The eating requirement is breaking emersion

[martinistripes]

I don't usually visit this forum but I just came here to post the same thing. To much eating!

 

Latest, build increased the number of friendly animals though. Now it's like we're at the zoo. We can't go anywhere without coming across bears and wolves. There's plenty of meat, but still... you don't want to be eating every 5 minutes. I'm trying to build a pure intelligence character, but I feel like I'm being forced into buying Strength and several levels of Iron Gut skill.

 

Could we reduce wild animals slightly and reduce need to eat slightly?

[Liesel Weppen]

4 minutes ago, martinistripes said:

Latest, build increased the number of friendly animals though. Now it's like we're at the zoo. We can't go anywhere without coming across bears and wolves.

Agree. Looks like TFP didn't increase it a little, but even more then doubled it. Should be tied to gamestage too. I now have been killed 3 times by direwolfs and seen at least 5 others. At the last quest poi there have been 2 bears directly in front. If seen more direwolfs since the last update, then i've seen alltogether since i play 7d2d.

Killing a direwolf in early game is nearly impossible, if one notices you, you're dead. You can't outrun them and even since im dual-blunderbussing, they survived to shots in their face and some hits with a spear. I still died. Double as bad as the lost backpacks seem to occur primarily when killed by an animal!

And even if some complain about the food here: Was meat an issue? Now i'm drowning even more in meat.

[JCrook1028]

21 hours ago, hotpoon said:

I've been playing since A12, and also have literally thousands of hours in Ark, so this isn't my first rodeo, thank you.  I'm not saying those perks need to be eliminated. It's good they are there, but I shouldn't be forced to perk into them just to get by.  Perking into them should make already manageable survival easy, not unmanageable survival manageable. Food drainage needs to be toned down. This isn't JUST a survival game.  It's also crafting, shooting and looting...tower defense in a way.  It has lots of aspects which right now are being dominated by the survival angle.  Balance is what I'm asking for.

Putting 1 point into a few survival skills IS balance. that's my point. A Survival game with perks should REQUIRE A SMALL AMOUNT of points into survival.

1 hour ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Agree. Looks like TFP didn't increase it a little, but even more then doubled it. Should be tied to gamestage too. I now have been killed 3 times by direwolfs and seen at least 5 others. At the last quest poi there have been 2 bears directly in front. If seen more direwolfs since the last update, then i've seen alltogether since i play 7d2d.

Killing a direwolf in early game is nearly impossible, if one notices you, you're dead. You can't outrun them and even since im dual-blunderbussing, they survived to shots in their face and some hits with a spear. I still died. Double as bad as the lost backpacks seem to occur primarily when killed by an animal!

And even if some complain about the food here: Was meat an issue? Now i'm drowning even more in meat.

Yea. Someone really needs to teach MM the meaning of the word balance. One day into the new patch and I saw 5 bears, 3 wolves, 1 dire wolf, chickens and deer everywhere I looked. WTF did he do? I'm not even wanting to login now til this is fixed. That was my Navezgane world. Later that night I logged into my Nitro world and had the same messed up animals. I had 235 meat in the first 5 minutes just from having to hop up on roofs and use tons of pistol ammo to kill 3 bears and run over 3 wolves. It's seriously broken. Joel needs to leave adjustments for someone who knows how to do them. Stick to design!

 

Watch the first few minutes of this and you'll see bears everywhere. At the end you'll see another.

 

 

[Ralathar44]

13 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

For me it clearly looks like early game has been generalized. There are still options how to do it exactly but going fully for a weapon build from day 1 is not good anymore. And imho that is good.

11 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Putting 1 point into a few survival skills IS balance. that's my point. A Survival game with perks should REQUIRE A SMALL AMOUNT of points into survival.

I went all in agility and I was fine.  Admittedly I'm an experienced 1,000+ hour player so I know how to play the systems but it's more than doable.  The only time I've ever seen this game have food problems that were not really doable was early A17 were even I starved to death a few times.  But there are plenty of ways to handle it now with or without skill points invested.

It sounds like people are running into bugs.  I'd advise those people start a fresh save in Navezgane and see if the issue persists.  RWG has been buggy for me in multiple ways.  I was supposed to do dedicated testing today but I can't stop playing The Long Dark lol.  Gdammit I love 7DTD but The Long Dark is super good too and it still has that new wolf smell for me right now :D.

