Provisioning Revamp

Nazon_Katts

randolphbenoit wrote: »

Moon 'Sugar' Shine!

Fish Sticks with REAL Fish!

Now they wouldn't be fishy sticks anymore, now would they?! (and a virtual piscine substitute would be more than enough, don't want to smell like a fish monger just for playing ESO)

yappy118

I love these ideas as a whole.
This being said, two aspects of the changes proposed leave me perplexed: the suppression of tiers and the editing of recipes.

Tiers would become irrelevant, I suppose, if the level of the recipes you can cook/brew is still determined by the skill points you have invested in recipe proficiency. So the same unit of beef could be used in a level 10, 20, 30, ... 50 recipe. That makes sense. Beef is beef. In other words, a given ingredient would no longer be tied to a tier; it would be a free agent, in a manner of speaking. Good and well.

The recipes. I have long been annoyed by the recipes. Yes, they are a source of revenue for the finders, but what of the player who isn't lucky? Who IS a provisioner, needs a particular recipe and must per force trade with the player who doesn't give a fig about the recipe but wants to milk his find for all it's worth? Often, to ply his trade, the Provisioner must pay ridiculous prices. I remember paying 5K for a Citrus Malt recipe because I kept getting writs that asked for it; the moment I bought it, I got it as a reward for turning in that very first shipment. I could've eaten that chest! Why was I asked to produce something I didn't have the recipe for?!! Silly.

How about this? Each player gets a recipe book. On each page, there are 3 recipe titles (normal, blue, purple) or 4 (+gold if you decide to go there), all variations of the same recipe. The player only sees the titles, no ingredients. It becomes his job to figure out what the ingredients for each recipe are; discovering a recipe is a quest. But that's not all; each player's recipe book is unique! Not everyone has the Citrus Malt recipe in his recipe book, and two players who do will not have the same recipe; there will be at least one difference. No more recipes found and sold. You have all the recipes at once, but know not the one. Of course, you must have reached the appropriate level in Provisioning to dabble in Blue, Purple, level 20, 30, 40, etc. recipes. And dabble you must to figure out your own recipes. You get two or three for each type of food (health, magicka, stamina) and drink so that if you are out of one ingredient you can still provide for yourself. In this manner, some ingredients will be useful to you, others simply won't and can be sold altogether; that's where some of the profit will be made.

Two points are important here: first, the ingredients this provisioner will need to use ought to be fairly consistent throughout the recipes he will discover or we'll be back to square one, each one of us carrying a plethora of ingredients in our bank just to be ready to cook all that we can; secondly, the writs we pull MUST call upon us to produce a drink and a dish we know how to make, in other words select from out cookbook or we may not be able to fill out the order.

To allow players time to figure out their recipes and become autonomous, I suppose that one-time stacks of non-descript food and drink ought to be handed out in proportions appropriate to the level of the player (the higher the player, the more time he'll need to invest in order to figure out recipes useful to him).

I also suggest that optional ingredients should be included in the world which would be rare or very rare but which would add extra properties to the foods/drinks. Think spices, rare fruits, rare vegetables. They could add an edge to the user, but not be unbalancing. With the appropriate special veteran points invested, one might be able to add up to three such rare ingredients in a recipe. These foods/drinks will be worth a pretty penny on the market.

This is the equivalent of a personal instance for recipes that cannot be published on some site for all to copy. It adds a gaming value and eliminates an exploitation of gamers by gamers. To charge whatever price for food or drink is commerce; to charge extravagant prices for the tools of a trade is extortion. It also expands on the designers' ideas without modifying them at their core.

Yappy118

Tashira_Ronin

Well they have changed something along the way. I killed a bear and it gave me. Bear meat. I almost fell off my chair having grumbled about the lack of it since beta.. So are they are implementing some of the changes incrementally....or was the bear meat was an oops in the Rng and table pull?

codybrewer78b14_ESO

I agree with the proposed changes and the reasoning for them, but I am concerned that all the work I have put in to find and learn all the rare recipes will have been for nothing. I have also made a stack of 100 of each blue and purple food and drink I have learned. What will happen to those items?

Nightreaver

codybrewer78b14_ESO wrote: »

I agree with the proposed changes and the reasoning for them, but I am concerned that all the work I have put in to find and learn all the rare recipes will have been for nothing.

