hunger and maybe stamina I suppose

[Nagahiro]

probably (most definitely) already suggested, but I wanted to get this out having already dwelled on the idea.

getting hungry in the game can get annoying, not because of food management or something, but because damage in the game is programmed to always trigger the seraph voice sounds. it's good to give feedback to the player on the conditions that affects the character so the player knows what to do, but there's definitely a better way. my thought was, once they've figured out how to implement status effects in the game, it's possible to apply those to hunger, like modifying movement speed, applying screen effects, playing stomach growling sounds, and complete halt of hp regeneration, different levels of your satiety bar could also give different levels of the hunger status, like you start have your hp drain at different rates (instead of the current system where it bites chunks out of your hp, it drains smoothly.). or alternatively, only apply the status effect after your entire bar is empty. would be nice to test it first to see which is more fun to play with.

honestly, anything to replace the cries of pain the seraphs do when they decided skip lunch or forgot to pack a snack.

having played a ton of Valheim and Kingdom Come Deliverance recently, I think once a lot of the "in-world crafting" gets added to the game, a stamina bar seems fitting. basically your primary unit of energy that measures what you could do at a given moment, it slowly gets depleted by actions like sprinting, jumping, mining/attacking, and interacting with "work stations" (like a quern or idk panning), the more stamina you exert the more satiety gets drained from you. your satiety becomes an energy reserve for your stamina. once combat gets overhauled in the next updates, it would also help combat feel more thoughtful, and your actions purposeful, and not "spammy"

in Valheim, there is no hunger, as the point of the game is not survival. food instead buffs the player's health and stamina stats, with meat providing massive boosts to health, and fruits and vegetables providing massive boosts to stamina. Vintage Story kind of does the same thing, but with a focus on health, and balance diets. with a stamina system, the diet mechanic can boost stamina too. many of the actions in the game requires stamina, which includes running, jumping, swimming, and even sneak, which each point of stamina you spend on an action will also give an equivalent point in experience for your skills. it also incentivizes the player to keep a watch on your actions, and be unable to spam attacks. combat in the game is really good because of it. 

Kingdom Come Deliverance on the other hand does have a hunger mechanic, but it's not a survival game either. the hunger in KCD is not only for roleplay and realism (which it has a lot of), but also to influence player decisions, whether you have enough food on you to travel to the next town, or if you have enough coin to spend for a meal or a pint, otherwise you will suffer debuffs that would affect movement and combat, which heavily relies on you keeping an eye on your stamina, which could lead to your death if you don't. tho there is always a communal pot of stew in major locations where the player could grab a bowl themselves and have a bite to eat.

tho overall, maybe it would make calculations more complicated, but I'm not much of a programmer myself. and I might not have worded some of it properly, so I understand if there are some things that don't get across. I'm not even sure if stamina fits the ideas or visions of Vintage Story, but from the games I've played that has a proper stamina mechanic, I've enjoyed a bunch of them, and feel more connected to the game character than if it didn't have some form of stamina bar. and from the hours I've spent on VS, I feel that there's something lacking with the hp and satiety bars that makes it very basic or rudimentary, which isn't a bad thing obviously, but it could be much more.