My idea on how cooking should be full in depth explain.

[Hielo]

let me start by saying this will be a long post with me trying to explain how the cooking system in my eyes and in my opinion should be to make it good and fun and impotent and impacting in a positive on MO2 pvp, pve and economy with the use of already in game mechanics and crafting stations.

i don't know if anyone will have the will power to read it all or if the developments will see this or take any ideas from it but here it is.

Notes: all the numbers effects are solo for the purpose of giving numbers and vision
ideas and can be changed and moved around.
with this cooking system the game can remove the effect of reserves on player weight and make the food affect it, removing the way players are losing and getting weight at the moment in game by eating endlessly to overflow their reserves to gain weight or kill them self/ let a friend hit him endlessly to lose weight.

This system will expand cooking to a level where it's fun for the cooks needed for other players and affect the game in a very positive way in all aspects of the game , pvp , pve and economy.

Cooking System:
The first step in this new idea for the cooking system will be to stream line and normalize the tier 1 ingredients when it comes to basic values on those ingredients.
I will be using some of the new cooking ideas inside of this explanation that I will expand upon later on as well but i will use them from the start.

a lot of the ingredients in the game at the moment have unbalanced and random values on their nourishment values making some ingredients way worse or way better than others making a lot of the in game ingredients when it comes to cooking not desirable and in some cases even render them completely useless for use in cooking, one way to level the play field and make the ingredients less meta choice and more of an in game situational choose will be by streamline them and normalized the values across them making them more interesting for the player and more of a choose in the hand of the player of what he wish to cook based on the dish type.
impacting the player experience and the PvE aspect of the game and the in game economy.

For example from in game at the moment:
Rice has 1.033 health nourishment , 43.965 stamina nourishment, 20.655 mana nourishment.
while Corn has 0.284 health nourishment , 15.744 , stamina nourishment, 34.020 mana nourishment.
add Gherkin to the comparison, Gherkin has 23.695 stamina nourishment, 56.325 mana nourishment.
Pig meat has 4.275 health nourishment , 4.655 stamina nourishment, 14.250 mana nourishment.
and last ingredient for comparison is Tallow it has 3.207 health nourishment , 4.075 stamina nourishment, 32.130 mana nourishment.
you can see from those examples how at the moment the values are all over the place even when it comes to ingredients in of the same type like rice and corn.

first step will be breaking the ingredients into "food groups" a behind the scenes tag that every ingredient will have as a baseline.
there is one more group that isn't in the picture below because it will have a different role in the cooking and its "spices and herbs"
like in the picture below:




stream line and normalized by food group and by ingredient tiers will be something as follow:
note: those examples are for the raw ingredient base values without cooking them at all.

Pig meat is under the protein group that have the main focus on health, so a tier 1 pig meat values will look as following for nourishment:
4.275 health nourishment, 3.655 stamina nourishment, 2.852 mana nourishment.
Cutted pig meat will be under protein group but will be a tier 2 ingredient so its nourishment will be a bit better:
5.523 health nourishment , 3.812 stamina nourishment, 3.021 mana nourishment.
(those examples are for the raw ingredient base values without cooking them at all).

not lets take Corn
Corn is under the grains group that have the main focus on stamina, so a tier 1 Corn will look as following for nourishment:
health nourishment , 5.010 stamina nourishment, 2.252 mana nourishment 3.345.
Corn Flour will be under grains group but will be a tier 2 ingredient so its nourishment will be a bit better:
health nourishment , 5.850 stamina nourishment, 2.420 mana nourishment 3.545.
Corn flour dough will be under grains group but will be a tier 3 ingredient so its nourishment will be a bit better:
health nourishment , 6.200 stamina nourishment, 2.643 mana nourishment 3.850.

