Changes to Cooking rewards

[jonsnow 40]

I've felt since I came back and tried the cooking system that the current version only really rewards high level players, and the benefits are really negligible to the new player experience.  What I was thinking would be better, and you can tweak this how you want:

Eating foods should instead gain experience.  Experience in what?  Affinities! 

For example, a pizza with a lot of ingredients might give you exp in several skill affinities.   Of course it would take a lot of time to gain the affinities, but lets say after eating corn bread for 3 months you might have enough experience to gain an affinity on your character for that skill.

 

Leave the current system in as well, to give high level players also an advantage over the new players...  but I think this is necessary in order to make a demand for all types of ingredients.

 

Thoughts?  How long should it take if you're eating regularly to gain an affinity?

 

We would also need an experience page.  This page could also tie into other reward systems for other skills!  Doing things could reward exp towards these affinities.  For example, hunting might reward you with affinity exp.

Edited September 25, 2019 by jonsnow

[Flubb 773]

Not to sound like a contrarian, but you're trying to "close the gap" by making the thing that benefits higher skilled players comparably useless against something that can be done across the board?

Sorry, hard pass. The gap you're addressing doesn't even neccessarily need to be closed - that's the whole point of aiming to have high skill as opposed to low ones.

For what it's worth, the temporary affinity timers could be narrowed a bit, so that low skill doesn't have affinities that run out before you even take the second bite while highly skilled cooks make affinity food that last for days (not even hyperbole) with a single bite, that sounds like a reasonable tweak, but it's as far as I would go.

[jonsnow 40]

It actually would benefit vets more, as vets will have more resources to utilize from farming and such. 

 

I agree the timers definitely need fixing, but what I'm aiming at is a reason to make something specific in the early game vs just eating random bits of food just because you're hungry and need to fill the meter.  There was just simply NO reason to make anything other than the simplest meal possible.  This sucks!  There's so much content in the cooking field yet there's no reason to search out the recipes and develop new meals!  At least not until you get high enough skill level, and even then are you really going to bother figuring out what meals to make until super high level?

 

What I'm particularly targeting is the new player experience, having started on Jackal I was mostly just eating meals and breakfast as they were easy and simple to make.  This resulted in me eating the easiest thing possible.  It also meant that no farm land was dedicated to making new resources for cooking, as I was instead just foraging for a few bits of food and eating it immediately.

 

If we had an experience bar that after eating varieties of foods would gradually fill up there would be a goal as soon as you start - I want to be a lumberjack, focus on lumberjacking... so I need to eat this specific type of food to gain affinities in it.

 

Also as far as the affinity gains go, obviously this would be very long term and would not be immediately gained .  Affinities aren't OP, they're what... 3% more exp gain?  Hardly anything.  Still, gives purpose and goal where one is lacking.

 

You could do this for all skills!  For example, sacrificing a barrel might produce exp for a different affinity.  Making utilizing all those "imped" items useful!

Edited September 26, 2019 by jonsnow

[Flubb 773]

4 hours ago, jonsnow said:

3% more exp gain?

 

10%. That's rather substantial, especially on 5 stacks.

 

Foraged raw food kills your nutrition, which also affects your skillgain, so if you wanna talk "miniscule skill gain" mechanisms that benefit the early game, they are already there. It's also affected by QL, but more complicated recipes also give better nutrition. So from what I see, the premise of your suggestion is already reasonably covered, because there is very much an incentive to go for better recipes even early on for slightly better skillgains, if those are really only what you are after.

 

Addendum, before I miss this:

4 hours ago, jonsnow said:

It actually would benefit vets more, as vets will have more resources to utilize from farming and such. 

The point was that temporary affinities become pretty useless if permanent ones can be gained through the same means, not that vets won't benefit from your particular proposal more. Rendering one mechanism moot by introducing a concurrent, more powerful one, when it could just be tweaked just seems like a bad approach to me.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Flubb

[Wonka 438]

Basically, what Flubb has already said.  This is taking a system that is reasonably straightforward, albeit with a lot of detail, and making it basically pointless by replacing it with a different, more complex, more powerful mechanism.  The current cooking system works fine in that it gives you a useful boost if you choose to invest time and effort into it, but the advantage is minor enough that you can easily choose to ignore it if it doesn't appeal to you.

 

It sounds like your complaint is that you can't get full advantages of the cooking system without putting some effort into it.  Which is basically the entire premise of wurm.