Thirst Bar

[AceGoat]

Hi,

 

I would love to see a thirst system added to the game. This game is the ultimate survival game, and water is a very important part in surviving in the wilderness.

It would add a new layer of depth in to the game, especially for those living in the wilderness, would be able to make a mechanic that makes it so you can extract water from Cacti, etc.

[Maelstrom]

https://youtu.be/7Gg9iQHfV5A

[Davis]

31 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

https://youtu.be/7Gg9iQHfV5A

LMAO good one @Maelstrom

[Maelstrom]

@daretmavi gets credit (see disease status thread).

[bj0rn]

Yeah, I like it. This would increase the need for leather-based pouches for carrying liquid around.
However, I worry about the frequency of having to rehydrate, given that hunger is already kind of a pain in the A.
Realism requires much higher frequency than food, but for the sake of gameplay it should probably be the same.

[Maelstrom]

IF (big if here) a thirst mechanic is implemented I'd say twice as often but 1/3 to 1/2 as long as eating food.  BUT carrying water will take up yet another precious inventory slot.

[SingABrightSong]

On 3/30/2023 at 8:52 AM, Maelstrom said:

IF (big if here) a thirst mechanic is implemented I'd say twice as often but 1/3 to 1/2 as long as eating food.  BUT carrying water will take up yet another precious inventory slot.

One of the major problems with designing a thirst or hydration system is making it something more than just Blue Hunger. The gameplay obstacles involves in addressing thirst must be different than those involved in hunger, and water being something that needs to be ingested more often than food to maintain verisimilitude, should be correspondingly easier to attain, to keep a good supply while at a base and to obtain without hassle from most environments. A simple system to boil or otherwise make freshwater in the wild safer to drink, and to obtain water in-situ even in deserts by tapping cactuses or whatnot, would be my own proposals.

[Maelstrom]

I would refer you back to the video in my first post.  Ultimately, I think thirst is unnecessary in VS.

[SingABrightSong]

49 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I would refer you back to the video in my first post.  Ultimately, I think thirst is unnecessary in VS.

Oh, definitely, it's quite difficult to make it an engaging mechanic, let alone a rewarding one, so any implementation would have to be incredible to make it an improvement over not implementing it.

[Clockwork Mind]

I'd thought about this early-on as well. Thirst is one of those survival mechanics that can be very interesting and deep, but is so easy to just make into a Tedium Meter. It needs to be more than just a timer on how frequently you need to take a swig from a water jug, no matter how dynamic and interconnected that timer is. 

This game's Hunger system works because of the variety of the food groups, and how they all tie into different ways of making food, which are themselves tied into major progression mechanics like farming, milling, and preservation. Thirst would need to do something similar, with things like juices being more valuable to drink than just water, soups and stews getting their own hydration value to incentivize cooking them, higher-tiered water containers like leather waterskins and metal canteens, and probably either very streamlined and infrequent manual water collection in the later-game, or fully automatable water collection + storage, to ensure that even hundreds of hours of dealing with hydration doesn't become a major annoyance.

It also ties into other aspects of the game like World Generation. If water becomes a vital survival resource like food, then you'll want to have it relatively nearby wherever you decide to settle. The thing is, simple food is easy to forage on the fly anywhere, and seeds/bushes are easy to relocate to your home. Will the same be true for water? Will a player's choice in home location be constrained by the random fluctuations of procedural generation? Would people stop exploring/settling in deserts because they're too much of a pain? 
Buckets currently require access to smithing, which is a not-insignificant progression gate for something as vital as hydration. Would water relocation have to become easier, and what other parts of the game would that affect?

It's a big and complicated topic. While I would absolutely love to see my dream-version of a Thirst mechanic implemented, actually doing so would be really hard to pull off, and I'd understand if the devs ultimately decide that a Thirst mechanic just wouldn't be worth trying to implement, and focus on other things instead.