That is actually a fair point you've brought up. Hunger is mostly used in the beginning as an incentive for MC to get his bearings in his new life: a place to sleep, something to eat, a way to make ends meet... It achieves this by making it so if MC doesn't eat, he'll get a malus in combat. Given that MC sucks early game in battle, that's basically a death sentence unless you're well-fed. Past a certain point however, you've got 2 allies with you who can pick up your slack and carry your starving ass through battle.
However, having starvation pass days or force a game over could easily lead to unforeseen softlocks. It's always delicate to enact such drastic drawbacks (which is why MC doesn't stumble asleep on the floor when exhausted like a Sim would). So i don't think that'd be the way to go here.
Even the idea I got while reading those replies, I'm not certain it wouldn't risk softlocks. The idea being: if starved, can no longer use stamina actions (or they cost double or something like that). Because chopping down a tree or mining while starving would be a bit hard to do. You'd faint.
On the one hand, you could say "why worry about softlocks? You always have at least a bit of food lying aroudn in your inventory. A bit of anything and you're golden". But on the other hand, imagine an early game situation where you're starved and without anything to eat and no money. That'd mean you can't hunt, so you can't get food that way. You can't do chores either, like helping Claire at the kitchen. If Penny has had enough of you, tough luck there too. No way to make money either. You'd be completely softlocked, unless you somehow manage to defeat Tia's orc scout for instance.
That's why I'd say "double the cost of stamina actions", because you can always sleep for free. But I hope that showed how difficult (and annoying) it can be to design gameplay concepts. With all that said, what to do with the hunger system? Is it truly needed? I'd say it works as intended in early game. It's once you get past the early game that it loses all meaning, but it's not a system that you can suddenly revamp in the middle of a playthrough. Imagine the game telling you "from now on, starving will render you unable to perform actions that cost stamina". It's immersion breaking and very odd. The system needs to be the same from start to finish, the game can't change its rules in the middle of playthrough, that'd be unfair.
With all that said... What I CAN suggest is:
- the game not allowing the player to share a meal in Emily's household for instance if they're already well-fed enough
- some intensive labor could also be blocked while the rest would still be fine (solving the issue of being unable to hunt)
- a few slight dialogue changes to reflect MC's starving state (like Emily pointing out how MC is wolfing down his plate)
- since you mentioned lactation, no lactation play if well-fed... also if lactation + meal event, can only share the meal after sucking the teats if MC was starving at the start (otherwise he'll say he's not that hungry after all)
Would that give enough purpose to the mechanic?
