From the Discord to the Forums, so it has two spots to discuss.
"Instead of ticking damage, starvation can instead slowly weaken you over time in a much more immersive way, and it can be done rather simply with a little bit of code, a few timers, and simple stat changes. Not to mention a few failsafes.
So firstly, let's explain why starvation should be overhauled. In its current state, when you begin to starve, you take damage every several seconds; a completely negligible amount, and in previous patches you could just ignore it and heal through it with poultices (still the case in 1.21). Or, if you were fresh to the world and had no real nutrition to worry about, or simply didn't have armor, you could sui-slide (heh) right back to 50% hunger and a fresh bar of HP. In most multiplayer sessions I've noticed, people are ticking hunger down like crazy and just letting themselves sound off like a very hungry choir while they build or do their own thing; getting a shelter set up, ETC. It's both bad game design, and it's terrible for the ears.
Let's change that.
Remove the ticking damage. Instead, replace it with stacking debuffs to maximum health and movement speed. For example's sake, I'm going to explain my vision behind this and give out examples of numbers and balancing.
Just beneath the Satiety Bar, in a thinner bar the devs could add that is attached to it with 10 segments, is the player's Endurance. Each unit of Endurance is worth 100 points, and every second the player continues at 0 Satiety, they lose 1 Endurance, multiplied by their Hunger Rate (145% Hunger Rate = 1.45 Endurance Lost per Second). For every 100 missing endurance, the player gains a stack of Exhaustion, up to 9, with the 10th stack being fatal (0 Endurance). Exhaustion reduces the player's Maximum Health by 10%, and Movement Speed by 3% per stack. The player's current Endurance is denoted in the (C)haracter Menu, beneath their other notable stats, alongside their current rank of Exhaustion. While the player is below 300 satiety but not at 0, Endurance can not recover. The player must maintain above 300 Satiety to recover 1 Endurance every 2 seconds. Recovering Endurance consumes satiety, much like health, making it harder to maintain when food is scarce. Endurance can also function with both heat and cold. When the player's body temperature begins to plummet, they begin to tick down Endurance depending on several factors. We can finally remove freezing damage as a result.
Endurance recovery pauses when your body temperature is below 36.5 Celsius,
If your body temperature is between 33-35 Celsius, you lose 1 Endurance every second,
If your body temperature is below 33 Celsius, you lose 2 Endurance per second,
If you are wet or soaking wet, you lose an additional 1 or 2 Endurance per second respectively,
This is added to Endurance lost from hunger; if you are freezing and soaking wet, not to mention hungry in heavy armor, you could lose several Endurance a second.
For Heat, you can implement a similar system, where the player's body temperature increases based on movement and outside temperature, not to mention sunlight exposure in arid climates. Heat stroke is a real threat, and could quickly sap your endurance.
In harder difficulties, receiving damage could impact your endurance. This means that armor becomes grossly more important, as it could maintain your max health longer.
Now, failsafes! How do we make sure players aren't cheesing the system? Simple: You respawn with however much endurance you had when you died, -200 Endurance, rounded up to a minimum of 500 Endurance. This means that if you die to a wolf while well fed, you respawn with 800 Endurance. If you died from Starvation with 0 Endurance, you are failsafed to 500, to make the game playable but difficult. You also maintain 750 Satiety as well. While the Glowing Light clings to your body, Endurance can not deplete, either - giving you some sanctuary from the cold. This means that the player can no longer ignore food in early game, or scream 24/7 - it's silent, but it adds up, and makes the player weaker over time.
Finally, benefits. What can we add to the Endurance system to give it a little more grit? Eating meals can instantly restore a small amount of endurance when it has varied foods within. 4x Red meat stew will fill Satiety, but 2x Red Meat with Carrot and Onion will restore Satiety and +50 Endurance. Next, players can obtain up to +500 temporary endurance if they remain very well fed. Each 100 temporary endurance grants +5% Health Recovery Speed from Poultices. When your Endurance is above 1,000, you will lose Endurance whenever your Satiety falls below 750, until you reach 1,000 Endurance once again. This encourages the player to stay very well fed to obtain an EXTREMELY potent buff; not more raw numbers, but a tactile healing advantage. And having more variety in the player's meals makes it easier to maintain this buff. I'm not too-keen on this system; but keeping higher endurance should be encouraged.
Hovering over exhaustion in the (C)haracter menu could read: "Your energy deficit from physical stress. Increases as your endurance wanes. Reduces maximum health and movespeed. Death occurs at rank 10. Increases for every 100 missing points of Endurance." Endurance could simply read: "The amount of strength you have within your bones. Decreases when starving, freezing, or burning hot. Increases when well fed and comfortable. High levels increases your healing speed, while low levels increase your exhaustion."
Endurance can also tweak: Damage received, damage done, block break speed, and the like. Sleeping in beds could regenerate endurance faster naturally, but also give a bonus to endurance gained. Some actions could deplete endurance regardless of satiety; like being in frigid cold waters could quickly sap your endurance until you die. Finally, as a way to balance armor, receiving damage in armor could always inflict the same amount of Endurance damage as if you took the blow physically; this means that steel plate users can eventually die from exhaustion if they receive too much damage in a short period of time, since you can't eat your way out of an endurance deficit without spending enough satiety first. Finally, players picked up from the brink of death also revive as if they respawned but a touch more punishing; the player loses 200 Endurance with no minimum; meaning a player can't be picked up if they die too many times back to back. Endurance options can be tweaked in the world creation menu, including returning to the default system if players prefer. Endurance lost is based on hunger rate; so that is controlled universally by one slider.
If players aren't a fan of extra bars, it could be represented as another UI element of some sort. Someone suggested coloring the bar; so it made me think a little on this. My idea is that Satiety could be Blue, while Endurance could be Yellow, and when overlaid together - you get green. I included a picture of how that would look; the first picture is just a simple bar idea. If having three bars overlapping each other is *too* much, then over-endurance could just be baked into normal endurance. Also, the secondary bar could simply be an accessibility option, so players who are color blind are able to clearly see their endurance levels.