Besides normalizing and streamlining the ingredients, the next change that can be done to improve the ingredients and the cooking system is by adding more effects to ingredients between the different tiers.

for example:
let's take the corn and all the 3 tiers i listed above, corn is under the grains group this group focus is on stamina reserves, as a tier 1 ingredient the corn will have a higher pull of stamina nourishment but when the corn used in the grinder it turn into corn flour making it into a tier 2 ingredient same grains group but a more refine ingredient making it’s stamina nourishment higher but also adds a new layer of improving stamina regeneration for a short time after finishing eating a dish that had corn flour as it's main base ingredient.
now lets take the corn flour and putting it into the furnace with water as catalyst it will turn the corn flour into corn dough making its stamina nourishment values higher but also adding a “hidden effect” for this example let's say the hidden effect of the corn dough will be “ increase
carry weight for a short time “.

adding "hidden effect" to a dish will only be able if the cook find another ingredient that have the same "hidden effect" from another tier 3 ingredient or from the final group I mentioned before the "spices and herbs" and by using the right tool for cooking the base ingredient. those hidden effects won't stack and a player will only be able to maybe one or two buffs on them at the same time.

Even this small “hidden effect” will give the use of dough for bread more reasons for players to use beside the flat nourishment values for the stamina, a player can choose using the dough to make a dish that help him to carry more weight before a hard day of crafting or mining or moving things around.

for this example i will be using the baking stone to unlock this hidden effect that i mentioned before and the recipe may look as follow:
5 units of corn dough and 2 units of flour and 1 unit of cream. The cook will ended up making a cornbread, This type of bread will have a good stamina nourishment value, a short buff for stamina regeneration after finishing eating and also this bread will give the a buff for 30 min increasing the carry weight.

now the final step of the corn in this cooking system will be a “name recipe” this will be a recipe of maybe a real life recipe or a made up recipe with perfect
ratio of ingredients.

 

[Hielo]

for example:
when making a normal cornbread the player will receive different versions of cornbread as follow: “Luscious cornbread” or “Ambrosial cornbread” and “Creepy cornbread” indicating the player on how well the ratio or ingredients are balanced in his dish (close to how the cooking working at the moment) affecting how well the dish is.
But if the player used the right perfect ratios and ingredients he can find a secret named recipe like lets say “Tindremic Honeyed bread” this name recipe will give double the value of nourishment and double the special effects like the stamina regeneration will be stronger and longer and the carry weight buff will be higher and longer.
making the named recipes something that the player will look for and the other player wants to use and buy. Effecting: pvp , pve , economy. putting the cooking
system on the level of the other crafting systems in the game.

In this example of this named recipe I used honey as an example this brings me to the final group of ingredients of this system “spices and herbs” that I mentioned before and now i will expand on them .

spices and herbs ingredients will act like multipliers in dishes that will boost basic stats like
health, stamina and mana reserve.
For example salt boosts health reserves when used with the protein group or vegetables group but will have a smaller effect on the other two
reserves types.
but maybe something like Karuva, a more sweet spice will be a multiplier for “stamina regeneration” for the grains group and fat and oil group.
or something like Nymph Herb will have the hidden effect that gives: “more concentration when casting spells” buff for a short time that will be needed to add to another “base” ingredient or two to unlock this effect for the dish.

Cooking tools: in this system will act in two ways, first the right tool will be needed to make and finding the “named recipes” and the other effect that the tool will have on the ingredients will be by affecting the food groups base nourishment values, meaning if the right tool is used with the right group the values of the nourishment in the dish will rise( few tools can affect few groups of food in a positive way), but using the wrong tool can lower the
nourishment values in the dish.

for example:
turnspit will affect positively pig meat health nourishment values. but pig meat on a baking stone without anything else add to it will lower or
won't affect the nourishment values of the pig.

this is the core main idea of how i think the cooking system should be the below part will be extra examples of show casing the idea

Now I will expand and explain the flow of the system and will give more ideas of the system.

