Cooking food too complex to make?

[Leo G.4501]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:All of them. Unless you have arthritis which might make clicking challenging but then the whole game is probably literally painful.

or you if mean it is expensive but that has nothing to do with being complex.

That's a bit disingenuous. When I cook (and I do cook food for my characters so they have snacks for the road), I'm always needing to either:

1. Needing to go purchase some specific ingredient from a karma vendor that I need to wiki to find which one.a. that is, after I check the trading post to see if the specific product made is cheaper to buy directly.b. making sure the other components used to make the food don't exceed the price of the food itself

2. Needing to go farm specific areas for ingredients that are bound but this is usually more a note for future cooking sessions.

3. Wiki foods that likely have better effects, are cheap and can't be crafted.

None of that looks anything resembling complex.

That's your opinion though. For an inexperienced cook, seeing ingredients that they don't have and can't find on the tp this requiring external info can be considered complexity.

Even if it's not complex, it's only one particular step that's extra busy work on top of other busy work steps. Comparing it to real cooking tho is kind of funny. It's no where near as interesting as real cooking.

But if you're debating to keep busy work in the game, that's fine. I disagree that it's good or fine tho.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:All of them. Unless you have arthritis which might make clicking challenging but then the whole game is probably literally painful.

or you if mean it is expensive but that has nothing to do with being complex.

That's a bit disingenuous. When I cook (and I do cook food for my characters so they have snacks for the road), I'm always needing to either:

1. Needing to go purchase some specific ingredient from a karma vendor that I need to wiki to find which one.a. that is, after I check the trading post to see if the specific product made is cheaper to buy directly.b. making sure the other components used to make the food don't exceed the price of the food itself

2. Needing to go farm specific areas for ingredients that are bound but this is usually more a note for future cooking sessions.

3. Wiki foods that likely have better effects, are cheap and can't be crafted.

None of that looks anything resembling complex.

That's your opinion though. For an inexperienced cook, seeing ingredients that they don't have and can't find on the tp this requiring external info can be considered complexity.

Even if it's not complex, it's only one particular step that's extra busy work on top of other busy work steps. Comparing it to real cooking tho is kind of funny. It's no where near as interesting as real cooking.

But if you're debating to keep busy work in the game, that's fine. I disagree that it's good or fine tho.

I am not but you have set the bar for "too complex" ridiculously low if the simple act of obtaining ingredients is considered too complicated.

The wiki is not required. The alternative is that you explore the world and remember where everything is. Most people probably aren't going to do that though. The wiki is like everyone's shared notebook. That isn't much different from the rest of the game. You could figure out how to fight a boss/complete a collection/go through a JP/etc. on your own or you could follow a guide.

[Leo G.4501]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:All of them. Unless you have arthritis which might make clicking challenging but then the whole game is probably literally painful.

or you if mean it is expensive but that has nothing to do with being complex.

That's a bit disingenuous. When I cook (and I do cook food for my characters so they have snacks for the road), I'm always needing to either:

1. Needing to go purchase some specific ingredient from a karma vendor that I need to wiki to find which one.a. that is, after I check the trading post to see if the specific product made is cheaper to buy directly.b. making sure the other components used to make the food don't exceed the price of the food itself

2. Needing to go farm specific areas for ingredients that are bound but this is usually more a note for future cooking sessions.

3. Wiki foods that likely have better effects, are cheap and can't be crafted.

None of that looks anything resembling complex.

That's your opinion though. For an inexperienced cook, seeing ingredients that they don't have and can't find on the tp this requiring external info can be considered complexity.

Even if it's not complex, it's only one particular step that's extra busy work on top of other busy work steps. Comparing it to real cooking tho is kind of funny. It's no where near as interesting as real cooking.

But if you're debating to keep busy work in the game, that's fine. I disagree that it's good or fine tho.

I am not but you have set the bar for "too complex" ridiculously low if the simple act of obtaining ingredients is considered too complicated.

The wiki is not required. The alternative is that you explore the world and remember where everything is. Most people probably aren't going to do that though. The wiki is like everyone's shared notebook. That isn't much different from the rest of the game. You could figure out how to fight a boss/complete a collection/go through a JP/etc. on your own or you could follow a guide.

Lol I doubt anyone can be arsed with remembering where everything is. But I'm not arguing that its "too complex", just that you said it's not complex. If it were an intricate mini-game to be invested in, exploring for secret or obscure ingredients could be fun...but it's just menu clicking. It's rather beside the point as the original topic is discussing tiered aspects of the recipes. That plus busy work can make cooking more of a chore than anything. Are we talking because you strongly feel we need to keep everything the same because "reasons"? Or are we talking to maybe feel out possible avenues to improve this aspect of the game? I suppose if you feel the game is perfect then there is no reason for us to continue this line of discussion.

[LucianDK.8615]

Chore is a pretty good word to describe cooking.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Cooking does feel pretty... Clunky compared to the other crafts. It's very non intuitive, and the fact that you pretty much need a guide to level it or reasonably find/know all the ingredients is a bit ridiculous.

[juno.1840]

I have a maxed Chef and I only craft account bound foods that I cannot buy off the TP. It's extremely annoying with all the nested recipes.

If I want to make "X", then I shouldn't need to bust my ass making "W", "Y", and "Z" which are required for "X".

On top of that, if you leave out one ingredient when you go shopping then you have to drop everything and go track it down. To me it's bad game design... but I suppose it makes ANet money from players buying the TP consumable or the VIP area pass.

[Opopanax.1803]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Chore is a pretty good word to describe cooking.

