127 replies to this topic

[Heimdallr]

One part of Ragnarok that has been around for much of it's history is the cooking system. The first time around, it was not long after the Cooking system was implemented that the same +10 foods that were lighter, but lasted 10 minutes less were offered in the Kafra shop. The cost and ease of those Shop versions were such that in-game cooking disappeared.

I don't want to repeat that event, I do want some Kafra shop stuff, but I want in-game cooking to still be highly sought after.

Problems with in-game cooking:

• Crazy rare items to do the high tier recipes
• Loss of buff on Death
• Difficulty finding good cooking utensils.
• Item weight was very high.

Things we are thinking about :

• Make Weight a non-factor
• Maybe change the actual recipes (this would take a long while as there are 100 recipes now)
• Perhaps offer the high end ingredients via Kafra shop while other changes are happening.
• Update drop/hunt rate/quests to get those ingredients.
• Maybe only offer +7 or so items in the Kafra shop, so the in-game variants are better.

We aren't making changes now to this system, but it is on the planning board for updating, likely after we finish the map updating in about 2 weeks. So let's hear some ideas you have on pros and cons and ideas about the system.

Thank you for being a part of Classic's future!

[TwilightsCall]

The biggest problem I had with the cooking system (that meant I never even bothered to try it) was how difficult the recipes were and how low the success rates were. I just never felt it was worth my time to invest so much time into hunting to have a chance at getting a single item...that is one of the things I loved about Genetic crafting in renewal, you gathered a stack of items, but when you crafted it MADE a stack of items.

I suppose if I were to make a list of suggestions...

-Make successes create more than one item. Recipes may need to be adjusted accordingly.
-Make higher level cooking kits a little easier to obtain (maybe an exchange quest?)
-Offer Kafra food no higher than +7 sounds like a good idea too.
-Weight could be reduced to 10 instead of 100, and duration could be increased to 30 minutes so it matches up with Kafra food durations.
-Add exchange quests to get higher level cook books (Level 10 Cookbook has an almost card drop rate from MAYA PURPLE?!) These can be hard, but need to be more reasonable than boss monsters dropping them below 1%.
-I don't know if tweaking the formula is allowed, but I would reduce the dependence on Dex/Luk and increase the dependence on number of previous attempts. I really liked the idea of that system but it never really made a big impact :/
-I would modify recipes to require more bulk items and fewer rare items. Asking for Illusion Flowers and Ygg Berries to make the same piece of food is just...yeah. Its ok to have a few rare ingredients for the +9 and +10 foods, but I would advise against having the recipe be composed around the rare items.
-Kafra shop 'Cooking Kick Starter Kits' like you mentioned could be a fun idea. Have them contain maybe a few cooking kits and some of the more miserable to acquire materials (but not enough materials to create foods right out of the box). You could split them up by stat, or just mash them all together depending on what you want to accomplish with them. This could be dangerous though depending on what items you offer in the boxes.
-Kafra Cooking Club? Make an item (either rental or one time use) that having it lets you into the Kafra Kitchen, where an NPC will attempt to make the food for you (you still have to have all the required items). The NPC will craft it at a success rate similiar to a pure potter (really high Dex and Luk) but will NOT give the bonus for previous attempts. This opens up the possibility of cooking for people who don't make pure potters for it, and still lets those who DO have pure potters have a bit of an advantage. Maybe adding a zeny cost to each attempted creation as well? I think something like this could be a really good idea but I'm not so confident in the way I've proposed it lol.
-Keep Fantastic Cooking Kits RARE but OBTAINABLE. They give 100% success rate guaranteed, but they only ever drop from Lady Tanee...I feel like they should be made a bit more obtainable but need to stay rare. Any drop above 1% would be too much I think for a common mob, as for bosses, I'm not so sure. Adding it as an MVP reward to a number of MVPs might be a fun idea.


These are just a few ideas I could come up with, if I come up with any more I'll post again.

Edited by TwilightsCall, 31 July 2012 - 04:19 PM.

[StarBlaze]

I'd suggest making Lv. 1, 2, and 3 cookbooks available at any Chef Assistant NPC. Also make Lv. 4 ~ 7 books attainable through regular mobs at a low rate (1% ~ 5%), have Lv. 8 and 9 books be from a couple of high-level bosses at a mid rate (20% ~ 35%) and have the Lv. 10 book drop from an MVP at a mid rate as well. Lv. 10 already drops from Maya Purple, so maybe just increasing the drop rate would help. I think one of the huge turn-offs is that it's difficult to even get into cooking when the key items needed to start are so rare. Making at least the bottom few available from NPCs will make it easy to start and interesting to continue.

