Chef Archive

Wow, there are a lot of heavy forum hitters going in this thread.

Multiple /salute!

Sorry to see you all go

Maybe it's just me, but perhaps there should be some content love thrown the chef's way (in terms of some story-based event) that will make us all higher-profile types.

I know that players could do something like this if they can coordinate something, but I added elements that require Sony CSR participation (to make it cooler and more impactful). Maybe a crafting PA on each server could run it mainly, with a CSR there to do the actual prize giving:

The Galaxy Iron Chef competition:

You pay a flat fee to get into the contest. (This will cover the next item's cost.)

You ALL get the same resources from a specific individual.

You can use whatever tools you bring.

You each make a specific item.

Whoever has the best item (and this is where a panel of judges comes in) wins some sort of badge. You should probably specify that it has to be a manufacturing schematic.

The best item becomes a quest-given schematic in crafting missions AND can be used multiple times by the winner. (As in you get 10 copies or more given to you by the CSR there.)

This would require a CSR to moderate and present any prizes, of course.

THEN, the second part of the contest is a USER contest: How would *I* use this food item that I just got?

The points covered in this little thesis would be knowledge of subject matter (pick out a few things each essay should have), innovations in use (if combined with this other effect, I get X), and writing ability. You could get submissions via the website on this thing, and you'd want to limit the essay to 500-1000 words (whatever the Sony people feel covers the topic at hand).

The winner of the essay gets 100 units (or more) of the thing the chef made plus some kind of food knowledge badge. The essay could get posted on the website so that more people can learn about how to use food/drink.

There. That's my idea. I don't play my chef often enough to actually pull this off myself (or participate, really), but I REALLY feel that some of those crafting PAs out there could do this type of event IF they get CSR and the Events Manager's support.

If you want to involve all levels of chef, you could specify what level of knowledge you need and pick something appropriate to each skill box, but that's more ambitious. (It'd be the equivalent of a pie contest, a pickle contest, etc.) I'd give it a shot if I didn't have to be Master Chef.

Totally understandable that someone who spent time going up the chef tree would quit this game. The only reason I'm staying on SWG is cause all my friends are on another server and I have started a char there. He is totally anti-crafting and is slowly going up the fencer route.

My chef is dead on the water. This game is too big for SOE to handle and they are losing customers. Sadly I hope more leave so the whip gets cracking on the whole SOE team.

In a sick way, I'm kinda glad you all are leaving. I'm only aware of 1 other living, breathing, playing Master Chef on Starsider, as well as a couple that are within 2-3 skill boxes. It means I have a 1-man monopoly on my sector of the galaxy

I can rename all of my Breath of Heavens to Abyssal Elixirs, and I bet 75% of my customers wouldn't even know that that was a fake name

So you hit 1 million credits. I hit 2 million credits. It wasn't about the money.

I was bring in lots of money despite all the bugs. The reason being there were indeed some uses for food, and hardly any chefs around to make it. I was one of perhaps 2-3 active masters on Starsider when I pulled up my harvestors - that's a pretty low supply.

My main problems were not about being financially successful. They were things like:

• The absolute constant effort it took to get resources, due to frequent resource shifts, the need to get resources from multiple planets to get a suitable quality, the shortage of quality organic resources for sale from other players, and the general high cost and low quantity of meat. I was spending all my play time managing my harvestors, and it wasn't fun. This is a general crafter problem, though a little harder for chefs due to the wide range of resources needed, the crazy schematics making things like unit toughness being important, and the low number of chefs meaning other players didn't see a huge opportunity to make money finding resources for us.


• Constant babysitting of my factories, mostly due to the fact that I often couldn't make huge batches of certain food/components, as I couldn't get large enough stacks of ingredients such as domestic meat. I also found the speed of factories frustratingly slow- it would take maybe 2-3 days to get a batch of something like 1 crate of boh made.


• The stupidity of food experimentation - so frustrating to have great quality/flavor ingredients and not get past 40% of nutritional value or flavor texture.


• General frustration with the design of buffs and food's place in that. Sure I could sell a 3 minute buff and make money, but that doesn't mean I like the way that buff works.


• The huge time effort needed to maintain my vendors. It was way too hard to place stuff on vendors and set prices (or even worse change prices). I can't believe I still have to turn on worldwide planetary advertising EVERY MORNING.And then to have everything fall off my vendors after a week and even worse DISAPPEAR if I don't deal with that within 3 days. Oh yeah, and then there's my email box filling up with a gazillion vendor messages about things that I'm fully aware of.


• The frustration of dealing with special orders. Too many times my special order crate got bought off my vendor by someone else, even when I hid the vendor in a separate house or bedroom. And if I didn't put it on the vendor I'd have to wait around for people or go out of my way to meet up with them.


