Mushroom Reclassification

[VaelophisNyx]

Mushrooms should be classified as a protein, as they are used as such by vegans and vegetarians world-wide. Fungi in general are also closer related to animals than plants!

Additionally it'd be nice if they had varying satiation values or harvest quantities, as currently all mushrooms, even deadly ones, are equal thus making most of them little more than inventory bloat

Edited October 26, 2023 by VaelophisNyx

[Zero_]

I'm not sure the food classification system in VS is very accurate at all. Reminds me of the Canadian food guide. Instead of having fruit, vegetable, protein, dairy, and grain, why not have something more akin to carbs, fat, and protein, as well as a few rudimentary vitamins? After all, one can survive entirely off of meat, build muscle, and stay healthy so long as they're also eating organs, and consuming bones.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Zero_ said:

Instead of having fruit, vegetable, protein, dairy, and grain, why not have something more akin to carbs, fat, and protein, as well as a few rudimentary vitamins?

I think the fruit/vegetable/grain/protein/dairy system we have now is fine, as it makes each food group easy to identify(hence why mushrooms count as plants) and therefor keep track of. The protein bar is low? Then you need to eat some sort of meat. The vegetable bar is low? Eat something containing plants. Not enough grains? Time to eat some porridge, bread, or drink some grain-based alcohol. For dairy, drink some milk or eat some cheese and you're good.

If you start tracking by actual real-life nutritional content, it's going to become more time-consuming in the game trying to figure out which food you need to eat in order to get a specific nutrient. And the more time you spend figuring out the nutritional information, the less time you're going to be spending doing the other stuff the game has to offer. I think it's also safe to say that most people don't have fun figuring out the nutritional content of food.

2 hours ago, Zero_ said:

After all, one can survive entirely off of meat, build muscle, and stay healthy so long as they're also eating organs, and consuming bones.

While this is true for real life, the main point of the nutritional system in the game is to encourage the player to vary their diet rather than only eat the most conveniently acquired food(such as what happens in the other block game). It still possible to play using just one type of food, though you'll be forgoing the boost to health if you choose to play that way.

What I would rather see, though I doubt this will be implemented outside of a potential mod, are a couple of sliders for character weight and muscle mass(height too, though that's irrelevant here). You can set this to whatever you'd like on character creation, but the value can change over the course of the game depending on how you decide to play. Eating infrequently, or sticking to certain types of food as your primary food source(vegetables, fruits, grains), will eventually result in a thin physique. Eating plenty of protein and dairy and frequently engaging in hard manual labor(mining, smithing without helve hammers, manual milling, wearing heavy armor) will eventually result in more muscles. Eating when you're not hungry(continuing to eat after the hunger bar has been filled, which would now be possible) and/or eating a lot of nutritionally dense/dessert foods and beverages without appropriate levels of activity will eventually result in a chubby seraph.

I'd also expect all of those qualities to be cosmetic for the most part and have no actual effect on gameplay, just for simplicity's sake. NPCs might comment on your appearance, if you fall within certain thresholds, similar to what happens in certain other games(Red Dead, Fable). Allowing smaller characters to fit into smaller spaces than larger characters might also be interesting in regards to exploration, but would also make designing locations much more difficult, especially since players aren't allowed to tamper with major story locations by default. Adding minor benefits/drawbacks depending on your character's physical condition could be interesting, but I could also see it being more of a chore to manage than it is fun, hence why I would expect it to mostly be a potentially humorous bit of immersion and customization.

[Zero_]

17 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

What I would rather see, though I doubt this will be implemented outside of a potential mod, are a couple of sliders for character weight and muscle mass(height too, though that's irrelevant here). You can set this to whatever you'd like on character creation, but the value can change over the course of the game depending on how you decide to play. Eating infrequently, or sticking to certain types of food as your primary food source(vegetables, fruits, grains), will eventually result in a thin physique. Eating plenty of protein and dairy and frequently engaging in hard manual labor(mining, smithing without helve hammers, manual milling, wearing heavy armor) will eventually result in more muscles. Eating when you're not hungry(continuing to eat after the hunger bar has been filled, which would now be possible) and/or eating a lot of nutritionally dense/dessert foods and beverages without appropriate levels of activity will eventually result in a chubby seraph.

