Milton Mailbag -- Dispatch #40

[Raphael van Lierop]

Hello all!

The weeks are getting longer these days, it seems, so the Mailbag is more frequently getting pushed to the weekend. Sorry about that! Thanks to everyone who submitted questions this week. There are some great ones!

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Question from @Pinefarmer13:

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Heyya.

First, have loved this game probably more than most other video games I've experienced in the past few years.

My question stems from other abilities to stay warm in the Long Dark and even the consequences of it. My family does agriculture work year round and often in the dead of winter. We always tell our workers that "The heat is in your tools." Basically, have you ever considered making doing work, cutting wood, or even just sprinting giving you a slight increase in warmth? The flip side would be the danger of heat. Many time I've been out of subfreezing days hauling pine trees in from the field and I've been not only fine in a sweater but was downright over heated if I had more layers. Even in winter that warmth can kill you. I guess has there been any thought about this or would mechanics like overheating or "work-warmth" too fiddly?

Keep up the awesome work, I can't wait to see what else you guys make.

Warmest Regards,

-W

 

I see what you did there.... --> "Warmest Regards"  

We've talked about (and been asked about) many times, the idea of overheating/sweating and the risks that could introduce. I've always held back from it because it does start to feel very fiddly. There is currently a little Warmth bonus you get during Sprinting but it's pretty subtle; we could definitely build on that in the future. Some of these things start to step on improvements that might require significant overhauls to our entire Survival System infrastructure, and between you and I I'm not sure when the best time to do that would be. After 5+ years of active development on The Long Dark, I think there are things we can definitely still do to improve the core game, but deeper improvements will require starting from scratch, essentially, something I'd like to put off for a future game.

At the very least we might be able to treat "sweating" as another form of Wetness (which we already have), that goes from the inside out (vs. the outside in as it currently works), and then you'd have to deal with the same risks of Ice forming and then Frostbite (or, at the very least, your Wet clothing loses a bunch of its heating value so you'd pay a cost there). I think we could do it but we'd have to feel the change was worth how many bugs and tuning issues it would introduce!

*****

Question from @Starving Gamer:

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I'm wondering if some of the load screen art is taken from original concept boards, or were they created to give that impression? 

They are screenshots from the game, with an artful treatment from our talented presentation artists.

*****

Question from @Dan_:

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Thank you once again for taking the time to answer the questions. 

I've got a sort of OT one: Did you enjoy your recent trip to Iceland? Did any TLD applicable inspiration came up when visiting the land of ice and fire? There are plenty of absurdly beautiful natural sanctuaries worldwide ( the Canadian wilderness being one of them ), but Iceland strikes me as somewhere mythology would've easily developed in the olden days of civilization, natural beauty and the juxtaposition of volcano and blizzards would've had a profound effect on people. I wonder if creative people in modern times get the same pump of inspiration from seeing nature nowadays. 

 

Yes, I spent a couple of days in Reykjavik, which was an incredible experience! What a lovely people, and the city is absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time there to get out and explore the landscape, but I plan to come back in the future. It's definitely a very dramatic, inspiring environment. I also had the opportunity to visit CCP, developers of EVE: ONLINE, at their HQ in the city. They were super friendly and it was great to see how their studio and teams are organized. Definitely gave me some ideas for Hinterland.  

I can't speak for others but I find travelling to be hugely inspiring, and typically whenever I embark on creating something new I try to do it from a new location, just because the change of scene seems to really stir up the creative juices. I think it's something about breaking routines that readies the brain for fruitful enterprise.

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Question from @BESt:

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What do you think of this review made by a survivalist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzGZqFgkfQ

 

I thought it was equal parts interesting and funny. I also think it kind of misses the point of the game.

