Alternative Offhand Penalty

[Demoncyborg]

12 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I could even imagine having a stick in your off-hand could reduce hunger by 2% (referencing a temporary walking stick), there could be a carved walking stick which reduces hunger even further

ahah the walking stick mod i play with is really similar actually, i think it does straight up remove the debuff when it's working, but as others have stated, for some reason trying to mod the hard coded 20% has a few bugs for some reason.

 

5 hours ago, Phantom72 said:

If we're sticking with the 20% penalty then having the main hand empty SHOULD reduce food consumption. 

TBH, early game it's a PITA but generally it doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the lack of logic behind it.

It would be zero effort to remove it if you have access to the original source code.

So I still vote for removing it until there's a better system.

the main reason i'm not sure this would work is that the hunger drain *is* already really complex and thought out! just standing still and doing nothing for 4-5 seconds drastically reduces your hunger rate, and each jump and bit of sprint will increase it by a %, as well as a drop in temperature. The logic behind it to me is obvious- the 20% in the offhand is there to prevent you from having a free inventory slot and to keep the overall balance of hunger while doing work. If this system were simply deleted with no counter-balance, it's very likely the player would literally eat like 20% less of their cellar during something like winter, which isn't crazy in solo play, but adds up pretty big in multiplayer.

it genuinely seems like the 20% is just the simplest solution for 'working hard = get hungrier' to feel accurate and gamified, until an even more complex solution or overhaul for handling items comes out, be it through inventory weight, a total re-balance or reworking of the off-hand, ect. I think it's the best option so far with the current state of the game.

Edited Thursday at 12:15 PM by Demoncyborg

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Phantom72 said:

If we're sticking with the 20% penalty then having the main hand empty SHOULD reduce food consumption. 

It already does--the player's hunger rate is reduced by 20% if the off hand is empty.  You could flip it around and remove the penalty from the off-hand and just reduce hunger by 20% while the slot is empty, but that's the exact same mechanic implemented in a way that makes the game easier, not harder.

 

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

It's not about large-scale choices on allowing the player to fail or whatever. It's about a simple design decision: given a specific design goal, do you want to punish the undesirable action or reward the opposite?

I'm saying that it's perfectly fine to do both. Maybe not in every scenario, but if every choice is always going to get framed as a beneficial one to the player, then the world stops feeling genuine and starts to feel pretty bland, since there's nothing bad that can actually happen. Generally, the "carrot" is more attractive than the "stick" when it comes to getting the player to make decisions, but if there are actions the player really shouldn't be doing or otherwise actions that should logically carry some serious consequences, it's perfectly fine to slap the player with a penalty as a deterrent. 

As for me personally, I'm not convinced the game would feel more satisfying with no off-hand hunger or weapons only providing buffs and never any drawbacks, even if they maybe should. The no off-hand hunger mechanic I've already experienced in Minecraft, and while it's very convenient it also ends up feeling rather unsatisfying since the slot turns into free inventory. Sure, not equipping anything in the slot is an option, but that doesn't feel very satisfying since it's just such a useful benefit. As for the weapons, generally the systems I find more interesting are the ones that have positives and negatives; the positives are nice, but the negatives are what's actually interesting to play around.

[Heegrim]

Yesss! Using both hands to swing the pickaxe better makes so much sense! Having your offhand free should be an upgrade instead of being penalized for utilizing it. 
This would go so well with animation/sound overhauls so you can actually tell that it is working better with both hands. The current little plinky dink sound can be for one handed mining and a slower, but more impactful sound and animation can play when using both hands. Same should go for axes and weapons.

(I hope they give some more love to immersive first person mode because the combat feels so much better with that turned on until your head disconnects or the attack animation gets stuck playing over and over without ever connecting).
 

Also (unrelated), the falx should have a more ripping metal sound effect when hitting rust monsters. The little ass slap sound effect just doesn’t fit for it lol. It should also be slower and maybe stun them while it rips through them instead of just smacking them back like everything else. It is curved inwards so it would pull them down/towards you, not knock them back. 

