Chef Archive

Thunderheart has asked me to create a State of the Profession so that both players and developers are all on the same page.

With the current state of the game, this could easily be turned into a rant, and I don't want to do that. So I thought I would start off with some positive things. Yes, believe it or not, there are some. I went back to the first correspondent report I wrote and realized that some of the items on it have been fixed. We now have medium and heavy floral harvesters, something that architects were not able to make when the game was released. Our factories can now create food stacks, and they fixed the stack bug so that the entire stack cn be eaten without throwing it down on the ground. So we have made some progress.

The current state of our profession is this, however: We do one thing, we do it very badly and now it's broken. That's the long and short of it.

The current bug that is effecting buffs is killing us. Because the bug prevents people from stacking their buffs, we cannot compete with doctors or smugglers who make better buffs than we do. I don't know any chefs who is not having a highly difficult time covering his or her costs based on food sales...most chefs are reduced to selling pet food only. Who wants to buy something that will end up damaging them?

Even if the bug was not there, we are still not able to correctly create our food. The experimentation is bugged and the flavor quality of our components means nothing while experimenting. I believe it is impossible for a chef to achieve a success of over 52% because of a problem with the experimentation equation. All we can do is create buffs and we are the only profession that creates buffs and only buffs, yet we have the worse buffs in the game. Our best buff comes at Mixology II, and once you get that there is little reason to climb up to Master chef...unless you want a cantina.

I have been asked to list the issues the chef class has and to list them as bugs, exploits, gameplay, balance and wishlist. If there is any that you think should be on the list but not there, don't worry, we will have the chance to update it very soon.

(Also, I would like to thank the community in general. I plagerized some of their stuff, especially the wishlist. I hope nobody minds.)

Bugs

• Food is bugged and is reducing stats once the effects ware off. This bug is the biggest issues with chef. It has been documented well enough already, so I won't go into it too much but it is really, really hurting the chef profession. In short, if people try to stack buffs, it can hurt their secondary stats and even cause incapacitation. This effects smuggles, doctors, musicians and dancers as well, but it is hitting chefs the worse.


• The values of the resources for recipes are not calculated correctly. The success of our recipes is supposed to depend on overall quality, flavor and nutritional values in equal amounts. This does not seem to be the case. Even using resources with values of over 900, we never get past 52% for flavor and texture. The flavor rating seems to have little or no effect at all. I urge you to read this thread where Forkbomb does a much better job than I can of explaining the problem: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=chef&message.id=3202. This is also a good thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=chef&message.id=8903. Both of these are excellent threads and I really, REALLY encourage you to take the time to read them.


• Got Milk? We still need milk. Thanks for giving us eggs, but eggs have not been used in chef recipes except as a meat substitute since beta. I am sorry, that was my fault. There are, however, several recipes that require milk. What is Star Wars without blue milk?


• When you are experimenting on drinks, it does not show you the number of charges you have. This is only with drinks, not foods.


• DoubleDip Outer Rim Rumdrop will not load into the crafting tool. When you try you get the error: Crafting Error: No test prototype


• Terratta will not load into the crafting tool. When you try, it just keeps loading and loading.


• Wedding cake does not give any buffs or benefits.


• Factories seem to give no experience at all, not even the 10%.


• You only get UXP if you are in the same area as food is being used.


• The meters showing how full we are do not seem to be working as well as they should be. And while we are on this subject, even though it is more of a wishlist, can we please have a meter that gives more information?


• When you create components, you cannot see the stats. There is no way to compare components to see which is better, and if components don’t have any stats then let us know so we are not using the best ingredients for them.


• Food should be able to be placed on furniture without requiring a 2 story house.

Exploits

• You can use items purchased from the NPC bartenders as ingredients in your recpies. Since they don't have serial numbers, they are considered identical. Since recipes do not use the stats of their components, the fact these don't have stats don't matter

Gamplay

• The stats of components does not seem to have any effect on the final product.


