Chef Archive
Thread: How would you fix buffs
Plainly said, Doctors have the buffing market cornered. I didn't realize this fully until Master Doctor when literally that second I got three tells asking can I buff. In addition, there's a slight competitive market going on where 1000 per buff (6000 for all) is now about 800 or 4000 for all. This of course severely impacts the Chef since I've seen some extremely expensive higher level foods. While making buffs is not a pretty sight, making foods is exponentially more detailed. In addition, the Doctor's forum (run by a great player Zalor) is hot on the topic of getting more buffing priveledges, making Master Docs buff the same amount or keep randomness. Simply put: if Doctor's get this unrandomness with the 25% bonus to Master's and bonuses to Zabraks, this will completely kill the Chef profession IMHO. Without randomness, why go to a Chef?
I realize that all of this is quite on the opposite perspective of being a Master Doctor, but I just empathized so much with the Chef profession I had to say something. However, I see "buffing" as the overall topic between Chefs, Doctors, and Smugglers since the devs put it in all three. It is an extremely powerful tool for all players, since soloing the toughest creatures in the game like Krayts becomes an easy proposition with buffs (and of course, our trusty "Pet Wars".. but that's another topic. They should think VERY seriously about complete game balance, since this creates an almost game killing scenario. No one can possibly solo a Dragon in Everquest and thus makes large groups essential. SWG takes groups, guilds, etc. lightyears ahead, but faces a distinct threat with this solo-buffing-creature ability to the games toughest creatures. Buffing needs the absolute attention of the devs at this point for all three of the professions and frankly should have it's own forum topic to fix it. Buffing is an essential part of any MMORPG and is a viable long-term profession for any player. Make this a TOP priority for us ALL devs!!!!!!!!!!!
Bekaek
Master Doctor, Expert CM
Ahazi
[GDF]
/kowtow
You earn my respect. But what I don't want to see happen is the doctors loose all their buffing abilities and then blame it all on us for some reason. I completely agree that buffing is a very high-priority item in an MMORPG. This is why I chose down the 'dark path' of Chef, after reading that it was the buffing class of SWG. I have been tempted to give back my skills to become a doctor, after seeing their raw power. All I can say is that we welcome inter-community support (well, I do at least).
Please Q, or Thunderheart, or anyone, please find your way through the maze that is the community forums and find ours. Can it really be that difficult?
I feel as if I'm on a life raft that has a little hole in it, and water keeps coming in...
First, I agree with many posters that food should have a much longer duration. I would suggest this:
Food duration lasts for up to 3 hours for a "full meal". Capacity should also be at 3 hours. One group of "meal" buffs should = 3 hours. So perhaps each "single" of a group of 3 would last 1 hour each. Eat all 3 and the effect will last 3 hours (not stack). Eat 3 different foods, and the effects stack, but last 1 hour (and you're full).
Drink duration should be shorter, around 30 minutes. A capacity should also be smaller, maybe around 1 to 1.5 hours.
Effects wear off as the food time expires. So 30 minutes after eating a +100 health food that lasts one hour, your character would have +50 to health; after 60 minutes the + would be 0.
Now, as for the buff level/layout - I like the idea of Drinks, Meals, Desserts & a "experimentation" trees. I would totally revamp the effects of the foods & drinks in them though:
First, [B]total[/B] bonuses should be kept to the following:
Level 1: Max single primary (Health, Action, Mind) stat increase of 100; multi stat increase of 80 divided between the # of stats (e.g Health & Action +40 each or +50 health, +10 strength), secondary stats up to +50 (half the value of the primary stat)
Level 2: Max single primary stat increase of +500; multi or secondary stat increase of +150
Level 3: Max single primary stat increase of +300 with no penalty, +750 with penalty; multi or secondary stat increase of +100 with no penalty or +250 with penalty
Level 4: Max single primary stat increase of +500 with no penalty, +1000 with penalty; multi or secondary stat increase of +250 with no penalty or +500 with penalty
[B]Drinks:[/B] Adds to Health & Action stats & sub-stats, subtracts from mind stats & substats.
[B]Food:[/B] Same idea as drinks, but bonus would be to Health & Mind, negatives to Action.
[B]Desserts:[/B] Same idea as drinks, but bonus would be to Action & Mind, negatives to health
[B]Experimentation:[/B] include some fun things like aprons, chef hats and things in clothing; allow Chefs to make nice plates & stuff that will give a bonus to foods when eaten (must first be placed "into" the plates to be used; can only be used once every hour), Improved crafting tools at higher levels, and so on.
That's it from me. It seems from the work I've done (which is not much) that there was very poor QA in the pass for Chefs, otherwise the buffs would be distributed much more evenly, regardless of the "power" of the buff.
Despite everything above, play balance has to be kept in line.
'k wanted to add to this earlier but had problems replying to posts when at home. Probably too late to grab any attention but my 2 cents (cut&paste from another post; sorry)....
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Personally I think chef foods should be redesigned with specific uses, professions and situations in mind- recipes that combine several effects (temporarily buffing stats, skills or having other effects). An example:
Entertainer food: energy food that specifically reduces HAM cost of flourishes for a reasonably long duration
Combat-recovery food: nutritional food that boosts regen stats and improves effect of anywound treatment applied to the consumer.
Defensive combat food: increases awareness thereby improving dodge success rates or hit success rates etc
Surveying food: energy trail-rations that specifically reduce HAM costs of surveying and sampling, for an extended period
Pet food: for faster / better growth and improved training, or for pet recovery
'Bribery' drink: can be given to NPCs to improve payouts, get additional info etc.
Doing this sort of thing has 3 benefits:
1) Players can readily identify what food / drink they want to buy for particular purposes.
2) Easy to organise into a skill tree such that lower level recipes are still useful and in demand
3) Makes chef more interesting and more involving, and makes food more central to SWG 'life'.
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a 4) was mentioned by EATENG...
Led, those proposed foods also do something else. gives us a WHOLE NEW market, instead of competing with the stat buffing professions like smuggler and docs. gives us a new purpose and niche
oh, and like sciguyCO said...
Resistance foods: vitamin-packed food that confers resistance to certain states such as poison, dizziness, blindness etc.
C'mon, there are a ton of things like this.
1) double the duration times...it won't make buffs increadibly useful, as most would still be under 20 minutes, but at least they wouldn't be annoyingly short.
2) add a food requirement to the CH's tame ability, and have it affect chance to tame (not cl of tamable creature), and put that schem at master chef.
3) have a few new foods, or change some useless ones, so that they heal the mind pool...you can only eat so much anyway, so this is not a problem. This could be just a simple, heal 100 mind per use...maybe put it at deserts 2...so that you could only eat 2...maybe 3 of them before you get full...so essentially you could heal your mind pool, or eat a couple of ryshcates...buffs would still be a better route...but in combat...having that option could mean that extra little bit of difference between incap/slay, and victory...
4) just get the devs to realize, and maybe even admit that they have been ignoring chefs, and at the very least owe us an apology for it at this point.
ok so #4 isn't exactly a buff improvement thing...but how can we expect the devs to listen to any suggestion we make when they won't even admit in public that chefs are screwed...it also detracts from SOE's credibility that they've made DE's TH's top priority over chefs when there has been more of a scream/demand that the devs fix chefs...especially since DE's are getting a boost with the CL nerf for non-ch's.