suggestion Mal de caribou

[Blood_Red_Mike]

Hey guys! Have you ever heard of ailment called "mal de caribou", or "rabbit starvation"? It's a thing discovered by, I believe, canadian explorers (but I might be wrong). It happens, when a person eat nothing but a rabbit meat for a some period of time, he will get sick. "The reported syndrome includes initial symptoms of diarrhea, then headache, fatigue, low blood-pressure, slow heart rate, and a vague discomfort and hunger.", says Wikipedia and suggests, that eating meals rich in fat is an appropriate treatment.

What do you think about it? I think it's a thing, which would improve the reality in the game, especially in survival mode!

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning

[UpUpAway95]

I think it's a bad idea to suggest to modern people that eating meals rich in fat is a cure for anything.  Fatty Liver Disease (which is a condition associated with the typical North American diet that contains too much fatty food) is epidemic.

[Blood_Red_Mike]

LOL, mate, but if it actually is a cure for mal de caribou, what then? Chill mate, it's a video game and it does have a survival mode. Try to use your imagination.

By the way, I bet that you never heard about keto diet...

Cheers!

[UpUpAway95]

19 minutes ago, Blood_Red_Mike said:

LOL, mate, but if it actually is a cure for mal de caribou, what then? Chill mate, it's a video game and it does have a survival mode. Try to use your imagination.

By the way, I bet that you never heard about keto diet...

Cheers!

It may be a cure for mal de caribou, but the reality is that modern N. American's at least more commonly suffer from the effects of a syndrome associated with eating too much fact, not too much lean meat.  Will is/was an alcoholic, so his liver is probably half fried already.  There are bags of chips lying around, so I think our characters are also getting some supplemental fat from them.

Furthermore, I really don't think bringing in obscure ailments really benefits the game.  So, you want to treat mal de caribou by having the player increase their fat intake... but all the game, except for bear meat is quite lean (causeing the ailment).  Bear meat already triggers parasites... so, basically, you want to have the player contract another ailment by treating the first... frustrating, not fun.  Or... are you proposing to introduce domestic cattle to the game?

Edited January 4, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Derek0311]

Protein poisoning is real that happens when you don’t consume enough fat.  Eating exclusively rabbit meat will cause this condition IRL.  This problem can be prolonged by eating ALL of the animal, eyes, heart, liver, bone marrow, etc.  The same problem exists with moose.  Very low in fat.

Fat is an essential part of a diet and is less of a problem when in a survival situation since you’re burning everything you eat.

Yes, The Long Dark is just a game.  No, suggestions are not invalid because “it’s just a game.”  A flight simulator is just a game.  Try to introduce a plane with no wings and see what happens.

Point taken on the Bear meat.  Bear meat should not be a problem since they are they are not exclusively carnivores.  Maybe that could change to counter the problem.  Also deer meat while lean isn’t near as lean as rabbit.  So, I would not group them together.

Edited January 4, 2021 by Derek0311
Edit

[Blood_Red_Mike]

It was an suggestion for developers, a single fact associated with game's "lore", wich is survival exploration in Canada. I believe that for creators it's a thing worth of consideration and I bet if they would like to implement it, they would know how to do it making a profitable content :).

[UpUpAway95]

5 minutes ago, Blood_Red_Mike said:

It was an suggestion for developers, a single fact associated with game's "lore", wich is survival exploration in Canada. I believe that for creators it's a thing worth of consideration and I bet if they would like to implement it, they would know how to do it making a profitable content :).

OK, so how to do exactly propose to do it in the game in a way that benefits the gameplay?  Perhaps... having the player consciously carve up and cook the organ meats from whatever they kill?  Right now, there is no accounting for those... we just have generic "meat" products and the guts are just used for fishing line and bow strings.  Scurvy has been suggested as an ailment that should be introduced.  Historically, explorers suffered from that as well... but, within the context of the game... how does one treat it?  Should we, perhaps, start finding bottles of vitamins lying around?

How many ailments are just too many to keep the game reasonably fun?

Edited January 4, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Blood_Red_Mike]

The best cure for scurvy are onions

[Derek0311]

@Blood_Red_Mike. It seems what you’re asking for is a realistic nutrition to be added to the game.  I like it.  It’s probably too much for TLD at this point, but I’m not a manager at Hinterland.  They are more then capable to make those decisions.  Maybe for a game in the works... (nod, nod, wink, wink, know what I mean Hinterland).  I would love to see a game where protein poisoning and scurvy are things to deal with.

[UpUpAway95]

34 minutes ago, Blood_Red_Mike said:

The best cure for scurvy are onions

... and where do we get onions in the game?  Like other vegetables and fruits, they don't grow in the dead of a Canadian winter outside of heated greenhouses... and nothing on Great Bear Island has been heated for some time.  While we're at it, let's add in a calcium deficiency (unless, of course, the player is eating all those cans of sardines they find and suffering the bouts of food poisoning they're likely to get from those).  After, say, 100 days in game, sprains become breaks due to osteoporosis.

