Chef Archive
Thread: A fighter's thoughts on chef buffs
I thought I would post here to get a discussion going on what combat characters actually want from chef buffs. Well, what I want as a Trandoshan pikeman in particular, but it should apply generally 
OK, let's start with doctor buffs as the basis for comparison. +1000 to the first 6 stats for 2 hours for around 3K to 5K. Which you can make back on the first mission. And you can see instantly on the HUD when they wear off because your red and green bars stretch all the way across while the buffs are on
Clearly, that's pretty attractive
Now I want to talk about chef issues, some of which I think you can address immediately in-game and some which you might want to badger the Devs about
Firstly let's talk about the transaction. Everyone lags at starports which are the main selling areas and I personally can't pick up items from inventory when there's a lot of lag. I click on it and move the mouse but by the time it registers it's already switched out of click and drag mode and into radial mode. You might want to ask the Devs to add a slider bar under the Options menu to allow people to delay how quickly the radial menu appears
I think you should tailor your product to complement the doctor buffs and work with them. So if as a fighter I get my stats buffed if there's a nearby chef who says do you want mind too? my answer will always be yes. What I would want is enough buffs to last the 2 hours the doctor buffs last. So if there is a buff that helps mind for 15 minutes I'd like 8. I'd prefer it in a crate too to save space
I'd be inclined to pay you the same amount I pay the doctor. I have no idea whether 5K is a fair price and it's a non-issue for me really. It seems fair and paying 500 would be silly since I will get two hours of mind buffs and paying 50K would be off-putting since even the best hunters don't make much more than 50K per hour and I'm not in their league. So while the 8 cafs might seem only worth 500 to you guys to me they're worth 5K. If it's something better than Caf that's a bonus but regardless of what it is I'm liable to expect to pay what I pay the Doc
Now that brings us to the notion of working with Doctors. Find them, suggest that you offer the mind buffs to people that they buff and give them a free set of mind buffs or whatever. You are not competing. In fact as a fighter I'd go to the Master Doctor who hangs out with aChef over the Master Doctor who doesn't. So work with them, offer your products to the players who buy buffs from them and make sure the Doctor is happy with the arrangement
Next, no one knows what any of your stuff does. Sorry, we don't. It's vaguely nice if you're a Master but a Novice can do this well enough. To me a buff's a buff - I'm serious I would buy caf if there was someone selling it next to the doctor who buffs my stats
Now get your patter worked out and macro it. Tell people price and tell them to check inventory space and how much is required. Tell people to drag it up to their toolbars while they're waiting for the shuttle and to drink more every 10 minutes or however often it runs out. Advise them to delete any partly consumed stacks before they log (if that's how you get round the bug - I think it is)
Label your products more helpfully. Bantha Blaster means nothing to me - a chef who gave me I Want To Shoot Stuff (same drink I think) made a deep impression. More prosaically you could label it +300 WIL, 10 mins or whatever
Try to work up a decent duration. With my two hour doctor buffs I will get through 12 uses of a 10 minute buff in the same time. If it's both food and drink then that's 24 uses. I'd prefer a less effective buff that lasts 15 mins. It would also be cool if it's in stacks configured to help with inventory space management. For instance something you need to drink 3 of is cool in a stack of 6 and a pain in a stack of 5
Next point is that you can't compete with doctor buffs and a doctor-buffed fighter doesnt need 500 more Strength. We need Mind, Focus and Willpower buffs. Don't waste time offering us the other stuff, with all the noise around starports it's best if you only say things that we really want to hear. What I mean is if I've just got my doctor buffs someone saying "wantfood?" is going to get ignored and I'll have run off before you get a chance to say anything else. Someone saying "want mind buffs too?" is going to make me stop and say yes
Be confident. Act like any half-decent player getting buffs would always take mind as well as the doctor buffs and the reality will reshape itself around you
Another issue which I think you should take up with the Devs is some sort of graphic on the HUD for whether your character is full. This is a really big issue, if you can get this through it will be a huge help to the profession. I don't check the character sheet when I'm hunting. I do check everything on the HUD constantly