• Climbing up the chef tree is a slow process and requires a lot of grinding. It just seems that the chef tree is one of the slower to climb up than other professions. It is just that nowhere in the chef tree is anything that gives a lot of exp. I am not the only one who has noticed this either. I have a friend who is a master chef and a master doctor and she said that 80% of her time was climbing up the chef tree as oppose to 20% climbing up the doctore tree.


• There needs to be a crafting station in player owned cantinas. With the 10 lot limit restriction, and 7 lots being taken up by a player cantina, it would be really helpful if we can have a crafting station in the player cantina. Three lots for factories, harvesters and a home to put the crafting station into is a very tight limit.


• Ingredients put in the factory should not have to be identical. 25 carbosyrups can be done faster manually than with a factory. When inserted into the factory, the factory rejects them because they don’t have the same serial number. Allowing any type of sub ingredients like dough or carbosyrup will make things a lot faster.


• All food and drinks on the bazaar are listed under the misc. category. Can we please give food it’s own category so that it is easier to find? Also, can we please remove spice from the food category? Stat on food/drink that affects how "full" it makes you.

Balance

• There needs to be a better progression between novice artisan and master chef. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where you put schematics on the skill tree. Our best buff is in Mixology II, in the middle of the skill tree. For the most part, a Homemaker can make better food than most chefs. We need to see a progression of schematics with the lower ones being in Domestic Arts I and the best being with Master Chef. And we need to see a clear line between the two. Right now, as we climb up the tree we are not seeing better schematics as we go, and that is very discouraging for us. We need that ding, that reward for a job well done. I know you have already said that you are going to be doing a balance pass on the recipes. We feel this really needs to be done soon. I think that this is probably what discourages people the most from becoming chefs. There have been many times where people have come on the boards saying that they saw that their buffs are not improving significantly (or at all) and becoming really discouraged about proceeding.


• Buffs need to be more useful. Right now, we make the weakest products in the game. Scouts, Smugglers and Doctors can outsell us because the buffs of their products are so much better than ours. We need buffs that are more competitive. We need buffs that are more comparable with their buffs. Our food has a much shorter duration than the buffs of other classes, and buff for a lot less than other classes. One thing that chefs are divided on is how the buffs should be improved. Some of us feel an increase in duration will help us, while other feel it is the potency of the buffs that need to be increased. Of course, why not both? Then there are others who think we should be more creative than that. Why just buff stats? Why not buff skills? Why can't cantina drinks increase the rate battle fatigue is used? Why can't sports drinks increase speed? I am not sure which is the best way to increase buffs, although a combination of all of the above is probably the best way. One thing that I really hope you keep in mind is that Doctors, Scouts and Smugglers all have other ways to make money while chefs do not.


• The restrictions of higher-level foods is greater than the reward. There are actually a few problems related to this catagory. The higher-level foods have more restrictions than the lower level ones, but they do not offer as much of a reward. Filling is a very good example of this. When you reach the higher levels of the chef profession, much of the food fills you up with one use. If the foods had better buffs, this would be ok. As it is, however, it makes the food no better and even worse than the lower level foods. With the lower level foods, you can eat several before becoming full and the combined effect is greater than the higher-level foods that fill you up with one use. Also, some recipes contains rare resources (like the hydron-3 inert gas for T'illa-T'iil.) Many feel that the foods produced by the recipes are not worth the time and effort to find these rare resources.

Wishlist

• We would like some more cool items for Chefs. There are a lot of people asking for chef hats. I am not sure I agree with this (although on this I am greatly outvoted), but I think there should be more cool stuff for chefs. Things like aprons and kitchen tools to decorate the house with. Also, I would like more bar furniture like bar stools, actual bars and decorations you see in bars. Maybe a spatula or a bloddy cleaver we can hold.


• More food art. There have been many requests for more food art. Why is vyerbock not green? Why does a wedding cake look just like an aircake?


• We should be able to equip drinks and other player see us hold them. Since we are mostly a role playing profession, being able to do this would add a lot to role playing in cantinas. Also, in general, there should be emotes for drinking and eating.


• There should be more emote for drunken behavior. See above.


• A food cart that we can take with us, much like the merchant's tent. We see this all the time in Phantom Menace on Tatooine.


