Ways to prevent a player accidentally eating raw meat from the radial menu when they were trying to "place" it on a cooking surface.


PlayerPawn

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Obviously this is a simple problem which may or may not have a simple solution.  With the addition of the new cooking mechanic, people have been eating raw meat like it's going out of style but not out of a want or need to eat it, but because it's simply too easy to do it accidentally.  Considering the affliction that happens afterwards, regardless of how much was eaten, this can be a significant detractor from an otherwise nice and welcomed addition to the game.  This is especially true on harder difficulties where resources are scant and having to deal with an affliction brought on by accident can be particularly frustrating.  I understand user accidents are a part of the game, such as misjudging ice that you subsequently fall through, or going through the backpack and eating food that you forgot to check the quality on which leads you to get food poisoning, or even choosing to harvest your only lantern when you were trying to repair it.  However, from a UI design standpoint, I feel you'd have to admit that there is too easy of a chance to eat raw meat instead of placing it on a cooking surface. 

The radial menu by and large has users clicking the left mouse button (LMB) to select a weapon, place a fire, make a shelter, eat food, drink water (or soda), use a light source, etc...  The majority of actions we'll be performing in the radial menu use the LMB so when we are asked to use the RMB to place an item for cooking, you can begin to suspect that our muscle memory alone will make it far too easy for a player to make a mistake when trying to place food on a cooking surface.  I feel there needs to be something to help mitigate the accidental eating of raw meat from the radial menu interactions.  I know a warning might be against the overall idea of TLD but there has got to be some way to stay in line with the vision of the game while also helping prevent accidental ingestion of raw meat.

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They should change the inventory/radial UI so that LMB puts all items in your hand - you then interact with it from there, in the gameworld rather than the menu.

Food item in hand: LMB=eat; RMB=place

That gives you an extra stage of the process, which gives you time to think about it more!

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It never was that big of a problem to me, after the first few times I've learned to either drop or cook from the pot menu. But I agree there's a problem with the UI, it is not consistent.

I like the suggestion of having RMB to place on each item on the radial tho, I think that having all the menus behave in a consistent way would help in this case. 

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Since this is not a problem if you use cookpots, then the solution seems to be to open the cookpot menu when the user clicks A on the cookspace (xbox controller).  Just hide the options for water if there is no container on the cookspace.  Seems like a very simple fix.


The only time you could then accidentally eat raw meat from the radial menu would be if you were trying to manually place your raw meat in the world instead of just dropping it, which is a very uncommon thing to do unless you are roleplaying as some sort of raw meat sculptor.

 

 

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7 hours ago, electricblue said:

Either change the buttons or make a prompt that asks you if you really want to eat raw meat. The idea that a person could accidentally eat raw meat is hilarious and also ridiculous. And yes I've died this way 

yeah, me too!  prompt would be nice.  only real option currently is to slow down on your clicking...  yes, I know, easy to say but it works.

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Well we can argue as to how to fix it, but one thing's sure: there is a dire need of this fix. I've already eaten raw meat (and subsequentially got ill 3 or 4 times since the update. It's beyond frustrating, to be honest.

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3 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

With the 1.34 hotfix, we updated the "use" verbs in the UI for various items. How has this impacted the unintentional actions you run into when cooking? 

well, in regards to accidental raw meat consumption, you are able to cancel the action,  but not before contracting food poisoning.  Worse side effect is when you are cooking wolf or bear meat and accidentally eat that raw and subsequently contract intestinal parasites even while canceling the "eat" action.  

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I lost an Interloper playthrough to this mistake yesterday, food poisoning + parasites followed by death.  It was a new game and I didn't have the condition or meds to handle this double whammy.  My conclusion: the radial menu cooking interaction is too easy to mess up, with quite harsh consequences.  Far safer to drop meat on the ground and move it to the cook surface, since Eat is a third keybind that won't be triggered by LMB or RMB. 

Suggestion: make Cook it's own keybind, and don't use LMB or RMB.  Use the Cook keybind twice, once to select the item for cooking and again to place it on the cooktop.

