STARVATION ONSET

[SonoftheThrone]

Currently, a person can reach the RAVENOUS marker on the HUNGER METER within a few hours of not eating. Please change this. A person can survive anywhere from a week or two before starving. Please adjust this per difficulty setting to be realistic. If a person could go literal days w/o eating and not "fade into the long dark", that would make the game less stressful as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 7 days w/o food before starving. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Second, a person can survive w/o water for 3 days before succumbing to a lack of fluids in the body....in the desert! Please make this adjustment for the game as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 3 days w/o water before dying of thirst. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Sincerely,

SonoftheThrone

REQUEST: Tweak the fall rates of both the HUNGER and THIRST meters as a whole as well as the CONDITION PERCENTAGE fall rate once the HUNGER/THIRST meters are fully depleted. Please, developers, make them match the real-to-life deterioration times of the human body! Please do this.

[pixelpie]

You are running around thick snow in low temperatures and you expect the body too go for a week without starvation...

[selfless]

After using up all one's on board sugars, one begins to convert flesh to fuel. This is simulated by the health loss effect when the fed meter remains empty. It still takes over 4 gamedays for this to get from 100% health to 0% (-1% per hour). Not hours. So, what?

[SonoftheThrone]

You are running around thick snow in low temperatures and you expect the body too go for a week without starvation...

I am not doing this with my character. If you did that, you'd die in a matter of hours. A survivalist does the exact opposite of what you are assuming, "You are running around thick snow in low temperatures and you expect the body too (i.e. 'to') go for a week without starvation..."

No one with common sense or fortunate circumstances would do such a thing. Even Les Stroud demonstrates the need for shelter. You dig a snow shelter to get beneath the wind (if you're stuck above ground in a snow storm in thick snow. You find large chunks of snow and you build an above ground igloo or you dig a hole in the snow big enough to escape the surface winds (like animals do by instinct).

So, again, no. Your assumption was completely of your own imagination, and NOT anything I would do.

[SonoftheThrone]

After using up all one's on board sugars, one begins to convert flesh to fuel. This is simulated by the health loss effect when the fed meter remains empty. It still takes over 4 gamedays for this to get from 100% health to 0% (-1% per hour). Not hours. So, what?

How may days does it take (in-game) for the player to die of thirst?

[SonoftheThrone]

It still takes over 4 gamedays for this to get from 100% health to 0% (-1% per hour). Not hours. So, what?

I am a forum member just as you are. Is it necessary to be confrontational in your reply? "So, what?" Your negatively diminishes the credibility of your statements. Do you want to come across as nasty, negative, rude, confrontational? That is not the point of forums. Humans unnecessarily seek a "fight" for no reason. I cannot communicate w/ the game developers directly or I would do so. Having to bare the gauntlet of unwarranted criticism, disrespect and lashing out of online entities that do not know anything of my person apart from a feather on a bird in a tree is quite bothersome to say the least.

Jesus said to treat others as you would like to be treated. Please observe that. I'm not mistreating anyone but posting an honest forum topic. If you want confrontation, go somewhere else please.

[druffzilla]

After using up all one's on board sugars, one begins to convert flesh to fuel. This is simulated by the health loss effect when the fed meter remains empty. It still takes over 4 gamedays for this to get from 100% health to 0% (-1% per hour). Not hours. So, what?

How may days does it take (in-game) for the player to die of thirst?

The same rate.

Its true what selfless is saying, and even then you generate your health back way to fast even when your body is running on low fuel; water/food, building up fat and muscle takes a lot longer then degenerating it. It only takes like 12 hours to fully regenerate your health in the game.

[Patrick Carlson]

Currently, a person can reach the RAVENOUS marker on the HUNGER METER within a few hours of not eating. Please change this. A person can survive anywhere from a week or two before starving. Please adjust this per difficulty setting to be realistic. If a person could go literal days w/o eating and not "fade into the long dark", that would make the game less stressful as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 7 days w/o food before starving. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Second, a person can survive w/o water for 3 days before succumbing to a lack of fluids in the body....in the desert! Please make this adjustment for the game as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 3 days w/o water before dying of thirst. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Sincerely,

SonoftheThrone

REQUEST: Tweak the fall rates of both the HUNGER and THIRST meters as a whole as well as the CONDITION PERCENTAGE fall rate once the HUNGER/THIRST meters are fully depleted. Please, developers, make them match the real-to-life deterioration times of the human body! Please do this.

Thanks for your feedback on this. While we don't have any plans to change the current eating and drinking system, it's helpful to us get different perspectives on how players interpret and experience the system. Thank you!

------------------------

And yes, we do expect all forum members to treat each other with respect and courtesy when participating in this space. We hope everyone feels comfortable posting their constructive feedback on The Long Dark in any area of the forums.

