Config Option: Should Nutrition Levels Restore on Spawn?

[masterblaster 1]

One of my favorite features in TFC is the food/nutrition system. They certainly put a lot of work into it and the attention to detail shows. But it seems like that systems gets rendered somewhat irrelevant whenever you die and re-spawn, since everything just resets to 100%. Are you missing dairy from your diet? No problem, just jump off a cliff. It's kind of like an exploit, albeit in most cases an unintentional one. I'd like to suggest the following configuration option for those of us who prefer to not to have their nutrition levels reset upon re-spawning.RestoreNutritionOnSpawn: True/FalseDefault to true, I guess. But I would set to false in my games. :)Edit: I added an anonymous poll for Ms Kitty.

[Miner239 47]

There are some other penalties to dying, like losing much of your skill, all that hard-earned levels, and, of course, your items. I think that the low fullness at respawn is enough for food/nutrient penalty, because if you don't eat immediately then you'll starve out.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The biggest penalty for dying is losing your levels, which also increased your max health. So if you're low on dairy but have a lot of levels, killing yourself to replenish the dairy really is only going to decrease your max health because you lose the bonus from all of your levels. The nutrients reset on death to stop a starvation death loop. Otherwise a player might be completely starved, and only have 50 HP, which is low enough that everything is essentially a 1-hit kill, and then they die, but are still stuck at 50 HP and keep dying from 1-hit kills because they can't get their nutrition high enough before taking damage again.

 

Unless a whole bunch of people post saying that they really want this, I'm not going to put in the effort to add it. And to those of you thinking "Oh I'll just make a PR for it" please remember to extensively test your changes and submit proof that you have extensively tested it, or else the PR will simply be closed. If I've decided to not put in the effort to add it, I've also decided to not put in the effort to double check your code for you.

[landryx 36]

well kitty, reset it at 100% is too much because like master blaster said, the nutrition/food system is really cool and just killing yourself destroy all the benefit of that mechanism AND keep it as it was before the death bring the death starvation loop.

 

SO! why not just reset it BETWEEN those 2 ranges. like at 30%. It will be just ok to survive and enough annoying to AVOID death at all cost.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Or you could just not intentionally kill yourself? Punishing the few who decide to exploit mechanics often just hurts the players who aren't trying to cheat the system.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

To put it differently, adding in a mechanic that is off by default (which is what this topic suggested) defeats the entire point. We put in the time and effort to create a mechanic so that the majority players will actually use it. To make an analogy, imagine if a chef put in the time and effort to create a big fancy meal, only to have pretty much none of it be eaten. It's a waste, and there is no motivation to do it in the first place.

[landryx 36]

Or you could just not intentionally kill yourself? Punishing the few who decide to exploit mechanics often just hurts the players who aren't trying to cheat the system.

yeah that's it! A punishment or something! And it's not a punishment, it's just a mechanism that merit to be used!

You used it, you eat well, you're in health, you have HP, you're a better miner, better ALL!

You eat only meat, you don't eat well, you're not heathly, you don't have stamina.

 

I always saw this food nutrition bar like a BONUS thing. Not a key element to consider.

Increase max HP is cool, but it's could be better than that VS works you put to masterised this system !! 

[Hector49er 31]

Funny how this seems to be such a big deal for some people. I have never even been tempted to kill myself to refill nutrients. Is it not odd the the people who go "Change this! It's bad!" are the same people who don't kill themselves? So if this were changed it would not have any impact on you because you already don't kill yourself for food. (sounds strange because it is) I still see no point in doing anything about this since it isn't hurting anyone and it is actually a useful feature when the do-do hits the fan.

[landryx 36]

well yeah you're right. It won't change anything I agree. I just don't get it.

 

(Gather all type of foods, gather milk, increase familiarity level of your cows, experiment to find the ideal meal, mix vinegar, mix milk, craft barrels, waiting 2 days "OH YEAH all my nutrition bars all maxed up") = just killing yourself.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

You're missing the point that nutrition isn't the only thing that affects your max health. By the time you get milk (which you can drink instead of making cheese to increase dairy too) you've likely got a bunch of XP levels. XP levels increase your max health too. Killing yourself gets rid of those XP levels, and therefore decreases your max health. By killing yourself, you've put yourself at a lower max health than keeping your XP levels and consuming dairy.

[landryx 36]

yes, to keep your HP bonus.