I doubt it will be for nothing. I expect your blue and purple recipes will be converted into blue and purple equivalent versions putting you well ahead of the curve if you have them all. The exception would be the low level (1-30) blue recipes if they convert Alliance specific recipes into universal recipes. Meaning that your level 20 AD Health/Magicka recipe and your level 20 ED Health/Magicka recipe and your level 20 DC Health/Magicka recipe may all convert to the same universal level 20 blue Health/Magicka recipe.

codybrewer78b14_ESO wrote: »

I have also made a stack of 100 of each blue and purple food and drink I have learned. What will happen to those items?

Why on earth would anyone make even one drink much less a full stack and MUCH MUCH less a full stack of every blue and purple drink? Does anyone actually use drinks?

Divinius

Nightreaver wrote: »

Why on earth would anyone make even one drink much less a full stack and MUCH MUCH less a full stack of every blue and purple drink? Does anyone actually use drinks?

No one uses them now, but they will after this revamp, since one of the bullet points is that they are making food and drinks stack. Drinks won't be useless anymore if you can use them with food.

wookiefriseur

Divinius wrote: »

... since one of the bullet points is that they are making food and drinks stack. Drinks won't be useless anymore if you can use them with food.

I think I read or heard somewhere, that for now drinks will be only buffed, not made stackable yet.

randolphbenoit

Will there be mammoth cheese? I like make some good old chessy bread!

Not sure Tacos sounds ESO style... Just don't lose Sweet Rolls!

So fish will be used? I like Fish 'n Chips! (with tomato sauce for extra boost!)

Rabbit Stew! ...mmmm! Snowberry Pie!

So will we be able to steal food from farms? fruit trees?

Recipe Books sounds would be neat.

Divinius

Patros wrote: »

I think I read or heard somewhere, that for now drinks will be only buffed, not made stackable yet.

When did that happen? Drinks stacking with food was one of the only parts of this whole revamp that was actually needed!

I'd love a source on this, if anyone can provide one.

Nightreaver

Divinius wrote: »

Nightreaver wrote: »

Why on earth would anyone make even one drink much less a full stack and MUCH MUCH less a full stack of every blue and purple drink? Does anyone actually use drinks?

No one uses them now, but they will after this revamp, since one of the bullet points is that they are making food and drinks stack. Drinks won't be useless anymore if you can use them with food.

True, but even then I would wait at least until 1.6 hits PTS before making any drinks.

We know that drinks will stack with food.
What we don't know is:
1) How drinks in 1.6 will compare to currently made drinks.
2) If current drinks be compatible (stackable) with foods in 1.6.
3) If the new drinks in 1.6 are preferred over the current drinks available now then any drinks currently made will remain worthless.
4) What mats will be used to make the new drinks in 1.6. (A common ingredient used to make low level drinks currently may end up being a rare ingredient required in high levels in 1.6.
5) What the value of all those collected ingredients will be in 1.6 vs. the value of drinks made from them currently.

Kat_Cnaa

Though I have lately been making most of my gold off of recipe & ingredient farming for lvl 20 and below, recipes are not a good farming business strategy. The recipes for veteran ranks have completely glutted the market and sell for 20g less each, and you obviously can't stack t them. With only 30 slots in each guild bank to sell stuff, it's a bad deal. When I pick up a green and sometimes a blue recipe with my VR4 toon, I automatically junk it. Decreasing recipes will probably increase the market glut for recipes, deincentivising their sale after the initial Update adjustment period.

If the drop rate is high, they will be easy to acquire by looting, but after you have, they will become like motif stones--worthless (but unlike motif stones, you currently can sell recipes for 9g, so that's something. It would be nice if motif stones were worth at least one gold, because I have stacks of them that I have to dispose of, as well as Almandine, ugh). There will be little reason for people to sell them in the market -- and zero reason for anyone to buy them.

If the drop rate is low, people may become frustrated at how long it takes to find the recipes, but the market would be very strong for them. It would be similar to racial styles, though currently the market is fairly weak for blue racial styles (150g or less down from ~300g), though purple and gold styles are still going strong and the Dwemer pages have definitely added some verve to the system.

yappy118 wrote: »

How about this? Each player gets a recipe book. On each page, there are 3 recipe titles (normal, blue, purple) or 4 (+gold if you decide to go there), all variations of the same recipe. The player only sees the titles, no ingredients. It becomes his job to figure out what the ingredients for each recipe are; discovering a recipe is a quest. But that's not all; each player's recipe book is unique! Not everyone has the Citrus Malt recipe in his recipe book, and two players who do will not have the same recipe; there will be at least one difference. No more recipes found and sold. You have all the recipes at once, but know not the one. Of course, you must have reached the appropriate level in Provisioning to dabble in Blue, Purple, level 20, 30, 40, etc. recipes. And dabble you must to figure out your own recipes. You get two or three for each type of food (health, magicka, stamina) and drink so that if you are out of one ingredient you can still provide for yourself. In this manner, some ingredients will be useful to you, others simply won't and can be sold altogether; that's where some of the profit will be made.