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Question from @Timmytwothumbs:

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First of all I'm relatively new to the long dark and I was absolutely elated to see the game is still in the works I believe it has so much potential and is by far my favorite survival game out there right now as it stands. One thing I've noticed while playing is the numerous bars of soap and metal pails littered around the map this got me thinking of hygiene and a potential system in place that allows the player to control his or her scent by bathing. Potentially having to boil water and find soap after a hunt to get rid of the scent instead of the scent being eliminated simply by dropping meat. It would feel more realistic because everyone knows when you are elbow deep in deer guts that smell will stick to you kinda like in RDR2 where you have to wash up periodically especially after hunting. I think this would pose a new unique challenge and would give players something extra to do during bad weather instead of just passing the time. 

Yeah I've thought a lot about hygiene and how to incorporate it into The Long Dark. I'm generally always impressed by RDR/RDR2 and a bit jealous at how effortlessly they incorporate basic survival-type mechanics into those games. For us, we get stuck on a lot of these things because the realization aspect becomes kind of tricky to pull off. But I'm sure there are good solutions that would work within our game as well. I do agree that this should be part of the overall Survival System.

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Question by @TheRealPestilence:

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In watching Turkeysteam play on YouTube, I noticed that the well fed bonus actually adds condition to your character when it kicks in.  Today, he had the buff lapse while he had low condition and it seemed to cut what little he had in half.  It appears that if you have the well fed buff and your condition is low enough, allowing the buff to lapse can instantly kill you.  Is that the case?  If so, wouldn't it be better to have the buff increase and decrease your *capacity* to have condition?

The Buff expands your Condition bar and also gives you a boost to Carrying Capacity. When the Buff expires (due to starvation), you lose these benefits.

*****

Question from @Azdrawee:

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I've recently shown TLD to my brother and he really loved it, it's probably the only game he ever played on his own. We've been playing WINTERMUTE (slight spoiler ahead, be warned), and when we reached the Hunting Lodge, the phone rang. How is it possible that the phone was ringing when there wasn't aurora active in the sky? Is this somehow connected to the note in the Lonely Lighthouse that talks about ringing phones too? Thanks a lot for your answer (if you can and it's not something that would spoil future episodes, of course :-))

Partly based on reality (research this online and you will find some answers) and partly poetic license.

Not everything has to be explained and not everything has to be 100% realistic, as long as it is true to its own fiction and players accept it as logical. There are a lot of things in The Long Dark that don't line up 100% with reality. I'm totally ok with that.

*****

@MikeV -- please use regular formatting for your questions. As we've stated many times, we're not offering dates so I'm not going to tell you how long it will take for us to deliver all five episodes of WINTERMUTE. 

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Question from @PlayerPawn:

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Hey Raph!

What is the process of looking for someone to make original music for your game or did you already have Sascha and Cris in mind?  Do you kinda just let them do their own thing or do you take a more active role in shaping the musical experience?  Aside from TLD, what would you say is your favorite game soundtrack, from any gaming era?

Thanks and have a good weekend everyone!

 

I had the good fortune to have Cris and Sascha score my last game, SPACE MARINE. I really enjoyed working with them so when I started putting THE LONG DARK together I reached out to see if they would score it. In terms of selecting composers -- of course you want to find a composer with a style that fits the kind of experience you are creating. In this case, Sascha is great with electronic music and created this really cool sound for Survival Mode, while Cris's strength is in orchestral and we found a way to use a small ensemble and some key instruments like piano, guitar, strings to create a "frontier" feeling in the soundtrack that also hits on the emotional depths of the story. Mostly you just want to find people that you gel with well creatively.

I love soundtracks and listen to them almost exclusively, but mostly movie soundtracks when I think about it. Lately I've been listening to the soundtracks to INTERSTELLAR and WESTWORLD a lot, for no particular reason than I really enjoy them and they help put me in the right mood for the work I need to do.

*****

Question from @liam:

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What inspired the emergency stim was it something the community came up with or was something the team came up with if so how did you come up with the idea?

