Chef Archive

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Balzamel wrote:

Well this is my experiences of the food bug.

Ex.
I eat some bread (can't remember the name) that adds +70 to stamina.
My base stamina is 500
After I eat one I have 570
After I eat two more I still have 570. I should have 710.
When the buff ends I have 360 and I have to wait 20-30 min before it returns to the base value
The result is that I never buy food or drinks. This is a bug that needs to get a higher priority.

I can't understand why they don't fix this.
The only explanation is that they have so much to do that they are ignoring this matter.

Some hints for them how to fix it.
1. Talk to the project manager for the developers (if any)
2. Describe the problem step by step and ask who is responsible for the chef code(or stat code)
If they fail to under stand the problem ask them to log in and eat some **edit** food
3. Developer who is responsible for the chef code, write a patch to fix the problem. (and get a kick in his butt for not doing it sooner
4. Problem is solved, customers are happy.

This should take 1-2 days to fix if they dedicate one developer for it. The problem is that no one is working with this at all

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It's heartening to see chefs still doggedly working for our profession. I don' use TS and neither have I taken much food lately, instead watching the boards and waiting till things are fixed before supporting this tree again.

However, in answer to the original question, the buffs are killing me. i have almost noghting to seel on my lone vendor. I'm a solo player for the most part, and now that the most advanced items I can craft myself are useless [or worse, anathema] at the moment, I am reduced to harvesting resources for income aside from lonely missions. Whoopty doo.

So, Akane, did they keep the buff subtraction on the primaries on TC? Before, if you got a Health buff, it would add to the max, but not the current, requiring you to regen up. Now it adds to both (assuming you only eat one, of course). But when the buff wears off, the game subtracts from both your max and current, even if your buffed current is below your normal max (if that makes sense). So with a +100 Health food, you'd go from 500/500 to 600/600, then if you took 300 points of damage (putting you at 300/600), when the buff wore off you'd be at 200/500. Prior to the "big bad patch", you would've been at 300/500.

This seemed to cause some concern from people on live, especially with spices. But I like that implementation, it seems more fair since you can now use food as an instant "heal". Of course, it might be better if it either bottomed out at 1 (so you wouldn't get incapped if your health was at 50 when the buff wore off, now it puts you at -50) or had some way to check the remaining time on the buff.

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sciguyCO wrote:

So, Akane, did they keep the buff subtraction on the primaries on TC?

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Next time I get a chance totest, I will continuemy search for Flameout on Test Center to be totallysure of whether the subtraction is happening (and if it can incapacitate your character). However,as far as I can tell,they did keepthe buff subtraction when the primary buffs expire. When your buff expires, you actually take damage to the affected stat. I can see the negative "damage" number float over my character's head.

I actually like the instant increase in your current stat, although I agree that it can be a problem when a big buff wears off. If the decrease were managed properly, some mind foods could be used as instant"mind healing potions" — something I know most of my (former ) food customers would love.

My Experience.

I was the only IMP (Covert) In an all reb party (Mostly Coverts) and we were on the way to fort tusken. Everyone wanted to make a camp before we went in so docs could buff, dancers could buff etc.....

After numberous IMP Jokes (I can take a few jokes no probs but it was getting really ugly) So I had a factory crate of Vegeparsine on me and after passing them all out to the group I asked them all to eat 2 bites each before we went into the fray. I left the group only 10 minutes later to receive numberous tells from the former group that I bugged their stats to 150 and their regen was shyt even after relogging.....OOPS....Did I do that?

A reb friend of mine was in the group and asked me to do it. He said they cursed my name for an hour but in the end many of them knew it was a joke so OH well......Cook On!

Chefs are worthless even if you weren't bugged what can you do? What does a 182 second str booth of +30 get me? Chefs should now be called poisoners. You get a little high off what you eat then your stat bugged. I noticed the posts about balance pass on chefs was dated June, hehe. You will see player mounts and player cities before you see chefs serve some purpose other than a rare title under your screen name.

Thank you. I've enjoyed your comments and attempts at making chefs angry. I'm not angry at you. I do think you need to take another look at buffs. a +50 buff for 3 mintues might not be the nest buff in the game, but for some ppl out there it might make the difference between a visit to the cloning center and walking away with the loot. I wouldn't say that if I didn't sell those buffs successfully. Sometimes it's only for pet food, but ppl really use them. I think you just need to educate yourself about this profession and what it has to offer.