Two points are important here: first, the ingredients this provisioner will need to use ought to be fairly consistent throughout the recipes he will discover or we'll be back to square one, each one of us carrying a plethora of ingredients in our bank just to be ready to cook all that we can; secondly, the writs we pull MUST call upon us to produce a drink and a dish we know how to make, in other words select from out cookbook or we may not be able to fill out the order.

To allow players time to figure out their recipes and become autonomous, I suppose that one-time stacks of non-descript food and drink ought to be handed out in proportions appropriate to the level of the player (the higher the player, the more time he'll need to invest in order to figure out recipes useful to him).

I also suggest that optional ingredients should be included in the world which would be rare or very rare but which would add extra properties to the foods/drinks. Think spices, rare fruits, rare vegetables. They could add an edge to the user, but not be unbalancing. With the appropriate special veteran points invested, one might be able to add up to three such rare ingredients in a recipe. These foods/drinks will be worth a pretty penny on the market.

This is the equivalent of a personal instance for recipes that cannot be published on some site for all to copy. It adds a gaming value and eliminates an exploitation of gamers by gamers. To charge whatever price for food or drink is commerce; to charge extravagant prices for the tools of a trade is extortion. It also expands on the designers' ideas without modifying them at their core.

Yappy118

I am deeply intrigued by this idea. It would bring Provisioning much more in line with Alchemy and Enchanting. It would make Provisioning less mindless, as there'd be more of a pattern and you'd be making educated guesses while working on filling in the book.

I would also wish players could craft in batches, because it takes forever on top of gathering the ingredients (or earning the money to buy them). It's nice to get 4:1, but that same mechanic could apply to 100:25. It would just make it so players don't spend all the time they have to play that day sitting in town making pots so they can go do the day's Pledge or whatnot.

If the recipe books are a set (distributed), people could still map them. Then once you learn one or two recipes in your book, you could still look up the book online. I would imagine that would be the simpler method for the devs, allowing them to control the balance more (and make sure players can have a book based around bear meat or goat meat or fish or whatever), but I suppose an algorithm could be written that creates recipes and distributes them. With fewer ingredients and a coherent system, however, it would restrain the possibilities, making it much more likely that players will quickly figure out the system.

The downside could be that one or two recipes come out on top for some reason -- either effects or ingredients (like plump worms currently). Then you may have unhappy players complaining that they don't have control over their toon the way they do in everything else.

You may have players creating new alts, leveling them in Provisioning just to see what recipe books they have, then destroying them if they are unhappy with the books. This could be an excellent mats & gold sink, but it could also be viewed negatively by players because it's a mechanic that requires out-of-world work. I personally wouldn't mind it, as I like creating characters, though destroying a toon once I've invested work in it may be upsetting.

Cnaa

Eldarth

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Functionality

• Food and drink categories will have clearer usage
  • Cooking: Meat = health, fruit = magicka, vegetables = stamina
  • Brewing: Alcohol = health, tea = magicka, tonic = stamina

Don't know if anyone pointed this out earlier in the thread, but I think you got brewing flipped. It should be:

• Brewing: Tonic = health, tea = magicka, Alcohol = stamina

burningcrow

It would be pretty cool too if certain recipes did things other than just gain stanima, health, and magicka. For instance maybe a carrot juice would make seeing the dark easier. So in caves you could see as if it were lit. Maybe a recipe for garlic makes vampires have a debuff when they are near you. Maybe some sort of magical recipe to be able to see what is in the barrels before opening it, or even chests. Maybe one makes lockpicking easier. How about one that makes npc animals follow you for some reason, just because. Things like that I love and hope it could be incorporated someday.

wookiefriseur

Divinius wrote: »

Patros wrote: »

I think I read or heard somewhere, that for now drinks will be only buffed, not made stackable yet.

When did that happen? Drinks stacking with food was one of the only parts of this whole revamp that was actually needed!

I'd love a source on this, if anyone can provide one.

