To me, this is a very broken aspect of the game at the moment for several reasons.
1. It is annoying having to enter the inventory system to use them.
2. There is no reason to buy food/drinks at all because you find so many of them.
I think it is a system that could be somewhat easily fixed and made a lot more useful and in general better integrated into the game and make NC feel more alive. It would make the game better since the player doesn't have to go into the inventory constantly to use these and it would also force the player to actually visit the vendors for different buffs. To me, it's amazing to see how poorly food and drink systems are integrated into games, so think that should be fixed.
Solution to improve the system.
(One of the following options should be used as a base for food and drinks.)
a. Remove all lootable food and drink items from the game and replace them with random junk items instead.
b. Remove all low-quality lootable food and drink items from the game, but leave expensive/finer ones.
Vendors should be organized into a quality system.
1. Highest tier is restaurants or food vendors which have a proper shop.
2. Street vendors.
3. Vending machines.
Each of these should sell food that applies a buff based on the tier, for example:
High-quality food
Give +10% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat. + a combat stat and small XP bonus.
Street food
Give +5% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat. + XP bonus
Vending machines
Give +5% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat.
Consuming a mixture of food
Will simply calculate a % based on how much of each is consumed. So mixing things, the player could end up with +7.5% health etc.
Bought food
The price for food bought from any vendors has their price increased and is consumed the moment the player buys them, Given that a day cycle in Cyberpunk is 3 hours, these buffs should last either 1 hour or 1.5 hours in real-time. The same should be the case with drinks.
Food that is found (In case they don't want to remove/change these)
Depending on the quality of the food, this should add to the timer when eaten or drank, maybe adding 5 minutes per item used. Stacking up to the maximum of 1 / 1.5 hours.
Certain drinks bought either at bars or special drinks shops, should give a bonus to stats, such as +1% crit, recovery of Ram, give armour buff, +1 accuracy etc. And will also last a long time, making them worth buying and using, to avoid people getting too overpowered, simply reduce the player's stats a little to make up for it, if needed.
1. It is annoying having to enter the inventory system to use them.
2. There is no reason to buy food/drinks at all because you find so many of them.
I think it is a system that could be somewhat easily fixed and made a lot more useful and in general better integrated into the game and make NC feel more alive. It would make the game better since the player doesn't have to go into the inventory constantly to use these and it would also force the player to actually visit the vendors for different buffs. To me, it's amazing to see how poorly food and drink systems are integrated into games, so think that should be fixed.
Solution to improve the system.
(One of the following options should be used as a base for food and drinks.)
a. Remove all lootable food and drink items from the game and replace them with random junk items instead.
b. Remove all low-quality lootable food and drink items from the game, but leave expensive/finer ones.
Vendors should be organized into a quality system.
1. Highest tier is restaurants or food vendors which have a proper shop.
2. Street vendors.
3. Vending machines.
Each of these should sell food that applies a buff based on the tier, for example:
High-quality food
Give +10% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat. + a combat stat and small XP bonus.
Street food
Give +5% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat. + XP bonus
Vending machines
Give +5% max health and 0.5% health recovery during and outside combat.
Consuming a mixture of food
Will simply calculate a % based on how much of each is consumed. So mixing things, the player could end up with +7.5% health etc.
Bought food
The price for food bought from any vendors has their price increased and is consumed the moment the player buys them, Given that a day cycle in Cyberpunk is 3 hours, these buffs should last either 1 hour or 1.5 hours in real-time. The same should be the case with drinks.
Food that is found (In case they don't want to remove/change these)
Depending on the quality of the food, this should add to the timer when eaten or drank, maybe adding 5 minutes per item used. Stacking up to the maximum of 1 / 1.5 hours.
Certain drinks bought either at bars or special drinks shops, should give a bonus to stats, such as +1% crit, recovery of Ram, give armour buff, +1 accuracy etc. And will also last a long time, making them worth buying and using, to avoid people getting too overpowered, simply reduce the player's stats a little to make up for it, if needed.
