The problem with Cooking and Discovery

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

Discovery works really badly for cooking. There are so many ingredients and so few of them go to your bank that discovery with cooking become a chore on the wiki. You simply can't have every possible item sitting around because you don't have the inventory space, so you are constantly queuing up 3 items and then having to use the wiki (which does not work very well for this) to try to find the fourth item. Either more stuff needs to go into the bank (so you can craft EVERYTHING beforehand) or the interface needs a massive overhaul to deal with the fact that 90% of the time you won't have any idea what the missing item is and can't possibly have every item present.

Similar problem with subrecipes in the main crafting interface, BTW. The interfaces in the game just do not work well for how cooking is designed, period. They do not handle large nesting or large amounts of possible inputs well.

[Cronospere.8143]

isnt it like that with almost all crafting disciplines?

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

@Cronospere.8143 said:isnt it like that with almost all crafting disciplines?

Not as big of a problem with most because there aren't so many options. The sheer number of things in cooking takes the problem from minor issue to HOLY SHIT. As with many things, minor annoyances become big problems when in bulk.

[Randulf.7614]

Cooking is more fun for the discovery than other crafts, but the inventory problem persists (albeit less than it did at launch).

[Game of Bones.8975]

I end up with a lot of single dishes that don't mean much to me.

[NigthMaremoon.7185]

The problem with chef is that some recipes require way too much stuff to make a single dish, is so resource heavy, not even making weapons require this much stuff to do a single thing.

[LucianDK.8615]

@Jayden Reese.9542 said:It's bad cause the food you use to discover alot of items you can't deposit so unless it's in your inv you won't see it on the list for discovery. I got thru the cooking to 500 with a lot of help from google cause I had no clue.

Completely unneeded. You get a lot of +cooking for finishing the individual cooking collection lines. I were 500 after finishing them all after starting from 425

[Donari.5237]

The guy asking for flatbread offered to sell the recipe, 50 silver, right there.

At least with the new Portable Composter, you can salvage the foodstuffs that are clogging your bags, to make essences you need later.

[LucianDK.8615]

@Jayden Reese.9542 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Jayden Reese.9542 said:It's bad cause the food you use to discover alot of items you can't deposit so unless it's in your inv you won't see it on the list for discovery. I got thru the cooking to 500 with a lot of help from google cause I had no clue.

Completely unneeded. You get a lot of +cooking for finishing the individual cooking collection lines. I were 500 after finishing them all after starting from 425

And those recipes I needed to google. I'm sure plenty had all of them discovered already but I didn't and even had to alt to VB to buy flatbread

You know you couldve just type /wiki name of recipe to get everything going into them?

[Trise.2865]

Cooking is the most complex and intensive crafting discipline besides Scribing. It tells you that when you learn it.

[Trise.2865]

But there is good news: The game will tell you exactly how many unknown recipes any one item is used to make. You can use this to your advantage, as well as the nested crafting system for other intermediary ingredients.

[starlinvf.1358]

@NigthMaremoon.7185 said:The problem with chef is that some recipes require way too much stuff to make a single dish, is so resource heavy, not even making weapons require this much stuff to do a single thing.

@"Jayden Reese.9542" said:It's bad cause the food you use to discover alot of items you can't deposit so unless it's in your inv you won't see it on the list for discovery. I got thru the cooking to 500 with a lot of help from google cause I had no clue.

Thats only a side effect. The underlying issue is the number of dead ends in the crafting process, the low desirability of mid-tier items, and inability to salvage (which sort of got solved with the Composter, but that has its own issues).

Gear components have a very straight forward production model. But cooking, by its nature, uses a lot of intermediary steps to accommodate the fact that its designed to condense a LOT of varied resources into a SINGLE output. You see this model in legendary crafting, which converts well over 3 dozen different materials across 6 item types until you get the final product. The only reason its easier to internalize is the more single threaded nature of having a Center piece item that drives the other actions you take. For Gen 2.5, you make Curios. Those Curios become shards, Shards become weapons, weapons become Precursor, and the Precursor becomes the legendary. Yet there are multiple side items you need, some of which are worthless once created.

Food doesn't really have that organizational benefit, since only 2-3 steps in the process produces something you consider valuable. The paths are also a lot more complicated, and irreversible. Hence why Wet Bakers, Poultry Stock, and Pepper mix, and its underlying components are all valuable- but every variation of food stuff OTHER then the high demand foods are worth less then half the components used to make it.

MMO Cooking's near universal flaw rests in how it mimics gear production models. You have very distinct outputs that exist to complete the "table of things" that need filling out; and that need is driven entirely by the "stat" combinations it supports.

An arguably better format for consumables can be found in LOL, where items have distinct traits or mechanics that are universal in nature, despite different builds leveraging them differently. In fact, the model for Sigils would had been much better as consumables, since those effects have much more opportunity to want changed to match an encounter, yet sigils in the gear system are too inflexible to do this. A redesign I would consider is removing direct damage modifiers from Sigils, and retool their effects to be vehicles for Consumable effects. This way Sigils mirror the way a build operates, and the consumable effects create the power gain. This greatly reduces the sheer number of permutations, and allowing them to focus on the variations that actually get used. It also has the benefit of scaling like the rest of the game, rather then existing distinct tiers where everything except the top gets readily ignored.

To compensate for this change, Gear upgrades have to have their overall stat gains reduced (and rune sets refocused on effects), move most damage modifiers to consumables, and stat gains for Utility consumables increased (with a modification). To deal with over optimization, you also need to setup utility consumables to convert between Support, Offensive and Defensive stats, but never within their own sphere. So power food has to gain off defense or support stats, and visversa. Offensive utilities will still be in highest demand, but its possible to tweak the ratios to limit the power cap in any given direction. It also gives support some much needed additions that Gear simply can't, given its stat structure.

The reasoning for all of this is pretty obvious in hindsight of RPG games in general. Permanent boosts always get investment priority due to their overall return on investment. But by shifting that power to consumables, you create an opportunity cost where they get used far more often in general play as long as the price is reasonable. Gearing can still be relatively expensive; but unlike gear, consumables SINK wealth out of the system at a steady rate when they are standard practice. GW2 got this in reverse- and as a result, we avoid using the vast majority of consumables because most don't make enough of a difference to be worth upkeeping, and the few that do are just too expensive to run outside of group content.