A17 Thoughts: Stamina

[Windhund]

After playing to Day 10 in Warrior mode, I find A17 to be a marked improvement over A16. I covered the one glaring exception (the level gate). Now I want to talk about the changes to stamina which is 90% great, but with one problem.

 

✅ Food, Water, Stamina, and Health

 

I like the new system. I like how food, water, stamina, and health all interact to make it feel more like a *survival* game. I particularly like how max stamina is tied to how well fed you are making food more than just a button you press when the game says you're hungry. Being hungry makes your character feel weaker.

 

And definitely superior to the agonizingly slow "wellness" system where one bad death spiral could erase days and days of drinking tea. Though I'm not a huge fan of the new death debuff. I'd rather see an overall drop in maxes which I can recover from through good planning and player action than a punitive debuff timer I can't do anything about but wait. See a theme? No arbitrary waiting!

 

✅Stamina and Combat

 

Stamina management has become central to melee combat, and I like it. It adds an extra variable to combat that could get monotonous in A16. You have to hold a bit of reserve when sprinting. Getting surprised by zombies can be very bad if they catch you with low stamina. It keeps power attacks from being overpowered. Spamming power attacks will leave you exhausted and vulnerable. And it adds another thing to decide whether to spend your precious skill points on.

 

⛔Stamina and Early Game Harvesting

 

This is the problem. The low rate of harvesting with a quality 2 stone axe you're stuck with early game, combined with the now increased stamina drain, makes harvesting even slower and duller. *Dink* *Dink* *Dink* Wait. Wait. Wait. *Dink* *Dink* *Dink* Wait. Wait. Wait. Harvesting is already monotonous. Waiting for a bar to refill every 10 seconds is even worse.

 

💡Never Stop Harvesting

 

Harvesting should drain stamina, there's no question. Blindly hacking away at a rock in the middle of the wasteland should leave you vulnerable when a vulture or zombie creeps up behind you. This is good. The problem is the low stamina interruptions make harvesting even more monotonous. Like how when you're on hold a voice cutting in to remind you you're on hold makes it even worse.

 

The solution is simple: make harvesting drain stamina, but low stamina doesn't prevent harvesting. This lets players happily harvest without interruption while still making them vulnerable to attack. And since harvesting still drains stamina there's still a consequence to harvesting while sprinting.

 

The harvesting rate can even be tweaked to keep the overall rate the same. Just don't go back to the old system where low stamina meant less harvesting. Then it's back to *Dink* *Dink* *Dink* Wait. Wait. Wait.

 

💡Have Harvesting Affect Your Condition

 

To compensate for endless harvesting, harvesting could raise your felt temperature (sometimes a good thing, often a bad thing), drain your fluids, and make you hungry at a faster than normal rate. This gives too much harvesting a wear-and-tear consequence.

 

In sum, harvesting is already monotonous enough without also being interrupted with "please hold, your harvesting is very important to us". Waiting at night in the dark with zombies growing outside: tense. Waiting for a bar to refill every 10 seconds so you can click on a rock some more: boring.

 

What's your thoughts?