[Hotzn]

Second, a person can survive w/o water for 3 days before succumbing to a lack of fluids in the body....in the desert!

Are you sure of this? I strongly doubt it. The time you can sustain yourself without water also depends on the air humidity surrounding you. At very low temperatures, air humidity tends to go down. This makes you lose moisture with every breath. I would imagine you can dehydrate very quickly in a very cold climate. The same goes for a very dry desert.

[vancopower]

Currently, a person can reach the RAVENOUS marker on the HUNGER METER within a few hours of not eating. Please change this. A person can survive anywhere from a week or two before starving. Please adjust this per difficulty setting to be realistic. If a person could go literal days w/o eating and not "fade into the long dark", that would make the game less stressful as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 7 days w/o food before starving. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Second, a person can survive w/o water for 3 days before succumbing to a lack of fluids in the body....in the desert! Please make this adjustment for the game as a whole. Regardless of difficulty setting. 3 days w/o water before dying of thirst. Developers would gauge the physical fatigue from this.

Sincerely,

SonoftheThrone

REQUEST: Tweak the fall rates of both the HUNGER and THIRST meters as a whole as well as the CONDITION PERCENTAGE fall rate once the HUNGER/THIRST meters are fully depleted. Please, developers, make them match the real-to-life deterioration times of the human body! Please do this.

First of all, don't take it all so literally (+10 for the developers making it close to real experience) there has to be some mechanism for the game to be interesting you know to force you to scavenge, hunt and fish.

Second -20 degrees -40 during blizzard do you really thing starvation and hunger are the problem? I thing what the developers wanted to represent is your overall condition is dropping slowly by been hungry, thirsty and so on which leeds to damaged health and much stress tons and tons of cortisol and adrenalite pumping through your body as you finally give up to hearth attack, brain stroke or JUST MAYBE QUIETLY FADE IN TO THE LONG DARK

[selfless]

So, what?

...Is it necessary to be confrontational in your reply? "So, what?" Your negatively diminishes the credibility of your statements. Do you want to come across as nasty, negative, rude, confrontational?

...

If you want confrontation, go somewhere else please.

No offense intended. Rather than construct a well versed introduction suggesting reconsideration that the full game mechanic might already be representative of the stated goals or that perhaps there is a semantic cross-up, I ended with the simplest question I could with hope you would restate your position after reading mine. Laziness on my part. And informality. Certainly some self-doubt.

Thanks for playing.

[Muk_Pile]

Yeah, the starvation mechanism seems a little off when I do the math. Here's my calculations:

• Facts
  
  • Starvation officially occurs when a subject loses 30% of their normal body weight
    
  • When the subject loses 40% of their normal body weight, death is imminent
    
  • Around 40% of the human body is skeletal muscles
    
  • Another 20% is amount of fatty tissue within the body of an average adult male (15% if he works out at the gym every other day, if you want to get picky)

  [*]Assumptions

  • Body fat will be burnt up first, then muscle tissue will be broken down and used to fuel the body
    
  • Considering all the previous statements, an average adult male will have consumed all of his body fat and half of all his muscle tissue by the time he reaches the death stage of starvation
    
  • Assume human muscles store the same amount of calories as the muscles of a wolf (i.e. 700 calories per kilogram / 318 calories per pound)
    
  • Assume human body fat stores 7,716 per kilogram / 3,500 calories per pound
    
  • Assume our male character weighs 82 kilograms / 180 pounds
    
  • Assume your character consumes 3,500 calories per day (2,500 calories to fuel your bodily functions and an additional 1,000 calories to generate extra body heat for warmth)

  [*]Calculations

  • Muscle Weight: 82 * 0.2 = 16.5 kilograms, 180 * 0.2 = 36 pounds
    
  • Fat Weight: 82 * 0.2 = 16.5 kilograms, 180 * 0.2 = 36 pounds
    
  • Muscle Calories: 700 * 16.5 = 11,550 calories, 318 * 36 = 11,448 calories, ~11,500 calories
    
  • Fat Calories: 7,716 * 16.5 = 127,314 calories, 3,500 * 36 =126,000, ~127,000 calories
    
  • Total Calories: 127,000 + 11,500 = 138,500 calories
    
  • Days until Death: 138,500 / 3,500 = 39.57 days, ~39 days

  [*]Conclusions

  • Under ideal conditions and perfect circumstances, the male character would be able to survive at least a whole month without food before enter the death stage of starvation
    
  • However, the symptoms of starvations would become increasingly severe and crippling over time: fatigue, muscle weakness, joint pains, diarrhea, dehydration, anemia, scurvy, weakened immune system, and heart failure are just some of the issues that plague our character during this ordeal
    
  • All-in-all, I wouldn't be surprised that our character (given the hostile environment he has to contend with) would succumb to health complications brought about by starvation within 2 to 3 weeks

[vancopower]

To respond to Muk_Pile Last post since it is too big to quote it all:

Again you are not calculating the fact than in extreme cold human body burns through the calories faster than plane burns kerosene. You have done exceptional job with these calculations too bad that is all wrong 3.500 calories per day on -40 Celsius are you sure? I would dare to say more like 9.000 maybe more depending on your adrenaline and cortisol levels.

