Not a fan of food and drink buffs and if any certainly not substantial ones, don't mind food and drink being a survival thing that might slow down standard regen when you run out. Needing it gives some players/classes that extra usefulness for summoning, foraging, fishing and crafting etc.. the buff side of food always seems to spiral out of control when the high end stuff reaches the market and ends up having big buffs available for cheap prices that seem to unbalance content when everyone has epic mana / health regen.
Hokanu said:Not a fan of food and drink buffs and if any certainly not substantial ones, don't mind food and drink being a survival thing that might slow down standard regen when you run out. Needing it gives some players/classes that extra usefulness for summoning, foraging, fishing and crafting etc.. the buff side of food always seems to spiral out of control when the high end stuff reaches the market and ends up having big buffs available for cheap prices that seem to unbalance content when everyone has epic mana / health regen.
This.
Food is a good addition, it's like a couple of additional pieces of equipment. It adds another small layer to the game. Gotta make sure you're stocked up on at least basic rations or you might be hurting later.
Speaking of equipment, I'd like to see "equipment slots" for the food/drink so they don't take up as much inventory space.
I'd also like to see "buff food" be a bit more rare and difficult to come by. Similar to early EQ. You really only want to consume it when you're actively in combat and will be for a while.
Kilsin said:Tavern Talk - Food - Are you a fan of food in MMORG's and what food would you like to see in Pantheon? Bonus question, should food give you buffs and health regen? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
I'm a big fan of food/drink, treating it as importantly as you would your armor, weapons and spells. Where I differ from most is in the recipes. I prefer them to be vague and through our interpretation we obtain different results. For example, A Hunter's Sandwich recipe should read: 1 Meat, 2 Vegetable, 1 Sauce, 2 Spice, 2 Bread. Depending upon which meat, vegetables, sauce, spices and bread we use, the end item will differ in the stats/buffs provided. I could choose to use Bear meat for a small STR bonus, or Dwarf meat for CR, etc. I could go with a white bread that gives duration bonus of 1.1 or use a more difficult to produce multi-grain bread and get a duration bonus of 1.5. The point being is that we can, mostly, determine what ingredients to use based upon the result we wish which allows for a lot of experimentation early on as you are working up your skills.
The added benefit is that all ingredients, regardless of the tier, can have some benefit, some use all based upon the results you are wanting. Those who want to Cooking to be their primary tradeskill can really differentiate themselves from others through creative combinations of ingredients. You won't, hopefully, see a marketplace just packed with all the same thing.
Kilsin said:... Food - Are you a fan of food in MMORG's
... what food would you like to see in Pantheon?
Bonus question, should food give you buffs and health regen? #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
IMO:
1) Depends on the implementation.
2) A huge variety, same as what Vandraad said above. A good lesson on this is what FO76 went through regarding this exact scenario in the past few years. Started out with "if you don't have food/drink, you die" and ended up with " food/drink provide buffs ". Seems reasonable to start at the solution, rather than repeat failed history.
Also, if it's a public design goal that players provide ALL the food/drink for other players, you need a very small number of players to be able to provide thousands of consumables per day, for an entire server.
If you continue down the path of what Nephele has outlined so far, this won't be possible. An entirely player provided economy is an entirely different implementation than one involving NPCs.
You can't provide thousands of outputs if you require punitive quantities of inputs and punitive quantities of outputs.
Also, it should be possible that consumables in general should provide alternate methods to achieve certain states, both positive and negative, both to players and NPCs.
A simple example is, if, through the collection of lore, observation of creatures, time, experience, achievements, milestones, whatever, a player is able to determine the favorites and dislikes of any/all creatures, they should be able to take advantage of this information.
For example: If Ogres love to eat sheep, and hate to eat carrots, placing a sheep sandwich with a strong sedative in it should make them sleepy. Similarly, tricking them into eating carrot soup should drive them into a rage. These scenarios shouldn't be unusual, quest-specific, only possible in an instance, or rare. It should be normal, and a viable method for handling certain situations.
Food/drink and many other consumables should be part of a luring, tempting, and distracting mechanic available to all races, classes, players, or characters.
3) Yes, among many other effects.
Yes, Food is good. Aside from the mechanics of them, they also add more flavour to the world (pardon the pun). I’d like to see each continent or zone having their own style of cuisine based on the plants, animals, and minerals available to them.
