Metabolism traits are so bad

[Khornet]

So I can no longer start the game as a fat ♥♥♥♥ or a skeleton and "work it out" through gameplay by losing or gaining weight. Not only is it a PERMANENT malus now (because you either lose or gain weight faster), but it's only worth 2 negative points?

I get the smoker nerf, but this feels entirely unnecessary.

I also have no idea if it's possible to gain/lose certain traits, like the physical ones (Athletic/Strong out of the positives Weal/Puny out of the negatives), seeing how they want to make traits more inflexible.

[Quineloe]

Originally posted by Eve:

Originally posted by Neskess:

Quick reminder: ALWAYS pick slow metabolism "negative"(lmao) trait. Thank me later

is a measly two points enough to warrant it?

The thing is that calories in this game are excessively off. They're way too low for the food they represent. You generate only 65 ish hunger per day. increased activity doesn't actually make your hunger rise faster (which is not how the human body works, you absolutely can work up an appetite)

Even assuming an idle lifestyle without further draining your calories, if all you ate was bacon, you'd still lose weight because 4 pieces of cooked bacon will give you 72 hunger, and only give you 640 calories.

If you actually looked at how much bacon 640 calories worth of bacon are, there's no way you'd be satiated an entire day on that.
So if you ate normally, you'll rapidly lose weight in PZ, and slow metabolism counters this problem. TIS offset this problem by giving a select few food items such as caught fish INSANE calorie values. They never properly balanced the system. So either you fish, you trap, or you overeat normal food.

[Selevan]

Bottom line: we just need to wait for the mods

[OttosTheName]

There is nothing the devs fear more than anything being OP.

Cars used as weapons? Wet cardboard now. Spear OP? Spear is now not even feasible. OP traits? 1 point and nerfed to hell. Or just gone entirely.

This has been how they change the game for many years now. They look at how people like to play and they break the meta by turning it upside down.

It's really rough. You actually need 10 strength, 10 fitness, combat boosts to do any real killing. I know it's supposed to be a slower game, but it already was a slower game and it just got incredibly boring. (And that's coming from somebody that doesn't mind the grind of clearing an entire city in CDDA)

[Neskess]

Originally posted by OttosTheName:

There is nothing the devs fear more than anything being OP.

Cars used as weapons? Wet cardboard now. Spear OP? Spear is now not even feasible. OP traits? 1 point and nerfed to hell. Or just gone entirely.

This has been how they change the game for many years now. They look at how people like to play and they break the meta by turning it upside down.

It's really rough. You actually need 10 strength, 10 fitness, combat boosts to do any real killing. I know it's supposed to be a slower game, but it already was a slower game and it just got incredibly boring. (And that's coming from somebody that doesn't mind the grind of clearing an entire city in CDDA)

Yeah I saw big hordes at Echo Creek gun range, and though to myself ''No way im fighting that army with melee, molotov cheese time'' and then I learned(on steam forum) that your character is a re*ard that can't put cloth into the flask to make molotov without recipe.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by OttosTheName:

There is nothing the devs fear more than anything being OP.

Cars used as weapons? Wet cardboard now. Spear OP? Spear is now not even feasible. OP traits? 1 point and nerfed to hell. Or just gone entirely.

This has been how they change the game for many years now. They look at how people like to play and they break the meta by turning it upside down.

It's really rough. You actually need 10 strength, 10 fitness, combat boosts to do any real killing. I know it's supposed to be a slower game, but it already was a slower game and it just got incredibly boring. (And that's coming from somebody that doesn't mind the grind of clearing an entire city in CDDA)

That's what puzzles me. A lot of the changes have no real point other than adding to the time it takes you to do things. Pure time sinks. Why lol? If anything you would think they would want people testing the actual new features and not be bogged down just getting to it. Bad timing at best.

Lets be real, the game released years back. They can hide under the early access title, but its just abusing it. Making major changes to the core gameplay loop of an eleven year old game is risky and could backfire spectacularly. It's their game though. I got my moneys worth long ago.

[wirewitch]

I think they should cost more points, maybe 4.

And they should have a over/under weight category thats separate of the metabolic trait, so we can have that normal metabolism, but we're a little late on shedding that 'christmas weight'.

[Logantron]

Originally posted by Eve:

Underweight/overweight was basically just free points in the previous build. I will say they should probably raise the negative point amount because its a pretty huge undertaking to have this much of a disadvantage

You had a harder early game and had to work to remedy those issues. How is that free?