Edited January 4, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[UpUpAway95]

Another question - how does the game account for a lack of specific ingredients in the diet such that the player can avoid getting the ailment?  Right now, the risk of getting parasites increases as the player eats a number of either wolf meat or bear meat, but how is the game going to determine that the player has hit a threshold of not getting enough fat in the diet? or enough Vitamin C? or enough Calcium? etc.

[Derek0311]

@UpUpAway95.  I like all of your ideas.  Can’t wait to see them in game.  I highly doubt TLD would consider such a drastic change, but, I would like to play a game like that.  Maybe you only have a hunger meter and you don’t know what you are missing out on.  When you die, as part of a wrap up, the game could show you your Vitamin C level, your fat, your protein, etc so you can make adjustments on the next run.

[ManicManiac]

I'm not really in favor of these ideas.

"Protein poisoning" (in simplest terms) is described as a rare forms of acute malnutrition generally attributed to a near complete absence of fats from one's diet.  This kind of thing generally takes months to develop.  Also, since it was mentioned I'll also weigh in on "Scurvy."  Scurvy is another one of those things that takes months to develop, and indicative of an extreme deficiency.

I think here comes a point when a game can have so many afflictions to deal with that the micromanagement aspect can start to leach the fun out a game.

This is kind of in the same vein as the folks that wanted the game require us to micromanage every aspect of fire starting in hyper-realistic terms...  and I felt the same way about that: There is only so much micromanaging I want to have to do in a video game.

All things considered...  I just don't think the game would be much fun with this level of micromanagement.  I feel there comes a point where there is only so much this that can be added before it stops being enjoyable, and begins to feel like a slog...

I don't think I would enjoy a "diet simulator" anymore than I could enjoy a "depression simulator" or a "campfire simulator."

To be clear, it's not that I'm against the micromanaging of certain things/aspects of a game... it's just that I think there is a threshold that once a game crosses, I just kind of stop enjoying it.  I think that things like this would push the game over into that territory for me.

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by ManicManiac

[Lexilogo]

Having your hunger system to account for different kinds of food isn't impossible to pull off in a survival game (Green Hell does it nicely) but it's not the kind of system I think can be crowbarred into a game at this point in development.

I mean, food sources right now are purely balanced around simple factors like calorie count, and calorie-weight ratios. If you implemented a whole "Okay, you need to get this much fat in your diet" system into the game, how does that influence the game's overall design? Meat is VERY MUCH supposed to be the endgame, renewable source of calories, but will the game just force players to fish for a significant portion of their diets, too? How many basing locations would that end up locking out as options?

 

In addition, I also just don't think this'd make TLD a better game. Sure, it's realistic and a neat reference, but is rabbit meat abuse really that much of an issue?

[ManicManiac]

13 minutes ago, Derek0311 said:

I would like to play a game like that.

Green Hell is really heavy on this sort of micromanagement.  If this is something you're into, perhaps it could be a good fit to add to your rotation.

Edited January 4, 2021 by ManicManiac

[UTC-10]

The Long Dark is centered around the events of Story mode.  That was the concept  (What would you do to Survive?),  I believe, that led to many backing the development of the game. 

So the time frame of TLD is a short one connected to Story mode.  A period of perhaps two to four weeks in game-reality.  I remember that the item decay time line used to be 100 days which give some indication of how long the devs thought a viable game would be.  The unexpected popularity of the survival sandbox showed them that they were maybe a bit too short-sighted.  In any case, that would define the kind of things that might be important in that time frame.

There is nothing wrong with possible nutritional deficiencies showing up, but those either will take a long time to develop (and story mode would have long finished) or it would non-trivially detract from the game-play of story mode so is not (in their considered judgement) worth spending time and resources to implement.  Either that or avoiding or treating the deficiency would become a relatively trivial action.  

Once story mode is concluded, the devs can take what they have and go in whatever direction they want to take things. 

Edited January 4, 2021 by UTC-10

[Derek0311]

@ManicManiac  Thanks for that information.  I’ll be checking that out.  
Also, you mentioned that it could take months for these conditions to develop.  I agree and I’m OK with that too.  It really doesn’t take much to not be nutrient deficient so for me it’s a way to not game the game, so to speak.  I fully take your points on not wanting to kill the fun.  So, as in life, I think the player should know when they are hungry but not what nutrients they are lacking. Eating a variety of plates should solve that.  That said, I highly doubt LTD is changing in this regard.  Something like that is most likely a game breaker.  It sounds more like starting over.  Hinterland’s call obviously, I just guessing here.

However, I can see why you are hesitant to changing TLD.  I get it and truth be told I like it the way it is.  I still play Tetris.  I’m just a big fan of a northern survival setting that doesn’t go too deep on mental health management and killer humaniods (zombies, cannibals, etc).  Like I said somewhere else, I don’t want to feel like I’m a psychiatrist holding the characters hand.

[ManicManiac]

10 minutes ago, Derek0311 said:

I think the player should know when they are hungry but not what nutrients they are lacking.

Fair point, and I do understand where folks like OP, yourself, some other posters are coming from.

I'm not necessarily against the core idea itself...  I'm just mostly worried about the what the implementation of this kind of thing would be; and that's what kind of puts me off the idea of having a large number of (for lack of a better term) "nutritional afflictions."

[Derek0311]

@ManicManiac Agreed.