Chef Archive

I have asked this before, but so many people have left and so many new people have arrived, I wanted to start this up again.

Assuming that everything was working right, how would you fix buffs? Would you make them longer or more powerful, or maybe a little bit of both? Or would you another route entirely instead of just buffy stats?

Keep in mind, if we ask for something that would unbalance us with the other buffing professions, we probably won't get it.

So, what would you do?

More of both.

Tat Sunburn is the only decent seller for a reason. Its the only decent thing we have. The idea of being able to buff other things is good, but probably more complex (i.e. slower) to implement.

Id also like the skill tree's to be 'shuffled' so that they make sense and there is a reason for getting more than Mix 2 and Cooking 4. having a branch that dealt 'mostly' with 1 stat would be good. i.e. Mixology deals with Mind, Willpower, and Focus. Entrees deal with Health etc.

I dont think anyone here want Chef unbalanced, in fact we are already unbalanced. and we want that fixed !!

Since buffing is the only thing the chef class does I feel we should be very versatile. Buffs should last in accordance with how often people usually eat or drink. I would like to see some buffs that are maybe less powerful but last longer (a good meal),some that refresh more powerfully for a shorter time (a snack or drink),etc. So entrees could be the longer lasting buffs for 200-400 covering most stats,desserts and drinks could focus more on highher (1000 or so) buffs to smaller pools that only last 30-60 min. The minimal duration of a buff,imo,should be 30 min. Those are some thoughts off the top of my head.

Zolita - master chef,master tailot-Radiant

---

SirVimes wrote:

Keep in mind, if we ask for something that would unbalance us with the other buffing professions, we probably won't get it.

So, what would you do?

---

IMO its the others that are unbalanced, and chef is underpowered

Now, prepare to be shocked.


I would like to see a total buff overhaul, with the removal of, or massive decrease in buffs from doctors.
Doctors heal, cure, heal wounds, revive - IMO thats more than enough for a class, without turning it into Buffbot City.
I see more & more people getting seperate accounts to do a Master Dancer or Musician/Master Doctor as a buffbot.

I think the way spice is currently, is how it should be - a large boost, for ~10 mins, with an incap/massive downer. If buffs were removed from docs, I'd say increase the zise, but not dur, of spice buffs. The alternative is to move spice to "enhancments", such as +25 burstrun for 10mins or "+25 to defence vs knockdown".

Then comes Chef.
I have always said, the size of the Tat Sunburn buff is about Master Level, but it doesn't last long enough.
Master food & drink should be 1500-2000 in a stat for 1-2 hours depending on experimentation & ingredients.
Make Enrtee's buff Healt, Con, Str. Pastries buff Action, Qui, Stam. Drinks for Mind, Foc, Will.

Remove the Food & Drink timers bars, and replace with an easier to follow system, that would allow any 2 or 3 master level items to be consumed, with a proper timer as to when more can be consumed.


I know the idea of removing Enh packs from a Doctor is a contentious issue, but chef is _THE_ buff class. It is the only reason for being. Chef can do nothing more.
Food & drink can be carried by everyone, by making it the premiere or ONLY stat buffer in the game, you eliminate buffbots, and the state DAOC got into, where only people that had 2 accounts could last more than 5mins in PvP - a situation that is becoming more and more prevalent in SWG.

I know my ideas will atract flames and scorn, especially from Doctors, but currently, even with food & drink working, the Chef has nothing to offer above spice & Doc, apart from the portability of medoicre buffs, hardly something to make an entire profession of.

As many of you know, I LOVE the Chef profession. I have fought hard from retail launch (I know many were chef in beta), and I was extremely sad to drop it lastnight, but as it stands, Chef is underpowered, underused and not worth the points just to get Tat Sunburns, Vercuptu & Fishak.

The foodsshould definitely haveboth duration and effectiveness boosted. I have a friend who's master doctor and he sells his huge enhancements for 400 credits or something, and it lasts 2 hours!

The duration of food & drink should be realistic, or if they really wanted to get complex, they could vary the duration depending on how active you are after consuming it. Food shouldlast AT LEAST 2 hours depending on the size of the buff. I knowafter I eat a full meal I'm not even remotely hungry after 2 hours.