[HungryZombie]

The increased food usage is mildly annoying but it's easily managed by the increased amount of animals and the fact that they removed the food poisoning debuff from eating. 

 

The bears and wolves were a surprise but after a few days when I had enough arrows they are easily managed. You can't run away from them if you run in a straight line but you zig zag around a and over a hill or two and you can lose them. 

 

If you can jump up on one of those large rocks you can be safe also to shoot them. 

 

I have lots of meat before the 1st blood moon.

 

If you spot a wolf or a boar, just make a 2x2 stack of wood frames and go about 3-4 blocks high and make a shooting perch. Makes them trivial to kill and makes them free meat.

 

Don't try that with a bear though. Make a perch on the side of a wall or shoot from inside a building or just run!  Bear takes 40 arrows but the meat is worth it.

[meganoth]

38 minutes ago, HungryZombie said:

The increased food usage is mildly annoying but it's easily managed by the increased amount of animals and the fact that they removed the food poisoning debuff from eating. 

 

The bears and wolves were a surprise but after a few days when I had enough arrows they are easily managed. You can't run away from them if you run in a straight line but you zig zag around a and over a hill or two and you can lose them. 

 

If you can jump up on one of those large rocks you can be safe also to shoot them. 

 

I have lots of meat before the 1st blood moon.

 

If you spot a wolf or a boar, just make a 2x2 stack of wood frames and go about 3-4 blocks high and make a shooting perch. Makes them trivial to kill and makes them free meat.

 

Don't try that with a bear though. Make a perch on the side of a wall or shoot from inside a building or just run!  Bear takes 40 arrows but the meat is worth it.

Don't expect B163 to be the final version of this though, that patch went too far and is already dialed back for the next patch.

 

[Diggs]

On 7/11/2020 at 7:43 AM, meganoth said:

It is definitely possible that there is some bug involved. If it is no exxageration that you are standing still doing nothing and it drops then that is definitely a bug (as standing still should cost 0 stamina). Please make a bug report if you see that. Just hit F9 a few times (which makes a screenshot you will find in 7 Days to Die\Screenshots) and add these pictures to the bug report together with your logfile.

 

I'll try and do that the next time I play A19. Although, would a ss necessarily show the bug? I mean, how would the ss demonstrate when I was standing still in comparison to when I was moving? Would the log file validate them? Fairly new to this process and I've not submitted a bug report previously. Thanks for the reply.

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Diggs said:

I'll try and do that the next time I play A19. Although, would a ss necessarily show the bug? I mean, how would the ss demonstrate when I was standing still in comparison to when I was moving? Would the log file validate them? Fairly new to this process and I've not submitted a bug report previously. Thanks for the reply.

 

The screenshots are to make sure you didn't misinterpret what the UI tells you. The testers will generally assume people to be honest, but also assume them to be novices at bug testing. A sizable quantity of reported bugs are not bugs but misconfigurations of the game or wrong observations by players. Naturally a video would be even more convincing, but a series of photos is a lot easier to get for most players and the next best thing.

 

The log likewise is the best way to show them you did not misconfigure the game, did not forget to remove an old mod or even play with an old version of the game.

 

There is a sticky thread there you should read before posting, it explains how you find the log and how to best post it and what information you should give.

[Ralathar44]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

The screenshots are to make sure you didn't misinterpret what the UI tells you. The testers will generally assume people to be honest, but also assume them to be novices at bug testing. A sizable quantity of reported bugs are not bugs but misconfigurations of the game or wrong observations by players. Naturally a video would be even more convincing, but a series of photos is a lot easier to get for most players and the next best thing.

 

The log likewise is the best way to show them you did not misconfigure the game, did not forget to remove an old mod or even play with an old version of the game.

 

There is a sticky thread there you should read before posting, it explains how you find the log and how to best post it and what information you should give.

I'm a QA tester and this is 100% on point.  Players honestly tell you what they feel.  However what they feel and what really happened often diverge.  Lack of attentiveness, misremembering, ignorance of game mechanics, bias, etc are all things that interfere in the player communicating an accurate situation to the developers.  AND, even if the players communicate everything accurately, they players may not understand what the actual problem is as they interpret the problem to be something else.