We just wanted to provide a tool that felt desperate and like something you'd use when you are in a really bad situation, whether it's trying to make it to the safety of that shelter in the distance, trying to get away from that Bear, etc. It felt like a tool that let us play with some of the survival mechanics in the game and something that might save you from a bad fate, but also something that came with a heavy cost, so you'd kind of hate to need to use it, but it'd be better than dying (and losing your save).

Do you have opinions about the Emergency Stim?

*****

Question from @Jendo:

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Would you ever make it so water freezes, or d'you think that'd piss people off too much? 😉'

I think it would create a tremendous amount of busy work and also require us to add a lot of new mechanics to counterbalance it, so I'm not sure it would really be worth it?

*****

Thanks again for all your questions and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

- Raph

 

[Looper]

25 minutes ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I think it would create a tremendous amount of busy work and also require us to add a lot of new mechanics to counterbalance it, so I'm not sure it would really be worth it?

Have to agree with Ralph here. It's a funny quirk but doesn't matter in gameplay. So not worth the effort in any way. 

Meat inability to freeze however does. It gives you full availability of stored or dropped meats at all times and creates some gamicky situations.  F.i. rabbits freeze but rabbit meat carved out placed beside the rabbit won't

But not in a big way.  

Edited August 17, 2019 by Looper
typo

[UpUpAway95]

I just wanted to say that the phone ringing without power is totally realistic... as I was remined recently.  I live in a rural area and, about a year ago, we retired our old analog walk phone in favor of one with base stations and handsets.  About a week ago, we had a power failure and I needed to report it to the power company, so I picked up the phone and, of course, nothing.  Then, I thought about our old phone and how I never had a problem calling the power company in the past.  So, I found that old phone, plugged it into the phone line (which is a wall socket but not a powered one) and got dial tone.  A few minutes later after hanging up with the power company, that same old phone rang and I was able to take the call... all without power.

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I just wanted to say that the phone ringing without power is totally realistic... as I was remined recently.  I live in a rural area and, about a year ago, we retired our old analog walk phone in favor of one with base stations and handsets.  About a week ago, we had a power failure and I needed to report it to the power company, so I picked up the phone and, of course, nothing.  Then, I thought about our old phone and how I never had a problem calling the power company in the past.  So, I found that old phone, plugged it into the phone line (which is a wall socket but not a powered one) and got dial tone.  A few minutes later after hanging up with the power company, that same old phone rang and I was able to take the call... all without power.

Yes. Old analogue rotary phones can function with a very small amount of power. There are even some old ones that can be used with a hand-cranked magneto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_magneto

I recall reading, years ago, about the importance of maintaining an old rotary landline phone in the event of a disaster -- not necessarily a geomagnetic one, mind you; it was more of a prepper-type scenario. The idea stuck with me. 

[Azdrawee]

@UpUpAway95 @Raphael van Lierop Thanks a lot guys, I understand it now!

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, TheRealPestilence said:

@Raphael van Lierop

 

We actually witnessed (and remarked on the fact during the live stream) that he actually gained and lost condition when the well fed buff started and stopped.  That sudden condition loss actually contributed to the character's death.  The question I asked was whether that condition loss could actually kill the character directly or not.  Your answer simply explained how the buff is supposed to work.  If I can document losing the buff actually killing a character, should I submit it as a bug?

 

Here's the buff lapse where condition is lost instantly.

 

By nature of how it works (as I described it), logically it would be possible to die when the buff is lost.

[Raphael van Lierop]

1 hour ago, TheRealPestilence said:

I don't see why one should logically assume that making a container bigger automatically implies more contents being added, but thanks for the clarification.

It also doesn't seem right to immediately injure the character by 5% the second they become hungry, but it's your game.

I didn't say the container is getting bigger; I think those were your words. I said you are getting a Condition increase when you get the Well Fed buff. Therefore, when you lose the buff, you lose the associated Condition increase.

I'm not sure if it "seems right" or not, but you asked how it works and if the observed behaviour was something that should be reported as a bug, so I am merely clarifying. Sorry if it's not the answer you're looking for.