As far as materials go, the higher-end recipes (at least as I understand them) could use some scaling down, but not much. My personal take is that if any ingredient has less than a 0.50% chance of dropping from a non-MVP mob or a 10% chance of dropping from an MVP, it should be limited to a requirement of 1 in a recipe. It makes it so that it's not too terribly bad if you fail, but difficult enough that it can't be done continuously. Another way of going about it would be to require only common and uncommon materials, but more of them to compensate for not having rare materials. Since Kafra Storage is cheap and available to everyone, the weight of the material components shouldn't be as much of an issue as the weight of the final product (which should be 5 or less, in my opinion). This could hold true even for Lv. 10 recipes, where 100+ of any given component could be required.

With regards to cooking utensils, Outdoor Cooking Kit should be available at all Chef Assistant NPCs as well, considering it's the most basic of utensils. Home Cooking Kits could easily be made to drop from a lot of different mobs to make that a common utensil as well. I think the current list of mobs that drop the Professional Cooking Kits could be updated to include a few more mobs, and also increase the drop rate a little higher than what it is, but not much. It should be a rather uncommon Kit to pick up and use. Making these changes should allow the Royal Cooking Kit to remain relatively unchanged. I'd also suggest making the Fantastic Cooking Kit a cheap Kafra item for maybe 5 ~ 10 KP each, since the success rate when using such a kit is 100%. This would enable diligent chefs to consistently make their favorite recipes without always having to farm for the best Kits, but is obtainable in such a way that it won't break the system.

I agree with TwilightsCall about success rates and bulk crafting. I feel cooking is something all classes should be able to do (I mean, it's a survival basic, yeah?), so in that sense I feel a flat-rate success algorithm would be best. It could also include a variable that improves the chances with each failure until you succeed, whereupon it resets back to +0%. When you do succeed, it should probably make either a static bulk of 3 or a variable bulk of 2 ~ 5 (because when you're preparing a meal for yourself, you might not eat it all at once). This will encourage players to invest in either cooking themselves or the products of cooks in the marketplace.

I also like TwilightsCall's suggestion on Kafra start-up kits. My suggestion on these would be to have various options available for the different levels of cooking, and also at different sizes. These are some of the package ideas I came up with:

-Novice Kafra Cook Bento Starter Kit: Contains Cookbooks 1 & 2 and 20 Home Cooking Kits
-Novice Kafra Cook Buffet Starter Kit: Contains Cookbooks 1 & 2 and 50 Home Cooking Kits
-Advanced Kafra Cook Bento Kit: Contains Cookbooks 3 & 4 and 20 Professional Cooking Kits
-Advanced Kafra Cook Buffet Kit: Contains Cookbooks 3 & 4 and 50 Professional Cooking Kits
-Master Kafra Cook Bento Kit: Contains Cookbooks 5, 6, & 7 and 20 Royal Cooking Kits
-Master Kafra Cook Buffet Kit: Contains Cookbooks 5, 6, & 7 and 50 Royal Cooking Kits
-Legendary Kafra Cook Bento Kit: Contains Cookbooks 8, 9, & 10 and 20 Royal Cooking Kits
-Legendary Kafra Cook Buffet Kit: Contains Cookbooks 8, 9, & 10 and 50 Royal Cooking Kits
-Master Chef's Ultimate Grill Set: Contains 10 Fantastic Cooking Kits
-Master Chef's Ultimate Grill Set Plus: Contains 25 Fantastic Cooking Kits
-Master Chef's Exotic Ingredients Bundle: Contains 3 of each rare material
-Master Chef's Extreme Exotic Ingredients Bundle: Contains 10 of each rare material
-Orlean's Deluxe Grilling Package: Contains 100 Professional Cooking Kits
-Orlean's Royal Feast Package: Contains 100 Royal Cooking Kits
-Orlean's Bizzare Kitchen Package: Contains 50 Fantastic Cooking Kits
-Orlean and Master Chef's Emperium Cook Challenge: Contains all 10 Cookbooks, 25 Home Cooking Kits, 20 Professional Cooking Kits, 15 Royal Cooking Kits, 10 Fantastic Cooking Kits, and 10 Kafra Storage Tickets

On top of accessibility and the system itself, I'd also like to see some sort of ranking system similar to what Blacksmiths, Alchemists, and (later) TaeKwons have with cooking. Not only would this allow everyone to be competitive on some level, but it can also have benefits similar to the Alch's ranking system, where food cooked by a ranking chef gets a +20% modifier to its effect. It would also encourage people who use the cooking system a lot to continue using it.