Food Groups and effects ideas - gameplay flow of a player ingredients making:

turning tier 1 ingredient into tier 2:

rye in the grinder to get rye flour
pig meat in the butcher table to get cut pig meat (bacon).
milk in the furnace with a catalyst like(wood/coal) for warm milk.
Karoton in the press for Karoton juice or Karoton in herbologium table for cut Karoton.
Corn in the grinder for corn flour or Corn in the press for corn oil.
Karuva in the grinder to get sugar*just a few examples for how tier 2 ingredients can be done with current in game extraction
stations.

turning some tier 2 ingredient into tier 3:

flour in the furnace with a catalyst like water for dough.
flour in a refining oven with water and honey/sugar as a catalyst for sweet dough.
cutted Malus fruit in the furnace for dry cutted Malus fruit.
cutted horn pepper in a refining oven with green jambura juice and thymus for jungle spicy
sauce.
*just a few examples for how tier 3 ingredients can be done with current in game extraction
stations, using tier 2 and tier 1 ingredients.

Cooking with all tier and tools another example recipe and how all the parts working together:
picking a tool like the baking pot then thinking about the base ingredient group like grains and taking a tier 3 ingredient “corn dough” picking the extra spices and herbs and ingredients (sugar tier 2, cream tier 1, cutted malus fruit tier 2, Karuva tier 1).
expected result: “Ambrosial Malus Fruit Pie” meaning the ratios of the ingredients are good so the values will be on the higher end.

break down the reason for making this dish:

baking pot can be used for a grain group ingredient and will give a mild stamina nourishment boost to the dish.

dough is a tier 3 grain group ingredient having a higher stamina nourishment to make a stamina food but also grain groups have stamina regeneration effect to them and dough being a tier 3 have for this example a hidden effect “Give a small boost to reading speed when reading a skill book”.
Sugar is a tier 2 spice and is a stamina nourishment and stamina regeneration multiplier (for the sack of this example).
Cream is a tier 1 dairy group mana nourishment but as a tier 1 it doesn't affect mana regeneration or have a hidden effect.
cutted malus fruit is a tier 2 fruit group mana nourishment and mana regeneration.
Karuva is a tier 1 herb/spice that has the hidden effect “Give a small boost to reading speed when reading a skill book”.


The result of this dish will be a high stamina nourishment plus giving a boost for 15 min stamina regeneration buff food from the baking pot + dough and sugar with mild mana nourishment from the cutted malus fruit + Cream and small boost to reading speed for 1 hour while not having any other special boost going from the dough + Karuva.

making this a good middle tier stamina food for melee fighters that training action skill book while doing pvp and pve.

here is an extra picture of some food grouping and ideas:


as i said at the start i think this type of system will fit perfectly to the game and will only add to the cooking system the game play the world of mortal 2 and will effect all the players in a positive way.

and again sorry for the long post i would love to hear what people think about this and what other ideas can be added and if you read the whole thing all the way to the end i wish to say thank you very much for your time. i hope the idea is good and maybe it will effect the future of the cooking in game.

 

[Bladeer01]

your idea is well explained , but not that new , we ask for a more complex and transparent cooking system since ages , but to no avail saddly

 

[Piet]

Not all of cooking is in yet. Sophistication is a big part. I agree it be nice to have a chance in it although I understand their current system. Their current system is the more basic foods like meat and potatoes are simple and hearty meals but aren't considered sophisticated and more sophisticated foods aren't as hearty so have less stats. Cooks can find a balance and make a sophisticated food with nice stats. The issue is before sophistication wasn't worth it. It may be now that you can't enter high society places like tind castle without being sophisticated but they will need to make it very appealing for that to be a big enough draw so we will see what they do.

 

[Hielo]

I don't know if you ever cooked in mo2 or not from your answer i will take a wild guess that your not a cook in the game because cooking in the game now isn't basic , it's more like non existing. It has no real value beside 2 simple dishes that even a non cook can make and it's not adding to the gameplay at all. But yeah Sophistication was in mo1, thats nice and this is mo2 where they can make something good out of this system more then it was before or is now my idea isn't about what it was it's about how to make it better more fun and give it more value on all fronts so saying it's not done or missing sophistication is beside the point of this poat that i made.

 

[Hielo]

your idea is well explained , but not that new , we ask for a more complex and transparent cooking system since ages , but to no avail saddly

I never played mo1 , this is my first MO so i can't only go by what i feel now so i don't know if my idea is new or not i wrote it after putting enough hours in mo2 and the current cooking system that they have now with the goal of pushing the idea of how to make it better without a huge change and with the tools and things they got in game already. And even if no one will fight for a change in it i will do it and i will try to push it again and again because i like cooking and i want it to be good and to have value in the world of MO.

