Chef Archive

Ok, here is the second draft. I read a lot on the board today, and I tried to take everybody's opinion into consideration. There are a lot of different opinions, however, so I had to make some judgement calls.


Developers,

Thank you for this opportunity to draw your attention to issues dealing with the chef profession. While I think this is a great way for you to gather information on what the players want to see improved, please remember we need information from you as well. We are a patient bunch (believe me, chefs have to be). If all you have to say is that you are working on things but not done yet, just let us know once in a while. We will be fine with it. We are also mostly role players, however, which mean we are an imaginative group. If you don’t give us an update once in a while, we can imagine the worse.

Ok, here are the issues I have identified from playing the game and reading the boards.

1. Duration of buffs and the desirability of food. For many people this is the #1 issue. Right now, food is not very useful; therefore we have problems selling it. Spice and the foraged food is outselling our stuff because it is cheaper to make, the buffs are better and, in the case of spice, generally lasts longer. Yes, spice has side effects, but rarely are side effects severe enough to stop somebody from doing something in a MMORPG. Currently our best customers are creature handlers, but even that is unreliable because they can forage from the ground and there is some question about if we get UXP for giving food to pets. During beta Holcron mentioned that he wanted to make food buffs last for hours while spice give better buffs but last for a short time. We would like to see this brought back. Not only would this make food more desirable to our customers without nerfing smugglers, this will also help with some other issues. With action, health and mind pool buffs lasting only a few minutes, half the time is taken up by people waiting for their stats to heal up. Another problem is that while buffs last only a few minutes, people can remain full for much longer. Increasing the duration of food buffs will help with all these issues.

2. Factories. Right now, factories are borked. If I were to make jawa beer by hand I can create an item that has 3-5 uses. If I were to make the same item by factory, it will only have one use. Right now, factories are too expensive to maintain just to create an inferior product. There is also the issue of being able to stack identical food from the same factory.

3. Chef vs. Homemaker. Right now, somebody with Domestic Arts IV can make better food than novice chefs. When you become a novice chef, you can no longer apply the experimentation points you had as an artisan to your chef recipes, and with those experimentation points the domestic arts recipes are better than the chef. People are giving up on chef because the recipes are not getting that much better. For example, a Dom IV can create a dustcrepe, which offers 45 stamina for 250 seconds. For novice chef we get wastril bread, which is, offers 30 stamina for 275 seconds. This is before all the experimentation points we already have for the duscrepes. Once you can make Tatooine Sunrise you don’t need to advance any more because that is the best buff of the game. The recipes of novice chef should be just as good as Dom IV at full experimentation…and Mixology I should be just as good as novice chef at full experimentation. As we move up the skill trees buffs should get better as a reward, with the best buffs being at the very top.

4. Medium and Heavy floral harvesters. This is actually a bug for the architects, but it hits the chefs pretty hard. Architects cannot make medium and heavy floral harvesters because the schematics are bugged, so we are forced to rely only on the personal harvesters.

5. Milks and Eggs. There is no way for us to get milk and eggs in the game. Without milk and eggs, we cannot make many of our recipes. People have said they found milk and eggs through foraging or getting them off dead NPCs, but this is not nearly enough for us to use. (Besides, getting milk off a night witch is just so wrong in ways I cannot even get into.) During beta you had creature farms that would provide us with milk and eggs, but they did not make it into the game. We don’t care if we them from bio-engineers, scouts or harvesters, but we need milk and eggs and in enough quantities that we can actually use them. If you believe it will take a long time to get milk and eggs into the game, many of us will be satisfied with replacing them with other resources in the recipes.

Finally, you said I can add a personal request. This request is to please look at UXP. Some people say it is working fine, others are not. Some people say you get UXP from factories, others say you don’t. I don’t think I am getting UXP when the food is fed to animals, but others say they are. I don’t know if it is working properly or not, so can you please take a look at this?

And just stop by in the Chef forum and say hi once in a while. We are really nice people and would love to hear from you. J

SirVimes
Chef Correspondent.

Very well said.

I still think you should include a section that states.

"If you ever want to see your dog fluffy again, you will meet our demands by midnight. you should also leave the sum of 5432 cr .......in small bills under...... the door mat of the West Theed Hotel. also include a roundtrip ticket to Yavin IV....I like that place this time of year. We are desperate...we have knives....and we know how to make potato roses with them."

Dahn

Did you look at my milk?...you looked at my milk!!!!....get away from my milk!!!

Dahn I think you are being a bitdiscriminatory here, we also know how to make roses out of Beets and Radishes.

Actually, fatgit, can you tell me what you think of #3? Do things get better at higher levels?