Drink durationcould be a littleshorter than food duration, but stillMUCH longer than it is now.I think a redbull gives u a jolt for longer than 6 minutes If I have a pack of cokes in the house, I'd say I go through a can aboutevery 30 minutes (yes I'm an addict), but hey the caffeine sticks with u formuch longer than that!

It's common sense to make a foodboost your stats for more than 5 minutes! At least there's not a downer, manchefs would be non-existent for sure if that were the case.

Why shouldn't a Chef be the Premier buffer in the game, bar none. Do chefs heal? Do chefs fight? Do chefs treat and cure wounds and other related problems? NO.. A chef ONLY has ONE thing to do, and that is to create stat food for the masses.. Therefore I think we should be the best at it, with NO exceptions.. Doctors, Entertainers and Smugglers can do other things besided buff.. A chef doesn't..

As for the buffs themselves.. Every single one of them needs revamped.. I would suggest that chef's be allowed a full variety of buffing options.. This would entail short duration buffs (15 minutes) to long term buffs (3 hours).. To keep this from getting exploited or abused I suggest that the Eat/Drink Timer be redone... Currently the timer goes down gradually over time.. I recommend that the timer stay full equal to the buff food that was taken... Example as to what I propose:

Timer has a 3 hour total window for Food.. 3 hour window for Drink..

You consume Food A (which is a snack) that gives out a 100 point Strenght buff for 15 minutes.. At this point you have 2 hr and 45min still left on your timer.. You now consume Food B (light meal) that is a 300 point Stamina buff for 90 minutes.. At this point you have 2 different buffs working and have 1hr and 15minutes still left on your Timer.. Lets assume you want to eat Food C, but it is a 90 minute buff.... YOU are not allowed to do so because you don't have that much time left to eat it.. The only way you can take Food C is to wait for Food A (the 15minute snack) to wear off.. I would make buff time and eat time identical so you know exactly when to eat and when buffs are ready or are wearing off..

The same can be done with drinks as well..

However, I don't think you will see ANY of this happen because SOE dropped the ball on buffing.. The will NOT nerf doctors buffs, and SOE has no intention on letting chefs have 1,000's of points buffs.. To do so will allow characters to walk around with 2500-3500 HAM in all attributes.. This would unbalance the game.. Basically we are screwed.. But we can dream of fairness and equality..

Thanks

I would do quite a few things:

Remove Negative effects from all Chef Products- Nobody will buy stuff outside of Sunburns that even has a negative stat for any duration. Leave the negative stats for the drugs peddled by Smugglers. Extremes are for drugs. Leave the -stat X off the food please.

Increase the duration of food in general- 90% of Spices outlast food buffs. We already know that doctor and entertainer buffs last for hours. Throw us a bone here and make the food last longer.

Fix the "full" factor to correspond to the length of the buff- Too mnay times you cannot eat or drink food because you are full, even though the effects of the perviously comsumed food has expired. This should be a simple code fix.

Leave stacks size production the way it is- We need help in terms of stats and durations, not in quantity.

Make schematics for pet/mount specific food- Remove the ability for Artisans to crank out Bofa Treat Pet Chow. Allow Chefs to create pet only food that actually regenerates pet health/mind/action effectively as an alternatives to Pet Stims. I know my dog gets excited for a treat over regular kibble in RL, so lets roll that over to SWG please. Pet only food that adds 500-1000 to Con, Sta and Focus would bring them in line to regen at least at the rate unbuffed players can. Considering the HAM of most pets, this is not overpowering, but helps CH and non-CH alike.

Create a broader stat increase between Artisan food and Chef food- Similar to the difference between Ruby Bliel and Charde, only more across the board with other food products and make the difference stand out a bit more.

Move Tatooine Sunburns up to Mix V or Master- Many people take Chef and stop at Mix 2 for the best craftable item (generally speaking).

Make Milk a craftable component- We are all tired of this issue. Make it craftable or remove them from Schematics.

Fix Wedding cake to work again, and then move it to Master- Make it worth looking at and something Masters should only be able to make.