• Give certain recipes an additional optional resource slot. Then have mobs randomly drop special parts that we can use in this optional resource slot. Like a cu pa leg, worrt tongue, or peko peko egg. Make these pretty rare and when used in a recipe make the results amazing! These can't be mass-produced so the results should be something special when a chef uses them.


• Large scale visible chef abilities: If scouts can make camps, there's no reason that a chef can't do a buffet, with large quantities of food for everybody to pick from. Make the wedding cake a big deal... make it big and visible, and let everybody take a whack at it. SWG weddings are big deals, and the cake should reflect it too. Have a big BBQ with an animal roasting over an open flame! Have a big cauldron of soup! Candle lit tables for restaurants!


• Buff icons for food you are currently under the effect of (with duration on mouseover), possibly have them blink when they are close to wearing off


• The ability to modify the colors of food icons. A droid waiter/waitress that you can fill with food and drink and set on patrol. When somebody clicks/converses with it, it presents them with a menu. The ability to radial and "feed" a person with their consent (ie. buffing without the d.amn trade window)


• Reactions to eating would be nice, particularly if it's based on flavor. A happy reaction for good flavor, and a gaggy reaction for really bad flavor. Just an embellishment, not a real game changer, in any event.

That is what I can come up with for now, and I believe I have all the major points. I am sure other community members can come up with more, however.

SirVimes

Climbing up the chef tree is a slow process and requires a lot of grinding. It just seems that the chef tree is one of the slower to climb up than other professions. It is just that nowhere in the chef tree is anything that gives a lot of exp. I am not the only one who has noticed this either. I have a friend who is a master chef and a master doctor and she said that 80% of her time was climbing up the chef tree as oppose to 20% climbing up the doctore tree.

- I used to think this was really slow when I first started, but looking back I am glad that it takes more effort to master. Gives you a better appreciation for the profession, and I'm tired of seeing poeple master professions in a matter of a week.

There needs to be a crafting station in player owned cantinas. With the 10 lot limit restriction, and 7 lots being taken up by a player cantina, it would be really helpful if we can have a crafting station in the player cantina. Three lots for factories, harvesters and a home to put the crafting station into is a very tight limit.

- This doesnt make much sense, since I believe you can place your own crafting station there if you choose. The bigger issue is that we desperately need our 7 lots. Musicians and Entertainers dont need their lots so sacrificing 7 lots of the cantina is not that serious of an issue, but for Chefs since we are crafters, really need those lots for the sheer production of food.

There needs to be a better progression between novice artisan and master chef. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where you put schematics on the skill tree. Our best buff is in Mixology II, in the middle of the skill tree.

- /agree- Please move Sunburns up to Mix 4 or Master level

The ability to modify the colors of food icons. A droid waiter/waitress that you can fill with food and drink and set on patrol. When somebody clicks/converses with it, it presents them with a menu. The ability to radial and "feed" a person with their consent (ie. buffing without the d.amn trade window)

- Perhaps this should be : A droid waiter/waitress that you can fill with food and drink and set on patrol. When somebody clicks/converses with it, it presents them with a menu. The ability to radial and "feed" a person with their consent (ie. buffing without the d.amn trade window)

The first line makes this issue confusing to read.

Reactions to eating would be nice, particularly if it's based on flavor. A happy reaction for good flavor, and a gaggy reaction for really bad flavor. Just an embellishment, not a real game changer, in any event.

- Love it! More food interaction can only help not hurt.

Rare schematic drops would be really cool. Something you can loot of random mobs or NPCS that maybe have a limited manufacturing limit. Also perhaps the ingredients dont have to be specific, since that could be an issue.

I also 100% agree with those schematics that require rare or more specific resources but their actual buff is simply not worth the time.

I also 100% agree with the fact that Master level foods are less effective because you can only eat 1. Why bother when you can just buy something cheaper that you can eat more of.

Duration, Strength, and anything else to have us become the buffing class that we are supposed to be needs to be done.

Nice work Sir Vimes!

superior work, sirvimes

we may be broken, but it sure isn't YOU fault
you've done nothing but help us
we are greatful


Three cheers for SirVimes!!!!