 

[Piet]

I don't know if you ever cooked in mo2 or not from your answer i will take a wild guess that your not a cook in the game because cooking in the game now isn't basic , it's more like non existing. It has no real value beside 2 simple dishes that even a non cook can make and it's not adding to the gameplay at all. But yeah Sophistication was in mo1, thats nice and this is mo2 where they can make something good out of this system more then it was before or is now my idea isn't about what it was it's about how to make it better more fun and give it more value on all fronts so saying it's not done or missing sophistication is beside the point of this poat that i made.

They are adding sophistication back in. It's just not in yet.

 

[Bladeer01]

about soph , i didn't manage to know what it was useful for , i mean ok , tea is more soph than plain cooked pig , but what the f is it useful for , even un mo1 no one could ever give me a real answer

 

[Icegoten]

about soph , i didn't manage to know what it was useful for , i mean ok , tea is more soph than plain cooked pig , but what the f is it useful for , even un mo1 no one could ever give me a real answer

You unlock titles So yea...not useful at all. Maybe they planned on doing special interactions with NPCs if you had a certain amount of sophistication because they had a system like that for other things but they never got around to it I guess

Besides normalizing and streamlining the ingredients, the next change that can be done to improve the ingredients and the cooking system is by adding more effects to ingredients between the different tiers.


adding "hidden effect" to a dish will only be able if the cook find another ingredient that have the same "hidden effect" from another tier 3 ingredient or from the final group I mentioned before the "spices and herbs" and by using the right tool for cooking the base ingredient. those hidden effects won't stack and a player will only be able to maybe one or two buffs on them at the same time.

I asked Henrik about this on stream once and he said things like that will be more in alchemy than cooking. I love your idea and agree there should be a whole new deep system to cooking but it's probably not going to be worth their time developing it ever. Maybe if we got thousands of people to take a poll and majority wanted an improved cooking system over other things they might do it but sadly I think chefs are in the minority of the crafting world and people just want to eat what people make for them or just kill pigs.

 

[Hielo]

You unlock titles So yea...not useful at all. Maybe they planned on doing special interactions with NPCs if you had a certain amount of sophistication because they had a system like that for other things but they never got around to it I guess

That also sounds like a meh thing cooking to get a title or to be able to speak to a npc doesn't sound like a something that will fix anything in the cooking system that we got now , yeah you will get a title and maybe you will be able to talk to an extra npc or two. But at the end of the day it won't do much. The idea i wrote can easly have this "extra" small thing in it but it will make the basic cooking way more interesting and fun and engaging in every way

 

[Piet]

about soph , i didn't manage to know what it was useful for , i mean ok , tea is more soph than plain cooked pig , but what the f is it useful for , even un mo1 no one could ever give me a real answer

There was titles, npc's that told you secrets, and npc's that only sold to soph people but in MO2 they plan to have high society places like the tind castle only accessible to high soph people.

 

[Hielo]

You unlock titles So yea...not useful at all. Maybe they planned on doing special interactions with NPCs if you had a certain amount of sophistication because they had a system like that for other things but they never got around to it I guess



I asked Henrik about this on stream once and he said things like that will be more in alchemy than cooking. I love your idea and agree there should be a whole new deep system to cooking but it's probably not going to be worth their time developing it ever. Maybe if we got thousands of people to take a poll and majority wanted an improved cooking system over other things they might do it but sadly I think chefs are in the minority of the crafting world and people just want to eat what people make for them or just kill pigs.

thats the thing about game development if you use UE4 right you make both system at the same time build on the same parent class and change the child to fit what ever system you need it to work with if you already have a multiplier system for alchemy you can do the same thing for cooking in a very easy way in UE4 if you going to add effects to alchemy potions you can add them to cooking as well both systems work on a very similar back end system where you take a base ingredient and add different ratios of other ingredients, i don't know how they did they scripts or blueprints in the engine but as a 2nd year in my game development degree and someone that used UE4 enough to know that it's not that hard to take those two and develop them together from the same core system but change them to fit.