[Serenity]

5 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

 I said you are getting a Condition increase when you get the Well Fed buff. Therefore, when you lose the buff, you lose the associated Condition increase.

I can understand why it was implemented that way. But what some people are expecting is that once your condition goes down and your total condition again fits into your regular condition bar, you don't lose anything further. You've already lost that extra condition from taking damage of some sort.

[Raphael van Lierop]

6 hours ago, TheRealPestilence said:

"The buff expands the condition bar" (your words), to me, means you make the bar hold more and says nothing about actually adding condition.  In UI terms, a title bar contains a title, a scroll bar contains scrolling widgets, a progress bar contains a progress indicator, and so on.  That's the point of view I was looking at it from and the reason your initial response seemed ambiguous.  Thanks again.

Ok I see -- apologies for adding to the confusion. I should have been more clear. I was thinking about "expanding the bar" from the POV of a full bar, i.e. we add Condition (not just make the bar bigger, we literally add Condition to the player's current level. So if they are at 100 their Condition goes to 105 (for example). If they are at 20 it goes to 25. When the Buff is removed we remove the extra Condition that was granted. But yes I can see how this could be problematic in certain circumstances. For the most part I've been ok with that but perhaps it warrants a revisit.

[Raphael van Lierop]

4 hours ago, Serenity said:

I can understand why it was implemented that way. But what some people are expecting is that once your condition goes down and your total condition again fits into your regular condition bar, you don't lose anything further. You've already lost that extra condition from taking damage of some sort.

Yes, I can understand that perspective. We should do a better job of explaining, through UI, what is actually going on. 

[ajb1978]

20 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I just wanted to say that the phone ringing without power is totally realistic... as I was remined recently.  I live in a rural area and, about a year ago, we retired our old analog walk phone in favor of one with base stations and handsets.  About a week ago, we had a power failure and I needed to report it to the power company, so I picked up the phone and, of course, nothing.  Then, I thought about our old phone and how I never had a problem calling the power company in the past.  So, I found that old phone, plugged it into the phone line (which is a wall socket but not a powered one) and got dial tone.  A few minutes later after hanging up with the power company, that same old phone rang and I was able to take the call... all without power.

Yup, I like to do little random science experiments, and one of the ones I'm rather proud of is to take a phone cord, usb cord, and 5v voltage regulator.  Put 'em all together, you can charge a cell phone off the voltage in the phone line.

[Guest Marcurios]

i'd like to see these unharvestable bushes (the ugly crossplaned textured alpha'd bushes, not an actual 3d mesh) being made into harvestable wormwood to kill of the parasites or reduce the chance to get them.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Marcurios

[stratvox]

I dunno. For me, if you lose your well fed while at 3% condition it doesn't seem unreasonable that the player fades into the long dark instantly. I mean, sure it sucks, but there's plenty of situations of suck that can happen in this game... it's part of its charm!

[ThePancakeLady]

Chuckling a bit. Why didn't the fellow who made the video come here to ask about it? 

But, he was playing the DMC. Dead.Man's.Challenge. I think it is called that for some reason or another.

Makes perfect sense to me, after watching the video, that if you are DMCing, and generally living recklessly, losing that buff and the extra condition that comes with it, makes total sense. Heck, if you are playing in any experience mode or player made challenge, you need to be aware of your condition, ration your food and water appropriately, and not take too many risks, knowing you may die if you do take them. Except Pilgrim, maybe. A death like that in Pilgrim would really suck. (And yeah, in my early days, I had a few of those really awful deaths, in Pilgrim. And they did suck. But they were all on me, not taking care of my survivor like I could have. But there were rocks and mountains to be climbed...)

[ajb1978]

7 hours ago, stratvox said:

I dunno. For me, if you lose your well fed while at 3% condition it doesn't seem unreasonable that the player fades into the long dark instantly. I mean, sure it sucks, but there's plenty of situations of suck that can happen in this game... it's part of its charm!

