Chef Archive

ok, well fair enough. I guess what I was trying to get at is I'd like for there to be reasons for people to consume food & drink in cantinas, hotels, and big social events. That particular idea was the best I could come up with to that end.

I think it would sell. I really do. And at present, since not even quite a novice chef myself, I speak as a user, rather than a crafter, of foods too.

Thanks for your feedback. (Ah the sting of rejection) . No i mean it. At least you took time out to read it.

in terms of realism I think it makes a certain sense for drink (ok maybe not food) to loosen peoples inhibitions and encourage them to dance (they might fall over more often though). Even if it just granted your basic dance type to non-dancers for a while. In terms of game-play I think it makes even more sense, but then I would wouldn't I! I think it would work particularly well with the pair-dancing / partnered-dancing idea in the other thread I mentioned.

Funny, Personally its the ideas in 1) and 2) that I'm most excited about (particularly 2). Harder to implement? Sure, some of them, but this IS a wishlist.

As for 3), people haveproposed skill buffs instead of / as well as stat buffs and I tried to pick out all the skills I could think of where nutrition might conceivably play a role. I'm not sure about all of them but I'm just throwing ideas at the wall.

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I should comment on and support some of the other ideas in this thread. Lots of them I love. More furniture/clothing for chefs, definitely. Customization of food? Great. Getting fatter? Fun (so long as its reversable with healthy eating and living!). Camp barbeque working as food&chem station is a stroke of genius. Food to help in taming- should havereferred to that idea in my section 2).

Could probably live without a Chef hat tho!

I have to say Niktok, you've squarely hit the nail where visual presentation is concerned for me. When I'm running afield and pass a house, it would definitely be cool if some of the shops had a window display to indicate the profession of the owner. I'm not sure how such things are done, but, I spose if one has a vendor in the house, then the items which are listed on that vendor could cue a particular type of window display - so it should be doable on a longrange sortuv thought. And yeah, I'm aware that gameplay mechanics will come before tweaks like these - but hopefully we'll be around long enough to see the evolution of SWG into something beyond its promise. So these ideas are worthy to bat around!

a) I'd like to revisit the bazaar/vendor food sale item and suggest that, as with clothing, we not only have a top-level listing, but subcategories along the lines of Sweets (for dancers or samplers who needs activity), Savories (for those mentalblokes like medics), and Hearty Meals (for constitution drive folks). Yes, what I mean is that the statistics most hit by afood could help determine the type of food we're selling, and thus a subcategory could be achieved to help direct buyers to the appropriate category of food for their intended activities.Some foods hit a number of statistics and might become harder to classify, but then, that may help us determine their appropriateness when balancing the game later. I've never tried to group the menu out into who could use what, but yesterday, at least 3 people bought about 20-50% of my bazaar listings in such a random manner that you could only presume they were sampling everything to figure out what it did to them. Which is fine, but, just indicative of the frustration players will face determining what food will do what for them.

b) I'm a big fan of the creature or resource-specific meals. I was killed my a number of krevols already, but my mission to go after them indicated they were a great delicacy. Yeah, I was the delicacy - but anyways, a FEW of these recipes requiring a specific food might be cool. Too many would be bad. Why? Cuz they would have to subcategorize every type of harvestable resource, and that would take up valuable room in people's backpacks. I think you could get away with one creature and/or one resource specific item from each planet; let's talk regional cuisine, and you have the picture. Wherever it says milk, justinsert a planet-specific resource.This shouldnt be a problem on one level since I noticed my flora/fauna/minerals from different planets wno't stack anyways. Spread these recipesaround the chef skills tree and you have a delightful way to encourage people to focus away from grinding without reducing them to one option on their menu acquisitions. If on the other hand, you balanced the skilltree out somehow to include a regional cuisine tree (not recommended), you could create a freaky way of driving a chef nuts, but also encouraging them to network and explore more.

c) In game holidays! Wesaw one already, can't wait for the next. Wouldn't it be radically COOL if we could make an exclusive item for only a short term? Like making eggnog. What agreat way to share some merriment with other players, having folks afield bring specific resources back in to us which can then be used for making a celebratory drink or food. Perhaps it all starts with a creature that only spawns once a year. Or a berry that has a short-term availability. Or a rare gas from a rupturing volcano. A strange effect from eating crazed durnis hit with stimpacks. Oh, stop me. I still like this idea tho. Note to Devs - keep with the holidays, btw, its one way to help build community in game, just add a few dialogue snippets for NPCs to throw out there to inform players as to what the holiday is all about.

I especially agree with number 3. I am trying to set up a cantina, and I am really disappointed in how little there is available. I think they should have more stuff to put in the kitchen or cantina or whatever.

Well thanks Ihro, I think that when playing in an alternate reality such as this, visual perception is very important. I would love to seea lot of the ideas we have been batting around added to the game, and I am talking seriously about the future here. I know a lot of this stuff is way more complex and would take a long time to get in place, especially considering that we haven't even really gotten our "balance pass" yet. I do however, know that with the current in-game graphics engine, a lot of this stuff is possible. Perhaps a tad difficult, but definately doable from what I've seen. So regardless here are a few more of my ideas and retorts (if you will) to a few of the suggestions floating about.