That's it for now from me. Time to do work again.

I like chef buffs the way they are at the master level, 10 min duration or so. Its the 2-3 min duration ones that are terrible, too hard to use etc. 10 min is good, one stack of food will last a customer 40-200 minutes, which is plenty.

For you folks saying "We should have the best buffs!" I disagree. Doctor buffs are strong, but you need a doctor to apply them. Spice is good, but has the downer. Chef buffs can be bought in crates, off a vendor, and used on demand whenever the customer needs them with little or no downside. it's apples and oranges. Chef buffs are great, especially when stacked, the main issue is duration.

- Manii Names

Ok, here's my thoughts on a comprehensive buff organization. I'm attempting to balance all four buff classes, which almost certainly goes beyond what SirVimes is asking for. My experience with spices and doc buffs is somewhatlimited (and nil on the creation side), so if I make an incorrect statement or assumptionabout those, please correct me:

Desired Buff niches (how I'd like to see them divided, changes from current design in yellow):

Spice (I don't see much that needs to change with these)

1. Pro: High buff sizes


2. Pro: Decent duration (10 mins), portable.


3. Pro: Portable, does not require application by a skilled player.


4. Pro: Various combinations of stats on each spice. Higher levels buff more stats (with fewer negatives) for larger amounts.


5. Con: Downer proportianate to buff which lasts half the buff duration.


6. Con: Can only take one at a time.

Doctor/Entertainer (these go together because entertainers buff mind stats, the only ones docs can't)

1. Pro: High buff sizes at higher levels.


2. Pro:High duration (up to2 hours).


3. Pro: No downer.


4. Con: Can only be applied in certain locations. For entertainers, onlywhere Battle Fatigue is healed(cantinas, hotels, theaters, [rumored]Master Ranger camps). For doctors, dependent on buff level. Enhancer Acan be applied in medcenter, camp, or next to medical droid. Enhancer B: medcenter, ranger camp, med droid with +75 or higher medical module. Enhancer C: medcenter, Master Ranger camp. Enhancer D: medcenter only.


5. Pro/Con: Buff size is a percentage of patient's base stats. For doctors, this depends on the enhancer level. Enhancer A gives a10% buff, B adds 30%, C adds 60%, D adds 100%. These percentages are experimentable with a cap of the next level's (D caps at 115%), but will have a small random variation on application(+/- 5%). For entertainers, the buffdepends on the performer's "Mind Enhancement" skill.


6. Pro: Percentage buff is based off patient's current stats, even if it is already buffed. [note: this may already be true for entertainers, can't tell until the buff bug is fixed] So a fighter with normal Con of 500 can eat a +100 con food (600 Con), then get a +100% Con buff from a master doctor. His new Con will be 1200 until the food wears off, at which point it is 1100.


7. Pro (Musician/Dancer): Requires no special tools.


8. Con (Musician/Dancer): Buff duration dependent on time spent listening to performer, performer must do /setperform (and can only do one person at a time) or be grouped (and duration-to-perform ratio is worse than with /setperform).


9. Con (doctor): Requires specialized resources for Enhancers using Advanced subcomponents. However, Advanced components reduce the random variation and increases the experimentable buff percentage. An Enhancer with all advanced subcomponents could possibly edge up to the buff size of the next level Enhancer.


10. Con: Stats buffed individually (with the exception of Musician's Focus/Willpower buff) and patientcan only have one doctor/performer buff to each stat.

Note: This includes some pretty major changes to the Doctor buffs, especially the switch to a percentage buff. Could anyone with medical skills tell me whether this is worse/better/similar at the various levels? I think the high-end gets nerfed a bit, but the low-end is improved. And I'm not sure how the doc buff duration should work. Musicians/Dancers of any skill can buff to 2 hours (although testing is still being done to confirm), keep something similar? A: 30 mins, B: 60, C: 90, D: 120? The same duration for all levels, but based on Enhancer experimentation?

Food

1. Pro: Portable, does not require application by a skilled player.


2. Pro: Stacks with itself. Multiple doses can be consumed (up to the max on the fill bar) to get additional buff. This also means that different foods/drinks can be mixed for desired buffs.


