Food Overhaul

Gameplay
#1

Here are some ideas I had to make eating work better because as it is now all I do is have Henry eat bread and cabbage all day. If I need some energy I’ll chow down on 20 carrots.

  1. Depreciating returns on food. If I eat one item, the next time I eat it within a short time should give me less of a return. In real life we don’t like eating the same food over and over… I shouldn’t be able (or have to) to eat 5 chickens or 5 heads of cabbage in order to boost my nourishment.

  2. More nourishment from protein rich meals (meats & legumes). A whole chicken gives me very little nourishment (16). This means that a full chicken, that has tons of protein, has less nourishment than a loaf of bread (17) and I also lose energy from it whereas with bread I don’t. Getting a meal of legumes (like lentils which are high in protein) gives me less nourishment (8) than a loaf of bread (17). Why should I ever eat anything that contains protein? If I sat down and ate a full chicken right now I’d be stuffed. There’s really no incentive to do anything but eat bread & cabbage for every single meal… two things that have almost no protein.

  3. Inns & Taverns should serve hot meals. I should be able to go to a tavern and have Henry buy a small, medium, or large meal or maybe just streamline it so that said meal gets nourishment to 100 and the price depends on how hungry you are. It would be an easy way to fill up while in towns and would be better than just going to the inn keeper and buying 4 loaves of bread.

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#2

Regarding 1 & 2, meat items are overpowered. It’s easy to eat too much by consuming meat items. A good, healthy diet is a chronic behavior; KCD treats food as an immediate acting drug. There needs to be a lag time, and the contribution of each food item to overall nutritional status needs to be lessened. fwiw, think both KCD and RDR2 have really good design intent but both are flawed

Regarding 3, KCD has an incomplete meal mechanic. Can’t even sit, order and consume food and drink from a tavern table in the hamlet that you are bailiff for

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#3

Sorry if you check these people ate what was in season. What was in season was usually baked in the bread. The bread was as hard as a rock and they soaked it in drink or some kind of broth. But what should be the question is why can’t Hal find more wild vegetables or berries. He seems to know the difference between good and poisonous mushrooms.

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#4

I think legumes & nuts were much more common for the poor when it came to protein. Meat was something that the rich ate more often. Someone who was poor probably only had meat a few times a year during feasts.

Meat should probably be much difficult to find outside of poaching and when eating with nobles or at least a lot more expensive. Maybe fish would be more common, not sure. However, being that Henry is an expert poacher and also starts making himself some nice amounts of cash as the game goes along, he would probably be able to eat more meat.

It is another thing that’s interesting to consider as well. There’s no real risk to poaching. There should be a bit more risk to it if Henry is rolling through town with his huge collection of poached meats on his horse.

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#5

Would be nice if you could just stop at 100 nutrition. The overeating thing should be a conscious decision. Typically the only time I’d want him to overeat is if I was about to go to bed that way I don’t wake up starving. However, i think the mechanic is a bit sloppy since you have to always calculate in order to stay just under 100.

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#6

I agree that keeping one’s nutrition level at <= 100 is a PITA. Agree the food system could use a rework or two, but I’m less annoyed by that.

Just having a constant nutrition indicator (or option to have one) in ALL SCREENS would go a long way toward addressing the PITA “try not to overeat challenge.” Another option would be an popup that requests user confirmation in put any time Henry is about to eat anything which would send him to 101 or greater. Depends on how hard either option would be to program, though if options to enable / disable were deemed essential it might not make any difference.

I mean, com’n Devs: stop and think about it. Henry has this great perk “Balanced Diet,” he has to keep his “nutrition” level between 50 and 100 to maintain it. ONE POINT above or below that threshold and he loses it and then has to maintain it for 5 days to get it back. Fairly reasonable game mechanic, except that: you do not provide the user with decent “tools” to make maintaining it less of a tedious grind.

Lets say you are at 75 and don’t intend to need to use any potions or alcohol for a while, but do intend to be doing something where time will pass and you don’t want to risk going below 50.

So you open up your character sheet, switch to the Stats tab, scroll to the bottom, and observe yep, I’m now at 74 . . . now you have to switch to the Inventory Tab and then the food tab (okay what do I have to eat . . .) . . . do the quick math . . . which is not a big deal but, when one has done this whole process for the 1000th time, one’s patience wears thin and one might not recall that . . . oh yeah, pretzel is “6” or was it “7”?? So you might well wind up typing “Q” and hover over your food items . . . Okay so I got bread which is 17, beer which is 7, pretzel is 6, So beer and pretzel is 13, bread and pretzel is 23 . . . 74+23 is 97 . . . okay cool . . . MUNCH, MUNCH, OH SHIT! I accidentally misclicked and at the Bread and the sausage! Now my butt will look fat in this waffenrack! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

#8

i think one of the problems is food’s impact on nutrition/health level is linear.