There is a workaround - be sure to buff mind. If my blue bar in the top left of the screen normally sits at halfway across but after eating it goes to full I can keep an eye on it. If your food buffs focus and willpower I'm not going to notice when it wears off so for the time being be sure to use products that buff mind because that's the visual indicator of whether the buff is on. Badger the devs tho, a little beer glass in the corner of the screen would be very neat
Give customers free pet food if they want it. I think it can be anything - even dough and carbosyrup seem to work (might be wrong here). Explain they have to put the good stuff in their backpack while feeding the pet or the greedy mutt will snaffle it
Lastly I would like to emphasise that fighters really do want your products. We don't want to have hassles though, like having to track you down, not knowing what the stuff does, being confused by the partly consumed stack bug. In my opinion if I get a 2 hour buff from a Doc I dont want to support it with Muon. I think spice is more a PvP thing than a PvE. When I'm buffed and hunting I want to be going at it for two hours non-stop, not spending 25% of the time being sick
Good luck and see you in game
Valid points. As I a chef I WISH I could accomodate you, but most of those things are beyond our control. The marketing and labeling of foods is something we can improve, but the actual buffs are limited by the developers. Even when we do our best, the buff duration just isn't that good.
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Couple of quick points.
1.
Try to work up a decent duration. With my two hour doctor buffs I will get through 12 uses of a 10 minute buff in the same time. If it's both food and drink then that's 24 uses. I'd prefer a less effective buff that lasts 15 mins. It would also be cool if it's in stacks configured to help with inventory space management. For instance something you need to drink 3 of is cool in a stack of 6 and a pain in a stack of 5
Good thought, but we can't really get that many things up to that length of duration, nor can we effectively experiment on the filling amount on food/drinks.
2. With the Musician/Dancer changes going in, you'll be able to spend 5 extra minutes in the cantina that you need to go to anyways, and get buffs almost on a level with Master Doc buffs, to your mind stats, that last for about the same duration as the Doc buffs. Therefore, you won't need the Chefs any longer.
I say that last one not to be negative, but realistic. Once Musicians/Dancers start advertising what they can do in the cantinas (where people go to get mind wounds/BF healed anyways), they're going to start seeing less usefulness in Chef products. Especially the PvE players, most of whom want a buff that will last for as long as possible (as the original poster mentioned).
Where's that balance pass at again?
The majority of chefs would really like to offer you products that last as long as doctor buffs. Really, we would. Unfortunately, our products tend to last 10 minutes MAX,with as much experimentation and highest quality resources possible. This is something chefs have been arguing with the devs about for a long, long time.
We also have no control over how filling a product is.
Chefs also cannot afford to offer their products at what most people consider a "fair price." For example: the major mind-buffing food (Ormachek) requires two creature-harvested components in fairly high quantity. Prices charged for these resources raw is ridiculous; similarly, it takes a lot of effort to harvest stacks of similar items large enough to make factory crates of any given item. This results in prices higher than you, the consumer, might expect for the item. People complain that Ormachek is too expensive; if we sold at the rate customers wanted, we'd be out of business.
Because of this, many chefs try to offer foods that are catered more toward a more willing market: roleplayers. Primarily, roleplayers want foods that have interesting names and look good on tables in homes. This is why you may notice a lack of clearly labeled products on the market.
"Lastly I would like to emphasise that fighters really do want your products. We don't want to have hassles though, like having to track you down, not knowing what the stuff does, being confused by the partly consumed stack bug. In my opinion if I get a 2 hour buff from a Doc I dont want to support it with Muon. I think spice is more a PvP thing than a PvE. When I'm buffed and hunting I want to be going at it for two hours non-stop, not spending 25% of the time being sick"
Any industrious player can utilize the bazaar and find food and drink - it's just as easy as finding anything else. Finding stats on items is as easy as confirming stats on a weapon: just examine the details.
as a fighter I really would like to see them reach the heal power of a doctor buff, and maybe last 30 minutes
its the ability to self use it that makes it attractive, andthe chef is anentire prof dedicated to buffing, doctors are dedicated to healing things fast, not making peoples stats go throught he roof.
