Difficulty shouldn't affect food/water intake

[Zetyr]

Just a thought, but why not be one of the few survival games that doesn't ramp up food and water intake with difficulty?

I'll start with I'm speaking from experience on this one. As I said in a separate post, I've been an "out in the country" person all my life and I'm also a wartime veteran who has spent weeks at a time away from base roughing it.

When you're active, yes your body does need more calories. You will get hungrier than those days just spent lounging about. However, there's a very finite point that you're able to eat after an active day. The body will want a couple good, filling meals, and that's it. Overeating on a day that you've been active (to a survival level) actually gets painful. For me, I would try to have a solid breakfast and a solid dinner, no lunch. Even then too, if I overdid it on whatever I had for breakfast it would kill my entire morning and I would feel horrible.

I feel the amount of food required on normal is actually very reasonable. When I started on that difficulty it felt right for my daily schedule of what I remembered. Eat/drink in the morning, one course and half a canteen. Do my daily activities drinking a canteen over that entire time. Then eat a solid dinner and drink another canteen.

On Very hard I find myself eating multiple "steaks", eggs, and fruits, PER MEAL just to keep up. I would have never done that IRL. Also the amount of times I need to drink is unrealistic. Sure, military motto is HYDRATE!, but it still is a few sips at a time over the course of a day. You don't sit there and finish a canteen in one sitting unless you're done for the day.

*I will say there's one exception to this. When you're recovering from something, then yes, more calories and rest make a ton of difference.*

I would suggest instead, put all the harder difficulty in the other aspects of the game. Make the animals deadly (which they can be IRL). Make the status conditions harder (which they especially are IRL). Make the crafting odds hard (which they absolutely would be for a new survivor). Make the firestarting hard (once again, new survivor, it ABSOLUTELY would be). Just leave the food and water amounts alone though since that part honestly has never made sense in any survival game. It has always driven me crazy in the past to have to eat multiple courses per meal in games like Green Hell and other realistic type survivals.

Of course, just a suggestion and please don't take my passion for the subject as trying to push you into a change you do/don't want to do. I just would love to see a game that sticks to realistic food amounts.

[themany]

I do sports sometimes, i am over fed after 1 steak. Our guy can eat 4 in a row. Your words speak truth.

I enjoyed every moment of very hard, tottaly like challenge.

[Zetyr]

I agree, I'm enjoying the Very Hard except for the food part. I love how much I fail crafts, how I sometimes spend half the day getting the fire going, and how status effects actually mean something compared to normal where it's just another icon next to my eternally red clothing icons. I honestly wouldn't even mind if those parts were a little harder as a trade-off for less food requirement.

[themany]

They said, they are working on custom sliders for things like hunger, thirst, enemy spawns in one of replies to negative game reviews,

[Zetyr]

That's good to know. Sliders can solve a ton of problems for a lot of survival games. I really liked how they did that in No Man's Sky (the sliders, not the survival). All the sliders that didn't make that big of a difference didn't mess with achievements, but there were a few sliders that did. That way you'd still feel the victory for a really hard playthrough even if you turned off something trivial. I would personally always turn off the ship damage that occured while your shields were still up. I could afford the repairs, I just thought it was annoying to have to repair for basically every single dogfight even if I didn't take significant damage.

[themany]

Kind of want sliders to have connection to existing difficulty modes, so as not to keep guessing where at which level they should be.

[Zetyr]

You mean to actually know what's increased and what's the same?

[themany]

Originally posted by Zetyr:

You mean to actually know what's increased and what's the same?

Yes, lardmarks for easy normal hard and very hard levels. To be able to fit somewhere in between them.

I suggest amount blocked for blocking slider, currently blocking negates 98% damage which is quite over powered.

[Zetyr]

Originally posted by themany:

currently blocking negates 98% damage which is quite over powered.

LOL I noticed that. When I played normal. I honestly thought it blocked all damage until I fought the boss Jackal. I guess we're playing as Ponce de Leon's personal martial artist.

That sorta thing would be nice. I've been wondering if experience for levels is affected in difficulty levels. It feels like it is, but then again at a higher difficulty everything is more challenging so that might just be a feeling and nothing more. Definitely specific amounts would be appreciated.

I will say as a side-note, I love that Perma-death is a separate option. Too many games force combine it on the hardest difficulty. Good on the devs for giving the option.

[themany]

Iron man never worked for me... accidents happen.

I am happy with 5 faints.