i think of food and diet in 4 ‘states’ or ‘stages’:
(1) starving - this isn’t a state achieved by missing a meal or two … or even from fasting for a day. this is chronic food deprivation that has significant adverse impact on performance. Henry in this state should suffer noticeable penalties in stamina, strength mobility, etc. moving from the bottom to the top of this stage should take more than a one off bout of eating 3 units of dried salami.
(2) maintenance - this state should be a fairly easy state to maintain if Henry eats with some regularity. this state should be neutral (no bonuses or penalties). the amount of food consumed at the bottom end of the range to the top end should again be more than 3 units of dried salami. the tapeworm debuff should narrow this window.
(3) peak - this state should have a narrow window but should confer performance bonuses. there needs to be a (very) small window to go from maintenance to peak (eg, 1 or 2 units of dried salami or lentil gruel). it should be tough to keep within this window (vigilance required).
(4) excess - this state shouldn’t be hard to achieve with a lot of eating, but in line with what you said, this should be knowable. 2 units of dried salami might be extra food for a single day but to jump to this state that extra has to be repeated. penalties should be applied to this state; exception might be strength

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#9

I think maybe a digestion metric could actually help out. It would give each type of food a purpose.
Meats - Slow digestion. High nutrition. Medium Energy cost.
Legumes - Medium digestion. Medium nutrition. Energy neutral or low energy cost.
Carbs - Fast Digestion. Medium nutrition. Increases energy that burns off quickly.
Vegetables - Increases digestion of other food items consumed within a 5 minute period. Low nutrition.

There are obviously other types of foods like cheese, honey, etc. and those can follow a similar system. Each type of food would then have some sort of purpose. Meat could be used to gain a huge bump in nutrition at the cost of energy. However, it also takes longer to digest. Carbs can be used for a quick jolt of nutrition and energy especially if you’re stuck in the woods somewhere. Vegetables can help with digestion and therefore could be eaten when you’ve overeaten to help speed up digestion.

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#10

You guys want something “complicated,” and if they can make that work it sounds fantastic!

I just want: the option to have a nutrition level indicator in ALL SCREENS! so that keeping nutrition from going over 100 is less of a PITA. :wink:

#11

Prokop did his masters on derivatives. modeling this is a piece of cake.

one could manipulate the values (retain linearity) and get less distortion

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#12

Cool! Then a few more option toggles in the settings panes should be a breeze :smiley:

#13

likes:
-food impact on health (KCD & RDR2)
-ability to purchase meals or dishes (processed food) from taverns (eg lentil mash in KCD) (KCD & RDR2)
-harvesting (some) animals provides more than just meat (KCD & RDR2)
-food items based on history (KCD)
-game harvesting reflects historical, prestige goods aspect of meat (KCD)
-meat quantity available from animal harvest (KCD)
-ability to store raw foods (KCD)
-perishability of foods (both raw and prepared) (KCD)
-game re-spawning appears to have a lag (overharvesting depletes game in area) (KCD)
-can create some things with harvested non-meat bits (eg feather can be added to hats) (RDR2)
-can turn in meat to group of interest and impacts reputation (very limited in KCD, only in beggar’s feast & Pribyslavitz start up; RDR2)
-can sell harvested meat (KCD & RDR2)
-can harvest non-meat items (eg currants) (RDR2)
-ability to prepare meals/dishes at designated sites (eg, oregano venison at campsites with simple NPC animations) (RDR2)
-health effect of prepared meals/dishes (eg, oregano venison improves stamina) (RDR2)
-ability to store meals/dishes you’ve prepared (RDR2)
-limited storage capacity of food items (eg max of 10 oregano venison) (RDR2)
-variety of game animals (RDR2)

dislikes:
-eating is too asocial/impersonal (let’s have a feast! for added reputation benefit especially Pribyslavitz) (KCD and RDR2)
-meat is overpowered (1-3 units of meat and bang… full health) (KCD & RDR2)
-food has no lag time (digestion takes time) (makes food too much like a health cheat) (KCD & RDR2)
-can’t harvest non-meat foods (raiding gardens is probably one of the first things refugees will try) (KCD; though crops such as garlic cannot be harvested in KCD & RDR2)
-seasonal availability of food seems to be ignored (the world is a Walmart grocery store; apple harvest is roughly Sept-Oct) (KCD & RDR2)
-can’t combine foods as prepared meals (eg, garlic and pork) (KCD)
-can’t derive health effect from prepared meals beyond simple nutriture (KCD)
-can’t make much with extra harvested bits (eg pelts) (KCD - criminal we have a huntsmen & pelts and nothing done with them; RDR2 limited to one off creations)
-overpowered perishability (overall rate seems too fast) (KCD)
-not limited in amount of harvested meat that can be transported (really? a whole red deer on a horse along with armor, weapons, etc?!) (KCD)
-amount of harvested meat is too limited (2-4 venison steaks from a whole frickin elk? are you nuts?!) (RDR2)
-immortal food storage (RDR2)
-continuous respawning of game animals without apparent lag (distorts potential of hunter role) (RDR2)
-restricted number of animals and harvestable items (KCD)

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