Chef Archive

GAHHH!!!! STUPID AUTHENTICATION TIMEOUT!!!!

/deepbreath. Excuse me. Now I'll have to retype this out (this time remembering to copy it before I submit)

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This is for a rational calm discussion about chef in the non-stacking world. If you just want to say "chef is dead", "food sucks now", or "I just spentX million credits on a +25 suit for nothing" there are plenty of other threads where you'll fit right in. If you're a BH claiming that food was the only thing allowing you to kill Jedi, than that's something that needs to be balanced between Jedi & BH, not chef. Personally: I don't care. Almost any environment can be adapted to in order to succeed. If you've decided not to adapt, you've admitted defeat. Go play Minesweeper with your spare time, it comes on every version of Windows and doesn't cost $15 a month.

That being said, there are some things out of our control, but I will be bringing up game changes that can keep food and food crafting a viable part of the SWG world.

First, I want to list a few points about buffs that I think are universally agreed upon:

• Buffs will always be desired by players. Any buff provides an edge. Any edge can mean the difference between victory and defeat.


• Buffs should not be at the level (either singly or in combination) where they are an automatic "I win" against a relatively equal opponent (whether buffed or unbuffed).


• The lack of buffs should not be an automatic "I lose" against a relatively equal opponent (whether buffed or unbuffed).


• A buffer's potential profit margin does not trump the need to remove or changean imbalanced game feature.

Food buffs in particular have specific bonuses / drawbacks.

• Food buffs can be applied by anyone (to themselves), are portable (so can be used on an as-needed basis), and are easily mass-produced.


• Food buffs are the only mass-produced source of skill buffs. Plus, food buffs stack on top of other skill bonuses such as skill tapes and Squad Leader group bonuses.


• Food duration fits (with some overlap) between smuggler spices and doctor buffs.


• In general, it is relatively easy to craft high-quality food. Food items requires almost no named resources, the majority of our resources can be gathered with harvesters, and for most of those (flora) we have ten planets to choose from in a given resouce shift to find the best stats. With a minimal amount of resource acquisition, it is not difficult to hit 80% or above in any given experimentation category. Of course, getting high stats in multiple categories (due to limited number of experimentation points to spend) is more difficult.


• Food's drawbacks:




• Finite food/drink filling space limits the number of simultaneous buffs a player can have. In some cases, it also limits the frequency buffs can be applied. Most high level foods cannot grant a "constant buff", since the filling does not digest completely away by the time the buff wears off.


• For maximum effect, almost all foods require a BE tissue to enhance the food's stats. These tissues require finding a BE (or taking up the skills yourself), add to the resources used, increases manufacturing time, and increases the cost to the customer.


• New with CU: You cannot take multiple doses of the same food in order to multiply the buff.


• New with CU (then gone, then back with pub 17): You cannot eat a food buffing a stat that is already being buffed by another food. {note: more testing results are needed to determine exactly what the stacking rules are, both between food + food, food + doc, food + spice, etc.}

So, given all that (especially the big change: the new stacking rules), where does that leave us? Chefs still provide buffs, still have a market, and the stacking changes have zero effect on non-HAM foods. Vegeparsine and Thundercloud still do the same thing today that they did on Wednesday. Pikatta Pie and Veghash are just as potent as before.

The main thing we've lost (IMO) is one thing that has always been one of the most enjoyable part of Chef: the sheer variety of things we can make. Prior to the chef revamp, a Master chef could make roughly 100 different items (not counting components). The problem was that every one was a HAM buff / debuff of some sort. Even with nine stats andvarying duration / power / filling most foods were "eclipsed" by something else: there was a food that did the same thing only better (longer duration, higher power, no stat negative, whatever). So there was no point in using anything but the "best", which meant most chefs sold the same 5-8 things.

