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honestly without the berserk thing, this game would be way too easy

Surely you have more imagination than that. Berserk is not the only difficult thing in the game. Adjust a couple numbers on a couple other events and boom, it's just as hard again. Besides, I'm specifically talking about easy difficulty.

Guess what - Rimworld colonists don't do that either.

You don't understand how Rimworld mood system works. You have been misled by the pop-up message. (Colonist went berserk. Reason: ate without a table). I know because *I* proposed the pop-up message, only with different wording:
(Colonist had a mental_break. The final straw was: most_recently_acquired_negative_mood)

The bottom line is that colonists in Rimworld don't berserk from eating without a table or from being joy deprived. Eating without a table is -4, totally joy deprived is -10. That's not enough to push a colonist below the treshold. It's the total mood level that matters, not some minor negative thought that's really just a flavor message. Your colonist broke because of a combination of negative moods.

Yeah actually I do get how it works, thanks. Doesn't really affect my point. None of the things that happened in the game would realistically contribute to someone going violently insane. If a bunch of minor things really added up to a wanton murder spree like that, the world would be a much more dangerous place.

Exactly what b0rusk said.  One addition: you get the "eating without a table" as the final insult because eating is something colonists do a lot of.

BTW, have you considered building a table?  And a stool to sit on?  If you put it in your freezer your colonists don't have to walk far to get food and eat.

BTW, I probably eat at a table about once a week. The rest of the time, I'm sitting in front of a computer, standing at a desk, or maybe walking somewhere while I eat. It really doesn't bother me at all.

And yes, I did consider building a table, but it seemed like a lower priority than aquiring food, building some way to preserve it, building somewhere to sleep, and fending off raiders and mechanoids, all within the first few days. I'm literally talking about a matter of days, on Phoebe Chillax/Basebuilder.

I also get why Tynan made not eating at a table affect mood. I don't actually have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the quantum leap to berserk, and the overbearing effect that moods seem to have on the game at this time.

You guys that are such detractors of the system do realize that the various mental breakdowns the pawns can have in game fit the bill almost exactly for real-life psychotic breaks, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotic_break

Symptoms can range from delusions, catatonia, to outbreaks of depression, to violent outbursts. They can be caused by many things, but accumulated stress is one of them.

The pawns aren't having a breakdown from not eating at a table, they are having a breakdown from all of the other super-sucky shit you are making them do

"........ So, I am living in a hole carved out of the side of a mountain, on some uncivilized dirtball in the middle of nowhere. I am not going to see my friends, family, or even my homeworld again. We are constantly hungry, get attacked by the locals (that hate us), sleep on the floor, and I work 8+ hours a day chipping out a tunnel in the rock. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. I am pretty sure that we are eating human flesh and wearing their skins. And I can't even eat on a fucking table. All this work, all this blood, sweat and tears, and we can't even make a goddamn table and some stools to sit down at. You know what, I am SICK AND TIRED OF THIS! FUCK THIS, AND FUCK YOU! NO DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!"

-cue mental break-

On a related note, it is actually pretty easy to prevent mental breaks among colonists, so long as you don't treat them like shit. Strange concept, I know.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have many issues with the various mental aspects of the game ("I want a private room!"? Fuck off, cotton-candy-panties, you just crash-landed on a hyperviolent, ass-backwards frontier-world, you should be glad to be alive, much less have a bed.), but mental breaks are actually one of the aspects I have the least amount of trouble with.

Don't overwork your colonists, give them nice, tasty food and comfortable surroundings, and prevent/limit trauma.

Yes, people can be "comfortable" killing people when their lives are threatened, but react with remorse and horror when the adrenaline wears off. It is called "killing in hot blood", and happens in real life.

I don't really disagree with any of that. It also doesn't really address my point that the berserk effect specifically is unrealistic and incredibly annoying. Like brcruchairman said, there are a whole bunch of different things that can happen to a person under stress, but mindless bloodlust is incredibly uncommon. As has been mentioned already, there are countless examples of people stuck in horrible situations who never go berserk in any way.

People don't go berserk when they're forced to turn to cannibalism, there's plenty of historical evidence of that. Actually, people don't really go berserk. It's incredibly rare. The vast majority of humans do not have it in them in any way. It's a 1 in 10 million kind of thing.

The berserk feature is patently ridiculous and honestly feels completely out of place in what is otherwise a really well thought-out game. Not only does it have little to no basis in reality, it also procs at an incredible rate, even on really easy difficulties. I'm talking three separate people in the first hour. Come on, harden up a bit people.

edit: Seriously, that's like six times in a row now. Berserk from being totally joy-deprived, or eating without a table. PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT. I get that Rimworld isn't supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be a story generator, but a story in which everyone just goes berserk all the time is a terrible story. Has anyone made a mod that removes berserk from the game? I haven't been able to find one.