3. Pro: Can be fed to a pet to heal its wounds.


4. Pro: No downer.


5. Con: However, Alcoholic drinks (which having larger buffs to Red and Green stats than similar level food) have negatives to Blue stats.


6. Con: Duration shorter than Doctor/Entertainer buff, and at low levels shorter than spice.


7. Con: Can only eat a limited number of doses before becoming full, and the "fullness" lasts for twice the time of the buff. The fill bar is displayed as a bar graph with different foods eaten in different shades, and also has a total "Fullness percentage" on the side. This bar updates either real-time, or on refresh of the character sheet. Doing a mouse-over on each segment of the bar shows the food/drink represented, fullness used (percentage), buff applied,time remaining on the buff, time remaining on digestion.


8. Con: Buffs from single doses less than similar level spice, but when eaten until full reaches approximately 75% of spice effectiveness.

Food categories:

All examples are with no experimentation and medium quality resources.

Entrees: Foods in this skill branch have a longer duration than the other two, and focus mainly on the HAM pool stats (Health, Action, and Mind), though with a higher proportion of Health and Action. Duration starts at 10 minutes for Novice Chef, and goes up to45 minutes at Master. Basic Entrees with average Flavor and Texture fills you about 30%. They can buff a single HAM stat 75, two HAM stats for a total of 100, or a HAM stat and a related secondary for a total of 75 (weighted more toward the primary). Recipes may have higher buffs at a cost of lower duration. Recipes at each higher level of Entree adds approximately +75 to the total buff "pool",5 minutes to the duration, 5% fullness, and the possibility of more stats being buffed. These can be tweaked in each recipe, for example increasing the duration while reducing the total buff.

Example Novice Entree: +85 Health, 500s, Filling: 35%
Example Entree I: +120 Health, +30 Strength, 800s, Filling 30%
Example Entree II: +125 Health, +30 Strength, +50 Con, +50 Action, 1200s, Filling 40%
Example Entree III: +200 Health, 1500s, Filling 32%
Example Master Entree: +400 Health, +200 Action, +200 Mind, 2700s, Filling 55% (and should probably have a pretty complicated recipe).

Desserts: Foods in this branch have a shorter duration (about half that of Entrees), but the buffs are about 50% greater, and has a fairly equal spread among all 9 stats. Desserts are very filling, most around 40-60%, but since the duration is reduced they digest quickly.

Example Novice Dessert: +60 Mind, +50 quickness, +50 stamina, 200s, Filling 35%
Example Dessert II: +140 constitution, +140 stamina, +140 WIllpower, 480s, Filling 45%
Example Master Dessert: +100 to all nine stats, 600s, Filling 49%

Drinks: Drinks come in two types. Alcoholic drinks have very high buffs to strength, con, quickness, stamina (50 - 100% greater than Entrees), but negatives to Mind, Focus, and Willpower and relatively short duration (about equal to desserts). Non-alcoholic drinks have no negatives, buffs about equal to entrees, duration about equal to desserts, but a larger ratio add to Mind/Focus/Willpower than desserts or entrees.

Example Novice alcoholic drink: +160 stamina, -25 Mind, -25 Willpower, 230s, Filling 30%
Example Mixology II non-alcoholic: +250 Mind, +50 Willpower, 460s, Filling 35%
Example Mixology III alcoholic: +1000 Health, +600 constitution, -250 Mind, 480s, Filling 30%
Example Mixology IV non-alcoholic: +280 strength, +280 quickness, +280 focus, 500s, Filling 40%
Example Master alcoholic: +1500 strength, +1500 stamina, -125 willpower, 600s, Filling 40% (yep, Sunburn, but with a slightly higher negative to Willpower and longer duration)

Domestic Arts Food:

The Dom Arts tree in artisan would have food/drinksfor a very specific purpose: low filling to "top off" the fill bars. The highest filling percentages would be 25%, possibly coming down to 10% for DomArtsIV. However, to balance these with the chef foods the buff sizes would be cut by enough that eating 4,6, or 10 DomArts foods is still less than 2 Novice Chef doses. The Artisan experimentation could still make artisan food "better" than Novice Chef until you get Cooking I or so, but the first level of Entree/Desserts/Mixology should be equivalent without experimentation. The duration ofDomArts fodds would range from 3 minutes up to 10.