/cheer SirVimes!

Well done. I would throw in my vote for better Buff Potency and duration. There is no reason why Doctors should have buffs that last for 120 mins and buff 6 of 9 stats for over 2,000 points when the majority of our decent buffs are in the 300ish range and last for maybe 12 mins. For a class that soley buffs, we are by far the weakest bar none. THis needs to be adjusted.

/agree

Good points Sir Vimes and Saitek. I definitely agree that Chef should remain a hard and time consuming progession. I said that when I was a Novice 0-0-0-0 chef and I still say that. I loved the feeling of accomplishment after finally making master more so because it was a difficult climb. I would say that we need to be perhaps slightly more difficult too.

Nothing in Domestic Arts should be better than Novice chef....look at Engineering and Weaponsmith and etc to compare.

/bump

Great post SirVimes! :-)

I'm a big believer in giving the Chef more value, and giving us buffs for non-stat enhancements would give us a product that no other profession can make. This would make the demand higher for Chefs, and give us a more defined role in the game, rather than playing second fiddle to Doctors and Smugglers.

Our buffs also could use a wow factor similar to Tatooine Sunburn to entice others to want the buff. Even though Veronian Berry Wine buffs all three primary stats, it's just really not enough for anyone to want it, unless I price it below it's worth in resources.

- Malikor [Dragon Pearl Enclave] : TestCenter

/agree all. Is there ever any hope of producing foods (at Master Level, say) that actually heal wounds or conditions?

SirVimes I believe you should Include a very short but concise account about the food bug anyway. Don't leave it to any developer or coder to play ignorant as to how you can reproduce the bug. Something along the lines of.....

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CURRENT BUG EFFECTS:

1. If ONE bite ONLY is taken of ONE food type ONLY and nothing else is added as an enhancement until the duration has ended, the ONE food will function correctly.


2. If anything is consumed or enhanced in combination, all effects following the first will only increase the MAXstat valueand not the current stat value (500/500 to 500/750 not 750/750).


3. When the duration or combination enhancements have ended, players can lose total stats (500/500 to 250/500 or -250/500) sometimes leading to incapacitation of players.

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Other than that I agree with what you have presented to us and am glad that it feels like we are moving somewhere.

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Phazon wrote:

SirVimes I believe you should Include a very short but concise account about the food bug anyway. Don't leave it to any developer or coder to play ignorant as to how you can reproduce the bug. Something along the lines of.....

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CURRENT BUG EFFECTS:

1. If ONE bite ONLY is taken of ONE food type ONLY and nothing else is added as an enhancement until the duration has ended, the ONE food will function correctly.
2. If anything is consumed or enhanced in combination, all effects following the first will only increase the MAX stat value and not the current stat value (500/500 to 500/750 not 750/750).
3. When the duration or combination enhancements have ended, players can lose total stats (500/500 to 250/500 or -250/500) sometimes leading to incapacitation of players.

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Other than that I agree with what you have presented to us and am glad that it feels like we are moving somewhere.

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Just so we're clear, this bug appears to be fixed on TestCenter. They even added Modifiers and Encumberance columns to the status pane on the character sheet so you can see what's happening to your stats and why.

If there is another bug that I'm unaware of, please PM me or /tell me ingame and I'll check and see if it behaves that way on TC or not.

- Malikor [Dragon Pearl Enclave] : TestCenter

Great job SirVimes

Personally I think that 7 lots is way too much for a chef to use up for a cantina, 4 would be better but even that will cut into our harvesters and factories.

But basically I agree with your whole post SirVimes. I think you covered everything

Do you have any kind of info on how long it will take to get some action on some of these items?

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KalosMadred wrote:

Do you have any kind of info on how long it will take to get some action on some of these items?

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Well if you look at our original correspondent report, and nothing happened there, that should give you some idea.

Thanks Saark, I hadn't seen that information before.

Now I have a request to be added to our "State of Chefs".....

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• A clearcut response on what we as Chefs are supposed to be classified as in SWG, or whether developers are rethinking a new classification because the old one turned out untrue.

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