I was not able to find my old source, may have been an interview or ESO live.
But this new article seems to confirm food and drinks not stacking:

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/news/post/2015/01/19/update-6-guide-provisioning

Drink buffs have been improved greatly to make them competitive with food buffs.

Bouvin

codybrewer78b14_ESO wrote: »

I agree with the proposed changes and the reasoning for them, but I am concerned that all the work I have put in to find and learn all the rare recipes will have been for nothing. I have also made a stack of 100 of each blue and purple food and drink I have learned. What will happen to those items?

They said on ESO live you'll be able to use everything you have...

But they didn't make any consideration for the outrageous cost of some of the rare recipes.

So if you've learned 3 of the Purple Recipes in food, they might be getting combined into 1.

Nightreaver

Some time ago ZOS posted preliminary results to their proposed Provisioning revamp. Upon reading them the major consensus was to make drinks and food work concurrently and leave the rest alone. Somehow this got interpreted as continue to make food and drinks only work separately but make a whole bunch of other changes.
Kind of like the Sorcerer Atronach change.
I think I'm seeing a pattern here.

/facepalm

As someone who has almost every purple recipe I'm fine with combining 3 food recipes into one or even worse, 6 drink recipes into one. It just means fewer VR10 purple recipes to find/purchase.

Divinius

Patros wrote: »

I was not able to find my old source, may have been an interview or ESO live.
But this new article seems to confirm food and drinks not stacking:

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/news/post/2015/01/19/update-6-guide-provisioning

Drink buffs have been improved greatly to make them competitive with food buffs.

Thank you for the link, as I hadn't seen that yet.

But, while I do appreciate your directing me to it, it's actually a rather useless article, as it doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know, and totally avoids answering any of the questions people have been asking about since this thread was created.

Nightreaver wrote: »

...the major consensus was to make drinks and food work concurrently and leave the rest alone. Somehow this got interpreted as continue to make food and drinks only work separately but make a whole bunch of other changes.

This, completely. I'm really hoping that it's just bad wording, and that they aren't seriously going to throw out the ONE actually useful change that this revamp was supposed to provide.

Woolenthreads

Eldarth wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Functionality

• Food and drink categories will have clearer usage
  • Cooking: Meat = health, fruit = magicka, vegetables = stamina
  • Brewing: Alcohol = health, tea = magicka, tonic = stamina

Don't know if anyone pointed this out earlier in the thread, but I think you got brewing flipped. It should be:

• Brewing: Tonic = health, tea = magicka, Alcohol = stamina

I personally think that the food one should also be flipped.

• Cooking: Vegetables = health, Fruit = magicka, Meat = stamina

You don't really need Meat to be healthy, you definitely need Vegetables

Mr_Luscan

I have 2 provisioner's. 1 makes drinks (seldom) & other makes food. 8 toons in 3 alliances means he has recipe's that do the same thing just use different ingredients. I've found/acquired purples for 35-V5, again in all alliances. What is going to happen with him? Will those duplicated recipes be eliminated, because he's AD and his recipes and ingredients are from all 3? He has over 100 cooking recipes. I won't mind if you convert each of them to a new system. Won't be so happy if they just get removed.

ALSO....!! It would REALLY be a nice thing if we could look at a recipe and see what XP LEVEL the food/drink is good for. Any item you get in the world has a Required level to use it and it's plainly shown on the item. UNLESS it's a provisioning recipe. The only way to find out what level an unknown recipe is, you have to read it. Then you gotta find a cooking fire to see what it is.

An interesting thing that would be nice is for a provisioner to be able to make a cook fire in the wild, provided they have kindling. Could be used to make food for self/group. Could even tie in a Repair system for equipment, provided the one doing repairs is of a level & skill to create the items being repaired. So many of us have built high level crafters, yet having the innkeeper repair the gear I made because I am unable to do it. Like the edible grapes in a long unexplored dungeon.

I do like how the containers will yield an expected result.

charlmgn

Anath_Q wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Ingredients

I hate the idea of dropped recipes anyway...I would much rather see provisioning quests to unlock recipes. This would keep provisioning fresh (since we hit 50 so fast) and make it seem a bit more immersive. Having to help a NPC Chef perfect a new recipe via a mini questline, and then having that new recipe as part of our own cookbook...very fun. Getting a quality recipe off a random mudcab kill? Very funny, but...meh.

