Survival. Drinking and eating (too much)

[Falcon]

My early impression is - too much eating and too much drinking. By far.

I'd like to ask for your opinions on the following solutions to aforementioned issue;

Solution A: Make irradiated water way more harmful [in survival mode], so one cant just go unprepared and drink from any puddle. Same with food somehow perhaps - make it rare, perhaps eating meat from wild mutated animals would give likely sicknesses, even after thermal processing... Just want to eat and drink less often, as its just annoying, repetitive thing with no real value associated - I mean by this: food and water is everywhere around, its super easy to come by, perhaps less people starve over there than in the modern world... and it was supposed to be post-apo, hence I would love to be super-happy to get a piece of good quality food after killing a deathclaw solely for that purpose - to get some food.

Solution B: I dont have it, perhaps you do?

[Insomniac Jack]

I think some of the reasons they added such a high frequency to your hunger/thirst rate was to offset the trvial accessibility to food and water, or to highlight the new features at all time.

The best solution in my opinion would be drastically decreasing general loot spawns, yet leaving it unchanged for certain dangerous/populated areas (eg: super duper mart, diamond city) and placing more of it within locked containers. I want finding a some nuka cola quantum to feel like I won the loterry. This goes without saying but, they should also decrease the hunger/thirst rate accordingly.

[Dracon]

I honestly dont feel like Im having to eat or drink to much. I mean when you exhert yourself, you burn energy and need to replenish so...if your running alot or some other things, its obviously gonna wear down faster.

[Insomniac Jack]

Originally posted by Dracon:

I honestly dont feel like Im having to eat or drink to much. I mean when you exhert yourself, you burn energy and need to replenish so...if your running alot or some other things, its obviously gonna wear down faster.

That's a good point, but still, the rate at which it's required in survival beta makes it feel like a quest to morbid obesity.

[Vinnie Mack]

not that it matters, but i will weigh in on this too. The drinking seems to be a bit excessive. But i am not sure. Someone on some thread mentioned the fact that we are very active in the game. No couch potatos in this game. So it makes sense that we would need to eat and drink more. Kind of like the football players swilling gatorade every time they come to the sidelines. What doesn't make sense is to need to drink and eat a lot when you are building your settlements. If they made the drink/feature somehow based on how much activity you had in a given time period, it might make more sense. They could have it be based on how much agility you use. If you use no agility, eat and drink a set amount of time.

[Puppet Pal Clem]

i agree, i think they should make the eating and drinking a little more realistic. It should only take 3 meals to throughout the day to keep you from starving.. Just like in real life.

[Vinnie Mack]

even as it is, it is usually only a small irritation. Once you get a purifier going at Sanctuary, it starts making pure water you can grab on your way down the road. And food is fairly abundant. And there are the crops.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Drinking too much?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEGo41443iI

More seriously, it's probably related to the timescale, which is bizarrely quick.

It *should* be related to time of year (thirstier in a Boston summer) but there's practically no evidence of seasons outside of the Christmas holiday decorations in Diamond City, IIRC.

[Vinnie Mack]

i wonder if resetting time scale will ♥♥♥♥ up the new survival mode (once we get console commands back). I like to play real time.

[admiral.lols]

Soft,weak.

[admiral.lols]

I see nothing wrong with the frequency of eating and drinking, if it didn't go that fast it wouldn't even be a factor to worry about. Stop trying to come up with excuses as to why you can't handle it.

[Falcon]

Originally posted by Vinnie Mack:

even as it is, it is usually only a small irritation. Once you get a purifier going at Sanctuary, it starts making pure water you can grab on your way down the road. And food is fairly abundant. And there are the crops.

Sure the deal is not a big one here, but take another look please. It is not fun to gather food as it stands now. Why? Because despite apocalypse, we have food and drink galore. It takes zero trying to "get a single piece of edible meat" or get yourself a glass of clean water, while in Fallout 3 main story was all about water scarcity. You call it survival when you take hassle-free food sources for granted? No game around it. We can't die of hunger regardless of how badly we manage out food supplies, how badly we prepare for another trip. It is just a needless hassle to open the pip-boy, find AID, then find water and click on it... same with food. It is useless hassle that does not add to the fun. Penalties for irresponsibility in resource management are too low, so it just doesn't matter.

I agree we can certainly live with it, but I think there lies a bit of wasted potential.

Imagine this instead - you are starving, far from home, you see a camp of raiders eating meat around a fire place. You sure have motivation to engage and - if you happen to come out victorious, you can really call yourself a breadwinner. I bet it tastes much better when rare; and I bet it tastes much better when you had to put some real, active work into obtaining it.

What you'd rather have? The above or "Eh, stupid raiders, I can't be bother to go down there since I can simply eat my muitfruit, I have twelve milion of these left, just need to repetitively click on them in pip-boy or I will die of starvation...". What is it? A very slow kind of "quicktime event"?

[DaS]

Like most quasi surviavl/walking sims that use food/water/oxygen as a core mechanic, it gets tedious in the compressed time frames typical in games. If an hour = an hour most people wouldn't be bothered by it, and it would be additive to gameplay. But when an hr = a day or more it begins to feel like your toon has an eating disorder and ends up breaking immersion instead of adding to it.

EDIT having a realism feature tied directly to an unrealistic feature never feels right. If your having to have a MAC attack every 10-30 minutes of playtime it no longer feels like your surviving. It feels like your binging.

[Caedo]

Yeah I've felt the same way. I can see the reasoning for the survival feel, but if they went for any kind of realism, it's gone down the drain once I had to eat several steaks and drink 5 containers of water upon waking up. lol