Chef Archive
Thread: What I'd like Brought to the Table
Everyone seems to agree that food and the chef profession are assentially borken, and aside from a handful of key items, useless.
The following will detail what I'd like to see from foods and the chef profession. The basis for my idea is a more realistic definition how food gets used, but I'll get to that in a moment. First I'd like to define where I feel food buffs should fall in relation to other buffs in the game. Foods as they are now have far too short of a duration, and overall, are not very potent. I'm fine with doctor buffs being at the highest end of the spectrum given the cost of making them and the skills required for their use, but food should be at least somewhat competative.
[b]Food Effects[/b]
I think foods should have a large variety of both potency and duration, some might only be a modest improvment from 30-60 minutes while others might only last a few moments but have a shocking increase. I think the focus of food buffs should be on support stats, HAM should be rarely affected by food, or never affected at all. This is mostly to avoid the effects of sudden HAM drops when your food wears off. While food is currently pervented from incapping you directly, in the heat of battle I'm already damaged and suddenly loose 500 HAM when my food wears off, I'm usually going to find myself in trouble. Also, I personally think it just makes more sence that food allow you to heal faster and make you tougher, reducing the damage you take.
An additional option would be time release dimishing effects.
Example:
+100 Stength 300s
+100 Stength 600s
+100 Stength 900s
The buff would start with a total of +300, and every 5 minutes the buff would be reduced by 100. We could also play with the numbers to make the food not take full effect until a few minutes after being eaten.
Example:
+500 Stamina 1500s
-400 Stamina 300s
In this example you only get a +100 for the first 5 minutes, but the 20 minutes that follow you get +500.
[b]Food Decay[/b]
With all these proposed changes, food will of course become much more valuable. To counter balance all these improvements, I'd like to create a decay system for food. Most food is parishable, and the game should represent that. The game already has a condition system, they simply need to implement it for food to naturally loose condition over time, and if the condition reaches zero, the food will spoil and can no longer be eaten. Differnt foods will decay at different rates. Some of the most valuable food should need to be eaten in a few minutes, while others will have preservates that can last a few days. Of couse, there will be foods that a non-perisable, but most will have only limited effects (but still far more than most current foods).
[b]The role of the chef[/b]
Food decay will make Chef a far more interesting profession to play. A chef will be wanted for every party, because when the members break to camp, he can prepare meals for the group and with experiementation he can maximize strength instead of decay resistance since the meals will be eaten immediately. These foods will be some want to be some of the longest lasting since players can't wait till just the right moment to use them.
I'd also like to make the chef and the ranger complementory professions. They already are in the sense that the ranger can provide many of the esential resourse needs for foods, but I want to make camping and cooking tie together. Perhapes making some foods only craftable while in a camp, and still others only in camps at the level to have a food/chem crafting station. I don't want this this so only be an encumberance though. I'd like functional benfits from crafing in a camp. Perhaps allow the camp food/chem station to act as a mini-factory for foods. If I want to make 10 meals so I can feed all the member of my group, it would be nice to not have to craft 10 times (I don't really want the actual factory interface, but rather a means where I can use 10 times the materials and get 10 times the resulting items).
[b]Additional Ideas[/b]
1. Food that has spoiled from the suggested decay system can still be eaten, but will no longer have the intended effects. They might result in food poisoning, similar to spice downers, but before they do, some can have special hidden effects, perhaps even better than their original ones.
2. Some beverages might ONLY have their intended effects AFTER they "spoil" (conceptually mimicing the fermentation process).
3. High impact/Low duration foods. And I mean 1-3000 points for 5-30 seconds. Some boost your consumption stats to alomst "invincable" levels, others boosting regen stats to so that they act nearly like a stim. A particualarly hard to make food might even do this for your mind.
4. Food that pervents a status changes. For example a food that's a natural anti-venom. If I'm going to to fight some jungle voritors I'd be sure to take a bite first (to not upset the Combat Medics, this should only prevent creature poisons, or be a mod buff so it only makes prevention likely).
5. Foods that cause a status change.. berserk fruit anyone?
6. This migh be uncodable, but skill mod food could have some very interesting effects.
errmm read much? 
might want to take a peek at the sticky about holiday gifts..
I didn't think that was rude at all Nikii. Smiley faces go a long way.
Dagrin wrote:
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4. Food that pervents a status changes. For example a food that's a natural anti-venom. If I'm going to to fight some jungle voritors I'd be sure to take a bite first (to not upset the Combat Medics, this should only prevent creature poisons, or be a mod buff so it only makes prevention likely).
5. Foods that cause a status change.. berserk fruit anyone?
Ooo, I like these! I wonder if there's some internal stat that controls how likely disease/poison "sticks", if so it would be easy to include "+Defense vs. poison" stat mods, since we're getting some skill bonuses anyway. The status changes might be a little trickier; unless they have a built-in negative it would take the place of spending the HAM pool to actually do the beserk, Center of Balance, whatever. And I don't think these states are useful except to the professions that already get them. Can a player with a ranged weapon do beserk and deal more damage?
I'm not sure what to think about your decay idea. Not all chefs are looking for combat, and I'm not sure how take being a group's "Cooky". Maybe a portable cooler crafted by an artisan to slow down spoilage? And it takes long enough as it is to make BoH, if I had to let it ferment for a day or so I'd probably go mad.
Some interesting ideas...
Food decay...on one hand, its an interesting idea...but I can see the complaints now...a lot of potential downside and given human nature, it would be worse than I could imagine.
A lot of us already spend plenty of time hunting resources, making food, etc...adding a decay rate so that we have to forecast our sales and then spend additional time smaller runs...not sure how that would go over...
Why not? If it helped resist disease and poison, I'd mark the prices up 200% and become richer than I already am
Dagrin wrote:
For example a food that's a natural anti-venom. If I'm going to to fight some jungle voritors I'd be sure to take a bite first (to not upset the Combat Medics, this should only prevent creature poisons, or be a mod buff so it only makes prevention likely).
Pretty nice post, it reiterates a lot of earlier suggestions, and it is answered bythe early stage redesign thats going on. However, I do have to disagree with your opening statement, it's not broken anymore (a wee bit "out of balance" perhaps, but I think it's a nice profession as is). I think there are a lot more than a handful of good foods as well. Just my 2cr.
Dagrin wrote:
Everyone seems to agree that food and the chef profession are assentially borken, and aside from a handful of key items, useless.
My idea for food decay is not intended to try to weaken the class, far from it. It's simply a couter measure so that the very powerful foods can enter the game without sending the game out of balance. I haven't read everything, but so far I haven't seen any figures on how strong the new food buffs will be, but my guess is that they will be modest at best. I'm fine with some if not most foods staying at that level, but to increase variety both in effects and it long term sales new variables need to be introduced.
Perishable foods wont be to everyones taste (pun intended), but having a diverse selection to craft is the mark for the best crafting classes, and when it's lacking the bane of it's exsistance (5 items out of 100 being the only ones getting crafted). Maybe only make one tree of the chef line "Hot Meals".
This system would also distinguish the chef from many of the other crafters, with a strong focusof "on demand" crafting.I feel this makes sense for what the role of a real chef should be. Some might find this annoying, and those people can stay in their dark holes and mass produce the non-perishable foods.
As has been pointed out, some of these effects are already going into food. Others, however, are good ideas. I am not sure if there is time to get these ideas into the revamp, we will be getting new schematics with patches and expansions...they can be used for those