So, one of the things that has kind of bothered me (especially in more modern games with tiered content) is that food buffs are incredibly arbitrary and boring. In other words: food buffs give x or y stat, but there is always a "better" one until you reach the end of that sequence, and then you use that food always regardless of anything. I've always thought food has generally been implemented in the laziest way possible, so I thought I might propose a different system that incorporates a few old ideas, chief among them rested status, out of combat regen or 'medding', and camping.
Imagine a system where a party adventures out to exp. They meet at the nearest safe bind point, an Inn. The Inn serves larger, more interesting foods that will give you a max stack of an exp buff capping at some percent, maybe 10 (5 stacks of 2%). They venture out, they get into the groove of grinding out at a camp, and come to a point of downtime. While exp'ing the mages have slowly run out of mana and the melee have noticed their endurance regeneration rate has dropped off, let's say to 80% of normal. So, they choose to recover by medding ooc. The animation for this involves hanging out at a literal camp fire and eating their food of choice. By choosing to consume food like this when they get low, they can maintain their form over a long period of time.
That's not all, however: they've noticed their exp buff stacks might have worn a bit, so they should be particular about their food. Ogres are not halflings, and the aquatic Dark Myr have different dietary needs than humans. What that means is that not only do different races (maybe even classes? or at least mana/endurance lines) have food preferences, perhaps even individuals have different tastes that vary depending on everything from their birth date to their chosen deity. Returning to our exp party, let's say the Dark Myr Enchantress begins to eat a paella, a staple dish of their culture. As a result of eating a preferred food, she can start to rebuild her buff stacks. The Dwarf Dire Lord snacks on a plate of flapjacks, the Ogre eats an entire roasted boar, and everyone is back to full and back at 100(+10!)%.
But even that is not all! For these adventurers have made a campfire, and one of them is a cook. As a result, he can make the type of fare you would see while camping: jerky, breads, berry and nut mixes, even coffee and tea perhaps. Because of the skill of the chef and because his friends have brought along more basic ingredients, he can perpetuate the expensive food buffs that give them the highest stacks of exp buff for coppers on the gold.
I think the above anecdote is a much better system than the mundane one of tiered food in which maybe 5 recipes out of hundreds are relevant at any given time. I believe it has these advantages:
I dunno, what do you guys think?
Food should be eaten, manually, and should take a brief, but sufficient time. I never liked the idea of equipping and automatically eating food. Especially if it is expensive and I am afk or crafting or something. I waste too much that way.
Overall, not sure Ogre food is better for Ogres or not. I get the same nutrition from my Chinese dinner as a Chinese woman gets.
As as religion, do Jews get different nutrition out of a fish than Taoists do?
I am hoping that food can be used to battle certain atmospheres. That would be more varied than just base stats.
Agree about helping with atmospheres. Warm soup to help combat cold seems like a clear example. Also agree with first paragraph, although not sure what it has to do with my original post.
Not sure what to make of your description of different human ethnicities. Do you not know that all the races are from completely different evolutionary/creationary tracks? It's even further apart than asking if humans and gorillas have the same diet, it's more like asking if humans and fish or if dogs and horses have the same dietary needs. I just think the game should recognize that. Obviously some overarching things are similar (I'm sure 'cooked meat' is a pretty common thing), but ignoring cultural specifics just seems like a wasted opportunity.
One or two special foods for each race would be fine, but not a whole separate line for each plus general food.
I like the idea, especially camp specific. But would generalize the menu. For instance, ogre lines meat, dark Myr, fish - dwarf, ale or alcohol- halfling, bread or baked goods- gnome, crystalized sulphur...Or whatever. So if the group looted/picked up squirrel carcass, swamp cat-o-nine tails, saltpeter, and the chef had flour....The chef could make a batter dipped squirrel with saltpeter, and bog juice, which would satisfy the whole team, the Myr and dwarf on the juice, and halfling,gnome,and ogre on the main dish. Everyone would get a juice and squirrel, but because it catered to their particular species needs, all got the benefit.
Is that close?