 

[Hielo]

It was worth it to make soph food and sell it hue hue hue. Soph was for rare titles, it was bar that you could move, and it was kind of a contest to see not only who could move the bar the furthest, who could mass produce (ahem ahem), who could mix fat/stam and soph into normal foods (ahem ahem.) It was just a flavor part that kept it interesting. It didn't really make sense, but yea we were pushing soph opposed to HoT or DH. I feel like if I wanted to do deep cooking now I'd to those things. Cooking is in a sad state, ingredient list being the most-worstest part.

PS: There already were things you'd get when you made certain recipes that were 'named.' I dunno about their stats being good, tho.

When you create something with 14 ingredients and you have to hit x % liquid or x % flour, whatever, it can get really interesting just moving the bars around. Soph was the end game tho, imo. And of course, at least my soph theory was more like cutting fat/stam food with what I did to get high soph haha.

Afaik there were never really health or stam modifiers. Def a ton of room for improvement, but MO I beg you, even as a cook, who wants to be a cook main, NO FOOD BUFFS. The shouts/clade gifts are already gonna be super hard to balance once they start getting used over time in sustained fights/people figure out how to use them right, food buffs will make it worse.

there is "named" recipes but all they do is add a name to it like " dumpling" or "beer" or "pie" the stats are the same and still worst then just doing a single ingredient cooked dish. and about the "buffs" you will get some types of them from potions like "dark vision" or "breathing under water" so honestly they are already going to put system like this into the game anyway . and the hidden effects aka buff i'm talking about are less "direct" buffs like potions not talking about give X higher damage or "jump super high" i'm talking about more softer ones like . you drink a warm milk you get "increase your body temperature" or " you regenerate stamina a little bit faster". those won't break the balance if they won't be made op and plus in my idea i wrote i did said that you should have limit of 1 or 2 max of those buffs going so it won't become a balance breaker.
and for the Soph system with the idea i wrote it will be super easy to add Soph to it as a "end game" but my idea is more about making the core system of cooking more fun and interesting and worth time put into when the player that do it get rewarded with something he can be proud of and feel like he accomplished something. but yeah my idea is more focus on making the base of cooking better and the soph system can come on top of this better core system in my opinion later on as well.

 

[Hielo]

Ideally.

I mean if they keep the buggy mess they have, I'd sub and sit in town until I mastered cooking, play a bit to reap the benefits (all while bitching on forums about how wack the 1 v 1 combat is), and then dip haha.

Give us a system. I think cooking is a flavor system, and I hate that I can't say that without it seeming punny. I also enjoy the making special foods, etc. Those are 'buffs', but the buffs I mean are like +10 hp for 40 minutes. I'm even cool with healing food. I think healing food has a place, as do battle snacks, in a group fight you can get safe and chomp some. Over the course, it will be effective and you'd think you'd wear them down. I mean, people are sitting down to regen due to buffs, they can pop some food. Some food can have a legit Heal over Time effect, even now. Like IMO it'd be a no brainer to eat some stam food that gave you like 10-20 HOT. And you can extend out the length, too, with what is in the game now, I'm sure of it. I am just too lazy to go gather the mats. Dood put up stacks of palm fruit and malus on the broker and it's like BUY.... BUY. haha. JUICING. "Added a press to every town."

Also, I think the cooking system does work like you want it to, only a lot more complex. What you are doing is kind of dumbing it down. It's trial and error because MO cooking doesn't always react as you figure it would, but it's cool enough to play around with. I enjoy the craft. It really is one. It is, even now, but the values seem off right now. If these were the original numbers on the bars and converted to numbers, they need to be adjusted by a lot! The multiplicity, as in the value of mat, modifier mat, paired mat, whatever, there should be a standard meal, but it should not be pig meat only. It should have to be multiplied by a tool with multiple ingredients. 100 Secondary Cooking to me is like survival cooking, like frying bugs and shit. You should not be able to bang out a pretty ok fat food with it ( in the field with no fire.) You should be able to make something barely edible if you don't have lore, and something decent if you do.

