Chef Archive
Thread: Chef Correspondent Report #1
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SirVimes
Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:04 am
#1
This is a copy of the original chef correspondent report back in July. I posted this for several days before giving it to the developers and everybody approved it. This was a group effort. Pay particular attention to #3. This is just for anybody who has the conspiracy theory that the developers are trying to ruin us.
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Hello there,
The developers have asked me to be the chef correspondent. Basically, what they want me to do to is sum up what people feel is wrong with the profession.
To start with, they have asked me to write a report about what the 5 biggest issues with the chef profession. Below is my report. Please look over it and let me know what you think. If there are any issues that you feel are more important than the 5 below please let me know. And if you have any suggestions on how to fix them let me know.
One thing I have seen suggested on the boards is being able to equip drinks and have drinking animations in cantinas. I love this idea, I really want to see this included…but I really don’t think it is something we need. Besides, something like that would probably take a while to do. There are some issues that we need resolved before the Chef profession is really playable, and as nice as that would be to see in the game we can live without it. After some other issues are resolved I would love to see a push for it.
Also, keep in mind that we may not see any changes for a bit. They have other things to work on, such as server stability. There will be no chefs if nobody can log on and personally I really want them to boost FPS in cities. However, I do think we should see some changes in a month or two.
And just remember, even though I have been asked to submit this report, it is suppose to represent what we, as the chef community, want. So please, tell me what you would like to see added. I would like to submit this report early Friday.
Ok, here is my report (this is only the first draft and written after midnight...I hope it makes sense.)
Developers,
Thank you for this opportunity to draw your attention to issues dealing with the chef class. While I think this is a great way for you to gather information on what the players want to see improved with this profession, please remember we need information from you as well. We are a patient bunch (believe me, chefs have to be), and 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 means we are an imaginative group. If you don’t give us an update once in a while, we imagine the worse.
Ok, here are the issues I have identified from playing the game and reading the boards.
1. Milks and Eggs. For me this is number one and the most immediate. A lot of the other things I will mention are balance issues and may be debatable, but this is something that is broken. 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 nightwitch is just so wrong in ways I cannot even comprehend with my small mortal mind.) 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.
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. (Note: Guys, I have not even made enough money to buy a factory yet. If there are other issues with factories let me know.)
3. Chefs vs. Scout & Smugglers. Right now, scouts and smugglers can create a better product than chefs can. Scouts can forage things out of the ground that is generally better than anything that chefs can create. And smugglers can create spice that has better buffs than our food, generally lasts longer than our food and is usually cheaper. We chefs cannot compete, so we are destroying a lot of what we create just because we have trouble selling out stuff. Really, most of our customers are now creature handlers buying food for there animals. I didn’t become a chef to make pet food and I don’t think I get any UXP for that. During beta, you mentioned food buffs will last for hours while spice would give better buffs but last a lot shorter. What ever happened to this?
(Suggestion: Can foods give other buffs besides stats? Can a sports drink give a temporary bonus to exploration skills? Can drinks found in bars help increase the speed of battle fatigue healing? Can food that wookiees like give a benefit to their roar or food that trandoshans like give a benefit to their regeneration? This would allow us to have another bonus over smugglers that will help us find a market.)
4. Chef vs. Homemaker. Right now, somebody with Domestic Arts IV can make better food than 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. Right now 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. In addition, we get less uses out of what we create the further we go up. And this is all before the experimentation of Dom Arts. I know we get more experimentation as we progress, that that is a lot of progressing we need to do just to compete with Dom Arts. 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. That way we can move up the latter and actually feel like we have accomplished something.
(Suggestion: If we make the chefs that much better, we can force the Dom IV out of the market. I had some thoughts on what might help this. One thing that might help is make the Dom IV really cheap to make. Also, I had the idea of seasonings: things that you can create at Dom IV but loose the ability to create as a chef. Each chef recipe has an optional slot for seasonings. At Dom II you get a seasoning that adds to taste, at Dom III you get a seasoning that adds to quantity (dietary supplements) and at Dom IV you have a seasoning that adds to nutrition (vitamins.) They basically count as one experimenting dot when you add them to chef recipes. This is a market that only people with Dom Arts skills can have that is useful to the chef but not dependent.)
5. Bazaars. Please move the food and drinks out from under misc and give them their own category. If you want, create a food category and put jewelry under clothing. And stop putting spices under the food category on the bazaar. When people are buying from the bazaar they have no way of knowing what is food and what is spice. Give spice their own category.
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.
SirVimes
Chef Correspondent.
The developers have asked me to be the chef correspondent. Basically, what they want me to do to is sum up what people feel is wrong with the profession.
To start with, they have asked me to write a report about what the 5 biggest issues with the chef profession. Below is my report. Please look over it and let me know what you think. If there are any issues that you feel are more important than the 5 below please let me know. And if you have any suggestions on how to fix them let me know.
