Chef Archive
Thread: SirVimes, some questions for devs
Well, the revamp has certainly had a reaction, hasn't it? Old chefs are worried about being put into a niche that's not useful, combat characters are worried about not being as effective in battles, and new chefs appear to have a harder road ahead of them due to the schematic and xp changes.
SirVimes, I was wondering if you might be able to get a response from a developer (I'm assuming it's still GreenMarine?) or designer on what their intentions were with the revamp. TH is a great guy, but for all intents and purposes he's the "Player Correspondant", and may not have as direct of involvement with the design and development of the game. And I'd like to keep the "he said that she said that they said..." chain to a minimum.
1) What is the intended game purpose of the revamped chef buffs?
Prior to the revamp:
- Doctors gave the high-buff (1k+) high-duration (1hr+) for Health/Action stats.
- Dancers/musicians high-buff high-duration for Mind stats.
- Smugglers medium-high (750+) buff medium-duration (10m) for some stat combinations with a downer.
- Chefs medium buff (250-500) medium-duration (5-15m) for a large number of combinations.
Doctors need a hospital or med droid plus some high-end resources. Entertainers need no resources but have to be in a cantina and requires more time to apply. Spices have the 2 minute downer period where your stats are reduced below normal. Spices and food are portable and can be used by anyone. Foods are the only type that can be stacked with itself, allowing players to mix-and-match different food/drink combos to give the buffs they wanted.
Now, the stat combinations available to chefs are about as limited as smuggler spices. This gives the message that chefs are moving away from stat buffs (conceding those to doctors and entertainers) and towards the skill buffs. There are about 16 total stat buffs in both the Chef and DomArts trees, and over 60 other effects. If we are going to have limited in stats, can we at least get a BoH equivalent for regen stats (+constitution/stamina/willpower) and possibly pool (+Health/Action/Mind)? BoH and Veghash are commonly used on live as armorlube. BoH remains (with a reduced effect), but no replacement for Veghash seems available other than eating 4 each of Kanali Wafers, Teltier Noodles, and Caf.
2) How are novice chefs supposed to get their first one or two skills?
Right now, the only item that gives more than 20xp in Novice Chef is Air Cake. Casks give 300 general crafting xp, but this will also hopefully be fixed. So are aspiring chefs supposed to make 1523 alcohols? Maybe 761 Air Cakes (needing one dough and one carbosyrup each)? Or possibly 101 casks (requiring 202 trim bought from a tailor)? The Wastril Bread grind was bad enough with it's 70xp, now everything that can be used to earn food crafting xp is either worse than that, or requires a component from a whole different class.
3) Should BE additives be considered a luxury or necessity?
The addition of an optional additive slot to all foods was a great way to allow more chefs and BE's to interact. Now instead of being limited to foods that used components, any food can be improved with tissues, and the simplification of the tissue selection (1 for each size/category instead of 2 for duration, 2 each of various stat combinations) makes the final effect easier to estimate.
The problem is that a lot of foods are seen as useless unless they can be improved by additives. Nikki gave a great example where she discussed stocking both BE-enhanced Pate and normal Pate on her Live vendor. The enhanced ones are seen as more useful, but if those aren't available, the unenhanced ones are good too.
One thing that has made the debate a bit complicated is that there will always be comparisons to the foods that are going away. Sure, +300 Mind/Focus/Willpower from two new Vassarian Brandies is better than no buff at all, even without an additive, but it doesn't quite stand up to an Angerian + 2 Pate combo, which would average +500 Mind, +600 Focus/Willpower.
Are we expected to deliver pre-patch level stat buffs (which will make additives required), 20+ skill buffs (which will require additives) or 1hr+ durations (which will require additives)?
4) What is the intended downtime for food buffs?
The change to digestion is another hot-button topic. One thing I wonder is how much of a change was it? We could never see the filling before, so it was hard to gauge how much you got filled, how fast the bar dropped (that is when you could force a refresh), and when you could take a second dose. Did foods have individual digestion rates, which was simplified to one global 100% in 45m rate?