Edit: and that's why soph was interesting because it WAS using those sorts of things, and you could really do some max ingredient stuff. The more stuff you put in, assuming you're putting in good stuff, the better your food should be. Yet the only thing that would change noticeably is the soph meter.

First thing ifrst i have to say i disagree with alot of what you wrote but that's your opinion and i respect it.
But here i will give you a quick guide to become a master cook so you won't need to put time into it when the game goes full. Step 1)) buy cooking pot and turnspit , step 2) kill a crab and cook the meat in the cooking pot (best health food) nothing extra needed. Step 3 go and hold R on rye/spelt/corn and use turnspit to cook it(best stamina food) this is how deep the cooking is in game.

And i'm sorry to break it to you and burst your bubble but what you think is not how it is. I got the "master cook" title in game after mixing and cooking amd trying all the ingridents in game and i putted even more time into cooking the doing anything else in the game and the simple answer is no it's not working like my idea or close to it or have anything interesting in it. The way it is right now with or without the"soph" system that everyone love to bring up is that you need only crab and rye/spelt/corn to really be a cook and thats why no one cares about cooking because even with soph players that doing pvp or pve won't be affected because all they care is not having a grey bars on hp and stamina because cooking won't offer them anything else.

And cooking isn't a flavor system , you get 5 titles for it you have debuffs that you get from not eating you need it for pets , you need for removing grey bars and gain weight all those are part of the game saying that cooking is flavor system is like saying weapon and armor crafting is a flavor system , because you can fight naked and with yout fists , so why bother making complex weapon and armor system.

 

[Atticcuss]

To start I understand your frustrations, HOWEVER, you call cooking in game basic or complexity/function non existent while overlooking things that are in place already. . . Disclaimer, this is just my opinion (with some facts lol) and I say the following with attention and respect:

1. The values that ingredients have are not "all over the place". For the only comparison that you've made worth mentioning, between corn and rice, is that corn is a "whole grain" and more accurately a vegetable while rice is simply a grain. . . For the sake of consistency I also must point out that tallow is a fat while pig meat is, well, meat. Tallow is an animal byproduct and thus the raw ingredient nourishment values make sense when compared to meats and the cooked values change appropriately. These values are meant to be drastically different and are not random when considered correctly and placed into their proper categories. (e.g. gerkin should be compared to white cavolo or capsicum, etc. )

2. Ingredients in game are already sorted into food groups (they encompass yours and more). This "suggestion" is redundant and, from your chart, painfully simple. Vegetables, once cooked double if not triple their stamina values (they are stamina ingredients, with few leaning towards mana). Fruits are already mana ingredients with useable stamina values and serve as direct heal components as well as multipliers. . . you would know this if you actually cooked (should end this sentence here). . . with more than one ingredient. Question: why should all protein be health reserve food? MO2 incurs most of its critiques from its indie appeal to realism when possible for a video game (and yes of course the never ending debate surrounding "balance"). To me this is simply another one from you. I just can't imagine troll meat, sator meat, nitre worker meat, [insert non edible sounding monster here] being good to give health nourishment under any circumstance.

3. Ingredient tiers . . . exist
named recipes with cooking application specifics . . . exist (naming in game will take away your satisfaction in make "named" things anyway)
spices have a viable function. . . you either don't realize it or want to make it overly simple because it sounds good. . .
back to the tiers lol, a sliced apple is still an apple. . . *malus fruit. . . not all ingredients need said tiers
cooking tools work as you want them to. . . please stop simplifying

4. Please no buffs in cooking. Should you want this, go enjoy Valheim, New World, etc. Reason being, too much to balance and rebalance and we really don't know what food can do yet (I'll explain). Some crazy DH and HoT food already exists in game, far better than any one ingredient. Direct mana food and other cooking/food effects will also come into play along side alchemy changes and updates (like growth and shrink food to reference things currently implemented)

Your system seems very restrictive and simple. There would be no need to make anything other than your tier 3 and higher dishes. With no extra effort, ambrosial roasted spelt (flour) would just turn into ambrosial dough . . . (etc.)