Looks like someone is baiting. To make a post in the Chef Forum saying how useless foods are by way of a lame and obviously ill-informed example can be nothing else.

We Chefs know there are bugs, but any of us alsoknow that there are foods that rack up stat bonuses in the 1,000s and some that have durations that can last over 15 minutes.

I am attempting to handle the buff bug by starting to read a self-help book on patience. It hurts to have the bug, but I intend to be here when it is fixed.

I really really think the chef dev needs to head over to the EQ2 area of the building and just chat with the fine folks who are working on shamans and alchemy. If nothing else, it'll make alchemy that much more bug-free when EQ2 comes out AND possibly make several improvements to this class we call chef.

I play my chef as a secondary nowadays. I just stock up vendors, run maintenance every morning before work, and do surveys when I can to replenish my bank account. (Sales are very slow right now. Go fig.) I'll be happier when/if they introduce a means to monitor your harvesters from your main abode so that this time is cut down even more. (I hate running a harvester for 24 hours without it getting something out of the darned ground.)

But, I bet that EQ2 and SWG are siloed there at Sony, so there is not as much spreading of knowledge and lessons learned as there could be. Perhaps one of them can prove my impression incorrect by saying as much and giving a focused statement as to what's in store for us chefs AND have the shaman class get a focused statement as to what they can expect in EQ2? Maybe even mention that these people have spoken to each other, and all will be even better than before because of it?

While communication with the fans can open you up to criticism (based on what you reveal), it's better than building frustration in your player base. Fans of games like to be critical about something, and you'll never please everyone. However, you're more likely to lessen frustration in many folks if you just SAY something solid about whatever's bugging folks. You have to develop a thick skin in the gaming industry so that you dont' take things personally when someone gets upset, and you have to be ready to inform your fans if something is wrong and is being worked on. (And if you don't have anyone to work on a class-breaking bug like the buff bug, be ready to make reparations of some sort: Either hire someone on temporarily to fix it OR give the people affected something cool to play with while they're dealing with a class-breaking bug. Or do both.)

I really hope that this current buff bug does go away completely in the next big patch AND I hope that the chefs aren't saddled with another wave of profession-breaking badness. Also, I hope that we can see some nice tweaks to this profession. I've seen some nifty thoughts in this forum, and I bet the alchemy developer for EQ2 can provide even more possibilities. (They're using the same engine, from what I've heard, so it should be a matter of tweaking code in terms of alchemy-->chef. But I'm not a programmer. Address this if I'm wrong, O Developers.) For instance, it'd be super-nice to hand a fellow crafter a beverage that makes them run REALLY fast over those hills -- like a scout with Exploration 4 AT LEAST -- so that they can do their harvester runs more quickly and focus more on their crafting profession instead of having to take scout skills. [The equivalent of Spirit of Wolf potions from EQ.] Perhaps allowing a Mask Scent food that works to chemically neutralize your personal odor would be nifty, too. It'd be neat to give a fellow crafter something to eat that would temporarily grant more experimentation points, too, or completely negate critical failures for a period of time. Give us more to work with, please! We can enhance the game in so many ways that we currently are unable to!

--Brellian

Incidentally, I tested food and drink on Test Center some more today, as there have been updates since last I checked.

The double decrease with food and drink still happens. For instance, my character drank two aithas that added +39 to my mind each. A second before they wore off, my character had 88 mind, so if all were working correctly, my character ought to have taken 39 damage, then another 39 damage— leavingme with 10 mind. Instead, my character took 39 damage and then 78 damage, which left her incapacitated with-29 mind.

Despite this problem, it seems like the situation on Test Centeris an improvement over the current bug on the live servers— at least for chefs. I suspect thatone reason that these changes haven't been moved live is that they wereaccompanied by new problems with doctor and spice buffs.About a week ago on Test Center, there were reports that doctor buffs weren't increasing the character's stats most of the time. Although this problem seems to have disappeared, apparently it is still the case that if a spice or doctor buff increases a primary stat by X, damage taken to that stat eats up the buff itself. That is, the buffs act as shields, but don't regenerate. This makes doctor buffs virtually useless. I tried to replicate this with food and drink buffs, but even when I "used up" my primary stat buff (e.g., +30 mind), it regenerated correctly for the duration of the buff. I was really surprised. This is the first time I've seen food and drink work better than only buffs.

Even if the changes currently implemented on Test Center would benefit chefs overall, I doubt that developers will move the changes live if it means doctors will be unable to use their buffs effectively.