Incentive to cook or buy food items?

[Serath]

I think there needs to be more incentive to cook food. The barman's food is dirt cheap. Yes, the cooked food are physical items that you can eat anywhere, but if you were to awake at 7:00 AM and go out, you generally don't even need to eat or drink (the latter only if you sprinted a lot it seems) until the end of the day, and even then it may only be at white level. Eat again, go to sleep, wake up, rinse and repeat.

It's nice that the hunger pacing is not over bearing and sorta like real life, but there's a lot of food items out there that I have no desire to bother cooking or learning how to make due to the time it takes to get the ingredients.

I think an idea would be for cooked food that the player makes themselves to provide buffs, while as the Barman's food is nondescript with no buffs, essentially making it the quick and easy option but no benefits beyond satiation.

[savage1]

I find thirst and energy deplete pretty quick when carrying heavier packs and sprinting. I would like to see more incentive to cook though but as you say the bar snacks are super cheap.

[RicWalker]

its quite funny. a year ago there were no barman snacks and everyone and their mothers complained, so the barman got his snacks to sell about half a year ago. now people ask for a change again because its so cheap that they dont bother with cooking.

The irony the devs must feel.

[Otleaz]

It was pretty lame originally, since you pretty much always bought the milk, bread, and water from the barman anyways. You don't really feel any need to scavenge food, when that should be a huge priority.

The implementation was just clunky, unfortunately. Especially water, which you should just be able to gather and purify yourself.

[Serath]

Originally posted by RicWalker:

its quite funny. a year ago there were no barman snacks and everyone and their mothers complained, so the barman got his snacks to sell about half a year ago. now people ask for a change again because its so cheap that they dont bother with cooking.

The irony the devs must feel.

I wouldn't know. I only have a total of 30 hours in this game and 99% of that was only within the past week.

Then again, I am playing only in the beginning difficulty since the 1% I played months ago I was getting my ass handed to me, but judging by everyone's answer here it doesn't seem like starting over and upping the difficulty a notch changes much, at least as far as hunger goes.

[Suwako]

I feel like the solution is really simple, or is it just me?

-Barman fills food/thirst up as he has been. this satisfies people who want a quick easy solution to "survival" (maybe a slight increase in price, as its currently basically free)

As for those who want to venture into the culinary arts;

-Early game cooked food fills up bars AND provides a single day-long buff, which is overwritten if you eat something else INCLUDING barman bar refills or it expires 24h later. For early game buffs that would be stamina regen boost, more weight carry, slight aim cone reduction, small speed boost, faster search speed, decrease chance of bleeding on hit, increased healing effectiveness, slightly faster item use speed.

-Late game cooking using harder to get materials from dangerous monsters or zones would give a small but steady health regen or total health buff/total stamina buff, large increases in carrying capacity, large speed buffs, increased memory (see enemies after leaving line of sight, which adds on to the weapon skill), slight increase to natural anomaly defenses/minor increase to bullet/melee damage, bleeding immunity, radiation protection that adds to your total, allowing you to take suits you normally wouldn't be able to.

Buff up, not down. If you FORCE people to cook, they'll hate it. if you give them a REASON to cook, they'll be more accepting. This also gives those who already like to cook for immersion another incentive to go looking for rare creepy-crawlies so their only reason for cooking isnt "My immersion" or "Barman is too easy and convenient/cheap"

Basically, this way those who dont care about going out of their way to cook or dont want the kitchen module because they think scavenger is more important can still play as they have been with the added benefit that workbench recipes will give minimal but some-what useful food boosts that might entice them into replacing a module later down the line.

Everyone is a winner, and we give the current arguably worst module a reason to exist.

[dadotg]

I still use cooking, to make coffee and tea, Also you find so much food anyway, you would not need the barman, it's just nice to have, you can sleep and then fill up to be ready.

[Keyboard Cowboy]

Originally posted by RicWalker:

its quite funny. a year ago there were no barman snacks and everyone and their mothers complained, so the barman got his snacks to sell about half a year ago. now people ask for a change again because its so cheap that they dont bother with cooking.

The irony the devs must feel.

I think the point of the OP is to buff food items, not remove the barman's refill options.

[Serath]

Originally posted by Suwako:

I feel like the solution is really simple, or is it just me?

I mean, you literally just repeated the idea I said, just in more detail, so no, you're not the only one.

[RicWalker]

Personally i dont like buffs on food.

the way hunger and thirst work right now is just fine. it could be more sparse in the run. right now any hunter and bandit you run across has food items in their inventory.
Was way less in the "good ol' days" a year ago. even in the vending machines.

So yeah. my solution would be to make food more rare to come across in the runs, delete the refill bars for rubels again from the game.
That way people might actually collect some meat again from animal kills and loot coal to save rubels by making sandwitches.

I never use the barmans refills and dont feel like its a hassle or money bleed.

The only mentainance that really is troublesome in the game is the repair costs of class 4 and 5 armors. be it in cash or in mterials to craft the repair kits on the workbench.
A drill and 100 scraps for the repair box? WTF...
and if you have built the repair station and class 5 armor still at 60&: 100 weapon parts and 60 scraps...

ouch. Still cheaper than to have to buy a new one, but ouch.