Ummm, whoa. I really should've spent the last...hour or so working. Feel free to praise my genius, flame my abject stupidity, take these ideas and run, or throw the whole thing out and start from scratch. And if the forums eat this post, I'm really going to be ticked off. Better copy it...

Great, I should've known some formatting would get screwed up when I switched to HTML to copy everything:

Example Novice Entree: +85 Health, 500s, Filling: 35%
Example Entree I: +120 Health, +30 Strength, 800s, Filling 30%
Example Entree II: +125 Health, +30 Strength, +50 Con, +50 Action, 1200s, Filling 40%
Example Entree III: +200 Health, 1500s, Filling 32%
Example Master Entree: +400 Health, +200 Action, +200 Mind, 2700s, Filling 55% (and should probably have a pretty complicated recipe).

Example Novice Dessert: +60 Mind, +50 quickness, +50 stamina, 200s, Filling 35%
Example Dessert II: +140 constitution, +140 stamina, +140 WIllpower, 480s, Filling 45%
Example Master Dessert: +100 to all nine stats, 600s, Filling 49%

Example Novice alcoholic drink: +160 stamina, -25 Mind, -25 Willpower, 230s, Filling 30%
Example Mixology II non-alcoholic: +250 Mind, +50 Willpower, 460s, Filling 35%
Example Mixology III alcoholic: +1000 Health, +600 constitution, -250 Mind, 480s, Filling 30%
Example Mixology IV non-alcoholic: +280 strength, +280 quickness, +280 focus, 500s, Filling 40%
Example Master alcoholic: +1500 strength, +1500 stamina, -125 willpower, 600s, Filling 40% (yep, Sunburn, but with a slightly higher negative to Willpower and longer duration)

The biggest issue for me is definitely duration. I have a Rifleman/Scout (2 boxes away from Master) alt character, and I try to use food as much as I can (well, I did until the recent patch). Buffs that seemed miniscule to me before, say 100-200 pt increase, make a big difference to me in battle. However, the durations are usually so short that they render them nearly useless...

I don't think that our buffs should last hours, like doctor/entertainer buffs. We need people to go through their stacks quicker than that in order to do enough business to survive. However, anything under 5 mins is ridiculous. Chef is an elite class for pete's sake...we should not have recipes that are worse than artisan food. I think the absolute minimum duration for any Chef food, before experimentation, should be 5 minutes.

But in my opinion, the best way to go would be to have a larger variety of buffs. Some shorter and more powerful, some longer and less powerful, some somewhere in between. As it is, we have too many recipes that do the exact same thing. I can make four or five drinks that buff the Action pool, all around the same amount, all around the same duration. What's the point?

I would propose several different types of recipes:
-Recipes that buff one stat high (over 300), for a short amount of time (5-15 minutes)
-Recipes that buff one stat low (under 300), for a long amount of time (15-45 minutes)
-Budget recipes,that buff one stat low under 300, for a short amount of time (5-15 minutes)
-Recipes that buff entire HAM pools (like Health, Con, and Strength) for various strengths and durations
-Recipes that buff all 3 primary stats for various strengths and durations
-Recipes that buff 3 secondary stats (HAM cost, or Regen like Veghash) for various strengths and durations
-Recipes that buff different combinations of stats (like Tat Sunburns) for various strengths and durations

Basically, I think variety is the way to go. There's a market for all of these types of buffs. Variety and convenience are what should set us apart from the other buffers. A customer should be able to go up to a Chef and say, "I need to buff my Willpower and Strength for a long time" or "I need to keep my Health bar as full as possible" and we should be able to whip up something that will do exactly that, for as high or as long as the customer needs. The variety is what would make this class fun to play, at least for me. I'm sick and tired of all of my recipes doing the same dang thing (not to mention, they all have the same dang graphic...but that's another wish list)

Bogus question since i would allready have done it. and if it would only be improving duration *1,5 each patch to see where it settles.

Whector pretty much came up with stuff I'd vote for.