Food (Why cooks never get a profit)

[Llama]

Food
(Why cooks don't ever get any profits)

Cooking is one of those sad professions in the game. Its an original system which combines a large mix of resources - and a very few sales.

The reason for this (low sales) is in my opinion due to two things:

I) The quick decline of the food bar
II) The unforgiving nature of the food bonus system

I shall discuss them in turn.

I) Today I was smithing. I started off with a full food bar, and made myself a particular suit of armor (Salk Officer's Armor)

By the time I was done, my food bar was almost down to zero.
Am I really expected to buy food when I need to eat so much every time I do something?

The solution to this is - Less Eating, and more filling foods. If I had to eat (say) twice an IG day, then I would be more compelled to buy food, because its worth it.
Aside from being unrealistic to need to eat 8 raw fish to satisfy my hunger, the frequency of feeding makes it very hard for me to want to buy food.

The solution is to make the hunger independant of whatever you're doing, and let it drain naturally based on constitution, every so often you need to eat, whether you spent the day smithing or mining or lazing in bed - in addition all foods should be much more filling. Carrying a lot of apples/fish is irritating, and doesn't make me think "Hmm, next time round I should carry a lot of cherry cakes"

II)
The current food bonus system is rather unforgiving. Lets say you had a poor char who has only eaten apples all his life. One year later he finds his fortune and is rich. How many hundreds of plates of meals does he need to buy to recover (and get a bonus?) ?
In my opinion it should be capped very low. At worst case, 10 of the best meals should be enough to turn the lowest beggar into a normal person. I have no idea how much it is right now, maybe pharse could give us some numbers to chew on.

Hmm. Discuss.

[Estralis Seborian]

I) More filling food is barely possible since some meals already fill your food bar almost completely from zero. If you think the food consumption of specific actions is too high, I am sure you may make a concrete proposal how to change the values. PM me in this case. Food is already drained by time, but at a very low rate - no need to raise this rate IMHO. I don't want a life simulation a la the Sims or such.

[Juliana D'cheyne]

SPECIFIC PROFESSIONS...FIGHTERS:

I like this idea, to have to eat 50-60 apples in order to train fighting (in one day) as the minimum is daunting and since new chars can't afford the large amount of food needed to have the "good" constitution it is sort of a lost cause. Even IF your char has enough copper to continue to buy "good" food you can't find a cook that sells in such LARGE quantities that your char doesn't have to go back and buy every other day or so. The final outcome of this is for new chars to continue to pick apples taking a LOT of time away from either RP or training especially in the winter (and it is impossible for older chars to find enough dishes). The delay before you can benefit from the "good" food as another irritant makes some just give up and settle for the lower constitution.


specific proposal: keep the fill as it is on the dishes but allow it to stay longer...maybe then even new chars can afford the food and older chars won't have to buy so much being more willing not to supplement it with apples etc. Decrease the amount needed to enjoy the benefits of a good cons making it not so hard to obtain when a char DOES have coin to buy and CAN find a cook ig. This MAY reduce chars tendency to cook for themselves also.

[ogerawa]

How about make NPC that buy all kind of food and sell them back? The NPC doesn't refill the items he's selling nor refill the money. Starts with 10-20 silver coins or something. The food stock the NPC holding will be from players. Say... the NPC buy 10 cookies for 10 copper each. Then he can sell at 12 copper each or 10% profit. Need to find the right prices that's not too expensive for the food, but gives small profit to the baker/cook as well though. If it's possible, when asked what he's selling, the menu would only be the food he actually has in stock.

Basically a distributor NPC for a small profit, just because food is needed quite a lot. *shrugs* Just a thought.

[pharse]

The first bonus of +1 is quite easy to obtain. The hardest-to-cook dish is the venison dish. A human has to eat 6 of them to get the first bonus from scratch.

The second bonus of +2 is to benefit those who regularly eat high quality food. So this takes quite a while. But that is intended.

[Pellandria]

Why not going another way and including a "stamina" bar, that is hidden from view, stamina would be reduce every time someone makes an action, but will be increased with every "food" cycle and every time someone eats something, that would mean the food bar lasts much longer, as soon as the hidden stamina bar is drained the system will switch to the old food bar.

This would mean that everyone who just trains or smiths away alll day would have atleast some time before his food bar is "attacked" while those player who rp or talk while training would regain stamina doing that, letting their food bar last longer.

For the poor and good food, I think there should be changes aswell, say 10 apples reduce the food gain from one apple pie, sometimes I just want to fill my char up, because she just has a little need for food, but I don't want to waste a whole pie, but as soon as I eat the second apple my consti bonus drops down, as far as I see it it goes the following 1 aplle= -1 quality, while one pie=+1 quality, somehow I think this needs to be rebalanced.