Another main factor that you missed is you are comparing data made for different environment most of them are made on African environment and other third world countries who struggle with hunger. However this is a different situation altogether. The main kill factor here is cold, nothing else. every breath you take from -40 cold here has a major impact on your overall health. It is like having chronic asthma panic attacks, which most of us modern people will get in a matter of days exposed to this type of weather, our immune system is "lazy" slow to respond to change in the temperature since we are used so long to comfortable temperature, and this type of shock will overwhelm us. In conclusion I would say again the game is fine the way it is, the main factor you have to watch out is the COOOOOLD, which you do by crafting better clothes, staying out of blizzards and warming up by the fire everything else is second priority, however not eating or drinking water mixed together with our main factor extreme cold sure does not help to get your heath up. And why are we all posting so much about this Do you really thing there is not much food in the game or water for that mater ? I never had a problem with this in any game play only COLD and WOLVES can bring me down and Bears put they are easy to get away from.

[ANelson]

I'm not a doctor, or a professional nutritionalist or anything. I do however, know that I eat roughly 5K calories a day to maintain a weight of 165. I also don't have to chop wood, hunt and skin animals, or keep my energy high enough all day to be able to do those things between blizzards, nor keep my body warm at below freezing. Add regulalrly carying 30kg, not a really rough number for a short stretch, but all day that would get heavy fast, even if fairly well distributed.

I'll acknowledge that you don't exactly go to the gym, but odds are you burn just as fast as if you did with other activities.

When you include that not eating doesn't kill you instantly, but starts the condition degredation, I'm going to say you don't necessarily DIE at the instant the Long Dark screen comes up, they just don't bother to have you play through not having enough energy to move or do anything for the next 3 days that you technically maybe live, though you started freezing even faster with lack of activity.

It would be difficult to program in the fact that the first time or two I let my condition degrade badly (actually losing mass) I could probably afford to do it. I'm not entirely sure the benifit would be worth the effort, I only see it working if they decided to include mass as a trackable thing. I know I started weighing 180 lbs.(randomly chosen number) so when my condition drops to below 75 from hunger I start losing weight continually at some rate until I stop being hungry. Say it caps at whatever condition level gives you the blurry skippy vision until you have dropped your weight below 140 (another random number).

This would be an interesting mechanic, but again I'm not sure the benifit is equal to the work required.

I for one don't really want to watch the part where I just lay there and wait and will accept that the game ends at "The point of no return without help" rather than the point of Death.

Correction for accuracy: Checked what I actually ate yesterday and it turns out I'm actually just under 4K calories a day. I'm alright with adding 1K for the cold though.

[vancopower]

I'm not a doctor, or a professional nutritionalist or anything. I do however, know that I eat roughly 5K calories a day to maintain a weight of 165. I also don't have to chop wood, hunt and skin animals, or keep my energy high enough all day to be able to do those things between blizzards, nor keep my body warm at below freezing. Add regulalrly carying 30kg, not a really rough number for a short stretch, but all day that would get heavy fast, even if fairly well distributed.

I'll acknowledge that you don't exactly go to the gym, but odds are you burn just as fast as if you did with other activities.

When you include that not eating doesn't kill you instantly, but starts the condition degredation, I'm going to say you don't necessarily DIE at the instant the Long Dark screen comes up, they just don't bother to have you play through not having enough energy to move or do anything for the next 3 days that you technically maybe live, though you started freezing even faster with lack of activity.

It would be difficult to program in the fact that the first time or two I let my condition degrade badly (actually losing mass) I could probably afford to do it. I'm not entirely sure the benifit would be worth the effort, I only see it working if they decided to include mass as a trackable thing. I know I started weighing 180 lbs.(randomly chosen number) so when my condition drops to below 75 from hunger I start losing weight continually at some rate until I stop being hungry. Say it caps at whatever condition level gives you the blurry skippy vision until you have dropped your weight below 140 (another random number).

This would be an interesting mechanic, but again I'm not sure the benifit is equal to the work required.

I for one don't really want to watch the part where I just lay there and wait and will accept that the game ends at "The point of no return without help" rather than the point of Death.

Correction for accuracy: Checked what I actually ate yesterday and it turns out I'm actually just under 4K calories a day. I'm alright with adding 1K for the cold though.

Your post just gave me idea especially the part about "mass as a trackable thing", but I believe that should be in it's own Topic so I am making it right now it will be called Body Mass. viewtopic.php?f=59&t=8805