I guess to conclude this very long post of suggestions and such, I feel the cooking system is a great idea, but could use a virtual overhaul. Hopefully none of these suggestions are outlandish, but I feel there's opportunities for everyone when considering improvements to the system. One of the things I'm excited to get into is cooking since it's an often-overlooked feature that is actually valuable to those who utilize it.

[CocaCola]

Best idea. Just sell it in Kafra Shop again like it was before. Thanks

[Machiavellian]

The cooking system was something that I really enjoyed when it was implemented. That being said, it really upset me that level 10 food could easily be obtained from the Kafra Shop. The fact that it could be obtained in packs upset me even more, since I never had the luxury of even attempting to cook a level 10 dish.

It's reassuring to hear that food isn't a planned Kafra Shop item for Classic. As for suggestions, I would like to reinforce a few points that have been mentioned in the previous posts.


-Having success rates increase based on how often you succeed at cooking was a more fair idea in my mind, since cooking wasn't really a skill like forging or brewing. I think with this, there should be a cap at how high your success rates should reach from this alone. I don't think it is very fair for DEX and LUK to affect success rates unless it is very minimal.

-Revamping some of the higher level recipes is a good idea. It's not very viable to use some of the items in some of the level 8, 9, and 10 recipes just because the ingredients had a better use elsewhere or were far too rare to hunt (and to fail at an attempt with these rare items meant more hunting in many cases).

-Farming for better cooking kits was also an issue. It's not too bad using the tier 2 cooking kits for level 1 ~ 7 food, but with the ingredients for the higher level food, it is practically a requirement to use higher tier cooking kits. Perhaps a repeatable quest can be implemented to allow players to obtain batches (of 5?) of the higher tier kits. Having at least the tier 1 cooking kits available at each Chef Assistant NPC is a good idea, too.

-I liked the idea of a ranked cooking system. Something I had thought about a while back for the ranked food system was to have ranked food last a full 30 minutes instead of 20 and have maybe a 20% (or 10%) bonus to the food's effect. Something that might also be attractive about ranked food is that the bonuses are not removed after death.

-While most people use food items for the stat bonuses, the other bonuses were mostly negligible. I'm mostly talking about the HP/SP regen bonuses. It would be nice to see a more noticeable difference with the applied bonuses. Maybe instead of bonuses to natural HP/SP regen, the bonus can be applied in the same fashion as the Boss Egnigem Card, where a set (or percent) number of HP/SP regens every 10 seconds.


EDIT: I forgot to mention, while this is not really that important, I always wanted to see my name next to the food I cooked lol

Edited by Machiavellian, 31 July 2012 - 06:25 PM.

[Hrishi]

One thing that would make the in-game variant much better than the kafra shop variant is having the in-game variant not go away on death. That would most definitely make me want to use the system to make my foods.

Another idea for the difficulty to get ingredients is that you could sell it on a sort of bundle in the kafra shop and add it to a custom quest or something. So you could have a bundle which includes the difficult ingredients for every food, as well as have a quest which awards them (perhaps a daily quest even?).

You could make the fantastic cooking kit drop off every MvP instead of just Tanee, but at a lower chance. So Tanee would still drop it at a high rate, but every MvP would have a small chance to give it to you (like 10% drop or so maybe).

Edited by Hrishi, 31 July 2012 - 08:16 PM.

[Heimdallr]

A few limitations that we do have, changing the formula for # of attempts and dex luk is likely not changable. But the % chance from the "kits" is possible, as is the attainment of those items.

I'm 90% sure that recipes can be edited.

I would not want your name put on the food, it creates a lot of DB load on consumables, and it makes the items not stack cleanly. They don't have an additional effect with your name, so it is only a vanity thing (which if there were no drawbacks wouldn't be a bad thing).

There is a quest you do to start cooking, which gives you access to the early books, you can have 1 checked out at a time, so selling them isn't really necessary. Those books being rare is a good thing as it gives value to hunting the MVPs/mini-bosses that have those books.

[DeTahMonster]

Make the Kafra food and the cooking food stack-able and it will satisfy everyone. +20 stats? Yes!

