Recent Cooking Updates - Hinting at bigger things to come?

[kayoszee]

The new spicy stew reward from the Evil Dave part of Recipe for Disaster has been getting some attention lately for it's sheer variety of possible combinations and stat boosting (and lowering) abilities. I think Jagex might be experimenting with new possible variety foods on a grander scale. We've seen multiple potatoes and more recently a large addition to the pie list.

 

 

 

What if they took it a step further?

 

 

 

Jagex already has very large amount of possible foods, cooking with base ingredients, which can be used create simple and complexe dishes. Each with their own advantages and disadvantages. What if, like spicy stew, players had more of a choice the creating process of the culinary arts?

 

 

 

An introduction to a possible new subset of cooking styles seems like a direction Jagex wants to head in, attempting to give the food market a rest from its over loaded obsession with fish. I believe it is possible they could introduce a type of procedural generation cooking style. Meaning the game would generate these new dishes according to player instructions on-the-fly.

 

 

 

Now, for such a system to work, it would have to be heavily structured while maintaining a certain amount of chaos, to provide the uniqueness aspect. It would most likely not be the entire cooking skill revampment (the chaos that would cause :shock:) but maybe a special kind of subset to cooking to provide a larger variety of foods, let those creative juices flow and give people even more incentive for farming.

 

 

 

If people are interested, I could provide an example of a system that could be made, to give you an idea of what I believe Jagex is probably toying with.

[bigsword33]

yes i'm interested and that's a nice idea. i've been to worried about the economy to think about it.

 

I'M A BIG NERD lol

[kayoszee]

The Food

 

 

 

Stirfrying is a common Chinese cooking technique used because of its fast cooking speed (ideal for a fast-pasted game no?). Anyone who has eaten a stirfry knows of the incredible variety this technique has to offer.

 

 

 

Like current the cooking skill a base set of ingredients would be provided.

 

However, the range of will have greatly expanded. These would vary from cooking oils, dry seasonings (herbs, spices and garlic), meats vegetables, rice, noodles and liquid ingredients (like sauces or vinegar and wine etc.)

 

 

 

Each ingredient would be assigned characteristics, some would mix so-so with other, some combined make your dish appaling, other creating a masterpiece!

 

 

 

As well as an obvious leveling curve, a player curve (both in game and real life) will probably carved out as well. In game, your character improves his/her knowledge of the proper blending of suitable tastes and masters the use of the variety of ingredients, learning and improving their recipes and become a overall more effective stirfrying chef. Real life, you would learn what kind of stirfries you would want to make and purposely devote your time to perfecting these.

 

 

 

The Economy

 

 

 

Another side effect of introducing a on-the-fly cooking system would be the increase of cooking trade for key elements in well sought after dishes (not to mention the dishes themselves).

 

 

 

In my example of stirfries, these would be the cooking elements. Sauces, blends of herbs and spices and other ingredients would no doubt be traded in large quantities to aspiring foodsmiths.

 

 

 

Also, by making cooking a much more personal skill, and recipes requiring certain amounts of data stored to be useful, the appearance of a cooking journal which would house recipes seems like a likely candidate in this scenario. Possible economic impact could arise from a tradeable recipe system.

 

 

 

The Problems

 

 

 

There's a big problem a system like this will face. If you can create a HUGE variety of dishes, each as unique as the next, how do you tell the difference!?

 

 

 

One possible solution to this problem is a ranking system for dishes, based on a number of variables such as healing amount, stat bonuses and losses, complexity, unique abilities and cooking level required. Asides from ranking, it becomes clear that even if this system is seemingly random, it is very very structured and dish patterns will arise fairly quickly. The later establishment of dish arch-types/categories would help players in deciding what kind of food they want to buy or make.

 

 

 

A naming system where keywords and prefixes and suffixes are derived from the main ingredients used could easily suffice. This could cause problems however if a player wouldn't check the dish's ranking or arch-type/category and could lead to scamming if a system such as this isn't implemented correctly. (Of course, scamming will still occur, but more rigirous mesures should be put into place.)

 

 

 

End

 

 

 

A pretty brief over view of what I think will probably come to cooking at some point or another. I hope this leads to a discussion of how Jagex will 'fix' the cooking skill. They have certainly showed a lot of interest in it and I most certainly do not believe this feeling will wane.

[Lynx]

I love the idea of new and better cookable stuff, my favorite skill is cooking, but the only way to make good money with it is through fishing (and I hate fishing) so I would love to see a new baked good (because baking is a lot of fun in my opinion) that sells better then sharks.

[bflat0]

Like slayer pies? or whatever they're called?

 

 

 

Anyway, I think thier main focus being on cooking lately is that the shark being staple means tons of thier developement efforts go to waste.

 

 

 

As a software engineer I know the feeling. Problem is food in this game until now served one purpose - healing hit points. However, the new approach they seem to be taking as a stat enhancement and greater healing properties also has it's detriments. How will it affect herblore, etc... ? Point being people resorted to fish because it was easy, usefull and the xp gained quicker than other routes. If for some reason the time requirements compared between catching a shark and cooking it vs gathering ingredients for something else and cooking it and the xp ratio between the two reversed I see no way other avenues of cooking will be useful.