Does it double your max HP limit ultimately kitty? Cause last game on Rhodance server I was LV36, and all nutritions bars maxed up except diary to 0 and my HP limit was only to about 1300

[Kittychanley 1,002]

The XP HP bonus is configurable. By default your possible max health increases by 20 HP for every level, capping out at a possible max HP of 3,000. At level 36 and default configs, you would have gotten 36 * 20 = 720 additional HP, for a total max possible HP of 1720. Since you were missing dairy, you're only at 80% health, and 1720 * 0.8 = 1376 HP, so that sounds correct.

 

Note, if you killed yourself, you would only be at 1,000 HP. And even with keeping perfect nutrition, you would have to get about 19 levels before you would have the same amount of HP that you had before you killed yourself.

[landryx 36]

Alright, and metal armours help too! Thank you kitty.

[EstebanLB 183]

The biggest penalty for dying is losing your levels, which also increased your max health. So if you're low on dairy but have a lot of levels, killing yourself to replenish the dairy really is only going to decrease your max health because you lose the bonus from all of your levels. The nutrients reset on death to stop a starvation death loop. Otherwise a player might be completely starved, and only have 50 HP, which is low enough that everything is essentially a 1-hit kill, and then they die, but are still stuck at 50 HP and keep dying from 1-hit kills because they can't get their nutrition high enough before taking damage again.

 

Unless a whole bunch of people post saying that they really want this, I'm not going to put in the effort to add it. And to those of you thinking "Oh I'll just make a PR for it" please remember to extensively test your changes and submit proof that you have extensively tested it, or else the PR will simply be closed. If I've decided to not put in the effort to add it, I've also decided to not put in the effort to double check your code for you.

This is a much needed feature. But instead of spawning with the same values, they could be set not lower than a minimum. That way players won't explot it to get higer levels and no one will suffer from a staevation death loop. Everybody wins Kitty

[Kittychanley 1,002]

This is a much needed feature. But instead of spawning with the same values, they could be set not lower than a minimum. That way players won't explot it to get higer levels and no one will suffer from a staevation death loop. Everybody wins Kitty

 

Go back and read the point that Hector49er made. Do you yourself consistently kill yourself to reset nutrition values? If not, then you do not need this feature, and you would not need this feature. It is only a "much needed" feature if a vast portion of players are actually killing themselves to reset the nutrients. I would bet that if we put up a poll, the majority of members would vote that no, they do not kill themselves, and therefore this feature would add essentially nothing for them.

[Palisight 34]

The change would affect the early game before you have metal equipment (when you try to avoid combat as much as possible). You won't have high levels, so you don't care if you lose the levels

 

You don't have to intentionally suicide to exploit this. You can ignore nuitrition and your nuitrition will reset for free when you accidentilly die

 

If you want gameplay ramifications take two hypothetical Terrafirmacrack teams

 

Team 1:

Ignores nuitrition until they have blue steel

Die once to reset nuitrition, then go on mob killing sprees before the final event to bring levels up to forty something or whatever

 

Team 2

The team members starts keeping up thier nuitrition near the start of the 2-week period.

 

Team 2 is only rewarded for doing so if some of the players manage not to die for most of the 2 weeks (early deaths before nuitrition and levels are gained are meaninless). Its a gamble that isn't likely to pay off considering playing for 2 weeks means you'll likely randomly die from fall damage or get trapped by mobs at some point

 

Basically tech first-->nuitriton later pays off, where nuitrition 1st--> tech later has no benefits other than "you aren't being gamey"

 

You can even justify yourself saying the means to protect yourself are more important than a well balanced diet. Given you live in a world with monsters.....that's probably the realistic priority you would choose in real life. I'll bet any soldier  would place arming themselves as a higher priority than balanced meals

[masterblaster 1]

I added a poll to this. Btw, I happen to play the majority of my games on hardcore mode. You'll just have to take my word for it that I am not a player who would kill myself just to exploit the nutrition system. And yet the feature would definitely add a lot for me. So there's one.

Also, here is a suggestion for the doubters out there. Try playing with hp max bonus per level gain set to zero. Suddenly nutrition becomes something to pay more attention to. Now try that on hardcore mode. Makes things interesting and a lot more fun in my opinion.

[Palisight 34]

The wording on your poll is confusing

 

I would think it's possible someone who's primary language isn't English could esaily confuse your poll

 

Maybe edit so it sais something like

Do you want the option so nutrition stays the same after death?

[stringburka 72]

My vote is also on the "Yes!", I would definately use such a feature.

 

And while I don't think it's common for people to _deliberately_ go out and say, jump off a cliff, I do think that the game currently incentivizes getting killed on occacion, especially in the early game. If I'm down to 400 hp due to malnutrition and is attacked by spiders, as the game currently is I'm much better off taking the chance and fighting back than fleeing. Either I get XP or I get nutrition.