[Jason Felarion]

I disagree with the opinion that a cook can't get profit, its all a matter of RPing. I play one char, a cook. I earn about 50-100 Silver each dwarfen month, sometimes more or less. Maybe this isn't the profit of other professions, but for me IT's profit. I'm in a way a "powergamer" in cooking because I have to forfill many big orders. My life at Gobaith is cooking, nothing others, like maybe the most "all-rounders".

About the more filling food issue I agree in only one way. I think one of the fish-dishes could be more filling, the salmonplate maybe about 40% filing or so. If I spectated right, the fish plates are filling the food bar about 25% (?), same as sausagedishes and 50% for steakplates. The "higher" meals are getting a max of 75% (?). I think thats fine (only the fish-dish-issue needs maybe a config).

The main reason is, that most of the cook-chars are only cooking for themselfs or in small quantities. If you need big quantities of food, ask around in town, ask other people and I'm sure you will find a cook, who sells them.

Another point is, that a cook who needs to deliver big quantities is permanently in need of the ingredients. But if its cold, or he/she's not a farmer, hunter, carpenter for dishes etc. only just a cook (because of time or only because of interests), it needs a lot of time to find some people who are able to sell you the ingredients in big quantities too.

So far...

[Estralis Seborian]

1 aplle= -1 quality, while one pie=+1 quality

It is not this way, current ratio for the named case is 2.5 apples negate the effect of one pie. A ratio of 10 would mean that you can maintain the +1/+2 bonus with a diet of 50% free food and 50% dishes - I doubt this is pharse's intention of the constitution bonus.

The stamina thingy sounds like effort without benefit to me. I do not think we need new fancy stuff, again, whoever really wants to make a concrete proposal how to change food consumption of actions, PM me.

[pharse]

It is not this way, current ratio for the named case is 2.5 apples negate the effect of one pie.

This is not correct.

It depends on the current diet value. But being in the "middle", i.e. a const bonus of +1, 7-8 apples negate one apple pie.

[Pellandria]

[..]
The stamina thingy sounds like effort without benefit to me. I do not think we need new fancy stuff, again, [..]

I have to ask..did you seriously even thougth about the proposal before you put it in the trash bag, because I doubt that somehow, because the following effects would be the consequences of said system.

1)Rp'ers are rewarded, now they don't needto stuff their faces with cakes all day, because they can wait and talk/rp during training sessions.
2)It would increase the profit from real cooks and decrease the amount of people cooking their stuff up itself, simply because you would need less food, so you actually can afford buying food.
3)Powergamner would be encouraged to actually go out and rp now instead of logging out and just waiting a few hours to log back in again, I allready saw people logging in, ignoring not only the fact that eople stood around them but not even greeting them, rushing directly back in to work, if we reward staying ig, than they might think twice about it.
4)It takes almost no new scripts, we allready have the scripts that use the food bar, you simply would need to change it to stamina and include a hidden bar, that doesn't even need a new graphic, to rebalance it all we could decrease the time of the normal foodbar running down and maybe the amount of food it takes away, but that just as long as the stamina is not filled, that means that only those who work need more food, those who rather rp will still have the slow decrease of food.

Now I know the good old "People will afk because of it" argument allready wants to be written down, but you can allready forget it, because its simple, people will afk with or without the system, thus its useless to use that argument now.

[Estralis Seborian]

Yeah, I thought about a stamina bar some years ago, in the context of the MC-system. And I came to the conclusion that we don't need (even more) thirst, stamina, mental capacity, whatever bar or meter to solve the problems of this game.

For me, personally, there is more gain in simplicity than in complicating things. Maxis made a fine game with a pee meter and whatever, called Sims. Can't say I'd like to see such thingy in Illarion.

I am in favour of lowering the overall food consumption to give individual dishes a higher value. And I am also in favour of rewarding online time instead of rewarding adaption of ingame behaviour to the MC-system. But will yet another system nobody really needs fix all problems of other (broken) systems? Why not simply fix the stuff that is broken or inbalanced?

Again: Food consumption is determined by actions, time and physical status. Everything can be tweaked and should be tweaked before somebody takes the dissatisfying, current state as granted and put in another thingy that might be as inbalanced as the current state.

On could have introduced a stamina bar for Illarion, no problem with that. But not for fixing other broken stuff but as use for the overall game concept. And right now, I don't see the necessity of raising the complexity of the game concept, rather, the necessity to lower the complexity in order to make Illarion more attractive for casual gamers who don't want to bother with five colored bars and dozends of auto messages about the physical state of their characters but want to go ingame, bash some monsters, tell some stories and craft a helmet and that's it.