Yeah I'm on board with that.  Maybe all those painkillers and emergency stims he'd been popping finally caught up, and the 'ol ticker called it quits.

[ManicManiac]

Seems to me, we just need to accept the consequences for bad decisions/risky behavior instead of asking to change the game to help save us from ourselves.  

I agree with @stratvox.

I think the better answer to the previous situation is don't let our survivor get down to 3% condition and then start starving.   If we better prepared and better managed resources, that particular situation wouldn't be a problem.  Even if it was purely the result of tragic bad luck, that's just life in this game sometimes.  I personally love that about it.

It's funny to me, to see people wanting the game to be brutal and challenging, but then ask for safety nets/conveniences.   As I've mentioned before, these are incongruous ideas. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by ManicManiac
Edited for clarity.

[Raphael van Lierop]

4 hours ago, ManicManiac said:

Seems to me, we just need to accept the consequences for bad decisions/risky behavior instead of asking to change the game to help save us from ourselves.  

I agree with @stratvox.

I think the better answer to the previous situation is don't let our survivor get down to 3% condition and then start starving.   If we better prepared and better managed resources, that particular situation wouldn't be a problem.  Even if it was purely the result of tragic bad luck, that's just life in this game sometimes.  I personally love that about it.

It's funny to me, to see people wanting the game to be brutal and challenging, but then ask for safety nets/conveniences.   As I've mentioned before, these are incongruous ideas. 

That was my initial take too, but understanding it better I can see that what is needed is clarity -- the Buff and the changes to the Condition Bar need to be clear enough that people understand the associated risks, so that they can plan better. It's difficult to own failure if you failed because of imperfect information. In the case of Well Fed, the "fix" will probably end up being modifying it so that it "expands the container" but does not confer the extra Condition. But if you debuff while you have over 100%, you will be dropped to 100%. 

I can't say with 100% certainty that the current feedback is clear enough to communicate what is actually going on and therefore we have work to do. Once the feedback is clear, well then if you make a mistake and die...don't come crying to me.  

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 8/17/2019 at 10:43 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Do you have opinions about the Emergency Stim?

I feel like the stim is one of the best designed items/mechanics in the game. It has several use cases, each of them rather unique, and it allows to overcome some situations in the game that otherwise would not have been solvable. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free-card as it doesn't solve your problem for you, but it affords you the resources to do so when you need them. But it comes at a high price, and rightfully so. For once it's the item in the game with the most definitely finite supply. There are 9 or 10 per game, and even if you are really fast and traverse all of those locations in 100 days (which is a feat in itself on Interloper) this limits your stim usage to every 10 days on average. And you will not get them back. Then the drawbacks are very dangerous in itself, and in that you succeeded in making one hate to use it. It's nice and good that you climbed that rope in the storm, yeah, but now you are fatally exhausted and everything you have to do until you find shelter and a bed will be ever so much harder. So knowing when to use it is just as crucial as having it in the first place.

In general the stim really reflects all traits a good game element should have: it is unique, it feels meaningful, it adds depth to the game and the experience, and has a well balanced cost and scarcecity attached to it that reflects its benefits. In general you people are very apt in making design decisions meaningful, and I could probably go on a very long list why this or that is a very clever design, even if I still do disagree with the revolver - which is a fair topic to disagree on I guess.

[Raphael van Lierop]

On 8/23/2019 at 4:16 PM, TheRealPestilence said:

My argument is that not only does it make no sense from the realism point of view (you don't start dying the second you have an empty stomach), it also doesn't make sense from the point of view of the existing game mechanics.  The rate of condition loss from hunger has always been 1% per hour.  Now it's 5% instantly and, again, at the very instant your stomach goes empty.  One second ago, you were 'well fed'.  Now you might be dead.  It doesn't make sense.