LedSyrus, I don't really know how Diablo 2 got thrown into this... I played Diablo 2 Hardcore for a really long time, and there is absolutely no food in the game whatsoever. So as far as foods that enhance abilities and the like, or provide temporary buffs, the closest similarity I could see would be that of the diablo style armor. And let's face it, as much as people love to say "THIS ISN'T DIABLO". Diablo was a very very successful franchise due to its addictive nature and extensive collection of armors and weapons, while we don't want this game to be Diablo, certainly we want to have an extensive array of stuff to collect don't we? We have, at least I have in any case, been thinking a lot about foods that would provide various buffs to skills and abilities for a short time. This would in no means be a permanent thing like that of donning a suit of armor and having bonuses to your skills ALA diablo 2 style armors, but more of a temporary buff, which is as far as I am concerned, is what the chef class is all about. Why shouldn't a wine or liquor effect accuracy skills when firing a gun butimprove artistic qualities? Come on, how many artists have there been with extreme alcohol dependencies, that have been extraordinarily famous? This could be coupled with the rarer material requiring recipes, or maybe just require a 'power up' not dissimilar from the krayt tissue the weaponsmiths are now squabbling over. Or maybe this idea could just become the cornerstone of the chef class. It would have to be thought out, because let's face it... no matter how good of a cook you may be, no food is going to improve your Organic Chemistry knowledge, and if it did, what I wouldn't do for a crate load of those for my next exam!

But I do believe that skill-buffing is a great idea. Alcohol does remove inhibitions, firey foods doseemingly make you feelmore resistantto cold... You can see the progression. Butthe problem here is that the smuggler, doctor, and chef are all buffingthe same things... So of course there will always be a clear-cut loser, but if we shifted the buff roles around a bit, eveyone would have a niche andhave a specific market.

SirVimes, thanks for looking over the initial list. I know that the Devs have their plate full if not mega-overflowing right now, but it would be great if they know what we are feeling in regards to our appearance in the game. A lot of artisan classes are lacking in their visual presentation aids, but some classes, like the droid engineer, have a lot of the stuff in game. Granted, they can't make this stuff or rarely if ever find it, but visit any guild hall in town, i think the university guild hall, and look at the awesome decorations available for the droid engineer. We need some of this stuff to put in our houses and stores.

Other things, Ihro, I think you might be on to something. I know in games like Asheron's Call 2 there are creature trophies. I've never played that game, but I hear that monsters have a percent chance of dropping the trophy, and you can then stack them akin to our factory crates. That would be cool and would save inventory space for those of us who would like to dabble in the component recipes. I would LOVE to see this, it would give the chefs a more active field life instead of just tracking down a fungus or a fruit, and would also give rangers or scouts a reason to use their nifty new tracking abilities to hunt down specific creatures for that hard to find recipe component.

Alright, well I have a bit more to say, but alas I can't take up all my time at work typing here can I? hehe... I'll drop some more information off here later.

Age

Nice ideas...

I'm not a chef my self, but I once was about to be Novice Chef... thinking of having my own cantina and such... but well... crafting isn't me...

Now I'm a ranger (just made novice 24 hours ago... wuhu!), and I'm often one those long hunting trips, where I don't see a city for several hours (sometimes in a bigger group), and it gives me loads of BF... my idea that would make it absolutely great use (I hope), was that some of those "hunting meals" would temporarily (30 minutes perhaps?) decrease the BF... this would make a good use for us lone rangers that hates the city, or is trying to fill a big order of specific organic...

Another idea is for chefs helping CH... seriously... using a master chef made food would give the CH bigger chance for taming, than not taming... or something like that... I would love to see chef being used for other than buffs

Heh heh, I have no idea where I found this, but it's a good post, so I'm sort of bumping it withmy reply.

I just want to say that these are great ideas. I mean, I see the whole balance thing here. "Yes," people will say, "these are good ideas. BUT we need to get the BROKEN THINGS FIXED FIRST." And I agree with that--I'd rather be able to sell my food because it's no longer poisonous, use all my schematics because they've fixed them and input milk, and make better buffs. But I also don't think there's anything wrong with wishing for pretty details.

For one thing, I wish that each of the schematics would look different from one another. I mean, why should Ruby Bliel, Charde, and fifteen other drinks look exactly the same? And, while I'm wishing, I wish that we could color them, as was suggested before. Blue icing on an aircake, I believe was that suggestion, and I love that. Tailors get to color their clothing, yes, and I know that their profession is all about what stuff looks like, but don't droid engineers get to pick colors for their droids? It doesn't have to be a ton of different colors or even for every food, but why can't we have five colors to choose from for our cake?

The thing about animations is so true, as well. If you're a doctor and you heal someone, there's an animation that tells everyone that you're a doctor (or at least a medic). And try being a commando and hiding it once you go into combat. Yet I, as a chef, can stand in the middle of Bestine and craft until I'm blue in the face, and unless I'm wearing a title, no one will be the wiser. At least it will make people more aware of us--I've had to explain what a Culinary Master is twice since I got it about a week ago. And while that's not a lot, imagine all the other people who DIDN'T ask me yet didn't know what I was, and on top of that, does a Bounty Hunter have to explain what he does? No.

OK, now that I've said all this, I feel kind of sad for our profession. Everything I've said has been said a million times in a million ways. It feels to me like these boardsare just reiteration of the same things--this is broken, that's not working, PLEASE fix us and make us better and stop overlooking us!

I, for one, wish that things would get better so we can talk about real chef stuff, instead of the same topics over and over and over ... I don't know what that real chef stuff is, but it seems all the brokenness and bugs make whatever those things would be go by the wayside.