One thing I have seen suggested on the boards is being able to equip drinks and have drinking animations in cantinas. I love this idea, I really want to see this included…but I really don’t think it is something we need. Besides, something like that would probably take a while to do. There are some issues that we need resolved before the Chef profession is really playable, and as nice as that would be to see in the game we can live without it. After some other issues are resolved I would love to see a push for it.
Also, keep in mind that we may not see any changes for a bit. They have other things to work on, such as server stability. There will be no chefs if nobody can log on and personally I really want them to boost FPS in cities. However, I do think we should see some changes in a month or two.
And just remember, even though I have been asked to submit this report, it is suppose to represent what we, as the chef community, want. So please, tell me what you would like to see added. I would like to submit this report early Friday.
Ok, here is my report (this is only the first draft and written after midnight...I hope it makes sense.)
Developers,
Thank you for this opportunity to draw your attention to issues dealing with the chef class. While I think this is a great way for you to gather information on what the players want to see improved with this profession, please remember we need information from you as well. We are a patient bunch (believe me, chefs have to be), and 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 means we are an imaginative group. If you don’t give us an update once in a while, we imagine the worse.
Ok, here are the issues I have identified from playing the game and reading the boards.
1. Milks and Eggs. For me this is number one and the most immediate. A lot of the other things I will mention are balance issues and may be debatable, but this is something that is broken. 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 nightwitch is just so wrong in ways I cannot even comprehend with my small mortal mind.) 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.
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. (Note: Guys, I have not even made enough money to buy a factory yet. If there are other issues with factories let me know.)
3. Chefs vs. Scout & Smugglers. Right now, scouts and smugglers can create a better product than chefs can. Scouts can forage things out of the ground that is generally better than anything that chefs can create. And smugglers can create spice that has better buffs than our food, generally lasts longer than our food and is usually cheaper. We chefs cannot compete, so we are destroying a lot of what we create just because we have trouble selling out stuff. Really, most of our customers are now creature handlers buying food for there animals. I didn’t become a chef to make pet food and I don’t think I get any UXP for that. During beta, you mentioned food buffs will last for hours while spice would give better buffs but last a lot shorter. What ever happened to this?
(Suggestion: Can foods give other buffs besides stats? Can a sports drink give a temporary bonus to exploration skills? Can drinks found in bars help increase the speed of battle fatigue healing? Can food that wookiees like give a benefit to their roar or food that trandoshans like give a benefit to their regeneration? This would allow us to have another bonus over smugglers that will help us find a market.)
4. Chef vs. Homemaker. Right now, somebody with Domestic Arts IV can make better food than 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. Right now 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. In addition, we get less uses out of what we create the further we go up. And this is all before the experimentation of Dom Arts. I know we get more experimentation as we progress, that that is a lot of progressing we need to do just to compete with Dom Arts. 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. That way we can move up the latter and actually feel like we have accomplished something.
(Suggestion: If we make the chefs that much better, we can force the Dom IV out of the market. I had some thoughts on what might help this. One thing that might help is make the Dom IV really cheap to make. Also, I had the idea of seasonings: things that you can create at Dom IV but loose the ability to create as a chef. Each chef recipe has an optional slot for seasonings. At Dom II you get a seasoning that adds to taste, at Dom III you get a seasoning that adds to quantity (dietary supplements) and at Dom IV you have a seasoning that adds to nutrition (vitamins.) They basically count as one experimenting dot when you add them to chef recipes. This is a market that only people with Dom Arts skills can have that is useful to the chef but not dependent.)
5. Bazaars. Please move the food and drinks out from under misc and give them their own category. If you want, create a food category and put jewelry under clothing. And stop putting spices under the food category on the bazaar. When people are buying from the bazaar they have no way of knowing what is food and what is spice. Give spice their own category.
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.
SirVimes
Chef Correspondent.
Marrok
Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:20 am
#3
They really took you literally, didn't they? 
But really, I would think most feel we're moving in the right direction, but something just isn't right with the current situation.
Jihadic
Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:39 am
#4
I guess that shows what the problem is. Devs are developing off of 5-6 month old info(July? I thought correspondents came around the end of August) instead of just coming here and having a discussion with us. I know you've fought hard for us SirVimes. I'm definitely not blaming you and I don't think anyone is. The problem here is the development staff unfortunately. There are some items that have NOT been changed for the new system(duration of 3 minutes with a filling of 81?, that's gotta be the old stats) but will probably be pushed live and be useless because the info getting to the developer is not updated by the developer themself. I understand how busy they must be, but sheesh, you would waste less time fixing things if you spend a little more time and get it right the first time. I'm still staying chef after the revamp and testing things myself. I doubt I won't be able to make ANYTHING useful, but it will take some getting used to.It will be nice tobe in a rare profession once again.
My concerns as everyone else has already seemed to have stated:
Resource/benefit costs seem WAY out of whack, especially for BE components 
. Available milk is nice, but the devs apparently do NOT realize the scale that we deal in with consumables. I'm hearing 1 hour to gather 1K milk(maybe this was just haphazard testing, I don't know.). I'm sure the CPU rate will be up int the 40s or 50s if this holds true. And we have to CONTINUALLY get stacks of 10-20K.
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