Two-handing the falx should focus on slashing/crushing and maybe a sweeping area attack while one-handing with a shield would allow you to bash them back.

I so hope we are getting a combat update now that the armour overhaul appears to be on the horizon. 

[The Lerf]

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Smithing is tough work though, so while it may not be much effort to just hold a pair of tongs, it is a lot of effort to shape metal. I think that's what the 20% is supposed to translate to in this case. I also don't think the player is meant to be juggling the tongs when doing smith work, since smithing requires holding a hot piece of metal in place so it can be shaped. From a game perspective, it's probably a lot easier to code a simple off-hand penalty for tongs instead of trying to write code to account for whether the player is hitting the anvil/workpiece versus just hitting something else.

I think this is the best understanding of the hunger penalty. It isn't supposed to be 'having an item in both hands is physically taxing', but 'the physically taxing work being done requires two items in hand'. The most common activities for having two items in hand, as previously mentioned, are Smithing, Mining, and Combat. It's a kind of roundabout way of making these activities 'cost' more, but I don't mind it. 

What doesn't feel like it works though, is when other strenuous physical activity doesn't get the debuff. Chopping trees, swimming, mining in the daylight... I think this is what pushes the perception of "Item is in my left hand, my metabolism is now overclocked" like OP says.

I think this will all be solved with the status effect system, and a way to show exhaustion. An invisible 'stamina' meter just like satiety, that gets depleted by swinging hammers, breaking blocks, wearing armor; basically taking the place of what the hunger bar is doing currently. Hunger I imagine would just be a 'time since last meal' meter. Once the stamina amount decreases enough to reach a threshold, that's when 'Strenuous Activity' would occur, increasing the hunger rate and whatever else to represent it. When fully depleted, an 'exhaustion' debuff can apply, lowering mining speed, attack strength, movement speed, etc etc.

"Oh, but isn't this just the same as hunger but with extra steps?????"

Yeah, but with a layer of separation that doesn't tie the offhand or wearing armor so directly to hunger. Which is the important part that OP is referencing.

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

I think this will all be solved with the status effect system, and a way to show exhaustion. An invisible 'stamina' meter just like satiety, that gets depleted by swinging hammers, breaking blocks, wearing armor; basically taking the place of what the hunger bar is doing currently. Hunger I imagine would just be a 'time since last meal' meter. Once the stamina amount decreases enough to reach a threshold, that's when 'Strenuous Activity' would occur, increasing the hunger rate and whatever else to represent it. When fully depleted, an 'exhaustion' debuff can apply, lowering mining speed, attack strength, movement speed, etc etc.

A status effect system will definitely give the game a lot more flexibility, but I'm not convinced it will really solve the "problem". I've a hunch that some hunger tweaks/rework might be coming, but I also expect a rework of the system to bring with it a lot of similar complaints if it's implemented. 

[runeAnarki]

amidst all these essays, I alone am the simpleton. (<-- for clarification, this is a joke. the only meaning behind it is "I don't write much, and I hope this sentince gives you a little chuckle")
I just want my grunting stick to not eat into my hunger bar with the ferocity of a starving hyena. 

[Phantom72]

16 hours ago, Demoncyborg said:

The logic behind it to me is obvious- the 20% in the offhand is there to prevent you from having a free inventory slot and to keep the overall balance of hunger while doing work.

20% to prevent you from having a free inventory slot? 20% just to hold a chisel? Yet you can cart around 9 items in your crafting slots? And I'm aware of some of the more complex mechanics related to hunger which makes this implementation even more out of place.

12 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It already does--the player's hunger rate is reduced by 20% if the off hand is empty.  You could flip it around and remove the penalty from the off-hand and just reduce hunger by 20% while the slot is empty, but that's the exact same mechanic implemented in a way that makes the game easier, not harder.

 - yes we can, but we're paying for it either way no matter how we slice it.
--- 
But imagine how many discussions there would have been if there wasn't a global off-hand penalty... OR as some might call it... 'empty off-hand discount'  ? 

The amount of discussion that tiny piece of code is generation... starting to think we're being trolled by the devs..