Here's a good high profile real world game development example: Too Many Skags.  Articles as accurate and understandable as this are pretty rare.  Parsing player feedback (and even QA tester feedback) is quite an art.  It's not simple.  And even when you accurately identify every part of the situation perfectly as a developer there are often large groups of players with opposed interests and you have to choose what kind of game you're going to make.  Someone is always going to be unhappy with your changes.  All you can do is serve the largest audience possible (of your targeted core players) while also keeping to your vision or spirit of the game as much as possible.  It's a constant balancing act and sometimes the vision takes precedence and sometimes player feedback takes precedence.

It's doggone Ruff :).

[RipClaw]

14 hours ago, meganoth said:

Don't expect B163 to be the final version of this though, that patch went too far and is already dialed back for the next patch.

So I should hurry to complete the "Nail some chicks" quest. I haven't done that since Alpha 16 and right now I'm seeing more chickens than in A17 and A18 combined.

[Liesel Weppen]

7 hours ago, Diggs said:

I'll try and do that the next time I play A19. Although, would a ss necessarily show the bug? I mean, how would the ss demonstrate when I was standing still in comparison to when I was moving? Would the log file validate them? Fairly new to this process and I've not submitted a bug report previously. Thanks for the reply.

 

I'd suggest, make a screenshot where the ingame time is visible and also your stats screen where the exact food is shown. Then do whatever you do you are thinking it uses far to much food and tell what you did, best is to do something simple and repeatable, e.g. mining. Then do the screenshots again, so we can see how much food was used and how much time had passed. Also tell your skills and what tool you are using.

Then somebody else can crosstest if he consumes that much food too. If there turns out to be a big difference, it might be a bug.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

I'd suggest, make a screenshot where the ingame time is visible and also your stats screen where the exact food is shown. Then do whatever you do you are thinking it uses far to much food and tell what you did, best is to do something simple and repeatable, e.g. mining. Then do the screenshots again, so we can see how much food was used and how much time had passed. Also tell your skills and what tool you are using.

Then somebody else can crosstest if he consumes that much food too. If there turns out to be a big difference, it might be a bug.

Diggs seems to have observed food consumption even while standing still and doing nothing. If that is the case, doing mining would be counter-productive as a test.

 

[Maladon]

If I stand perfectly still and just watch my food meter I lose 1 food every 130 seconds. Is that how it's supposed to work?

[Boidster]

20 minutes ago, Maladon said:

If I stand perfectly still and just watch my food meter I lose 1 food every 130 seconds. Is that how it's supposed to work?

Happens to me as well. No stamina usage, but there is a sort of background food drain going on. Which makes sense to me.

[FA_Q2]

On 7/13/2020 at 12:30 PM, Maladon said:

If I stand perfectly still and just watch my food meter I lose 1 food every 130 seconds. Is that how it's supposed to work?

Not sure what the exact drain is but there is a latent food drain that occurs naturally even if you never move.  Then there is a drain on top of that to regain stamina.  Being the driver of a vehicle also increases the latent food drain.  I do not think that moving actually effects this - I believe the drain in a vehicle is increased by virtue of just being in the vehicle itself weather or not you are actually moving but I have not tested this.  I have no idea if passengers are under the same effects though.

[Liesel Weppen]

I just watched a stream series and they also had some food struggles in the beginning. However stamina usage was quite normal for A19.

They are now on day 7 and still struggle.

I assume because they have been short on food in the beginning they now eat almost everything just when they find some without paying attention to the food bar or even being hungry. Almost ful on food (like 10 missing) and found a hobo stew in burried supplies... eat it immediately... wasted...

If people play like this, it's now wonder they are permanently short on food...

I wonder even more since the foodbar was added to the UI again. Foor me it looks like people got used to not seeing the foodbar and just ate when they got hungry, although many also complained about the missing foodbar. Now they have the foodbar back again and don't pay attention to it.

[HungryZombie]

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

I just watched a stream series and they also had some food struggles in the beginning. However stamina usage was quite normal for A19.

They are now on day 7 and still struggle.

I assume because they have been short on food in the beginning they now eat almost everything just when they find some without paying attention to the food bar or even being hungry. Almost ful on food (like 10 missing) and found a hobo stew in burried supplies... eat it immediately... wasted...

If people play like this, it's now wonder they are permanently short on food...

I wonder even more since the foodbar was added to the UI again. Foor me it looks like people got used to not seeing the foodbar and just ate when they got hungry, although many also complained about the missing foodbar. Now they have the foodbar back again and don't pay attention to it.