• Travel being a pain in the ass. Losing my pets whenever I crossed a server boundary. Autofollow not working except in wide open areas. No way to autorun/ride to a location. Having to sit in the spaceport for 10 minutes and actually be there when the shuttle arrived lest I miss it.


• Not feeling like there was any real reward for my success. The only thing I could really do withmy moneywas buy more harvestors.


• The complete inabililty to take a few days off without things decaying or wasting my money due to things like a harvestor having a resource shift turning it off, but the harvestor still eating up my money.


• And most of all, that pretty much all of my friends disappeared from the game because they hated their class, thought pvp was unbalanced, or ran out of interesting content to explore.

I thought about trying some other parts of the game, doing some quests, developing some combat skill on another character, etc. But with none of my friends still around to do that with, and no time to do that without completely giving up my chef business, it seemed kind of hopeless.

yeah, some people here need to realize this has nothing to do with credits, many of us have plenty of it, including myself. Its about other issues.

Some of us don't have plenty of credits

I had to get a loan to afford the training to Master Chef.

Ilori, sounds like you should just take some time off (which you seem to be doing). I went from playing about 8 hours/day to MAYBE 4 hours/week for about a bit over a month, and I have just started to get back in game. I'm maybe going to actually quite possibly ahve a chance of enjoying the game again!

*splits the galaxy with Brullig*

I'm still going, and business really picked up after the patch.

llori,

Maybe I've gotten lucky, but a lot of my special order customers own or have access to a vendor that I can sell to, so I can get around having my own special order vendor or playing the same time as my customer. I usually ask that first now, i think most high end characters have a merchant friend they can trust with this.

I do agree that vendors should have more options/permissions on who buys what. I know of an imperial chef that gets constant business from a few rebel players, and wants to bar opposite faction players from buying from him. That option could probably start some crazy griefing/discrimination against certain races or something (those crafty rodians! no treats from me!).

Ida, I agree completely with you. I couldn't have typed it better myself.

I love Chef, I have loved it since retail started (in beta I was DE O_o), and I still love the IDEA of the chef, providing buffs that ANYONE can use.

I played non-buff classes in DAoC - Armsman, Cabalist, then Necromancer. In that game, unless you had a buffbot, you weren't able to compete.

The Chef provides a way for everyone to carry their own buffs. Yes, the doctor buffs are superior, but how many Doctors can you fit in your pocket ?

I have stuck it out from the start, I got Master the hard way - gwouch and orders, giving out packs of the stuff everywhere, not in 2 days by macro grinding. It took me a bit longer than some, and I was faster than others.
I have a massive collection of Meat and Flora, most of which will probably never be used because 95% of the chef's items are useless.

I dropped Carbineer & Scouting to get Master Smuggler to compliment Chef, and my spice outsells food 3:1 (that's probably gonna change if the incap on downer stays in).

However, there is still no sign of the Chef re-balance that was promised. The Correspondant replies from the devs are nothing more than playing for time by them.
It took 6 WEEKS for the stack bug to be fixed - OK it wasn't as bad at first, but it was there that ling ago.
We STILL don't have a reliable way to get milk, other than duping.

Like many, I have lived with it, done what I can to campaign for Chef - even to the point of getting banned from the forums for a humorours remark O_o.

The ONLY thing that's keeping my Chef skills currently ? I can't decide what to replace it with.
That is the sad fact now, as soon as I decide what to do, Chef will go. No matter how much the PA need a Chef, I can't see any reason to keep it.

So it looks as though it may be goodbye from me. I'm currently levelling a Carbineer/Squad Leader on a 2nd account, so I may not be dropping Chef on the char immediately, but it is going to happen.

I don't know how SirVimes keeps going. All that hard work, testing on teh TC to see the bugs he reported going live anyway, all his work being ignored - a lot of respect to you SirVimes, it's a damned shame the devs don't appreciate your work as much as we do

I'll still haunt the chef forum whilst I still have any chef skill, as maybe, one day before I lose chef totally, a miracle may happen

Amen Fatgit!

After seeing the results of this latest patch, I have no real hope of being the food/drink buff provider that I had been looking so forward to being. I can't see paying money for several more months to have the profession finally fixed. I have better things to do in life, and my money will be better spent elsewhere.

Good luck Halle, and the other few chefsthat are going to hang in there on Radiant.

Its so... cold.. so.. useless...

Ever felt so useless? Yea.. well then again, I do like being those 'why in the world are you still living' classes. Picking up swordsman in my spare time... rather odd for a chef to wield an Axe... but I like it. LoL..

All in good time will the class be fixed. Which in its self, is a dangerous line to say. After all, who knows just how long time is? Or how 'good' time is? So far, time has been quite the not so good thing. gotta love crafters, and even more so, those that put up with it.

All in all, total balance is impossible. This war never really started, its all just one really big ending...

Good luck to all the chefs out there that are going on to other classes, if you need food.. umm... I got some bread!

stupid bread...