I understand that without some brake on usage, food effects can be unbalancing. If the filling went away instantly when the effect expired, the 95+ filling of Flameout isn't much of a detterent. I know I'd be downing another one after every 4-5 hits landed. But for the stat buffs, the duration to filling ratio seems a little off for higher-level foods. Won-won, Kiwik Swirl, and Vagnerian canape seem especially bad. Are they intended to be used like spices (at the last minute as an emergency boost)? The buff size seems a little low for that (2-500 is the range I estimated for Won-won), and also requires abstaining from any other foods to keep the available stomach space.
What led to the 45m (or 60m) stomache decay? Were the filling/durations of the foods designed with a particular digestion rate in mind, or was the filling set as an inhibitor for more powerful foods, and the digestion rate determined afterward? How unbalancing would it be to reduce the digestion rate to 100% in 30m?
And any chance I can get my Ipacac idea implemented? 
5) What's the timeline for the combat HAM revamp?
We've been told that the new buffs are in line with the new combat design. Well, how long will we have to sell these "ahead of the curve" buffs with the old combat design? This is publish 6. Are we talking publish 7? 8? 9?!? Considering that SOE has been averaging 1 1/2 to 2 months between publishes, we could be looking at end of April or May before the rest of the game catches up to us.
6) How prevalent is domesticated milk supposed to be?
Most of the recipes I've seen are split about 50/50 in needing generic milk vs. Domesticated when looking at the raw resources. Unfortunately, that's not counting recipes using Bantha Butter, which requires Domesticated. This makes some of the dessert line difficult to craft (although thankfully not as difficult as on Live). I don't think it's unreasonable to make Domesticated milk required in some recipes, but not in a component. Components need factory-run quantities (1-2k), which requires a very large amount of time if you stick to Lesser Plains Bols (the only creature I've seen mentioned that gives Dom Milk). Or is there some obvious (to developers) method for obtaining Dom Milk that we've been missing?
7) Any cool things that are we missing?
The overall response on the forums seems weighted towards the Nays, the people who don't want this to go live. The removal of old foods doesn't seem to be compensated by the new skill bonuses. Is there anything that devs/designers thought "Wow, this is going to knock their socks off" that we've been overlooking?
Anything I missed?
.
sciguyCO wrote:
Well, the revamp has certainly had a reaction, hasn't it? Old chefs are worried about being put into a niche that's not useful, combat characters are worried about not being as effective in battles, and new chefs appear to have a harder road ahead of them due to the schematic and xp changes.
SirVimes, I was wondering if you might be able to get a response from a developer (I'm assuming it's still GreenMarine?) or designer on what their intentions were with the revamp. TH is a great guy, but for all intents and purposes he's the "Player Correspondant", and may not have as direct of involvement with the design and development of the game. And I'd like to keep the "he said that she said that they said..." chain to a minimum.
1) What is the intended game purpose of the revamped chef buffs?
Prior to the revamp:
- Doctors gave the high-buff (1k+) high-duration (1hr+) for Health/Action stats.
- Dancers/musicians high-buff high-duration for Mind stats.
- Smugglers medium-high (750+) buff medium-duration (10m) for some stat combinations with a downer.
- Chefs medium buff (250-500) medium-duration (5-15m) for a large number of combinations.
Doctors need a hospital or med droid plus some high-end resources. Entertainers need no resources but have to be in a cantina and requires more time to apply. Spices have the 2 minute downer period where your stats are reduced below normal. Spices and food are portable and can be used by anyone. Foods are the only type that can be stacked with itself, allowing players to mix-and-match different food/drink combos to give the buffs they wanted.