Jimmayus said: I meant it more like in the larger categories of food (I.e. Fish) the fish from the Dark Myr home world would be preferred by Dark Myr as a general rule, whereas human world fish would be preferred by humans. Both races could still eat all the types of fish, just that the effects would vary predictably along race/faction/maybe class lines.
I could live with that.
Jimmayus said: You can add things like birth month, chosen subfaction, or whatever so that a wide variety of recipes are sought after, not just "rogues the world over eat this and only this".
I was with you up to this one. I really don't want to see different benefits based on things like birth month. Reason being, there is always a 'best' one. And once that best is found in beta it will become the standard for every single person of that class. It's an arbitrary choice that ends up being a waste of resources. Cookie cutter builds exist in every game to date and people follow them like lambs to the slaughter
I mean the birthdate thing was more of an off the cuff suggestion, I'd imagine more logical ones would be things like: certain arrays of food buffs provide you with an additional stage of [environmental resistance], or maybe certain types of very local delicacies decay their exp buff stacks slower or something. Basically the idea is to keep people from all eating the same food all the time. I think it works pretty well because, while you could carry around a stack of a bunch of situational better (and way more expensive) foods, the camp food system allows you to just need one of them to create the stack and then use cheaper stuff at camp to keep it going.
But yeah you're probably right, birthdates are more of a roleplaying thing so tying variance to that is probably not ideal.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of races having their more preferred food. Hell I would be fine with each food type doing different things by races. Fish for Myr gave them Int, for Humans STR, Halflings DEX, etc. So that part of the idea I do like.
The one thing I really do not want to see is XP food ... like at all. I want to see no xp buff in game outside of the Progeny system. If there is an XP food it just became mandatory for 80% of the game. I'd much rather there be a mana regen/endurance regen food before an xp food
@Beefcake:
I don't feel like I'm proposing having a bunch of foods? Maybe the one that's your race/class "favorite" (or some cheaper replacement) you keep on you all the time, but the rest would more typically be found at Inns/"restaurant" type vendors in whatever place you're going to. Maybe if you spend like a considerable amount of time in a particular area you might buy more specialized food from a player, but generally you'd just show up at the inn closest to where you're going to exp, hit up the innkeeper and then head out. You keep some kind of trail mix ingredients good to go for at camp and you're done. Don't need much more than your average current mmo requires.
@Enitzu
I think you misunderstand me, because literally all food would be exp food. To elaborate: all food would either: help ooc regen mana or restore your endurance recharge rate. Some local foods you could get from npcs might give you a temp buff for climate survival. No food would give you generic stat sticks. ALL food you would cook/buy cooked from (n)pcs would give you the SAME stack of exp buffs. ALL campfire recipes would reset the exp buff stack duration and give similar results in mana regen or endurance rate restore. So there's no such thing as "exp buff" food in particular, that's not a thing that would be an issue.
I suppose the buff wouldn't need to be an "exp" buff, but I was mainly trying to play into the idea of simulating being "hungry" affecting your character in a simple to upkeep way. It also feels to me having both a super varied "favorite food" system would super complicated if there was an insane number of possible stat buffs, so I'd prefer to keep it simple.
edit: rereading my original post, I remember another reason: without a general buff tied to the "favorite food" system, i.e. if the only concern was helping with ooc mana regen or endurance rate recharge then I think people would just all get the easiest to mass farm one, even if only one race or class got the max benefit. By having a single, simple to understand buff tied to eating the "favorite food", you can get people to participate in it and by extension make a large variety of cooking recipes profitable, and a large variety of ingredients profitable to farm. The whole "exp buff with 5 stacks that wear off in stages" thing is mainly so that if you don't notice a stack fell off it's not a dramatic drop in exp.
Beefcake said:One or two special foods for each race would be fine, but not a whole separate line for each plus general food.
You could even take a hint from D&D and Mass Effect here. Maybe some foods are toxic to other races, or, perhaps, maybe some foods can cause "strange effects" with different races. Say hallucinations, poison, a random effect that could be a boost or bane. Maybe eating that mushroom makes you see things like your allies becoming your enemies as a hallucination during a battle or, in a random chance, you get an adrenaline surge as a fighter and gain a strength or hp buff.
