Chef Archive
Thread: State of the Chef Profession
This is the state of the chef profession. It is meant as an overview of where we are and where we would like to go.
It is a strange time for the chef profession. We are currently awaiting the new revamp of our profession. Some seem to prefer the way the chef profession currently is. Others at cautiously optimistic and think it looks great on paper and waiting to see how it works in game. We are all worried about bugs, which really damaged our profession up until November of last year. It seems all chefs are holding their breaths right now…not knowing to sigh in relief or gasp in horror. (Ok, being overly dramatic there.)
My own personal concern is the follow through of the revamp. It is not going to be perfect, I know this. That is not a lack of confidence in the developers but the realization that we have imperfect humans working in an amazingly complex system. I just hope that if any major bugs come into place, or if the new buffs need adjusting, the developers have something in place to do this quickly. It seems after every group gets an update there is some emergency tweaking that needs to be done right after.
Runesabre asked the correspondents to include the things we don’t like about the profession and what we do. Right now I don’t see the point of talking about what we don’t like since most of that will be changing with the revamp and the likelihood of other things arising. Instead I want to talk about what we do like about the profession and what we would like from the developers in the future.
I asked the community what they liked about being chefs, and these are the most common answers.
- We are useful to the other players. While I did not actually take a count, I believe this is the #1 reason people like being chefs. They enjoy the fact that their food makes the game easier and more enjoyable for others, and the reward hearing people tell them so. In addition, as one chef said, they like the fact that our food is helpful, but is not required making it another time or credit sink. People who come to chefs do it because they want to. (Which has always been my argument against making food required.)
- The challenge of finding the very best resources to make our food. This is the challenge of the profession, what makes it a game instead of a chat room with pretty graphics.
- We are unique. Combat related professions usually dominate MMORPGs, and chefs are something different. It is a novelty profession. Many people also like the fact that there is not that many chefs in game. Not only does this mean they are different from the other players, but because we are so small we are a tighter community and there is not as much cut throat competition.
- We are casual player friendly. While few said this, it is something I felt in many people’s threads. While other crafting professions are more cut-throat, because of the fact that our resources are renewable and there are so few of us we can be more relaxed.
- There is a lot of opportunity for role-playing. It seems that many chefs are role-players, and chefs is a good profession for this. It is a lot of fun to role-play the bartender in a cantina, and our cakes and wines are always needed at weddings. We even have one guy who is role-playing an army cook that makes crappy food that makes people fight better.
- Whackyness. I was trying to find another way of putting it, but it seems that many chefs have deep-rooted problems with reality and are using chefs as a means to vent. (Oh, you know it’s true guys!) Seriously, there is a lot of room for playfulness in this profession, to not take yourself so seriously and do things that are silly. Renaming foods is one way to do this. I know one chef that had a bantha in her house, renamed her meatlumps as bantha poodoo and left it around the bantha. There was the suggestion that we invade a server, creating blue twileks or moncals dressed in white chef hats and pants and wandering around as a group. Chefs seem to have a very off beat sense of humor, and this profession appeals to that.
- The community on the boards.A few said that the community on the chef profession boards is what has kept them interested in chefs. Just shows how important creating a community is for these games.
- Money! Finally, many chefs enjoy the money making opportunities in this game.
This is the direction that we would like to see chefs to go in. This is not a top five list or a wish list, but instead…just some suggestions to keep in mind whenever you design for chefs.
- More useful buffs. We were told we would be getting more schematics in the future. Try to come up with schematics that will be useful to other players I know you already know this, but I am just emphasizing it. The thing that most chefs enjoy is being useful to other players.
- More storage!! This goes to finding the best resources in the game. This kind of game play tends to lead to hoarding resources, and we need places to put the stuff. I know this is a big problem and there is no immediate or easy fix for this. I completely understand that and sympathize. It should, however, always be something to consider when talking about improving the game. There might not be an obvious answer now, but please keep considering it. After we get some kinks out, I can guarantee you that it will be on our top five for some time. One short term fix to consider, however…is it possible to increase the size of food crates?
- More role-playing tools. You cannot have enough for us (but don’t stop trying!). We think that the new chef clothes are definitely in the right direction, and we are all happy to hear we will have drinking and eating animations in the near future. Other good ideas is chef clothes with grease or blood on them, cups we can and kitchen utensils that we can equip. More things to decorate a kitchen with would also be great.
- More odd things. Of course we don’t want to go overboard with this. But chef hats are a great example of what we want, and now many chefs are asking for these hats to be equipped by Wookiees. Is that Star Warsy? …maybe. Is that silly? Yeah. Is that Chefy? Deffinitely. Other chefs have been asking for a meat cleaver that can be used as a weapon. Things like that. Have fun with this!
- Finally, we don’t have to be a popular profession and nor do we want to be. We like being a small, friendly community. While you should always be improving the profession (as you should with all professions), don’t worry about the fact we are the most uncommon or second most uncommon. We are not worried about it.
SirVimes
Chef Correspondent.
When you mention storage, your first example is resources, but I would also mentioned the fact that since we produce a consumable item, that we inevitably end up taking up a lot of room with crates as well. I find crates take up the most amount of space for me, since my resources are in 100k stacks. By the time you add in furniture its better you not have any furniture at all, and just stick with crates for tables and chairs.
More Role Play Tools & More Odd things, can this be incorporated into one item? They seem one in the same to me. If it isn't dont in patch 6 perhaps we can mention the food emotes again (drunk, tastey, full, disgusting).