With health regen, if it would naturally take 10+ minutes like EQ, then yes, something like EQ:OA or WoW Classic food to decrease downtime to a minute or two would be good. Otherwise granting a small 1 or 2 per tick would be fine also. As for buff effects, with clickies, potions and scrolls etc do you really need to add those effects to food too? Though I can see minor acclimation buffs working well on food.
Edit: You know what, changed my mind on the buff effects, having more options is usually more fun. Chow down on some Thronefastian Jerky for more grip strength, or Sorhiryth Mint-Cake for increased Breath capacity.
Hokanu said:Not a fan of food and drink buffs and if any certainly not substantial ones, don't mind food and drink being a survival thing that might slow down standard regen when you run out. Needing it gives some players/classes that extra usefulness for summoning, foraging, fishing and crafting etc..
This is pretty much where I fall with it.
In general I dislike a strong emphasis on consumables. A never ending farming spiral.
I like food as a craft but as a few have said, it can easily get out of hand with buffs. I wouldn't mind seeing it help with out of combat regen for health/mana, but I think additional buffs need to be kept fairly low especially combat related stats. Maybe boosts to material gathering skills a bit or in the amount of materials gained? But again in small doses.
I am a fan of food in MMOs. I'm ok with basic food providing increased mana or health regen while out of combat. However, I don't think that basic food should provide any lasting stat buffs.
On the subject of cooking as a profession, I typically enjoy seeing this in games. I think that having a profession dedicated to food enhances the overall diversity among the professions. It also gives players another option when deciding what they want to pursue as a profession.
Cooking has to provide something useful to the player to remain viable, though. Typically games do this by adding stat buffs to food. These stat buffs can be difficult to balance and often become a hit-or-miss scenario. They are either too good and become mandatory or they become obsolete because they don't do enough.
Personally, if cooking is a profession, I would rather have food be relevant V.S. being obsolete. I don't mind having to carry a stack of food on me for high-end content. I was always taught to come prepared for the content that I wanted to do, and I enjoy having to be prepared for battle as long as the preparation time is reasonable.
I like food and drink ingame as a Crafting profession. But I like it as a buff, not a penalty. By which I mean that having to eat or drink every X hours to avoid diminishing stats and potential death is not remotely appealing to me. I just don't see an upside.
I'm required to spend some ongoing portion of my gaming time gathering & crafting -or grinding gold & purchasing- the supplies, then carrying them around in my inventory (as though I didn't have enough items to carry in that limited space). Then I need to keep constant awareness of a clock or buff timer so I can eat before the ill effects begin. I expect to watch buff timers when I'm adventuring, but not when I'm Crafting, or Trading, or just hanging out socializing.
And my reward for doing all of this is just the 'privilege' of playing the rest of the game without needless difficulty or an unexpected death that is unrelated to my skills at playing my Class. As a bonus, me forgetting to eat may well ruin an entire group's adventure, not just my own. It honestly feels like a tax on my game time. I not only pay a subscription, but I have to 'pay' some of my playing time as well.
Yes I'd like food and drink to cover a wide variety of items that give a wide variety of buffs. It has in every game I played previously, and I enjoyed it in those.
Since others have mentioned their concern, I would offer my perspective that the buffs from food & drink are being created by the same Devs that are creating ALL of the other buffs in the game. The passive and active ones for each Race. All of the castable ones for the various Classes. As well as all of the specialty ones from various gear items we will find in Loot.
I see no good argument to worry that the buffs they create for food & drink are somehow going to be overpowered, while the ones they create for every other purpose will be 'just right'.
I like food and drink benefits, but I dont think they should have stats. I dont think it should be sorely survival but I do think one should have food and have ill effects from starving or dehydration.
I like different recipes and what Vandraad implied was something intuitive to those recipes, but with a core standard combine. my twist would be you dont know what the benefit is except from lore based flufflike reading recipe books, For instance you read a recipe book and it has a recipe for snake rolls, and it says "goes well with bog juice" snake rolls by themselves, do nothing, but when you find the recipe for bog juice and have some snake rolls and bog juice, suddenly maybe you notice you dont slow down when running through swamps. Larger recipes would have more things, like, meat pie goes well with centaur hoof soup, ale and candied rat ears. The trick is, you would have ot eat it all at once, and you would only eat again when hungry. the less you eat, the smaller the hidden buff/benefit and the hungier you are sooner. the larger the meal you eat, the longer the buff/benefit lasts and the longer it takes for you to get hungry/thirsty. In some cases you may fill up on food, but need more ale to preserve the meal buff until you are both hungry and thirsty again- which the environment could also play a part,
I think food and drink have great potential to enhance the game - even for fun. Since others before me have provided examples of how food and drink can work to enhance the game experience and have been illustrated to degrees that I support, I will add by suggesting how it can be implemented for some fun.