*EDIT* I meant +10 from kafra food and +10 from cooking food.

Edited by DeTahMonster, 31 July 2012 - 09:02 PM.

[Heimdallr]

The +20 stat foods will not happen on classic as anything but maybe some mega event prize. 20 stat points pushes things way too much in hte classic setting, even 10 was pretty awesome.

[DeTahMonster]

The cooking system just need to be made more simple.

1. Ingredients easier to farm/easier ingredients.
2. Higher success rate when cooking the item.


I would suggest a system like:

Str Food(Bear's Footskin)
+1 Str = 1 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+2 = 2 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+3 = 3 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+4 = 4 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+5 = 5 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+10 = 10 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients

I think this will make it simplier and easier system to use.

[Hrishi]

The cooking system just need to be made more simple.

1. Ingredients easier to farm/easier ingredients.
2. Higher success rate when cooking the item.


I would suggest a system like:

Str Food(Bear's Footskin)
+1 Str = 1 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+2 = 2 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+3 = 3 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+4 = 4 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+5 = 5 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients
+10 = 10 Bear's Footskin + other buyable ingredients

I think this will make it simplier and easier system to use.

No thanks, I like the complexity of the current system, although a few ingredients could be tweaked. The current system would make you hunt all over for ingredients needed for foods. The system you propose makes you stay in a single spot.

[DeTahMonster]

Each stats food will require a different main ingredient.

Why do you think the current food system is not used much?
I think the main reason is it's complexity and too many different ingredients needed. The easier the system, the more people will use it.

Otherwise there is no reason to change the current system and is better to just implement kafra-food and make the cook food stack with the kafra-food.

Edited by DeTahMonster, 31 July 2012 - 08:52 PM.

[Tolrin]

From the perspective of a guild leader of an active, competitive guild, I would prefer it if the stats foods were simply added to the Kafra Shop as normal sometime around the rebirth update. Stat foods are an important and powerful item when it comes to WoE supplies, they should be readily and easily available for people who are willing to spend the extra money/zeny for them.

The issue with the regular cooking foods is the incredible amount of time and effort it requires to create them. There is already a ton of preparation required to supply a guild with consumables for WoE and adding additional requirements for farming items and even more item creation as opposed to just a straight zeny/KP sink is a huge turn off for competitive players, and probably is even worse for less competitive players who don't have the spare in game time to go to the extra trouble.

I'd have no problem with making the in game foods easier to acquire or less annoying to use, but please do keep the cash variant of the items the same as they previously were.

As a whole, I would like it if this server was as similar to the original 13.2 servers as possible, as that was the game I liked, and that is the game I want to continue playing.

Edited by Tolrin, 31 July 2012 - 09:18 PM.

[DeTahMonster]

Another add-on to my previous idea is to allow multiple different ingredients to create a stats food.

Example:

Str Food(Bear's Footskin or Tendons)
+1 Str Food = 1 Bear's Footskin + buyable Ingredients or 1 Tendons + buyable Ingredients.
+10 Str Food = 10 Bear's Footskin + buyable Ingredients or 10 Tendons + buyable Ingredients.

Dex Food(Grasshopper's Leg or Sharp Leaf)
+1 Dex Food = 1 Grasshopper's Leg + buyable Ingredients or 1 Sharp Leaf + buyable Ingredients.
+10 Dex Food = 10 Grasshopper's Leg + buyable Ingredients or 10 Sharp Leaf + buyable Ingredients.

The more options the better.

Why is this a good idea? Incentive to hunt specific monsters, kind of like a mini-quest.

[Zeddy]

i agree with tolrin. also if you were to add +7 foods to the kafra shop. and not make making food incredibly easy(and i mean up there on the easy scale) people will still just use the +7 foods 90% of the time. why? because of ease of use.

[Heimdallr]

i agree with tolrin. also if you were to add +7 foods to the kafra shop. and not make making food incredibly easy(and i mean up there on the easy scale) people will still just use the +7 foods 90% of the time. why? because of ease of use.

That certainly is 1 possibility, if the new WoE "in thing" was to use a +7 available food during WoE as their default, that would be fine. As long as it isn't completely turning the in-game use into useless.

If +7 were the buyable, and +10s were more reasonable than before, but still somewhat valuable that would be sweet spot. How to get to that sweet spot has a lot of possibilities.

New recipes that still use a wide swath of items (so most everything has a use)
Quests to perhaps get those high end items
Quests/ shop to get the cooking utensils.

