Chef Archive

This isn't worded in any way that I would suggest giving it to devs to read, it's just for the sake of Chef discussion, on why I think we should prioritize things in this order.

These are my opinion of the top Chef issues, in order of priority.
The top priority items come down to "usability". Milk and eggs are not important if our buffs are not useful enough to begin with.

1) Factories do not produce foods correctly.

If they did, we would be able to produce a stack of 100 Jawa Beer to sell to someone. Stick it in your hotkey bar and bam, all the +STR/+STA buffs you can handle for several hours under one handy key.

As long as factories do not work correctly, the Chef is not going to be a well liked class. Even if we have a buff that gives you +1000 everything for 10 minutes, nobody is going to want to carry them as 100 seperate items, all taking up 1 inventory slot each. Only if you can give someone a stack of 25, 50, 100 or 500 can these buffs really be well liked.

That's why I think factories are the #1 issue with Chefs.

2) Buffs run out, but you're still full.

Either buff duration should be increased or the food should "digest" at a rate that matches the duration of the buff. Maybe someone can give specific numbers for this, but I think it takes 10 minutes for one eaten item? So if you eat 4 of something and fill up, you get good stats, but all your buffs run out after 5 minutes and you can't fill up again for like half an hour. I'm just making these numbers up, but you know what I'm talking about. Even if factories worked to produce stacks of 100 Jawa Beer, you can so rarely use the buffs that it's hardly worth the trouble of buying food.

3) No on-screen indicator of buffs.

At the very least, I would like to see a new window we can put on screen that just shows our food and drink level. Better yet would be a "buff window" that shows the food/drink meter and has a listing underneath it of what our current buffs are. Like you have the food bar, the drink bar and then see things like:

HP +1000
Con +150
Str +200
Foc -50
Will +400

This is the kind of thing that a player can look at and know what the food has done, and he can see when it runs out, and when he can eat and drink more. Having to pop open your character stats and then "do the math" to see your buffs is not helpful enough.

3a) PS, the existing food/drink bar on the character sheet does not update correctly. It frequently shows you as full when you're not.

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I will list some other problems but I think that fixing them would be useless unless we have those 3 things going first, so that people want and can make good use of our stuff.

4) Novice Chef is not as good as Domestic IV

There needs to be some carryover experimentation points from Artisan to Chef. A novice armorsmith goes back down to 1 or 2 experiment points and that's okay because he can make an armor that no artisan can make. A novice chef goes down to1 or 2 experiment points and that's NOT okay because his foods do the same things as Domestic foods. By having so many fewer experimentation points than an artisan, Novice Chef foods end up being far less useful than similar foods created by someone with Domestic IV.

This is an important issue, but I still rate it as #4, because even with a lot of experiment points, foods are just too cumbersome to use, as a result of #1 - #3.

5) No milk, no eggs

We could probably include "fish" here too. Recipies call for them, and the recipies aren't even that GOOD, but we have no way to produce useful quanities of those recipies because the game does not have any method of bringing in useful amounts of milk, eggs or fish.

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I think with these 5 things, Chef would finally be viable for something other than roleplaying.

I said it once I'll say it again, the factory issue simply does not apply to all chefs, and thats the reason I cannnot justify it being at number 1.
We should be focused on problems that affect all of us, not a quarter of us or a half of us.

When 100 percent of all Chef's have factories, then I can see us making this a top priority, until then, lets start fixing things that everyone will benefit from.

If you don't have a factory, then you really aren't much of a chef, at least in terms of supplying buffs to the community.

If you can produce something that gives me +1000 willpower for 10 minutes, awesome! If you tell me that you don't have a factory and can only give me these items as single stacks of 2, then frankly, I don't want them. My inventory is full enough as it is, if you can't give me a stack of 100, then you can keep them.

That's why I see factories as #1. If you can't make a stack of 100, then you can't make anything that 99% of players will want.

That's total nonsense and I totally disagree, to say that I am not a chef because I don't have a factory? Ever think that some players might want to develop their characters as more hands on instead of mass production?

It's the difference between a pastry artist who painstakingly hand crafts items to Nabisco that cranks 'em out by the thousands a day. Both are a manner of chefs, both create food.

You need to look at it from the standpoint of a player who is buying your goods.

They want a Willpower buff, because they use up their mind pool so fast.

They come to your vendor and see a great food item that gives them +200 willpower for 10 minutes.

They see that these items come in stacks of 2.

Now you have three problems:

1) They buy 20 of these things. You, as the vendor owner, get email spammed. It's a hassle for the buyer to have to do this as well, buying 20 seperate items, retrieving 20 seperate items.

2) It takes up too much space. They just went from 40/60 inventory to 60/60 inventory and their bag looks like a cafeteria.

3) It's not easily hotkeyed. They have to drag each stack into a different hotkey so it's handy for use and replace them with new stacks as needed.

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With a properly running factory, you could produce the very same food with the same buff, only you could make it a single stack of 40 or more. You get 1 email when they buy it, they only have to retrieve 1 item from the vendor, it takes up 1 inventory space and they can put it in 1 hotkey.

Night and day. The small stacks we produce by hand are simply too tedious for anyone to want to consistantly bother with. I'm a chef and even *I* can't stand to deal with all these seperate small stacks. It's all about ease of use.

I'm not contesting that factories are not busted, because they are, I'm saying it's selfish to make it the #1 issue when it doesnt apply to everyone.

As for buff times. I personally (may be jsut me) find the food and drink bar to be buggy. It shows visually i'm still full, but i can down food usully every 5-10 minutes. The characters bars dont' seem to move for hours.

Anyone else have this problem?

I agree with saitek.

Yeah, I listed that as 3a.

And I don't think you're seeing my point on factories. If we were both weaponsmiths, you would not need a factory. Your hand crafted rifle is as good as my factory rifle.

As chefs, if you don't have a factory, then you are not evena blip on the market. If you can only sell a stack of 2, but I can sell a stack of 200, then I will have all the business. Factories are a priority item to a chef.

You don't need a factory to grind your way to Master Chef.

You DO need a factory if you're going to produce useful items for a whole guild.

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I'm not interested in making it easier for you to grind your way to Master, I'm interested in making the Chef into a class that's useful to groups and guilds. And that requires a factory.

I do see your point, as I said before factories are broken, but we are not arguing the usefullness of a factory or whether or not we should be producing large quantities of food, we are arguing its placement on the top 5 list, you want it at number 1, I'm thinking its a 2 or a 3.

Hey man, instead of selling 1 drink for 300 credits that has 4 uses..might as well sell it for 300 with 1 use from a factory.

I don't see the negative here

To be honest, I don't really see the point of priority. I think the big question is wether it should be on the top 5 list at all (which I think we all say, "in the name of Lucas and all things Flannel, Yes, we say, Yes!" Well, maybe I am the only one who says that....) As long as it is included in the top 5, I am not really sure rank matters.

But that is my opinion.

I don't think rank is important as far as what they will fix or not fix first, because we know they will fix things in the order convienant and appropriate to their workflow.

But the list does indicate to them what we as a community think is important and urgent, in order from greatest to least. I also think of the list more of a message, what are we trying to say about the profession currently as a whole? Hence why the first choice should be something that represents the feelings and problems that the whole community is feeling. Kind of moving from broader issues to more specific ones.

[quote]#1) Factories do not produce foods correctly....

....factories are the #1 issue with Chefs.[/quote]

You are 100% correct!

This needs to be worked on as soon as possible, IMHO.

-DS