This comment chilled my bones worse than the haunting music rolling across Honrich Lake from Skald's Retreat into Riften. It sounds suspiciously similar to dailies that I am thankfully shut of from when I played WoW, which taught me to cringe at the very mention of "daily" quests. Since I'm most likely going to be killing that hypothetical mudcrab for a quest, or just because it's in my way or jealously guarding a node that I want to harvest, I much prefer the drop method to the much more limited chances of getting a drop from a repeatable quest.

Anyway, these recipes have never dropped for me off killed monsters. I have always gotten them from looting either furniture, or from the same containers that drop food ingredients. If this trend continues with the implementation of the Justice System, I can imagine that there will be many fewer "safe" places to harvest these items, but it won't involve farming monsters for them.

One repeated complaint I'm seeing in this thread is the concern about the rarity of the recipe drops, with one person even giving a 1 million gold price tag to a purple vr5 recipe. I hate to break it to everyone, but the value of that recipe (and all the other vr5 purples) has dropped to less than 5k gold since the drop rate was drastically increased (around patch 1.4 if I remember right). These "rare" recipes, such as the vr5 blues (now selling for less than 100g many times) and the aforementioned vr5 purples, have become so common that they are no longer "rare" and not truly valuable. With only 30 sales slots per guild, I don't bother picking up the vr5 blues anymore (or blue motifs). They're not worth the slot, and 10g from the vendor isn't worth the bag space when I can carry a gray carapace that individually is worth less, but will stack to be worth much more by the time I get to a vendor. Look at it one of two ways: 1. Either you'll have them drop, or 2. You'll make enough gold to buy them. Gold is so easy to make in ESO, and there are so few gold sinks at this point, once you've bought your horses, bank slots and bag slots, there's nothing left to buy except some other player's stuff. So buy mine! ;-)

charlmgn

shiva7663 wrote: »

I'd like to see actual farms with specifically harvestable crops. Even if the NPC farmers hire guards we have to defeat in order to take food crops.

WoW's already done it. If I wanted that, I'd have just stayed there. You may be interested in the new garrison concept they've got going with Warlords of Draenor, though. BTDT, got the T-shirt, no thanks.

charlmgn

Mortosk wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Our current plan is to replace existing recipes and Provisioning items with the ones from the new system, matching quality as much as possible. Any additional unused basic ingredients from the previous incarnation of the system will be changed to “stale” versions of themselves, and we’d like to include some way to offload them that provides value.

I think you should seriously consider putting a fair gold value on the ingredients you decide to make stale. At least 5g each. Certainly not 0 gold like stale radishes.

It is only fair to those that have been sacrificing space to store these all this time. I have an entire 170 slot shared bank full of 4 or 5 stacks of Tier IV/V/VI ingredients. What can I say? I was saving for a rainy day.

I would hope that I could vendor them for something, as I have been collecting them since launch.

Free gold for being a hoarder of trash? If you use those 170 spaces to hold items that already have value, you won't have that issue. I'm in the same boat, and holding onto all my ingredients until it rolls out to see if any ingredients will "roll over" and still be useful. But it won't faze me one bit if I vendor them all on release day for the value they show right now, or even if they all get reduced to nothing. Think of it as holding onto an investment too long when you know the company is failing. You already know the stock won't be worth anything.

But right now you can make some food or drink out of those materials and they'll be worth something, no matter which materials you use. Even the lowest-priced food is worth 1g each to a vendor. So if you're worried about losing the potential gold, and have that many materials laying around, start cooking. You might even be able to sell some of it to others for more than vendor prices in zone or in your guild stores. But either way, you're guaranteed to make something on it.

charlmgn

rekina wrote: »

Cooking: Meat = health, fruit = magicka, vegetables = stamina

Shouldn't it be Meat = stamina, vegetables = health? lol

No. It's obvious you've never had to build much muscle, but you get it from protein, i.e., meat, which is what these big, beefy barbarians use to swing their huge metal weapons around with, and carry all their heavy armor. Therefore, meat translates to health in a physically active, low-technology society, especially since the meats aren't treated with the artificial preservatives we take for granted today.

charlmgn

Murmeltier wrote: »

It is fine to see that they work on the Crafting System and sure some of these Changes will be difficult, for the Devs and the Players.

I hope really you dont oversee that some Players have invested Tons of Time and Resources, to get an Epic V5 Provisioning Recipe. Don`t destroy the Feeling, that they have gathered something Special, don`t destroy these Recipes.

If you change something, Balancing is always difficult but don`t delete the Work and the Time some Players have invested, to get something Special.