[starev91]

I personally like the new pies, they offer me a variety of things to cook and some of the better ones heal more then a shark after 2 bites. Wild pie is an example, I wish I could cook that (I'm too busy doing other things to train cooking).

[Lynx]

The stir-fry is a great idea, just as an example my parents cooked a stir-fry last night and it had in it: apple, tofu, sausage, and broccoli. That is variety. They should definitely add tofu if the stir fry gets added. Tofu has this wonderful quality of tasting like what it is cooked with making it a great addition to any stir fry. So it should amplify the main ingredient to things when added.

 

 

 

Jagex keeps trying to make baked goods more used, adding more of them, making them give more and more exp. But they keep making the same mistake, they are all way too hard to make, while fishing stays just as easy. What they should do is make a store that sells all the raw ingredients for cooking in large amounts. The only reason I don't spend my time making pineapple pizza is because cheese and tomatos are insanely hard to get, the only store that sells them only stocks 5 and recharges really slow, it really sickens me that they cannot see that problem.

[Guest]

The only way they are going to get new foods to take off is if they heal as much as sharks AND are as easy to come by as sharks. The latter being the most important.

[Lynx]

How about this: it gets treated somehing like smithing in that every level you get the ability to use more ingredients until at 99 when you can use every ingredient in the game, while at level one you could only use like cabbage and beef.

[kayoszee]

Lynx and TrixStar, you are both absolutely correct.

 

As much as people like the awesome healing abilities of the higher level fish, it is these same things that cripple the cooking skill.

 

 

 

It's not a secret that the skill, as it is, is horribly unbalanced and has been for years. Jagex have made efforts to rectify this by trying to apply patches to the skill. It hasn't worked. Not that new foods aren't fun to make, but, in the end they aren't practical. Sharks are still THE food as many people have mentioned and will continue to be so.

 

 

 

I think I can theorise a probable idea on how procedural cooking could would change not only that skill, but fishing as well.

 

 

 

Also, Lynx, I can see you understood what I said very well :D

 

Yes, it would be, in a way akin to smithing (which is why I called chefs foodsmiths in an earlier post). Further examples that dwelve in greater detail of probable scenarios, I might post later.

[Guest]

multi ingredient foods are never gonna take off. They are just to much of a pain to make, not to mention most of them are more than one bite. Really the foods are driven by pkers and 2 bites doesnt cut it. If they want to make multiple ingredient good foods then they should make a master chef guild or something and make them readily available. Theres a reason you dont see people selling 5k tuna and corn baked potatoes, or 5k of the new pies...no one wants to take the time to make them in bulk.

 

 

 

EDIT: lol guess we were posting at the same time :P

[Lynx]

I just realised a problem, what will fishing be good for if other food becomes more standard? All fishing is good for is supplying food to cook. So then we have all the people who fish and sell their raw fish complaining that their high fishing level is now worthless.

[Guest]

If they made the foods all heal 20 and relatively the same time it takes to get sharks i dont think it would hurt that much just add some more variety

[kayoszee]

multi ingredient foods are never gonna take off. They are just to much of a pain to make, not to mention most of them are more than one bite. Really the foods are driven by pkers and 2 bites doesnt cut it. If they want to make multiple ingredient good foods then they should make a master chef guild or something and make them readily available.

 

 

 

This is absolutely true. All the more reason why I think Jagex has realised this and is probably working a large scale solution.

 

 

 

Let's tackle the factors that make multi-ingredient foods unfavourable:

 

 

 

1. Availability of ingredients:

 

 

 

As any cook will know, this is a major pain in the rump. Even with the new lumby-chest-food shop reward from Recipe for Disaster, ingredients are easy to get in large enough quantities to make these commercially viable. Not enough people simply collect and sell ingredients for chef's to buy and even so, when people do, it's at a very high price range. The average player has to resort to spawning camping in stores and other locations.

 

 

 

Like you said: Solution? Make ingredients VERY available. Farming creates new ingredients, but doesn't sustain them enough. A larger scale or larger harvesting for cooking ingredients could really help this.

 

 

 

2. Number of bites:

 

 

 

In a heated battle, how fast and how much you can heal yourself will often make the difference between life and death. As mentioned, people will almost always take the 1 bite over the 2 bites or more.

 

 

 

Solution? Simple. Balance foods in a better system to support a universal 1 bite food eating process.

 

 

 

3. Time - From Start to Finish

 

 

 

I'm fairly sure the issue of time is largly portion of which is required to hunt down ingredients. Another big part of which is the carpal-tunnel inducing dozens of clicks needed to create these multi-ingredient foods.

 

 

 

Solution? As for ingredients, #1 pertains to that. For clicking slow down, perhaps a better cooking interface, balanced with automatic player cooking mechanincs with animations would relieve it partially. Even better if cooking become procedural, recipes could mean the ingredients need nothing more then to be in your inventory and your character does the rest.