Edit: If somebody really wants to help the game, PM me and I can provide further information on this issue.

[Pellandria]

Reducing the food consumption will just postphone the issue, now I just need 9 fishes /apples/hams instead of 10, whopedo.

The problem in this case is that you need to reduce the food need to a state where you don't need much food per day/work and at the same time reduce the gain of free food to a point where its easier to actually buy food, because making it themself just wouldn't be worth the effort.

I honestly see not how any stamina system would make the game more complicated, it would actually make it more playable, because you ~don't~ need to stuff your face with ten cakes just because you work half an hour, no bars, no auto messages nothing is needed for introducing a system that just gives the char the opportunity to play more often, do stuff without the need of immedeatly avaible food supplys and doesn't bother people who just wants to rp a bit.

[Lord Arcia]

Is it possible to make certain foods bad for you? Not like what is already in the system, how the foods lower our Diet Value (DV). Maybe having the bad foods actually LOWER your constitution. Let the diet system be a double edged sword.

[Pellandria]

We allready had that, noone likes that, it didn't improve the sells in any way.

[Lord Arcia]

I must have been taking a break during the time this was in place. My bad.

[Revan]

How about make NPC that buy all kind of food and sell them back? The NPC doesn't refill the items he's selling nor refill the money. Starts with 10-20 silver coins or something. The food stock the NPC holding will be from players. Say... the NPC buy 10 cookies for 10 copper each. Then he can sell at 12 copper each or 10% profit. Need to find the right prices that's not too expensive for the food, but gives small profit to the baker/cook as well though. If it's possible, when asked what he's selling, the menu would only be the food he actually has in stock.

Basically a distributor NPC for a small profit, just because food is needed quite a lot. *shrugs* Just a thought.

How about this idea? In combination with the food bar adjustment could really help out cooks and everyone else.

~~Revan

[Estralis Seborian]

Dishes should definatly be traded by NPCs, maybe not with such a low profit margin as 10%. A cook should have the option to sell his "junk" to a NPC like any other profession, indeed.

@Stamina bar: Did I get it right that the intention behind this is that people can work for a limited time without any food loss? And this is ment to improve the coin yield of cooking?

[Juliana D'cheyne]

How about make NPC that buy all kind of food and sell them back? The NPC doesn't refill the items he's selling nor refill the money. Starts with 10-20 silver coins or something. The food stock the NPC holding will be from players. Say... the NPC buy 10 cookies for 10 copper each. Then he can sell at 12 copper each or 10% profit. Need to find the right prices that's not too expensive for the food, but gives small profit to the baker/cook as well though. If it's possible, when asked what he's selling, the menu would only be the food he actually has in stock.

Basically a distributor NPC for a small profit, just because food is needed quite a lot. *shrugs* Just a thought.

How about this idea? In combination with the food bar adjustment could really help out cooks and everyone else.

~~Revan

Sounds fun.. a "restaurant/bar" (boris?) where you can buy and sell food. The only question would be the RP value, yet I think if the NPC's prices are set slightly higher then what you could get buying directly from the "cook" that should solve the problem. Most chars will first attempt to find the cook, and if the prices are adjusted correctly, the cook could make a little more profit selling to the player yet can also sell to the NPC. In combination with the food bar adjustment it would be very nice. This same idea could also work on some other professions that don't earn much coin.

I would think added to this however is a max the NPC would buy i.e. if the "storage" has a lot of food, the NPC will no longer buy any in order not to have all chars cooks, or constantly making food to sell to the NPC.

[Llama]

Is it possible to reduce the food requirements say to 1/5 th the current value?

The main problem I'm outlining here is that there is NO use for a character to buy food for long-term use. I bought 15 fish dishes once as an experiment. During a smithing run I ate 10 of them, on the same day. Had I only needed to eat 1 or 2, then YES I'd fork out some money for the const bonus As it is, there's always a free alternative which is plentiful. Lets make using cooks more worth it?

[Pellandria]

@Stamina bar: Did I get it right that the intention behind this is that people can work for a limited time without any food loss? And this is ment to improve the coin yield of cooking?

Yes, the reason behind is simple, currently its not worth buying food, simply because of the fact that you ~need~ so much, a miner who maybe works for maybe half an hour needs a good 1 1/2 food bar, atleast last time I checked,thats around 4 or 5 apple pies, who are maybe worth around ..well I would say with the new ingredience and harder work maybe from 30-50 copper one pie, now a normal miner simply doesn't have the money to spend on quality food, thus he rather eats masses of bad food.