I didn't know that overeating had been changed at first. You used to be able to overfill your food bar but they changed that to a 20% slower decrease or something like that. Those guys probably assumed overeating was still in effect.

[Liesel Weppen]

Yep, i know overeating was possible. Now the food applies slower, so you can still "reuse" "overeaten" food by burning food while the food timer is still ticking. But that are just a few minutes, so maybe during mining you can recover 5 points this way, but no way to do 50.

 

Not knowing that you can't overeat is a problem if you handle it like you could. They might also wonder why the foodbar decreases from full immediately when they are doing something.

[Lorca]

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

I just watched a stream series and they also had some food struggles in the beginning. However stamina usage was quite normal for A19.

They are now on day 7 and still struggle.

I assume because they have been short on food in the beginning they now eat almost everything just when they find some without paying attention to the food bar or even being hungry. Almost ful on food (like 10 missing) and found a hobo stew in burried supplies... eat it immediately... wasted...

If people play like this, it's now wonder they are permanently short on food...

I wonder even more since the foodbar was added to the UI again. Foor me it looks like people got used to not seeing the foodbar and just ate when they got hungry, although many also complained about the missing foodbar. Now they have the foodbar back again and don't pay attention to it.

So your take-away from watching that stream is that they're doing it wrong, rather than the game needs to be balanced because the common person struggles. Interesting.

[Liesel Weppen]

21 minutes ago, Lorca said:

So your take-away from watching that stream is that they're doing it wrong, rather than the game needs to be balanced because the common person struggles. Interesting.

7d2d is a survival game and not the simplest one (and that is good!). If you are not able to look up the foodbar, it might be the wrong game for you, if not to say the whole wrong genre. If you go for the overeating, the current mechanic is better, because overeating was not visibile in any way. That somehow overeating even was possible, was just recognizable by the foodbar not immediately going down. How much overeating was possible, could only be probably discovered by looking up some xmls.

 

And besides of that changing the balancing of food in whatever way doesn't change anything in that case, they are still doing it WRONG. Or in more polite words: They do it very inefficient.

[Boidster]

59 minutes ago, Lorca said:

So your take-away from watching that stream is that they're doing it wrong, rather than the game needs to be balanced because the common person struggles. Interesting.

It could be both. Eating a stew when you only are a few points down on food is definitely not a smart thing to do, AKA "ur doin it rong". At the same time, stamina drain might need some balance.

[Boidster]

16 hours ago, FA_Q2 said:

Being the driver of a vehicle also increases the latent food drain.  I do not think that moving actually effects this - I believe the drain in a vehicle is increased by virtue of just being in the vehicle itself weather or not you are actually moving but I have not tested this.

I just tested this. From what I could tell, movement does affect food drain in a vehicle.

 

Activity	Seconds to 1st Food Point Lost
Standing Still	50
Sitting on Motorcycle (not moving)	50
Driving Motorcycle at standard speed	47
Driving Motorcycle at high speed	42

 

[Liesel Weppen]

BTW: Food goes down if you stand still and not even watch around. Currently my food goes down, even if i stand still. You can even watch the stats page and look it gowing down. I started watching with 45 food and im down to 40 now. All the time just watching the stats page. It seems to tick down 1 food per 30s. That would mean with 60minute days, you burn 5 food every ingame hour.

 

Idea, since im hungry already, i don't have my full stamina quota. I could imagine that there is a bug, filling up stamina all the time if it is not maxed, constantly burning food?

 

But that observation somehow messes up my burried supplies. It took me 4 hours for one quest, and with that i would have burned 20 food in the same time without doing anything.

Edit: Wrong, ate something, i'm at 73/126 now, still ticking down 1 every 30s.

 

I just wanted to mention additionally, because some people always tell there is no food used if you stand still.

[gurutar]

the amount of animals is getting a huge nerf in the next patch.

 

as far as hunger, you do have to eat a little too often, but i find as long as i'm hitting the right poi's with a lot of cupboards i stay pretty loaded on food. also the new shamway grocery store is much better than the old shamway poi's.

[JCrook1028]

5 hours ago, Lorca said:

So your take-away from watching that stream is that they're doing it wrong, rather than the game needs to be balanced because the common person struggles. Interesting.

If you're eating a hobo stew when only 10 down on hunger you ARE doing it wrong. You are just throwing most of that meal away. Fact.