[way2co0l_2003]

Originally posted by Logantron:

Originally posted by Eve:

Underweight/overweight was basically just free points in the previous build. I will say they should probably raise the negative point amount because its a pretty huge undertaking to have this much of a disadvantage

You had a harder early game and had to work to remedy those issues. How is that free?

They were exceptionally easy to deal with to the point where they were automatic choices every single game. The long term effects has a chance to make some players second guess that choice.

[Swanky]

I always liked starting as over or underweight. Maybe a bit too easy to work around with PZ's food abundance in 41 but hey, if the entire population is suddenly dead there's bound to be a lot of left overs.
But I also liked mods implementing other traits not being permanent, like smoker or alcoholic. You can absolutely shake those traits irl, but in a zombie apocalypse it should be hard, and being perma panicked and depressed for 2 months certainly had its drawbacks.
You could probably just take slow metabolism and enjoy not having to eat as much and still stay on weight target.
A lot of things have been nerfed or (artificially) slowed down. A lot of added micro management. A lot of it is fun, or at least interesting to the survival players but I feel a lot of things are just there to take away from the core aspect of the game: to be fun.

[Loonessia]

Originally posted by Khornet:

The feedback I've seen on other places regarding the new calories/weight gain/loss system is that it's completely broken - you regularly need to eat like 8 full meals every in-game day to be actively gaining weight.
So yeah, I'm putting a checkmark under this as another untested tediumcore rework. Another reason to wait for a couple of patches, I guess...

Oh yeah, I have to eat full tubs of ice cream on normal metabolism to actually "Gain weight"

[Jet]

Originally posted by Khornet:

The feedback I've seen on other places regarding the new calories/weight gain/loss system is that it's completely broken - you regularly need to eat like 8 full meals every in-game day to be actively gaining weight.
So yeah, I'm putting a checkmark under this as another untested tediumcore rework. Another reason to wait for a couple of patches, I guess...

it really is too much. im already 63kg and dropping every day. Theres not enough food

[way2co0l_2003]

Originally posted by Jet:

Originally posted by Khornet:

The feedback I've seen on other places regarding the new calories/weight gain/loss system is that it's completely broken - you regularly need to eat like 8 full meals every in-game day to be actively gaining weight.
So yeah, I'm putting a checkmark under this as another untested tediumcore rework. Another reason to wait for a couple of patches, I guess...

it really is too much. im already 63kg and dropping every day. Theres not enough food

Depends on the loot settings you play on but I haven't had any trouble finding enough food. I got the mod that shows all the bars so I can keep track of calories, and as long as you keep yourself over 3k calories then you'll continue gaining weight quickly. Ice creams, candies, ham, anything that has a high calorie count will work. Once you get into animal husbandry or fishing then you'll have a replenishable source of meat to ensure you don't have to worry. Trying to sustain through rabbit food types of playthroughs may be tougher to get the number of calories you need.

[PKPenguin]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3387723299 :P

[Foster]

Originally posted by CaptainBinky:

Originally posted by DrLamp:

I used to start my characters as obese, weak and unfit. So, zero strength, zero fitness and fat as hell on top of it. ROUGH start, but with work (and LOTS of it) you can become a lean mean zombie killing machine.

The ability to load yourself up with particularly temporary issues and work your way out of them (such in, for example, the CDDA challenge) is an important aspect of the game. I can see why these sorts of free traits were changed to be inline with all the other traits which are permanent, but I'm sure there's some way in the future that we can work something in.

I'm thinking of maybe an additional part of character creation to customise starting penalties - like the things in the CDDA challenge, but each optional. So, for instance, starting the game obese, or drunk, or incredibly tired, or anything else which can produce problematic moodle consequences. On the flip side, you could also give yourself a boost by starting the game well fed, etc.

So yeah, I think there is a way to satisfy you - we'd just need to think about how the best way to do that is - whether it should tie into trait points, be its own point system thing, or be a sandbox thing, etc.

I personally quite like the idea of what amount to micro-mutators for your start, it seems like a more reasonable way to handle temporary challenging traits that used to exist while also allowing another degree of min/maxing for people who like that kind of thing.

On the flipside, I think I largely have to agree with others that the new metabolism traits are overtuned to lean far more towards the negative for how little they actually grant in terms of points.
They're worth less than cowardly, a trait that is inherently impermanent by virtue of the game having a mechanic that makes you lose panic faster than you could ever possibly gain it after a certain amount of time survived, that makes zero sense with their permanency let alone with how overactive they actually are.