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.