Wait wait -- please don't use "realism" as an argument for or against a game mechanic (or any tuning around it). You've played this game long enough, or been in this community long enough, to know not to do that. We don't design for realism, and we don't use it as a metric to determine how something should or should not work in the game. Our only "north star" is -- does something create the possibility for interesting choices to be made, choices that will deepen the player's experience in some way.

I also don't think the argument that suddenly losing 5% condition from losing the buff "doesn't make sense" from the point of view of existing mechanics. You don't typically gain 5% Condition without some other drawback, and you certainly don't gain it suddenly. By this logic, gaining it suddenly suggests losing it suddenly is also valid.

I still see the POV (and agree with it) that the way we handle the Condition increase/decrease may not be ideal, but let's be consistent in how we evaluate game systems. It can't "make sense" to suddenly get 5% Condition for being Well Fed, but "not make sense" to suddenly lose it when the Well Fed buff expires.

[ajb1978]

On 8/17/2019 at 3:43 PM, Raphael van Lierop said:

Do you have opinions about the Emergency Stim?

I like the emergency stims so much I never use them....  I'm one of those "better save my potions for emergencies" players, then finishes the game with an inventory full of potions.  I use them rather liberally in Challenge modes, especially things like speedrun attempts, where a health boost and being able to run like a goober comes in handy.  But survivor mode, where my brain is geared towards extreme long-term survivability, I have an unhealthy hoarding obsession.

Putting a condition on the Go energy drinks was a smart call.  I would hoard those too, but once they start dropping into the teens, I find a reason to use them.  I think e-stims would benefit from this as well.

[Guest jeffpeng]

17 hours ago, Raphael van Lierop said:

I still see the POV (and agree with it) that the way we handle the Condition increase/decrease may not be ideal, but let's be consistent in how we evaluate game systems. It can't "make sense" to suddenly get 5% Condition for being Well Fed, but "not make sense" to suddenly lose it when the Well Fed buff expires.

I guess the solution is rather simple: scale the actual hitpoints - not the ceiling - with their current value. So for example if you have 63% and gain well fed you get 63 * 1.05 = 66,15% .... of 105%, which is actually still 63% ot total. When you have 100% you get 105%, when you have 10% you get 10.5% and so forth. Then when one loses Well Fed just calculate x% / 1.05, resulting in when you have 105% you get 100%, when you have 10% you get 9.52%. and when you have 5% you get 4.76%.

What does this actually mean? Basically instead of granting you extra condition or revoking it Well Fed acts as a sort of damage reduction buff. Since when you have well fed losing 20% to a wolf struggle means you actually lose 20% / 1.05 = 19.04% of total. On the flipside you also don't gain your condition as fast. Getting 20% from sleep is actually 20% / 1.05 = 19.04%. To further emphasize the benefits of Well Fed one could introduce a 1.05 modifier to active condition gain effects. So for instance that Herbal Tea does grant you 1.05 times more condition resulting in 2% * 1.05 = 2.1% per hour of sleep

But bottom line Well Fed wouldn't really give or take condition to or from you, but actually grant you a bigger pool of health to play with. It takes longer to fill, but also longer to deplete.

Edited August 25, 2019 by jeffpeng

[Looper]

41 minutes ago, jeffpeng said:

I guess the solution is rather simple: scale the actual hitpoints - not the ceiling - with their current value. So for example if you have 63% and gain well fed you get 63 * 1.05 = 66,15% .... of 105%, which is actually still 63% ot total. When you have 100% you get 105%, when you have 10% you get 10.5% and so forth. Then when one loses Well Fed just calculate x% / 1.05, resulting in when you have 105% you get 100%, when you have 10% you get 9.52%. and when you have 5% you get 4.76%.

