Forum:Food is Useless

I expected that in Fallout 3, food and water would play a major role in the survival of the player. However, now I realize food and water is useless, with some exceptions like mirelurk meat and purified water. -Xandus the Legend

Yeah, it's good for healing until you reach level 3 or so. By then, you can afford or find enough stimpacks that you'll never need food again. LVTDUDE 23:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I only recently discovered my love for water sources. I never use stimpaks anymore I just drink, now that I finally realised you can hold the action button to keep drinking quckly. And with Lead Belly perk you're golden. Oh and yeah food is useless. I mean really, who wants to eat irradiated deviled eggs, yuck. DipCheese 09:34, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, food is pretty useless. I think that eating and drinking should have a bigger role in a game about surviving. One thought that hit my mind was that they could (in F4) make it so that you get like a penalty if you don't eat or drink something for 24 hours. You could like lose 1 point of Endurance, or gradually lose health or something like that. Some people might find this a pain in the ass, but I think it would make for greater realism. --KillerIsMe 19:48, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

When we are at "greater realism", you shouldn't be able to take 20 hits from an assault rifle, and enemies should not be able to take several headshots at all... But these elements have to be there for the game mechanics to work. Come to think of it, Fallout 3 is pretty casual: It is basically raining food, ammo, chems and stimpaks, and my character can take so much punishment that he must be a cross-breed between man and refrigerator.

This may sound awkwardly cynical, but I think Fallout 3 misses out on one of the cornerstones of a post-apocalyptic experience: Food. In this case hunger, the struggle for food, scavenging... you name it. The game throws all these elements into a bin, and ends up with player characters that can run through the game without even sipping some water.

However, if the game is supposed to be playable without too many flaws, these game mechanics have to be as they are. Now that it is mentioned, you may want to see a game which focuses more on food. But think about it like this:

Remember GTA IV? There was a game mechanic that allowed you to take your contacts to activities, and get access to better services. However, this game mechanic became most player's nemesis, because all in all, nothing is more annoying than wheel-barrowing your fat cousin from place to place. In general, there were two of these "encounters" every half hour. Pretty annoying when you had stocked up on ammo and were ready to take on the mafia. Now, picture that you had to 10 of these activities per half hour. Pretty god damn annoying, huh?

Well, that's how the "improved food"-thing would be implemented. It would seem reasonable at first, but after a while it would kill so much of your playtime that you would be bored out of your mind.

Long story short: Good idea, but it would have become tedious due to small variation and making restraints to Fallout 3's open gameworld.

AngryNorwegianDude 20:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Valid points indeed, but still I feel like food does have a very small role in this game. It is a game about survival after all, and food and water are two of the most important things when trying to survive.

Also, If you were killed by a single shot in the head the game would be virtually unplayable, whereas having to eat once every ingame 24 hrs would be annoying at most. There has to be a limit of realism.

Though, I totally see your point. Maybe you don't have to get a penalty for not eating, but instead different food would give benefits, so that you would actually WANT to eat. They could be like the drugs in the game, allthough weaker and not addictive. Could that work? --KillerIsMe 22:17, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I suppose you could always make the game time a bit longer (not 1 second is a minute) so It wouldn't be as annoying to eat food constantly. DipCheese 08:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

There was an eating mechaning in GTA SA. It's been a while since I played it but if I remember right you only had to eat every few days. If you didn't eat within maybe 8 hours of the game propmting you then you would start losing muscle mass and tire more easily wehn running/swimming/biking. I don't remember it being much of a hassle and would be even less so in a game that lets you carry food with you. Food and water should play a bigger role than it does, finding food and not becoming food would have to be priority #1. I'm cool with suspending disbelief in areas like multiple headshots to kill, but food and water are indispensable to survival in any environment, nukified or not. Your enemies bullets might kill you but no food and water will kill you.--JiNX Bloodfang 09:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Well said Bloodfang, I agree. It wasn't that tedious in GTA SA, so it shouldn't be in Fallout either. Also, like DipCheese said, they could change the game-time. There's really no reason aside from simplicity for it to be 1 second/minute. --KillerIsMe 14:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yup, that sounds reasonable... By the way, you would start losing health in GTA SA if you went long enough without food. Just wanted to mention it... AngryNorwegianDude 14:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The food would be better served if it had random effects. Sometimes you eat some irradiated 200 year old food and you get a little health boost and some rads, but sometimes it makes you violently ill and you break out in a horrible rash, or even shit yourself silly. Adding that fear of the unknown when you eat would be pretty cool. Make it so you have to eat once every hour of play, and deal with the consequences. LVTDUDE 14:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah... A random chance of buffs or debuffs? I like it... It fits nicely in with the chem mechanic. Only difference is, you won't get addicted to food.