If on death your nutrition in each category was set to 10% or whatever it was before you died (highest of them), then death would nearly only be a penalty, and in nearly every case you'd want to avoid it at all cost. It'd be like a "hardcore light" option that, unlike HC, works in multiplayer.

 

If not officially implemented, I would _love_ an addon that did this.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

It'd be like a "hardcore light" option that, unlike HC, works in multiplayer.

 

Configs like this are set by the server though, not the client. So everybody on the server would have to agree to having it changed, and you would have to convince the server admin to change the config files on the server.

[micmastodon 41]

I can see where people want this to be a config option, but to me it just seems like a balancing issue for this game mechanic. The philosophy behind the max HP feature is to make dying a punishment, but if you restore 100% nutrtion, there are a number of gameplay scenarios where that isn't a punishment at all, but can be exploited as a reward. I would think the devs would want to tweak the interplay of HP and nutrition to strike the right balance. You wouldn't want a starvation death-loop, but as someone already said, there could be a middle ground between full nutrition death and keeping whatever nutrition you had upon dying.

 

What we have now is that the main punishment for death is levels (other than your stuff being strewn about the bottom of a ravine) but since levels just mean max HP, for people with poor nutrition, death is almost like gaining instant levels. While probably not many players exploit suicide as a strategy in this way, if presented with a situation where one has very bad nutrition and not much available food, death becomes far more optimal than trying to nourish oneself. Doesn't that seem wrong?

 

I would definitely think it suits the game and fits the overall philosophy of how these game mechanics are meant to work to have a player's new life start with nutrition levels somewhere short of full. I don't know what that number should be, but let's just say it's 75% of fully nourished. Then, you can increase max HP two ways when you're starting a new life: XP, and good nutrition. I really like the mechanic - it's a big part of why I like TFC so much. I do think the starting nutrition levels make it fall a little short of how it was intented to function.

[stringburka 72]

Configs like this are set by the server though, not the client. So everybody on the server would have to agree to having it changed, and you would have to convince the server admin to change the config files on the server.

Yes, well, I am the server admin

[Kittychanley 1,002]

For a bit of reference, players actually used to start with only 80% nutrition, but we had to change it to 100% because players were becoming malnutritioned too quickly and they could never really get it up to 100% without a lot of work. So in essence, the "starvation death loop" that I'm talking about can happen even if we decrease nutrition to be as low as 80% on death. The nutrition system was designed in such a way that it is much much easier to maintain your current nutrition, than it is to actually increase any of the values.

[CHeuberger 9]

For a bit of reference, players actually used to start with only 80% nutrition, but we had to change it to 100% because players were becoming malnutritioned too quickly and they could never really get it up to 100% without a lot of work. So in essence, the "starvation death loop" that I'm talking about can happen even if we decrease nutrition to be as low as 80% on death. The nutrition system was designed in such a way that it is much much easier to maintain your current nutrition, than it is to actually increase any of the values.

but what if the nutrients were below 80% before he died?Happened to my character, was low on food at the end of winter (no clay for vessels) and fell off a cliff (accidentatly) - was a disappoinment not having to work on getting the nutrients back up...SO I think it would be better to maitain the nutrient levels, neither increase NOR decrease them on death!Maybe have a minimum, like 30%, that it always granted to the player if he gets below that.

[micmastodon 41]

but what if the nutrients were below 80% before he died?Happened to my character, was low on food at the end of winter (no clay for vessels) and fell off a cliff (accidentatly) - was a disappoinment not having to work on getting the nutrients back up...SO I think it would be better to maitain the nutrient levels, neither increase NOR decrease them on death!Maybe have a minimum, like 30%, that it always granted to the player if he gets below that.

That doesn't really address the problem that Kitty mentioned, though. We certainly don't want starting a new life (or a new game!) to be a constant grind against rapidly falling nutrition. As the mechanic works now, it sounds like anything short of full nutrition is too painful to start out. If you're at 80% now, it's because you haven't been eating well and thus it's a consequence of how you've been playing. If you were to start out that way, it would be too punishing.

 

That's why I said the dev's might want to consider tweaking how the mechanic works. I think by changing the starting condition to full nutrition, they solved one problem but created a new problem of exploitative game-play. I definitely agree with Kitty that it's better now - we don't want to hurt the game for everybody for the sake of a minority that might exploit it. But maybe adjustments to how quickly nutrition drops would make the 80% starting condition viable again and close the loophole. I don't know how feasible this is - it occurs to me that I don't even know if nutrition drops at a constant rate or if it's exponential or what.