I think that chef buffs need a serious performance boost, however one important thing to note:
Chef buffs are self-usable, any time, any place. As a result of this they dont need to last as long as doctor buffs, as the user can reapply them. However, there is no good reason why they shouldn't at least come close to matching the effectiveness of doctor buffs.
Also, chef buffs should not be seen as something to fill the gap for doctor buffs. But at the moment, they're so weak, this is the case. For gods sake, chef is meant to be THE buffing class, 100% dedicated to buffing(as it cant do anything else). Why then can a chef not reproduce something equal to the top spices? Spices have downers, however chef buffs should be of an equal effect, but without the downer, which would mark the difference between the best buffing class, and the "extra performance boost".
I'm sure GreenMarine will eventually do something... but with player cities on his plate, until player cities are released and the player city bugs have been fixed, chef aint getting that balance pass. And that, my friends, is why I quit the profession for the time being. Oh, and the devs consider smuggler to be more in need of aid then chef... **edit**...
J2xC wrote:
I'm sure GreenMarine will eventually do something... but with player cities on his plate, until player cities are released and the player city bugs have been fixed, chef aint getting that balance pass. And that, my friends, is why I quit the profession for the time being. Oh, and the devs consider smuggler to be more in need of aid then chef... **edit**...
Don't forget, we've discovered that he's also working on... Scout, Ranger, Artisan, Armorsmith, DE, Smuggler, BH, and (possibly) mounts.
Look for a balance pass to be started right after the bugs from the Space Expansion are worked out, imo.
Hi Brista,
I have a swordsman alternate so I tailor make my foods to meetmy needs - it helps a lot that this combination also sells quite well.
When my swordsman solo's and is not able to get buffered by a doctor, I rely upon a combination of sunburns and veghash. I use a power hammer and the str buff really helps to keep ham costs low and allows me to take a bigger beating in pve. The veghash is nice as it helps to regen all the stats, especially the mind pool.
When I am able to get buffed, i switch over to a combination of durandfires, ormacheks (or bivoli) and muon gold. My friend Renairdor is able to boost his mind pool to well over 2500 pts over a short duration - that's a pretty scary proposition for a master doc/CM in pvp.
My two main vendors stand right next to spice vendors - we cross pollinate eat other all the time.
Brista,
This discussion is good to see, as an aspiring Master chef, 0/0/3/2 right now I would love it if I had something that could compete with the Doc's, the dancer changes scare me too. But I do find a pretty good client base right now. Hunters really seem to like the self buffing capabilities.
I was disapointed to see ZERO notes of changes on the Chef profession in this patch but I have high hopes that they will get the attention that they deserve.
Proper marketing of the food/drink I think is up to the indivdual player. Some tend to call them self made names, and hope for market recogintion to sell them, others use colors. I have yet to see someone selling a "Tat Sunburn 1550/1550/-80/400secsX10uses" IMHO it would be a pain in the butt to see in your inventory. Personallly I make sure there is a brand name on my foods, and try to keep the labeling easy to read and understand. If you want to know the stats, then /exa them.
One thing I really would like to see is that the crates should indicate more details on the item, uses per stack and effectivness. The ability to split crates is a nice addition this patch.
Something else that would be really nice would be a filling indicator on the items. Players do not understand that generally the LONGER the duration of the food the SHORTER the filling time. So long lasting foods tend to be able to be eaten more often. 
When I am making and Item I do not try to max the number of uses, generally I try to max effectiveness and duration, it only makes sense to me. If I make a better product with less uses, then my customers will be happier and then will come back to me faster.
Bliznit
People are also forgetting thatwe can use food and drink buffs WITH doctor's buffs. How so? Well, a doctor's buffs don't use up your food and drink bars, so while your buffed with doctor's stuffing's, you can eat food or drink some sunburn and get super buffed
I do wish the duration for food lasted a little longer. I mean even in real life, food lasts longer than 300s or even 500s. Just some thoughts.