A lot of fun ideas to be played with. Guess that all depends on if it fits "The Vision" TM* and dev time permits. :)
Jimmayus said:@Enitzu
I think you misunderstand me, because literally all food would be exp food. To elaborate: all food would either: help ooc regen mana or restore your endurance recharge rate. Some local foods you could get from npcs might give you a temp buff for climate survival. No food would give you generic stat sticks. ALL food you would cook/buy cooked from (n)pcs would give you the SAME stack of exp buffs. ALL campfire recipes would reset the exp buff stack duration and give similar results in mana regen or endurance rate restore. So there's no such thing as "exp buff" food in particular, that's not a thing that would be an issue.
That still doesn't really change anything. If all food is xp food then it's pointless to even put into the game. For that matter it simply means they need to add more xp required to level to offset the bonus gained from food. This simply makes it yet another requirement and that I don't support. I want the game to be about choices not about 'musts'. The whole reason I stated different foods giving different buffs based on race is because it keeps all food relevant as some race/class combo would want it. But if all food does the same thing then the only one anyone would ever care about is the cheapest/easiest one.
The point is that magnitudes are different depending on race/class/current preferences, such that you have more than 3-4 foods that are relevant at any time. Basically this accomplishes the exact same thing as different stat stick food buffs without having an overly elaborate system that is hard to display reasonably. With different stats for different class/race/preferences depending on food that information needs to be communicated somehow on a per food basis; when the only thing that changes is magnitude then you only need a single number (or, if there's differences in mana/stam regen, 3 numbers) in the description.
I originally thought of this as a complementary idea to the question of: what does it mean to be role playing a character in a game world? I hate that in modern mmorpgs what has happened is characters are basically immortal gods that don't seem to have emotions, hobbies, whatever. So, I thought it would make sense to have a system in which your character's non-combat adventures affected their general disposition. Sometimes after work I like to eat quesadillas and watch a movie, sometimes I like to play with my cat, sometimes I go downtown and go to an art exhibit.
Let's say it went like this: we keep the "stacks" of exp buff (just as a placeholder to a general wellness proxy) from the OP, and to keep up the buffs you could either:
This is basically the same as in something like WoW or any other mmo but in a much more wholistic manner. You avoid the "cheapest" food issue by making the concept meaningless: as long as there's enough variation in preferences between race/class/gender/location/recently eaten foods then cheapest could literally be one of dozens of things.
Did a lot of searching and finally found this for “cooking” J
I agree with most of what is said above and I would also like to see a diversity of food. There will always be a “favored” food, but we could still diversify that based on race/class/situation. Any standard purchased, dropped, or summoned ration/water skin should suffice to keep you full and hydrated, but items that are crafted should offer more and the old fare would be used as merely back-ups.
Some sample ideas:
I love the idea of regional cuisine based on race. To the points above, not sure why we even call it “race”; it’s actually species. These species developed on entirely unique worlds… this gives us an opportunity to bring emersion through representative cultural favorites as well as bring true value to the crafting system as food/drink will always be in demand. I think that for the racially preferred foods it is best to keep it simple in that it offers an additional % over the core stat of the food. There may be some racially preferred foods that cannot be eaten by other races… I dunno, Fermented Elf Meat may be preferred by Skar, but Elves either cannot eat it at all (restricted use) or become violently ill when doing so. Whereas an ogre might be able to stomach it and gain the effects, but not receive any bonus to those effects.
Food Buffs
Drink Buffs
Additional Effects:
I think something like this would give a pretty wide diversity to the cooking system. Each race and class would no doubt have a favorite, but there may be situational needs for other foods that offer additional effects. While I get your point about “all foods are exp buffs”, I don’t think any food or drink should ever offer a direct exp bonus. I think it’s a slippery slope and it also leads directly to a concern stated earlier in the post… if there’s food/drink that offers an exp bonus why would anyone ever use anything else (at least until the hit max level and potentially had all their AA’s)? Everyone would only ever use the direct exp boost.