 

 

 

I just realised a problem, what will fishing be good for if other food becomes more standard? All fishing is good for is supplying food to cook. So then we have all the people who fish and sell their raw fish complaining that their high fishing level is now worthless.

 

 

 

If they made the foods all heal 20 and relatively the same time it takes to get sharks i dont think it would hurt that much just add some more variety

 

 

 

Well, I didn't feel like getting into this yet but..

 

 

 

Yes. The current fishing and cooking symbiotic relationship, as it stands, will ALWAYS dominate even if the current multi-foods are made much easier to make. It will still be easier to simply fish and cook or buy cooked fish. This is the problem Jagex will have to fix in order to make multi-foods more then an after-thought. Multi-foods will never equal fish unless Jagex makes them crazy easy to make.

 

 

 

What I am about to say might not fly with a lot of people (and I do mean, a lot).

 

 

 

They don't need to equal fish.

 

 

 

Fish, need to become..ingredients.

 

 

 

And in a procedural cooking system, it would still be very effective to use lots of fish in recipes. Rebalancing fishing and cooking wouldn't be so hard as I can imagine many dishes with a variety of fish as center pieces. In fact, fish becoming ingredients would more likely improving fishing for the greater demand of a greater variety would give even nooby fishermen a chance to make a bit of cash.

[godsfearme]

Ya toatl revamp the way you are talking would be cool. But it would be lots of work. Lots.

[Nazgul740]

words cannot describe my exitement :lol:

 

 

 

but they do sorta have that at the gnome village

[x_bow80]

Yea, fish is all that people eat for food. No 1 really cooks the other stuff because it heals too low. I think that JAGEX wants new non-fish foods to become the new shark :D

[kayoszee]

Oh yes. Reworking 3 skills would be no easy task at all.

 

 

 

Cooking, if to be done procedurely (with the obvious exception of the base simple cooked ingredients) would have to be reworked from the ground up.

 

 

 

Fishing and farming I suspect would be easier to tweak.

 

Fishing requiring a slightly higher output of fish and a slight decrease in exp to counter balance (mere speculation). Farming, has issues. You need seeds. In order to make ingredients readily available, you need to make seeds readily available. But it's more then that, farming takes a lot of time and the crop yield isn't enough to satisfy demand. Farming needs to seriously increase it's output of ingredients for procedural cooking to work.

[videl200]

Ya toatl revamp the way you are talking would be cool. But it would be lots of work. Lots.

 

Yeah sounds pretty full on.

[jessy87]

The only way they are going to get new foods to take off is if they heal as much as sharks AND are as easy to come by as sharks. The latter being the most important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

id like to see foods that are, easier to get the sharks and heal nearly as much. or foods harder to get that heal more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tuna potatoes... come on thats not gonna happen

[Freshwacka]

I'd like to see some Asian dishes when they add the eastern lands. But I feel like they have WAY WAY WAY too many useless things you can cook...

[Lynx]

I'd like to see some Asian dishes when they add the eastern lands. But I feel like they have WAY WAY WAY too many useless things you can cook...

 

 

 

Damn straight, when I first saw there description about the 100th quest and they said stuff about new food I was extremely excited to try out some new stuff... then it comes out and the food is completely worthless. It really seems like jagex wants cooking to be more widely used yet they keep coming out with useless new things to cook.

 

 

 

Ok, the main reason (in my mind) why fish are used more is because they only take one bit. Now in my mind it seems kind of unfair that they are easier to get and are more useful as food, also logistically it makes no sense: you eat a whole shark in one bite yet a little cake takes three? Complete bull. Now I love everything you are talking about guy who made this topic (can't remember your name) but just as an alternate suggestion: maybe jagex could make fish multi-bite and make all baked goods single bite, it wouldn't be as interesting and still has the side effect of pissing off al fisherman, but just another idea.

[chickenman]

They made fish too easy to start with, and it heals too much. I don't think Jagex has a whole lot of cooking skill to improve unless they lower the health healed or something.

[kayoszee]

maybe jagex could make fish multi-bite and make all baked goods single bite, it wouldn't be as interesting and still has the side effect of pissing off al fisherman, but just another idea.

 

 

 

I agree with you. Fishing doesn't make sense. The problem is that cooking and fishing live off of each other. If you intend on balancing either you have to balance both. Fish as ingredients and as low basic food (and some, unconsumable without further cooking steps, i.e. creation of a dish of some sort) is the only thing I can think of that could possibly help cooking rebalance itself short of making every bakeable thing ridiculously easy to make and one bite. The bite system doesn't have to go away, it just has to be re-evaluated and balanced.

 

 

 

Procedural cooking is what could very well do this. If Jagex does do something like it, I doubt it will be as extensive and deep as I have proposed. Probably not even proceduraly generated. The main idea is that right now, as it stands, cooking is an assist skill to fishing, with a few weird additions for people who feels like doing something different.

[Lynx]

They made fish too easy to start with, and it heals too much. I don't think Jagex has a whole lot of cooking skill to improve unless they lower the health healed or something.

 

 

 

Easy? Maybe. Boring? Hell yes, nothing is more boring then fishing so I feel that it is a fair compromise for it being easy.