What does this actually mean? Basically instead of granting you extra condition or revoking it Well Fed acts as a sort of damage reduction buff. Since when you have well fed losing 20% to a wolf struggle means you actually lose 20% / 1.05 = 19.04% of total. On the flipside you also don't gain your condition as fast. Getting 20% from sleep is actually 20% / 1.05 = 19.04%. To further emphasize the benefits of Well Fed one could introduce a 1.05 modifier to active condition gain effects. So for instance that Herbal Tea does grant you 1.05 times more condition resulting in 2% * 1.05 = 2.1% per hour of sleep

But bottom line Well Fed wouldn't really give or take condition to or from you, but actually grant you a bigger pool of health to play with. It takes longer to fill, but also longer to deplete.

Sorry to say but to me this is very much a longdark-theory problem. If you are at 5 pct or even 10 pct. you should be able to feed yourself at least for a good nights sleep. After that on all modes but deadman-mode  the 5 pct. loss doesn't matter at all since you have healed extraordinary amounts. If you are reduced to 5 pct. and don't have anything to eat, no stim, no bark, no way to find a cat tail, and empty stomach - well - you deserve to fade into the long dark. Hit spacebar and go again. 

[ManicManiac]

4 minutes ago, TheRealPestilence said:

That death would be a bullshit death.

no... it would mean that the player had been too careless/cavalier.   

Edited August 25, 2019 by ManicManiac

[Guest jeffpeng]

40 minutes ago, Looper said:

Sorry to say but to me this is very much a longdark-theory problem. If you are at 5 pct or even 10 pct. you should be able to feed yourself at least for a good nights sleep. After that on all modes but deadman-mode  the 5 pct. loss doesn't matter at all since you have healed extraordinary amounts. If you are reduced to 5 pct. and don't have anything to eat, no stim, no bark, no way to find a cat tail, and empty stomach - well - you deserve to fade into the long dark. Hit spacebar and go again. 

I can't say I completely disagree. But while there is no need (or way) to preserve realism (as reaslism in a game in itself is a contradiction) there apparently is need to preserve plausibility and by that make mechanics behave more intuitively. Losing 5% of your total health from running out of calories feels arbitrary, losing 5% of your current health seems absolutely plausible to me. And while the "problem" (if you want to call it one) is rather niche, the solution - at least in my opinion - is simple enough to implement it without breaking other mechanics in the game.

About the entire "intuitive" thing... there's a psychology to that. If a player is genuinely surprised by an adversary (and to some extent can "expect" to be surprised) the player will perceive this as something intended and part of the game. They might be still upset, and find the game "too hard" or their own odds "unfair", but all of this is happening inside what I call "game space", meaning contained inside the game. If however a player is surprised by some mystery mechanic that was not communicated and the player had no way of anticipating in advance they will feel "cheated", especially if the result means terminating the game, and as a result will blame how the game is made outside of the "game space". Reflected on your example this means that the player would in all likelyness still die. Having 5% health with no food (and no stim, no bark, no way to find a cat tail, and empty stomach) is dire enough to expect a negative result. But in this case the player will understand that a comination of their actions and the RNG god being angry led to their demise, and not some arbitrary game rule they didn't understand in the first place.

To make a real life example let's take a game of Basket Ball (since that's probably the one team sport fairly understood on both sides of the pond): Your team is 2 points behind 5 seconds to go, and you take a hail mary 3 pointer from 9 meters (~30 feet). Your chances of hitting this are slime to none (unless you are Steve Nash, which only applies to Steve Nash), but let's imagine the opposing teams Center goaltends your ball but the ref doesn't see it. You missing the ball, which is your fault, translates into the ref betraying you - which is the ref's fault, and as the ref is not part of the game but merely enforcing game rules .... you feel you have been cheated by something outside of the game, and are angry about it.

[Guest jeffpeng]

3 minutes ago, TheRealPestilence said:

By not understanding that you actually take DAMAGE from letting a buff lapse?  Who on earth would assume you take DAMAGE just because it's dinner time?

When I was a kid not attending dinner would cause severe damage.  Glad those times are behind us. But in seriousness: This is exactly what I mean with a player being angry about something they had no way of knowing or anticipating.