By the way, what happened with diseases? Considering that Oblivion had about 20 diseases, FO3 should have like 200, considering that it is situated in the wasteland... Any thoughts on this? I can, for sure... Imagine having a character with Deathclaw Flu, Mirelurk Pox or Rad Diarrhea! AngryNorwegianDude 15:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that if that was put in a game alot of people would save before eating and reload if there was an unwanted consequence. Also, those people would most likely think it was annoying as all hell.

Personally though I wouldn't mind, since I play F3 "real-style", meaning I never reload a save unless I'm stuck and cannot get out any other way.

Really dig the disease-idea! Brahmin Dyspecticality would be more feared than Flying Super Mutant Behemoths throughout the Wasteland. --KillerIsMe 15:18, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't help with agree about the requiring food/GTAIV comparison. What I would have liked to see, though, was more impact from food items and food itself being more scarce. To actually use food to heal up you need to require a metric ton of food that your character is somehow capable of eating all at once, it would be much better for atmosphere if they created a positive reinforcement factor that caused you to see food itself as inherently valuable (so you go "Oh awesome, food!") than some kind of pesky nag script. ("You haven't eaten in a while, you're starting to feel hungry." /penalty) AnaxagorasZ 22:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Making the game realistic would suck! I mean would you really want to be dominating the wastes and then die of starvation? Perhaps you would also like a sleep requirement to I mean you can't go without sleep would you like that if you went to long without sleep you would become slower and eventually just fall asleep wherever you were? And what of stimpacks I'm sure that the people of the future would have for saw them replacing food and put the nutrients (for those of you who don't know thats the important part of food) into the mixture as well as calories. But I do agree that there should be diseases. Also just to point out Yao Guai meat does give you damage increase for a short time. The Messenger 05:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If they made it so that it takes like real-life seconds per in-game minute (instead of 1/1 as it is now) I would actually like a sleep-requirement. Not to the point that you actually fall asleep in the middle of a fight, but so that you get some penalty. You're point on stimpaks is pretty valid though.

And I think that if the "required eating" idea was put into Fallout, you'd have to totally ignore food alltogether to actually die of starvation, considering some people can go like a whole week without food. --KillerIsMe 07:27, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I have to agree that trying to add too much realism to a game can ruin it, so yeah I think making eating requirements is a little too much, alothough water wouldn't be too much to ask for, seeing as there is a huge river running through the map and you have a butler that dispenses water to you. It would definitely make radiation poisoning a greater threat. I also feel that drugs should have more visual effects when you take them. Make the graphics get shaky while on Jet or Psycho, or maybe have certain things get blurry while drunk. Make lights extra bright or something while having any sort of withdraw and making combat while addicted to something more difficult. That's realism I would like to see in a game. --Esscex 07:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a problem with your ideas on stimpaks. There's always been this idea of having all your food in a pill, but there are reasons why it can't work: Protein & fat. You need them, & you couldn't fit them into a stimpak. Stimpaks are more like a cross between morphene & a healing agent, you couldn't live off them anyway.

Oh, & saying that an apple is better for you than concrete because the apple has nutrients is a bit like saying Fallout 3 is better than GTA because it has data.

Pararaptor 07:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't think of any game besides San Andreas that did this, and I'd really prefer that it wasn't added in. It would just get annoying, especially if you were doing the final part of a quest, you hadn't saved in three hours, you hadn't eaten in three days, and you die. Good game developers know that realism for the sake of realism is fucking stupid developing. If eating food every couple of hours added some fun to the game, I might say do it, however, I don't think that it could. Broeman 10:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)