With the chef revamp, the total number of craftable items was reduced to 75 (again, not counting components), but the "buff space" was increased with the addition of skill buffs and special effects like damage reduction. So there was a larger variety of marketable foods, not only could we make a lot of stuff, but we could actually find someone to spend credits on them. And the HAM buffs were organized into pretty clear groups: low power single stat + high duration + low fill, medium power multi stat + medium duration + medium fill, high power multi stat + high fill + low duration, etc. HAM buffs no longer eclipsed each other, they just presented a different set of trade offs. Of course, by this time doctor buffs with 2-3k potency had taken off so the health and action foods were mostly ignored.

With the CU, I think the devs tried to adhere too closely to the pre-CU food effects. The CU stripped out half of the player stats, so the "buff space" of HAM foods shrunk. But every pre-CU HAM buff foodbecame a HAM buff food post-CU, leading to a much greater similarity between everything. Removing the ability to stack the same food (previously only applied to non-HAM foods) was likely a bit of a bonus for us, since that meant customers could use a greater variety of stuff, rather than "2 brandy + Vercupti + Ahrisa + synthsteak" that many were sticking to previously.

Along with the shrinking of the "HAM buff space", I believe that they also messed up duration stats for several foods. This skews the desirability of several foods, making the more useful ones either the long-duration artisan foods or the high-power Master level foods. The Mix 3 "all regen" drinks should have a duration of at least 10-20m to sit more comfortably between the 60m artisan foods and the 8-10m Master level foods. The "Health + 1 regen high" foods in Entrees 3 should have a 15-30m duration (although even at their current duration they can be constant buffs). Synthsteak, Flameout, exo protein wafersandOrmachek (and probably Corellian Ale and Deuterium Pyro) should have "triggered" effects, not a duration measured in seconds.

There's also the weirdness where experimentation and tissues only affect a food's first listed stat. If this wasn't always Health or Health regen, it might have made for more distinction between the HAM buff foods. Accaragm could have Action regen the experimentable stat, with Mind regen fixed at +200 and Health regen at +50. Vas Brandy could remain as-is, with Health regen the experimentable stat +200 action regen and +50 mind regen.

And finally, the source ofthe recent outcy: the re-removal (it was originally this way when CU was in beta and first went live) of stacking different foods that affect the same stat. Depending on how the stacking rules are actually supposed to be (which I'm going to play around with), this again leads to "eclipsing". A customer is going to pick the single food (or maybe two non-overlapping foods) that gives them what they want. They can't try to make up for the deficit of a food with a single low-buff (one of the things that the devs attempted to use to differentiate items) with another food. And in many cases, the better choice appears to be Artisan level foods: with their single stat buffs they're more flexible to stack with other foods, they have a longer duration, and a very low filling.

Going forward, I think food can work even without stacking. But to work well, I've got a few suggestions (listed in roughly simplest to most difficult):

• Tweak duration stats of mid-level chef HAM foods to balance them between artisan foods and master level foods. 10-20m or even 15-30m for a Mix 3 or Entrees 3 schematic doesn't seem unreasonable.


• Differentiate foods by changing what stats are affected by experimentation. Give each food a specific purpose and something it does well.


• If that differentiation is unfeasible, throw out the duplications in HAM buff foods, they're not different enough. Replace them with more skill buff foods or special effects. I'd be ok with chef moving from a stat-buff focus to skills.


• Change the stacking rules to be an overwrite (not additive) on a stat by stat basis, not a food-by-food basis. If you drink vasarian brandy with +400 health regen / +200 action regen / +50 mind regen and a spice tea with +175 mind regen (in any order) make the player's buffed stats +400 health regen / +200 action regen / +175 mind regen. {who knows, maybe this is what's going on already} Along with this, maybe throw in a display for the regen stats on the character sheet so we can see what we've got.

That's pretty much wore me out (and I'm definitely copying this into notepad before submitting). What d'you think? Any modifications? Anything I forgot?

And remember: for the purposes of this thread, assume the devs had a good reason for whatthey did andnon-additive stacking is going to be staying. There's always the chance things will change in the future (look what happened to filling after cloning), but it's always easier to promote change from where you are rather than screaming to back up. Software development is like a speeding spaceship: it takes less work to give a sideways push than to stop and turn around.