when they get "god mode" they lose all interest shortly after.

And yes, the CF as implemented is annoying and detracts from the game. It should not be removed, but tweaked somewhat. I'd suggest all activities indoors (eating/crafting/harvesting, i.e. actual "work") not add at all or add only half as much to CF counter. As apposed to waiting/loitering indoors. I see absolutely no sense in the need to eat/cook/sleep/read outside, when a proper home is available. It is not as if you just stare at the wall there each day and slowly go insane, you do work there.

It is equally annoying for me to see that the first law of thermodynamics just does not work in the game. You literally can live forever spending more calories than you acquire with food.

In addition to the malnutrition mechanics in the works, I would suggest a reward for players who never starved for a full month. A "Well-Fed" bonus of +1 kg to the weight limit. But not as a Badge, just for each sandbox separately.

[nicko]

On 9/27/2017 at 10:35 PM, 1Macready said:

Hello,

I started a new sandbox game recently and decided to try the "starvation tactic."  For those unfamiliar, it involves not eating all day, thus losing condition, and then eating ~700 cals at night before sleeping so that you heal back the ~14% condition you lost during the day.  It is extremely efficient, as it allows you to significantly trim down your daily caloric intake.

But: it's too powerful.  I have some suggestions for your consideration as you mull your next sandbox update.  I don't mean to suggest all of these things, but to offer some alternatives that might help.  Playtesting would be required to see which works best.

• Do not allow condition recovery unless the player's calorie store is >= 25% of maximum (625 calories).  The reasoning here is that beyond a certain point, the body goes into "keep the lights on" mode and can't manage to heal itself.  The meta is that this would force the "starvers" into nearly doubling their daily caloric intake.  This seems a nice balance: you'd still realize a caloric savings from controlled starvation, but it would be balanced by the fact you are constantly running around with degraded condition.
• Allow negative calories (-500 to -750).  This is simply another way to achieve the same result as the first bullet.  It has the advantage of being easier to perceive without explanation (the UI would clearly reflect the deficit), but more gamey and less refined in concept.
• Consider accelerating condition decay when starvation is coupled with exertion.  In other words, walking around like normal means you'd experience the current rate of condition loss.  Sprinting, climbing, being overweight, and perhaps even harvesting would accelerate condition loss.  Instead of going for a forced increase in caloric consumption, this route instead amps up the risks of playing games with your body.

Feedback and discussion encouraged.  Thanks for listening.

 

I always thought once your calorie intake goes below zero, your condition / health bar starts to go down? I'm sure mine does!

Eating a night just brings it back up a bit ( not full unless you eat loads? or is that the bug? ) cause you consume less when resting / sleeping.

[Riotintheair]

7 hours ago, nicko said:

I always thought once your calorie intake goes below zero, your condition / health bar starts to go down? I'm sure mine does!

Eating a night just brings it back up a bit ( not full unless you eat loads? or is that the bug? ) cause you consume less when resting / sleeping.

It does, but the rate is slow enough (1% per hour, unless it's been changed since we lost access to accurate time keeping) that if you eat before bed enough to rest 10 hours, you gain back more health than you lost by starving through the day (the last hours are better than the first). You can do this forever as long as you don't take too much other damage and tire yourself out.

I hit day 97 on Interloper not using the trick (averaging about 3500 Calories a day), so it's certainly doable, but you have to spend a lot more time getting food and staying put is tougher as respawn rates on animals get bad with world decay, which makes it a lot more dangerous.