I'd also expect all of those qualities to be cosmetic for the most part and have no actual effect on gameplay, just for simplicity's sake.

That would be interesting, though I'd rather it be functional rather than just cosmetic. One with greater muscle mass should be able to chop down trees easier.  A body fat system would be interesting in terms of starvation? Perhaps then you could fast without starving, relying entirely on fat reserves?

Edited August 4 by Zero_

[LadyWYT]

17 minutes ago, Zero_ said:

A body fat system would be interesting in terms of starvation? Perhaps then you could fast without starving, relying entirely on fat reserves?

There's a mod that does this specific thing already, though without the cosmetic changes: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10343

It's been a while since I used it, and while it was interesting to toy with, I don't think it adds much to gameplay. While going several days without food before dying is certainly more realistic, I found that it significantly detracted from the overall challenge of the game. Under most circumstances, it's not particularly difficult to keep yourself fed(at least enough to avoid starving) in the game, so unless you're deliberately going without or otherwise decided to stack the deck against yourself, the mod provides less challenge. In contrast, while the vanilla system of starvation might not be the most realistic, it does provide a good motivation to keep your hunger bar full, as letting it run out will kill you rather quickly if you're not careful.

26 minutes ago, Zero_ said:

That would be interesting, though I'd rather it be functional rather than just cosmetic. One with greater muscle mass should be able to chop down trees easier.

A buff/debuff system is the route I would go, if adding functionality to the design and not making it purely cosmetic. More muscle mass could probably provide a small boost to block-breaking speed and melee attack damage, possibly even an extra point of health or two. Having a more lean build could boost movement speed instead, as well as perhaps slow down the rate of hunger a bit as well as provide a bit of a boost to stealthiness. Or perhaps a leaner character takes a bit less fall damage. Overweight characters could have a penalty to movement speed and stealth, and block-breaking speed as well if they don't have enough muscle. I think the only positive for an overweight character, outside of roleplaying potential and quickly filling up the nutrition bars, would be some way to significantly delay death by starvation, as you suggested. "Overcharging" the hunger meter could be a simple way to do it; perhaps a certain percentage of a food's satiation value could be added to a "fat reserve", provided that the food is eaten while the hunger bar is 100% full. The fat reserve that your character currently has could be indicated either by an outline around the hunger bar, or a smaller meter underneath the hunger bar. The maximum possible value of this reserve would be the same as your maximum hunger, although the reserve should probably be harder to fill/drain than the hunger bar.

Adding on to the reasoning behind that last thought--it probably shouldn't be too easy to change character weight/muscle mass outside of whatever you set in character creation, because otherwise you risk a situation similar to the Sims. Your character shouldn't immediately become overweight because you decided to celebrate an achievement with a couple of pies and a lot of alcohol. Likewise, an overweight character shouldn't become in-shape overnight just because they went entirely without food and/or mined a couple hundred blocks. That applies to character muscle mass as well--you shouldn't go from lean to muscular just from a mining trip or two, or vice versa from a lack of mining. Another drawback to changing weight too easily--it enables the player to quickly fill all of their empty nutrition bars, without needing to actually deal with the consequences of that level of indulgence.

The best example I can think of for how this type of system can work is a couple of mods from Skyrim--Pumping Iron(Gopher), and Stay in Shape - A Pumping Iron Addon(jayserpa). Pumping Iron enables your character to gain muscle mass over time(up to the maximum the slider will go) as they increase their skills in physical combat. The addon mod develops the idea a bit more by requiring the player to get enough physical exercise to maintain their muscle mass, or they will slim back down.

The more I consider the idea, the more intriguing it gets, as well as more complicated. It'd be cool, but possibly difficult to implement efficiently as a fun, engaging mechanic.