Perhaps in its place we can mention food not sitting on tables, alot of us love to decorate our cantinas and homes so that the appearance of a chef presence is noticable. Or mention that the cantina shelves and bar you are unable to decorate. I guess this kind of goes along with Role Playing as well.
Overall, its another excellent post, nice work!
yea thats a pretty good summary...spoons...I want a big wooden spoon! 
hehe
Id still like to see drunken behavior ala EQ, where the screen shakes and you cant talk right.
Currently, if my memory serves me correctly, we use 55 different specified resources/resource types, of those, we may need a number of each type due to shifts, stats etc.
I currenly have 187 different resources alone.
This creates storage issues, but what can be done ? We know that in MMORPG Delvelopment, item count management is a nightmare, and SWG suffers massively. The only thing I can think of, is to reduce the count of resource types we need.
The other massive issue I have, is that as a pure crafring profession, we continually struggle to manage lots. All crafters do to some extent, but ours is compounded by the fact that the Cantina is 5 lots. One cantina, one factory, one power harvester and you are left with 3 lots to harvest 40+ resource types.
I think ALL master crafters should receive at least 2 additional structure lots, that they ONLY keep as a Master. If you use those lots, you must clear them before you can drop the Master box.
Pure combat players are blessed with an abundance of spare lots, crafters struggle. Maybe the other option here would be to remake factories ?
Instead of a house and a factory, with the factory being a small box, it could be slightly larger than a small house, and have "work rooms" inside. This would be 1 lot, and crafters could declare residence in it, thus freeing up 2 lots.
Another idea would be a Factory Droid - something like the BLL that can make smaller factory runs whilst called from the datapad - this will add even more functionality to the DE class aswell.
One of my pet peeves about food, is that almost all food and drink drops on the floor! How hygenic is that
Food art needs a pass in order to put the default drop height the same as a standard table, so that it will no longer be on the floor for the rats
We have a massive change coming, and I am torn.
Whilst I will morn the passing of Vercupti and Angerian as my "Muon Downer" kit, I am looking forward to having unique buffs.
At the same time, I am dreading it, as I am worried about the number of bugs that will make it into the publish with such a new system, and the time it takes for those bugs to be fixed.
I do not want to see a situation where we get all new schematics, but most are bugged, and it takes 6 months to get them fixed :/
Even now, some of our items are bugged, 6 months after release. This does not bode well, and I would like to see some form of commitment from the Devs that any issues will be fixed as fast as possible.
Right on again!
One more thing to add is: Chef items are used alot for home decoration because it adds the lived in look. I did decent selling around halloween making gag foods.
As far as lots and storage go, I agree that there are some shortcomings. However, it would be rediculous to grant "uber" storage or limit our scematics to say 15 specific resources. Do you really want every Chef able to make the best possible quality buff for each scematic? I feel that it would ruin the profession and maybe even warrant a nerf.
The real challengein being a great Chef is collecting those out of the ordinary resources and properly manageing your lots. Merchant tents and large extractors are good examples of simple ways to improve your lot efficiency. Also, who says we need to be "independent". I personally think that we should have to rely on miners as well as the scouts/rangersto gather our resources.
We are getting a ton in this next patch, lets not continue to complain in an ignorant manner (by ignorant, I ammeaning selfishly desiring to simplify the proffesion).
~ Ching, SYN, Master Chef, DNI Industries
DAVCRE You know what Nikki? I reckon if there was a drink that just made you 'drunk' and had comical effects on your actions and speech, and that's all it did, it would sell by the crateload!
(Maybe even lead to drinking competitions!? Ahh boo though it'd be too politically incorrect in a game that kids can play I'll bet- though I suppose it could be regarded as "educating about the effects of alcohol")
...deep rooted problems....
Fantastic Post, it echos my views quite well.
Espo99 wrote:As far as lots and storage go, I agree that there are some shortcomings. However, it would be rediculous to grant "uber" storage or limit our scematics to say 15 specific resources. Do you really want every Chef able to make the best possible quality buff for each scematic? I feel that it would ruin the profession and maybe even warrant a nerf.
The real challenge in being a great Chef is collecting those out of the ordinary resources and properly manageing your lots. Merchant tents and large extractors are good examples of simple ways to improve your lot efficiency. Also, who says we need to be "independent". I personally think that we should have to rely on miners as well as the scouts/rangers to gather our resources.
We are getting a ton in this next patch, lets not continue to complain in an ignorant manner (by ignorant, I am meaning selfishly desiring to simplify the proffesion).
~ Ching, SYN, Master Chef, DNI Industries
I never said uberstorage, or drop it to15 resources, I simply stated that we are the only pure crafting profession with such a high lot expenditure.
I DO rely on other professions, and I agree on interdependancy, however, managing to harvest 30+ flora types on 3 lots get's annoying after a while.
Im not after an easy ride, but I do think our lot overheads are way too high for the type of business we have.
As I said, I think ALL crafters should get a couple more lots in one way or another.
The other Idea I had, was to add a factory INTO the cantina, it only saves one lot, but that can make a hell of a difference.
Very good work as usual SirVimes. Here is something I would like to add.
The one thing I am worried about with all of the new schematics coming our way is that the number of different types of resources we will have to harvest will expand dramatically. As it is, I believe that Chefs have to collect more different types of resources than anyone. I know from previous posts that SOE is taking metals out of theequation (but it is not clear to me whether someone will still have to make containers) and that is a good thing. What I don't want to see is a list of 40 different raw materials that I will have to collect in order to cater to my clientele. Let's try to keep it to around a dozen or less, if at all possible. If not, then we will have to spend so much time searching for resources that the Chef Profession could get to be real drudgery.