To note, I am critiquing with quite a strong bias: The Art of Cooking by Atticcuss Grandfall


If you've made it this far I will now engage in constructive support of some ideas. *I'm really not mean. I just play Mortal Online

1. Some extra tiers to ingredients would be great! It would create a need for specialized cooks or a greater role for extractors/butchers. A threshold skill level to cut pig carcass, into meat, into bacon is wonderful. I would even go as far as having "advanced cooking" determine weather you could even cook with things like tier 3 (or higher) processed ingredients. This would make true cooks even more valuable.

2. I support the idea of dough and how it can be created. I believe that wants like this come from the player base wanting to combine cooked/application processed foods to make a variety of things that are in-between fully processed. I believe that one should make dough and then add more ingredients to the correct application to make pie and dumplings, and that the intermediate product would greatly affect the finished product. This logic can be applied to all cooking pot results. (and yes I too dream of making baked goods in Mortal Online 2)


To conclude, cooking is just unfinished and for the current state of the game and even for some time to come, THAT'S OK. We are missing most (an insane amount) of the zoological classes (fauna) and pickable ingredients (flora) to be in game. A lot of systems are also not in place to make cooking more interesting and need such as sophistication, food poisoning (sickness), the inability to sleep/rest from low reserves when food is needed, HoT rebalancing, taste identification masking, WEIGHT LOSS FOOD, etc.

 

[Hielo]

To start I understand your frustrations, HOWEVER, you call cooking in game basic or complexity/function non existent while overlooking things that are in place already. . . Disclaimer, this is just my opinion (with some facts lol) and I say the following with attention and respect:

1. The values that ingredients have are not "all over the place". For the only comparison that you've made worth mentioning, between corn and rice, is that corn is a "whole grain" and more accurately a vegetable while rice is simply a grain. . . For the sake of consistency I also must point out that tallow is a fat while pig meat is, well, meat. Tallow is an animal byproduct and thus the raw ingredient nourishment values make sense when compared to meats and the cooked values change appropriately. These values are meant to be drastically different and are not random when considered correctly and placed into their proper categories. (e.g. gerkin should be compared to white cavolo or capsicum, etc. )

2. Ingredients in game are already sorted into food groups (they encompass yours and more). This "suggestion" is redundant and, from your chart, painfully simple. Vegetables, once cooked double if not triple their stamina values (they are stamina ingredients, with few leaning towards mana). Fruits are already mana ingredients with useable stamina values and serve as direct heal components as well as multipliers. . . you would know this if you actually cooked (should end this sentence here). . . with more than one ingredient. Question: why should all protein be health reserve food? MO2 incurs most of its critiques from its indie appeal to realism when possible for a video game (and yes of course the never ending debate surrounding "balance"). To me this is simply another one from you. I just can't imagine troll meat, sator meat, nitre worker meat, [insert non edible sounding monster here] being good to give health nourishment under any circumstance.

3. Ingredient tiers . . . exist
named recipes with cooking application specifics . . . exist (naming in game will take away your satisfaction in make "named" things anyway)
spices have a viable function. . . you either don't realize it or want to make it overly simple because it sounds good. . .
back to the tiers lol, a sliced apple is still an apple. . . *malus fruit. . . not all ingredients need said tiers
cooking tools work as you want them to. . . please stop simplifying

4. Please no buffs in cooking. Should you want this, go enjoy Valheim, New World, etc. Reason being, too much to balance and rebalance and we really don't know what food can do yet (I'll explain). Some crazy DH and HoT food already exists in game, far better than any one ingredient. Direct mana food and other cooking/food effects will also come into play along side alchemy changes and updates (like growth and shrink food to reference things currently implemented)

Your system seems very restrictive and simple. There would be no need to make anything other than your tier 3 and higher dishes. With no extra effort, ambrosial roasted spelt (flour) would just turn into ambrosial dough . . . (etc.)