This is so accurate. Going through multiple tiers of food, tracking down karma vendors in order to craft a food buff is simply not worth it.

[Martimus.6027]

Cooking is terribly designed. Just terribly designed.

Real cooking isn't anywhere near that limited or strict. Discovering new recipes is about FREEDOM in real life, not like it is in GW2. You MUST pick the correct things to add. You MUST! Or you can't do anything with it at all. Cooking isn't really like that, is it? If I have eggs, milk, flour, sugar and some fruit, I can make quite a few different things, depending on those ingredients, but if you have those things in GW2, too bad. If you're missing that ONE OTHER thing, you can't even discover anything new to cook.

Real life cooking is about experimentation. GW2 cooking is about plugging in the exact right item into those boxes to hopefully come up with something you didn't even care about.

So please, let's not try and compare real cooking to GW2 cooking in some weird effort to try and defend how awful a profession it is.

[Rauderi.8706]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:When I cook food in real life using the base ingredients, I cannot automatically make the end meal right away. I have to do them in stages just like in the game.

But it's still cheaper and faster to buy the finished product from a vendor~

Jokes aside, if I have a problem with cooking in GW2, it's the grind of the post-classic recipes. 25 of some rare drop just for a short boost? Miss me with that.

[Rauderi.8706]

@"Martimus.6027" said:Cooking is terribly designed. Just terribly designed.

Real cooking isn't anywhere near that limited or strict. Discovering new recipes is about FREEDOM in real life, not like it is in GW2. You MUST pick the correct things to add. You MUST! Or you can't do anything with it at all. Cooking isn't really like that, is it? If I have eggs, milk, flour, sugar and some fruit, I can make quite a few different things, depending on those ingredients, but if you have those things in GW2, too bad. If you're missing that ONE OTHER thing, you can't even discover anything new to cook.

Real life cooking is about experimentation. GW2 cooking is about plugging in the exact right item into those boxes to hopefully come up with something you didn't even care about.

So please, let's not try and compare real cooking to GW2 cooking in some weird effort to try and defend how awful a profession it is.

I would have much more preferred that cooking have been: pick base elements to determine some part of it, then throw in "flavor" items to determine some of the other stats and bonuses. It could make for some interesting combinations and allow freedom to use our materials.

Buuut, instead, we got one of the most lackluster crafting systems to show up in a video game, from our gear stats to our food, and it'd take way too much effort to redesign it now, regardless of how badly it needs rebuilding.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Martimus.6027 said:Cooking is terribly designed. Just terribly designed.

Real cooking isn't anywhere near that limited or strict. Discovering new recipes is about FREEDOM in real life, not like it is in GW2. You MUST pick the correct things to add. You MUST! Or you can't do anything with it at all. Cooking isn't really like that, is it? If I have eggs, milk, flour, sugar and some fruit, I can make quite a few different things, depending on those ingredients, but if you have those things in GW2, too bad. If you're missing that ONE OTHER thing, you can't even discover anything new to cook.

Real life cooking is about experimentation. GW2 cooking is about plugging in the exact right item into those boxes to hopefully come up with something you didn't even care about.

So please, let's not try and compare real cooking to GW2 cooking in some weird effort to try and defend how awful a profession it is.

Just because we’re restricted to recipes does not mean that it cannot be compared.

[voltaicbore.8012]

I like the fact that cooking is not as straightforward as the other professions. I'm guessing my opinion would be different if I was trying to max cooking or make endgame foods as a new player, but I got into cooking well after I was in a position to afford to TP the foods I actually used, and had enough spare mats of every kind hanging around to easily level it up. I somewhat enjoy having little cooking adventures once in a while with my chef toons, it's a nice little aimless break from ranked pvp and HoT meta events for me.

[Leo G.4501]

Another aspect that has annoyed me to no end is when I have left over materials or what have you, you either have to drop it, sell it or keep it stored off in your bank somewhere. A good amount of the time, I just keep certain components that I make because I know I'll make another batch at some point but if/when I do is usually dependant on if the prices for the ingredients change or if I manage to make any progress farming the needed materials.

Keeping around materials can be annoying if you make a plethora of different dishes because so many things require widely different components and there is no storage space for them.

[sorudo.9054]

the big issue i have with cooking is that we start with quite complex recipes while some of them are on higher tiers that are so simple to make i wonder why i even need such a high cooking mastery for it.i dunno about you but i can make cookies allot easier then the soups they show.

[starlinvf.1358]

If you wanna take it into perspective, all the crafting professions suffer from the same fatal flaw...... the usefulness of tiers. Basically anything below Tier 5 is never going to be used on a regular basis; and you can tell they were designed independently, and to work along side a much more aggressive level grind. Until Ascended was added, 95% of all crafting resulted in dead end outputs, with little to no value beyond generating Exp. Not even good for salvage. Food was the only exception to this, as T6 mats are rare/expensive, the difference between T5 and T6 consumables was marginal, but T5 being considerably cheaper.

To even begin to address this problem, they'd have revamp the entire crafting system from the ground up, and find a practical use for the mid-tier outputs.

[Wisty.4135]

@Opopanax.1803 said:What level 80 foods are easy to make? I don't run food most of the time because I can't stand crafting through three teirs of food just to make something...

Winterberry steaks, Mushroom bread, Garlic Kale Sautee, and avocado smoothies are all pretty easy and functional for most high end stuff. There are a few other recipes that require like 2-3 easy sub-crafts to make as well. Any more than that and I usually don't bother.