The success rate before was a bit poorly formulated. You had 3 or 4 cooking utensils. A B C gave like 0 - 1% chance of better success. And the D one gave 100% chance. Well that was a bit silly in my opinion because it rendered anything but the 1st and last pointless.

[pepe]

why not make in game food better ?
fo ex-sample Int food will give +10 to int and increase Sp regen by 10% for the next 30 mins
Vit food +10 to Vit and Recovers 4% of max Hp every 10 sec for the next 30mins
something along this line will make people want to spend time hunting and making foods and also increase the value of the in-game food over Kafra Shop food

[TooLowForZero]

One thing that would make the in-game variant much better than the kafra shop variant is having the in-game variant not go away on death. That would most definitely make me want to use the system to make my foods

This right here.

[Dragonhope]

I avoided cooking mostly because it was sooo hard to gather the materials O.O

[Humbelum]

I was a RO chef a view years ago too. I think the successrate shouldn't be too easy! Food was always something special.

I had about 45% success rate with NPC kits and level8 food. And it was no forger char(1luk). So I think increasing the droprate of the "premium" cooking kits(professional, royal) makes more sense!

And a additional buff for "selfmade" Food would be nice. You could just rename the Cashfood so it would be just 6 more items in your database.

My idea would be to increase the amount of hp/sp you get from some food items. Maybe a lvl1 vit food could be used as potion too.

A good monster for a good professional kit drop would be Alice. 35% Droprate. Alice isn't a high spawn monster but very often killed/hunted. + Higher rate on OrcLady/Magnoila

Edited by Humbelum, 01 August 2012 - 03:04 AM.

[FullSmile]

I think if you make gathering the ingredients easier then there is no need to change the success rate.

I do agree that stat foods have become an important part of WoE, but IMO that does not mean they should be readily available for everyone to spam.

[ZarethKnyght]

I think if you make gathering the ingredients easier then there is no need to change the success rate.

I do agree that stat foods have become an important part of WoE, but IMO that does not mean they should be readily available for everyone to spam.

What he said. Success/failure rate isn't that important as long as the ingrediants aren't a huge pain in the rear end to get. If we're ok with trying to get +10 stuff with around 10% success rate, this can't be too bad ^_^

[sadekOB]

• Update drop/hunt rate/quests to get those ingredients.

This is a very good one in my opinion. Even if the recipes weren't changed (although a few adjustments would be nice), making the ingredients actually obtainable without hours of grind is definitely a great way to make it more worthwhile!

The buff being removed after death is important for WoE, especially considering they last for a decent amount of time, but maybe the lower tier recipes could remain after death, to make them useful for leveling, considering they will only add +1-+5 of a stat.

[Tolrin]

The issue with the idea of selling +7 (for example) foods in the shop is the incredible difference in power between a +10 stat gain and a +7 stat gain for most stats. +7 foods would be fine for, say, int and vit, and fine for casters for dex, but it would do very strange things to physical damage dealer's character builds, as +7 is not enough to reach from one offensive breakpoint to the next.

I understand the desire to make the in game system for food useful, but I feel like not adding the regular foods to the Kafra Shop would be shooting yourselves in the feet, as it were, due to their high demand and low controversy.

[TheSquishy]

I was always an avid cooker, I really want to avoid the easy peasy kafra shop purchases as it did completely kill cooking.
Cooking really gave a great way for forging/potting characters to make extra money and be useful to their guilds.
I'm really against people "buying" insta-cast, which is what happened after +10 food went into kafra shop. There's a reason why the +10 foods are mvp drops.

Instead I would prefer to see cooking mats that had kits and the unique, npc only materials
for sale (like cooking oil, spices) included.
Mats would create in-game commerce and generate revenue kafra revenue, and I believe would be an attractive purchase once recipes get a much needed revision. I would totally buy a kit with 100 royal cooking kits on a regular basis If there is some good zeny in it. Kits would encourage me to play more, hunt items and buy them from other players, while easy +10 foods do not.

It would be very nice to make foods not expire upon death, and possible trade off for the change is that they don't last as
long (15 minutes). Foods also have the issue of being dispel-able as I recall. Not really sure how to best balance that at the moment.

The recipes are rather ridiculous for 7 and up recipes. Though many recipes have silly requirements in the first place, these ones hardly got made because the market value of the items consumed was many times the value of what you could sell the food for.
It was a loosing investment. Recipes is time consuming to edit...Time for google docs, yah for free labor.