To note, I am critiquing with quite a strong bias: The Art of Cooking by Atticcuss Grandfall


If you've made it this far I will now engage in constructive support of some ideas. *I'm really not mean. I just play Mortal Online

1. Some extra tiers to ingredients would be great! It would create a need for specialized cooks or a greater role for extractors/butchers. A threshold skill level to cut pig carcass, into meat, into bacon is wonderful. I would even go as far as having "advanced cooking" determine weather you could even cook with things like tier 3 (or higher) processed ingredients. This would make true cooks even more valuable.

2. I support the idea of dough and how it can be created. I believe that wants like this come from the player base wanting to combine cooked/application processed foods to make a variety of things that are in-between fully processed. I believe that one should make dough and then add more ingredients to the correct application to make pie and dumplings, and that the intermediate product would greatly affect the finished product. This logic can be applied to all cooking pot results. (and yes I too dream of making baked goods in Mortal Online 2)


To conclude, cooking is just unfinished and for the current state of the game and even for some time to come, THAT'S OK. We are missing most (an insane amount) of the zoological classes (fauna) and pickable ingredients (flora) to be in game. A lot of systems are also not in place to make cooking more interesting and need such as sophistication, food poisoning (sickness), the inability to sleep/rest from low reserves when food is needed, HoT rebalancing, taste identification masking, WEIGHT LOSS FOOD, etc.

I will start by saying thank you for the feedback and you're entitled to your opinion and that's fine. The other thing i will say here is that my post aim is about reworking the whole system from the ground up, while it looks like you think that the aim of this post is to criticize small minor things and nitpicking. And i understand that you think you see something in the current system that other can't because you are more experienced and knows better, but i can assure even after reading your "guide" it didn't change my mind about the current state of cooking.

Now let me adress your points:
1) you're taking a simple look at the words "black on white" without seen the whole point behide the section it wasn't about "those" ingredients i could have named them with other names like " bob 1" , "bob 2" or "x" and "y" the point wasn't about them as an ingredients but about how the numbers are needlessly all over the place and can be lowered "normalized" across the board and they can still be different between themself but with lower numbers.

2)i never said in my post that the game don't have food grouping in fact beside bring up few items from the game to explan what i mean when i said normalized numbers to give a visual to that. I was building my idea from that point on and not trying to compare what is there or what is not there at the moment in the game. As i said the point was to build my idea step by step from the ground up in a logical way that fits my idea and not to point out what is or isn't in game. Because my idea is about reworking from the ground up and not "fixing".
And yes my chart is simple because the point of it wasn't to go deep and break down every single item into the chart but to explan and show case the idea of food grouping in a simple way for the sake of explaning that part before using it later in my idea.
And i will disregard your comment about "you should know that if you cooked" because again it have nothing to do with my idea. But calling this redundant is wrong because i'm building an idea my idea while you looking at this as if its a suggestion for fixing a certain point , you're trying to defend something that i'm not attacking. This post is about me building an idea of how i think the cooking system should be and not puting bandage on whats now.

3)from this point on i won't repeat myself about you missing the point of how an idea should be build from the ground up and why it's simple and never meant to be deep in this post.
Yes the game have " named recipes" but they are nothing but a flavor text that does little to nothing beside giving you a different icon. My "named recipes" have a reason to be looked for by the player because they actule do something more then just a new icon and a flavor text. And naming items yourself won't take it away because in my system the "named recipes" will do something and give something more then just the name.
And funny you say "no buffs" while the game already have those things but you're stuck on the name "buff" HoT is a buff , growth food is a buff, night vision potion is a buff, clades have buffs in them, but you're stuck on the naming convention of it, while it's already is in play and can be added to food without breaking any balance. But i guess size changing food is fine and having a long timer under water as well, but changing body heat when drinking something warm is not or feeling more energetic and recover stamina faster is not ok.

And about your point of "Your system seems very restrictive and simple. There would be no need to make anything other than your tier 3 and higher dishes. With no extra effort, ambrosial roasted spelt (flour) would just turn into ambrosial dough . . . (etc.)"
Brings me back to the same point of my named recipes that actual do something and the hidden effects those two alone will give reason to make things above just ambrosial.

 

[Hielo]

But again thank you for the feedback i don't want to make my answer a paper long. So i will end it there on. But again thanks for the time and you're entitled to your opinion and its as valid as any other.