They do get better, but not as good as I had hoped when you look at spices/foraged foods amd Dom items.
With Master Artisan I get 11 experimentation points for domestic arts food, and I can get some items in that pretty high.
Kanali Wafers (Dom III) +50 quickness 365s
Garrmorl (Mix III) +50 quickness 100s

Same + 3.65times the duration in Dom III. and a lot cheaper to make.

The entire profession has a disparity throughout the lines & levels, and seem to have been thrown together ratherrr than thought out.

Anyway, its 2:30am here so I'll reply to anything else in about 5 hours

Great job SirVimes.

One thing I'd like to see in it though, is a rebalance of the food and their buffs.

Like i said, a novice artisan (no other skills reached), can make Bofa treats that give +35 action, where a mixology III drink only gives +20 for a shorter duration, and have insane resource demands.

Thanks

Hmm totally missed out one part

The higher levels seem to have some decent items.
Tatooine Sunburn, Rakirian Burnout Sauce,Xermaauc, Breath of Heaven to name some that are pretty nice.
Then you get ones like Vayerbok - +60health 110s at Mix IV, compared to Teltier Noodles in Dom at +65 health +50 willpower 280s.

The entire profession AND Dom Arts food need reorganising, so that the stats and bonuses scale, with Novice made with 2 experimentation points items being superior to ALL domestic arts with full experimentation, and upwards for each level.

How's Entres IV?

I'm at Mix IV cook III and entres II

Lazychump, that was part of the point I was trying to make with #3. Was I unclear? (and I am asking that honestly, not getting deffensive.)

Thanks.

Entree's IV isnt too bad to be honest, the only "bad" part is Terrata that needs milk & Bantha Butter O_o

I do think the entire food/drink section from dom1 to master chef need re sorting, with dom1 being the lowest buffs and increasing exponentially to Master.
I also want parity with foraged goods & spices at the very least.

With only a "top 5" and a personal issue to bring p initially, it's a tough call to make

No, I dont think it was as clear as it could be.

Second draft looks good!

Grats on the Correspondant, SirVimes!

doh! after writing for 40 minutes I see that a second draft is posted and what I just wrote mostly got changed hehe. But! That's a good thing, so I'm happy to see it!

A few things that might bear consideration I have included, but otherwise this all seems good to me.

1) Some way to see the activity of buffs currently in effect

This is not directly related to foods or Chefs, but as a Chef, we provide buffs and debuffs. Players right now might not even know their food buffs, as short as they be, are wearing off. With spices it is quite easy to tell, with scout foods not as easy, but with Chef foods almostimpossible, because of thegenerally short durations. This could become even more useful if foods have Holcron's suggested hours of duration. While this doesn't affect immediately the profession of Chef, it could in a longer run encourage the use of foods as people can see just what is affecting them, and for how much longer.

2) Chef lines are defeating inand of themselves, not just in relations to other lines.

My Entrees I Blood Chowder (+105 str/110s base) is comparable, if not entirely better, than my Entrees III Havla (+90 str/112s base). There are other foods in just the Entrees line alone that show this sort of retrogression in effect, and those definitely need to be altered.

3) Chefs might not be able to compare to droids (which are rumored to be getting nerfed)

Wipe out a camp? Pop a droid out and let it take the damage. Food doesn't even come close to how effective that floating ball of arms and lasers is right now. I'm not saying that nerfing droids or Droid Engineers need to be nerfed, but I think this also shows how Chefs need some angle or improvement to find their place in both the market and the gameplay.

Something that isn't entirely food related again, is the effectiveness of food. It has been said that Food should be a good way of temporarily escaping the Armor encumberance penalties. I haven't gone and tested all possible cases, but the one I am familiar with is the use of Chitin armor, brawling manuevers, and Tatooine Sunburns. With one Sunburn in me, I use maybe 30% less Health when using a basic unarmed manuever with armor on. This seems good, but I have a +1500 bonus to strength at the moment- how much will +80 really do? I have also seen similar results with melee, and I haven't been able to add 1500 to too many other stats to test it out with, so maybe it's just this case. But if not, I'm not sure what to think about both armor and food, just that the way buffs work might need some ground-up reconsideration. I loathe having to add 4000 to a stat to return things to normal...

I think you touched upon, but didn't go into the speculation of, how useful factories are in just the right amounts. I don't think this is such an important issue right now, because there is not too much of a market demanding great quantities at the moment.

I think your second draft is much better than your first draft. Glad to have you with us as the Correspondant.

^_^

-Xelloss Darkfly of Restuss, Rori (Corbantis)

Ah i see it now...i didn't read that part, i figured it would be part of the section about durtaon and buffs..

clear as crystal..i came accross a typo though..it's sunburn not sunrise