In EQ I remember drinking alcohol to a drunken stupor. I believe a little bit of consumption gave you a strength bonus and an intelligence hit at the same time. Drink too much and you got a blurry tunnel vision effect on your screen with the image floating around. It made it look like you were unsteady on your feet and couldn't stand straight or see straight.
I am thinking of the Irish horror/comedy Grabbers. Where the town realizes that having a higher alcoholic content in your blood dilutes the venom of the tentacled monsters and gives them a fighting chance - while in a drunken stupor. I can see this being implemented in some sort of fun fashion in specific areas. You could be highly susceptible to venom strikes immobilizing you unless you had a high alcohlic blood content going into the fight. Immune from the venom damage but you are really all over the place trying to attack.
Since this would be in specific areas - they could easily be avoided if that isn't your thing.
In most games I do not like food but Valhiem defintly showed me it can be done in a fun and interesting way. In past games I have never realy felt like it added much to the games I played so for the most part I do not like it. I guess I am open to be surprised.
As for food crafting, I love the way FFXIV does this (most of the crafting there actually). You have a TON of recipies, basic food ingredients, intermediate crafted items and so on. Food and drink usually provide a small stat boost, which is low percentage based with numeric caps depending on the crafted level of the food (like, +2% STR (max. 10)). So each class can pick food that improves their primary stats. In my experience, this is used most often in the end game to provide the extra punch to get through the expert and savage raids.
Food and drink also provide a small (3%) +EXP bonus. While food/drink is not neccessary in FFXIV (as compared to EQ), this gives an incentive to use food at any level (although with the already fast leveling speed, it is not anywhere near required). I know many of you will argue against any +EXP boosts, but in this case it makes some sense IMO.
How many consumables will we need to have for combat? In many MMOs food and drink being nothing but another long term consumable in a line of common buffs you will constantly have up during difficult content. I hope VR avoids this and limits the long term and short term consumables a player can have at any time.
My hope for food and drink is for it to be mild but useful out of combat effects. Long term HP regen, mana regen, some mild acclimation bonuses, stamina to help you climb a bit longer. Just make sure it only works out of combat. It should be tiered to need to use the better quality food/drinks matching their level range. Short term drink spam to regain mana between pulls and the like is something I hope we continue to avoid. Long term efficiency is a mechanic I hope to see focused on in groups.
Food and drink can also be used plying information from NPCs. Get the dwarf drunk to learn what he isn't telling you. Make a fancy meal to impress an NPC. Feed the orphans to gain faction.
I really hope to see EQ1s black bread as a failed summoning.
I agree with the seeming consensus that we should not need to eat or drink to survive - as in more than one much earlier game. Sure it is realistic - so is needing to defecate and I doubt VR plans on having us spend part of a play session on the toilet or to have achievements or titles based on defecatory success.
Equally I agree that benefits should be marginal. Buffs that reduce downtime are good - not much fun waiting out of combat for health or power to come back. Buffs without which you cannot win a fight (except maybe a high end boss fight) - not so good. We should be able to use food and drink but it should not be all but mandatory.
I think that if you are going to have food add bonuses, it should also have consequences such as being required.
Frankly, the dumbing down of supposed RPG's is playing a role in the watered down and boring gameplay you see in the hundreds of other MMO's that you don't want to play.
What I'm trying to say is, not everything has to be a bonus. Sometimes playing a roleplaying game means trying to survive a bad situation. Understanding the circumstance that you are in and trying to figure out how to survive is fun, so having a negative effect, or a trap, or a debuff, or many other modifiers that hinder are fun to find ways to circumvent. At least that's what roleplaying games meant when I started playing them.
If Cooking is a prime tradeskill (which it appears it is going to be) then the product needs to have some value, some on-going noticeable and tangible benefit to the consumer. If food/drink were merely relegated to RP status then it's usefullness as a prime tradeskill is completely gone. There would be no point, other than RP, to waste your time on that tradeskill. No long-term market would exist for the products you produce. Food/Drink, then, must by necessity of them being tied to a tradeskill, provide benefits. Those are bonus to stats, the regens of health/mana, you have to have it just to stay alive, etc.
It's great having food and drinks around before you start an adventure... just sux that sometimes you have to require real time currency to purchase these things because not everyone likes to constantly grind when you need to catch up in other things. That's just in what other MMORPG's have showed when you're trying to get things done.