Now, the stat combinations available to chefs are about as limited as smuggler spices. This gives the message that chefs are moving away from stat buffs (conceding those to doctors and entertainers) and towards the skill buffs. There are about 16 total stat buffs in both the Chef and DomArts trees, and over 60 other effects. If we are going to have limited in stats, can we at least get a BoH equivalent for regen stats (+constitution/stamina/willpower) and possibly pool (+Health/Action/Mind)? BoH and Veghash are commonly used on live as armorlube. BoH remains (with a reduced effect), but no replacement for Veghash seems available other than eating 4 each of Kanali Wafers, Teltier Noodles, and Caf.]
My impression is that yes, they are getting us away from the stat buffs. And I even said that when I posted the artisan food a few weeks ago. They are taking us out of competition with the above and making us unique amoung the buffing professions.
3) Should BE additives be considered a luxury or necessity?
The addition of an optional additive slot to all foods was a great way to allow more chefs and BE's to interact. Now instead of being limited to foods that used components, any food can be improved with tissues, and the simplification of the tissue selection (1 for each size/category instead of 2 for duration, 2 each of various stat combinations) makes the final effect easier to estimate.
The problem is that a lot of foods are seen as useless unless they can be improved by additives. Nikki gave a great example where she discussed stocking both BE-enhanced Pate and normal Pate on her Live vendor. The enhanced ones are seen as more useful, but if those aren't available, the unenhanced ones are good too.
One thing that has made the debate a bit complicated is that there will always be comparisons to the foods that are going away. Sure, +300 Mind/Focus/Willpower from two new Vassarian Brandies is better than no buff at all, even without an additive, but it doesn't quite stand up to an Angerian + 2 Pate combo, which would average +500 Mind, +600 Focus/Willpower.
Are we expected to deliver pre-patch level stat buffs (which will make additives required), 20+ skill buffs (which will require additives) or 1hr+ durations (which will require additives)?
They are not suppose to be a necisity for us. The heavy additives are suppose to make our foods uber. They are suppose to be expensive and only affordable by the leet. The developers described the foods with heavy additives as uber. Making the very best foods is suppsoe to be hard for us and is suppose to be our biggest challenge.
5) What's the timeline for the combat HAM revamp?
We've been told that the new buffs are in line with the new combat design. Well, how long will we have to sell these "ahead of the curve" buffs with the old combat design? This is publish 6. Are we talking publish 7? 8? 9?!? Considering that SOE has been averaging 1 1/2 to 2 months between publishes, we could be looking at end of April or May before the rest of the game catches up to us.
I asked the same thing...and the answer I got is the answer I will give you: When I know, you will.
sciguyCO wrote:
6) How prevalent is domesticated milk supposed to be?
if you stick to Lesser Plains Bols (the only creature I've seen mentioned that gives Dom Milk). Or is there some obvious (to developers) method for obtaining Dom Milk that we've been missing?
Confirmed, harvesting skill has no effect on the milk quantity you get.
Meplorium wrote:
The heavy additive may be uber and that is very good. However how about the light additives not requiring any meat. That way they enhance the food without being unobtainable yet the effects on the boost is as the name suggests, light. They can be used in the full mass production line of food that everyone can have access too. Note getting that Chef/BE combo won't be easy even with the lack meat for the light additive.
SirVimes wrote:
Making the very best foods is suppsoe to be hard for us and is suppose to be our biggest challenge.
SirVimes wrote:
Actually, I agree with Meplorium. I think light additives should be relatively easy to mass produce, medium additives should be difficult to mass produce but still possible and heavy additves be very rare.
Valid point. From what I've seen, the progession of BE enhancements is pretty standard. More of the same ingredients gives more enhancement. So, I disagree.
This is what I hope to change. Take some of the harder to find ingredients out of the light additives.
Ezran wrote:
SirVimes wrote:
Actually, I agree with Meplorium. I think light additives should be relatively easy to mass produce, medium additives should be difficult to mass produce but still possible and heavy additves be very rare.
More of the same ingredients gives more enhancement.