Now would we make food more usefull and including a function that basicly works on the food bar, but gives the chars a longer time to use for some people would consider buying food, because its now worth buying it, because the food will be easier to carry and you waste less time buying it and working it off, than collecting apples..

[Llama]

a miner who maybe works for maybe half an hour needs a good 1 1/2 food bar, atleast last time I checked,thats around 4 or 5 apple pies,

You haven't mined in ages it seems, you need much more than that. To get 150 of each you need around 24 fishes if I remember correctly.

[Estralis Seborian]

Is it possible to reduce the food requirements say to 1/5 th the current value?

Sure. I wouldn't use such a constant factor on all current values for the sake of balancing, though.

On the stamina bar: Yes, yes, the arguments are valid, but do we need a stamina bar for this? Isn't lowering the overall food consumption much more effective and reasonable? Or do you want to leave the current, dissatisfying state as it is and make a dev spend days on developing yet another bar which only use is to fix something that can be fixed by every noob in five minutes with more or less the same result?

[Athian]

I like the idea of involving stamina into the equations but maybe a sort of different approach on that concept. if it's possible this is what i'm thinking.

We have our regular common foods with any range of food values, perhaps even making some common foods more filling then before. Other then that they remain the same, providing no real benefit other then being fast easy nutrition for your character.

Then on the other side of the line we have a cooks food. A cooks food would still provide the constitution boost everyone loves, but it would also offer a sort of hunger buffer.

So for example if you fill up on apples and go directly to work your food bar decreases at it's normal rate. But if you fill up on a cooks food (of course the effect would vary greatly depending on the quality of the food and the type) and work instead of decreasing right away this food provides X amount of "stamina" which keeps your character from getting hungry again so fast. After these "Stamina" points wear off you food bar decreases as normal and you must eat again.

This in my opinion would put a big margin of difference between foods from harvesting and food from cooks and offer prepared food another advantage. But it wouldn't so much be a Stamina bar but more like a hidden Food bar value that goes above the allowed maximum amount. lets say to twice the amount of the regular food bar. This extra food value would only raise when eatting these more luxurious foods and decrease over time or if a person starts eatting common food.

And of course these extra 'filling' properties of food would remain an unspoken concept in ooc terms. RP wise your character would simply go by eye. If he or She has a plate on venison for a meal rather then a few loaves of bread then it would be apparent why your character is more full after one large meal as compared to a the many loaves.

Not sure how difficult something like this would be to implement but thought i'd share my thoughts on the matter.

[Llama]

That's a very good idea. Had a similar idea but didn't post it

I don't know about how possible it is though I don't think Lstates can work with that... Pharse?

[Athian]

Now that i read over it some things i'd want to add about though.

IF something similar to a 'excess' food points could be put in place, the amount of time these extra points last would have to be pretty carefully arranged. Otherwise all you get is:

A mage eatting 5 plates of rabbit and go machine gun with spells for 3 hours nonstop, or a fighter doesn't do the same and go fight in the graveyeard for 4 hours.

With such an idea if it weren't carefully balanced the cooks ould become the direct competition of our local druids.

Why would anyone buy expensive poitons if they can just stuff themselves full and not have to worry about there healing rate or replensihing there mana for X amount of hours? and food potions would be right out the window so to speak.


nice and over complicated isn't it

I'm more against the "Suicide by lumberjack"(anyone ever find that wierd or is it just me ) then i am for buffing up fighters and mages if anything

[pharse]

Simple: centralizing food consumption, making it dependant on the diet value. High diet value = low food consumption.

Voila.

[Llama]

Simple: centralizing food consumption, making it dependant on the diet value. High diet value = low food consumption.

Voila.

Problem is, there's a natural affinity to want to fill things

So if you make the foodbar 10 times larger, people will still try to fill it up.

[Lord Arcia]

Simple: centralizing food consumption, making it dependant on the diet value. High diet value = low food consumption.

Voila.

Problem is, there's a natural affinity to want to fill things

So if you make the foodbar 10 times larger, people will still try to fill it up.

I hate agreeing with llamas on anything...but he has a good point.

It's a guy thing.

[Olive]

I just need to comment on the original topic here

Olive never had any trouble making money as a cook. She's made a few goldpieces selling rabbit plates and cherry cakes.

not to mention the amount of coin she has paid out in wages to 'contract employee's who gathered cherries for her, which makes more money available to then go buy more food with

FOr some people, selling food is about availability, if you aren't online a long time each day do not expect to sell as much as those who are... they just have more contacts who can reach them reliably and reliabilty is key, you buy from who you trust to have food ready when you ask.

[bdgdkay]

I say we use that for the next economic stimulus package