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I agree with @greggbert, having the cooking menu popping up when you click on an empty cooking spot would be consistent with the other behaviors. Eating raw meat by mistake from the radial happens only because... you do it from the radial! If radial-dropping was disabled and the only way to cook meat was from the cooking menu, the problem would be solved. Less confusing for first-time players as well I suppose.

There are already different cooking menus for the can and the pot, shouldn't be too hard to implement an additional one on the cooking spots, where the only enabled item is raw meat or fish.

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12 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

With the 1.34 hotfix, we updated the "use" verbs in the UI for various items. How has this impacted the unintentional actions you run into when cooking? 

The verb use change has helped a bit but this is still a very easy thing to do.  So much so that I almost never use the radial dial when cooking meat.  Even when I'm working with the mighty stove in PV.  :)   

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16 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

With the 1.34 hotfix, we updated the "use" verbs in the UI for various items. How has this impacted the unintentional actions you run into when cooking? 

It hasn't helped at all, here. I usually don't get irritated when I die. But man. I started on stalker on the new map. And died solely because I accidentally ate some raw deer. And that was entirely not my fault. It was going so so well up until that point. As of now the mechanic is very flawed. I saw someone mention above that it would be a great fix to make it so that the food is in your hand upon selecting. Then you could choose what to do with it from there. That's also what I would propose

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I actually think the best solution might be to remove the ability to 'place' things from the radial altogether. That way, players aren't going there at all to perform that action, and therefore can't mis-click. Instead, you could add a 'Place' button to the main inventory, alongside 'Drop' and 'Use/Eat/Equip/Etc' for all items.

It's good having LMB for eat in the radial - for most food, anyway. 

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You know, I kind of get it, but while when the new cooking stuff first came out I was giving myself food poisoning on the daily, at this point I've not done it to myself in a couple of weeks game time. It's a matter of retraining the muscles in your mouse hand....

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The controller schemes are much better in this regard. They also make it much easier to not waste matches while picking things up while holding a torch. I play primarily on PS4, but even on PC I always prefer a controller for TLD. Two buttons on the mouse don't really intuitively work in a couple of scenarios. I think more keyboard presses are probably better than having a bunch of things tied to LMB and RMB.

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I just noticed that unsafe water doesn't appear on the radial, and I remember back before the radial was implemented that drinking unsafe water by mistake (from the inventory) was a regular occurrence. So, how about removing completely the raw meat from the food section of the radial menu, and simply putting it in the campcraft section together with the pots and the cans? It would make sense, you go there to place a fire and to place things on fire, and left click would place the meat, same as the pots and cans. Either that, or left click on the meat would place it instead of eating it even in the food menu.

Since we can't drink unsafe water from the radial menu, it would be consistent to be unable to eat raw meat from the menu as well. You'd still be able to eat it, same as being still able to drink unsafe water, but only if you "forced" it from the inventory.

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This definitely needs to be addressed. What I find most awkward is that its a right-click in the radial menu then a left-click to place. Done repeatedly this can be confusing. Also I would like a warning; like when you are about to burn an un-researched book.

I've eaten raw meat twice on a new 30 day stalker run. That's a lot of antibiotics to use in 30 days for a mis-click. Not to mention the inability to study books for over half the days at the start of a new game.

The cooking update is interesting. Even though it's gotten me killed twice already. Admittedly my own fault for cooking outside on decreased health. 
I wish there were more stoves in the game like the six burner one at the farmhouse. 

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Food poisoning isn't quite so big a deal (1 dose and 10 hours rest)  but it can still be the death of a run just for a mis-click. Maybe raw meat could have it's own sub radial on the food menu. So it's an extra click but still there as "food".  Would also solve my issue of eating my last 4 cattail stalks, losing count and accidentally eating the raw meat that shifted into the radial slot the stalks were in.

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I've seen a few people mention that eating raw meat gives you Food Poisoning. If you're cooking predator meat you get Intestinal Parasites when you eat raw meat. Which is substantially worse.

Do you get food poisoning if you eat raw dear meat or fish?

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You don't instantly get parasites for eating raw predator meat but you do jump to a high percentage risk of parasites along with the automatic food poisoning. This happened to me last night... went straight to 75% risk of parasites and immediately afflicted with Food Poisoning.  Thankfully in my case the parasites didn't turn into the actual affliction.

 Deer and fish just give food poisoning.

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