I'm aware it is probably early to give actual feedback on this, as the patch isn't out yet. But I'm kind of hoping that this thread can serve to centralise feedback on this topic, instead of having discussions of the new rest mechanism spread over multiple threads in different forum sections.
As described in the PFH3 and Community Update 13, the new system works like this :
- Each food item has a nutritional value (well, Camp Supplies value).
- When going to camp, you need to spend a certain amount of Camp Supplies to get a Long Rest.
- If you don't have enough food supplies (or presumably if you don't want to spend them), you get a shallow(?) rest. (I'm not sure how this weaker long rest differs from a short rest.)
So with this system, we convert food to long rests. And we spend these long rests to recover all our combat resources (HP and all class abilities, including spell-casting). So we effectively spend food resources to recover combat resources.
Before diving in the general implications of this new mechanisms, I want to say that, at are level of implementation and quality-of-life, I feel like applauding Larian for having included an "Auto Select" button, which automatically selects from our food collection a set of items whose total Camp Supplies values minimally exceed the cost of a long rest. I now hope that this attention to detail and quality-of-life will next be turned to the inventory, the hotbar and the "spell-book" menu.
Exploration reinforced.The first remark is that this ties exploration, one of the three pillars of many a good CRPG, to combat. Which doesn't sound bad at all.
I tend to think that roleplay is its own reward. Exploration is often its own reward too. I'm mostly thinking of lore books and harder-to-find areas. Exploration can also yield information which can affect our roleplay and the way the story unfold. But with this rest mechanism, exploration become more important.
On the flip side, since combat resources are spent in fights, and many combat encounters will be hard to avoid to progress the story, that means you now need to gather food to progress in the story. So exploration becomes a mandatory part of the game.
Players who engage in exploration and combat only will still be able to progress in the game. But Players in their 3rd playthrough who just want to try a different party and roleplay a different character, to see how the story changes, or generally players who want to focus on roleplay and combat, will be forced to engage in the food search. If Larian keeps their over-abundant containers, it will be harder to memorise where the food items are (in the same way that people may remember where the essential magic items are, and bypass the trash container-searching on later playthroughs).
Effective cap on long rests : difficulty implications.The game may be locally easier or harder, depending on the exact distribution of food, combat encounters, how well we fared in the past few fights, etc. Standard resource management.
But globally, within a closed area like a whole Act, there will likely be a finite amount of food available. And thus a maximum number of long rests that can be taken in this area. That basically means : you must beat this area using at most this many long rests.
So this mechanism really has an impact on difficulty. I mean, that's quite probably one of the goals. But that means it should be accounted for in the difficulty options.
My suggestions and requests.Gold for food ? Hunt renewable game for food ? This is not a request but more of a question (which perhaps Patch 5 will answer, I don't know). Will it be possible to spend gold to get food ? Also, will the Survival skill allow to hunt for food ? (Not actively. Just assign someone at camp to this task.) The actual, underlying question is : how much will the amount of food (and thus long rests) available on a map/Act be limited to what we can find in containers ?
Camp Supplies cost of Long Rest : please not tied to a global difficulty parameter. It is clear that, if this mechanism stays, the game's difficulty can easily be controlled by the cost of a Long Rest, measured in terms of Camp Supplies.
My request is that players can freely change this parameter, and some hypothetical global difficulty parameter (if there turns out to be one),
independently.
It will not be true that a player who wants to reduce the Camp Supplies cost of a long rest (even down to costing 0) also wants easy fights. In fact, I can imagine players going for a high difficulty playthrough and not wanting to bother with finding food.
Time should still be a thing. The resource management mechanism makes long rest harder to spam, which was immersion breaking.
But I hope the issue of time feeling like it doesn't exist at all will not be forgotten. Some things in the world should react to time passing. At the very least, our journal should properly account for the number of days past since the crash. Food For Long Rest doesn't change that.
What about the Danger Zone mechanism ? Nick Pechenin outlined a Danger Zone mechanism in
this interview. And it is completely compatible with the Food For Long Rest mechanism of Patch 5.
I hope it doesn't get ditched. Because having a long rest in a cave full of spider, or in a Goblin Fortress after having killed 1 or 2 leaders, is still going to make no sense. Food For Long Rest doesn't change that.