Everything you do here is fleeting. It's an entertainment, to pass the time. It's not an "investment" unless you work for ZOS or Bethesda, or you're doing something against the terms of service. At some point, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe next year... maybe in 10 years... but it will happen... you will no longer play this game. And all those hours you spent, all those stacks you gathered, and all those millions of gold you earned, will be gone. And all you'll have to show for it will be innumerable monthly service charges, maybe a Guar Plushie or a Molag Bal miniature statue if they survived and you still have them... and some good memories of playing the game. That's not investment; that's entertainment. But if you look at anything you do in Tamriel as "work" and you don't work for ZOS or Bethesda, you're either playing a different game than I am or you're looking at it wrong.

charlmgn

Audigy wrote: »

I like the changes a lot.

Just a simple remark,

please let us use fish in the provisioning of the future. I catch a lot of fish and cant do anything with it. You would think that such a hero as ourselfs has at least learned that fish can actually be eaten, especially for Argonians this seems to be a bit flawed right now.

I am thinking about a tasty fish stew, some soup and a fish bread!

Fishing heroes... lol

Eldarth

The latest ESO Live #9 re-re-confirmed Food & Drink WILL NOT stack.
...at least that'll free up half of my ingredients inventory -- but I won't be able to do writs anymore. Hopefully after several months they'll see how worthless drinks became.

Divinius

I still can't believe they decided to throw out the one smart change they proposed, which everybody actually agreed was awesome.

charlmgn

MornaBaine wrote: »

Oh please make this happen and SOON! I really HATE provisioning and would have never started it had I known what a PAIN it was going to be! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE also let us BUY RECIPES from a vendor! It would make total sense to get these from a Chef. Also, for the love of all that is holy, please make GROCERS easier to find! And make them have EVERYTHING for the level zone they are in!

Lastly, I want to request a new recipe and think it should be a purple: SAMMICH!

And don't forget, next to the grocers there should be a restaurant where you can buy the food already cooked, from green up through to purple, for those who just can't stand cooking their own food or for those who just can't be bothered to use their limited bag space to pick up ingredients. Also please include a frequent customer card that gets punched each visit so every 10th meal is free.

In fact, since you're making it simpler, why not combine the recipes themselves so one recipe increases, for example, health and health regeneration at the same time?

And animation... No matter what we eat, it looks like a hunk of bread, and whatever we drink, it looks like a mug of mead. I'd like to see my character wolfing down those maggots in his Maggot Bites

charlmgn

Woolenthreads wrote: »

Eldarth wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Functionality

• Food and drink categories will have clearer usage
  • Cooking: Meat = health, fruit = magicka, vegetables = stamina
  • Brewing: Alcohol = health, tea = magicka, tonic = stamina

Don't know if anyone pointed this out earlier in the thread, but I think you got brewing flipped. It should be:

• Brewing: Tonic = health, tea = magicka, Alcohol = stamina

I personally think that the food one should also be flipped.

• Cooking: Vegetables = health, Fruit = magicka, Meat = stamina

You don't really need Meat to be healthy, you definitely need Vegetables

When we look at everything through the lens of today's sedentary, high-technology society, both of these suggestions may sound reasonable. I disagree, and hope the developers keep their original designations, since it appears they've done more research than just listening to what people tell them. I'll give a couple of examples.

Tonic: /PHYSIOLOGY/relating to, denoting, or producing continuous muscular contraction.

This sounds like stamina to me. Yes, you can find many definitions, but since we're talking about the effects of tonic on the body, I felt a definition that specifically used its effects on the body was most appropriate.

As far as alcohol is concerned, even the most cursory search on the history of alcohol will show its use in the area of medicine, or keeping people healthy. Popular culture in the 20th Century included Granny's "Rheumatiz Medicine," which was well-known as being moonshine. We use alcohol externally to disinfect and sterilize ourselves and our equipment. If your'e as big a Monty Python fan as I am, and a history buff to boot, you may have watched, or even own, Terry Jones' Medieval Lives. Being a noted historian as well as an excellent comedian, Terry Jones mentioned in one of his episodes the fact that in medieval English society everyone drank alcohol because of the unsafe conditions associated with drinking water. Today we consider water a healthy alternative to alcohol, but today we don't have to worry about contracting dysentery or Bubonic plague. You put some alcohol in that water and it becomes safe to drink, therefore healthy.

In ESO we already have one historically accurate provisioning recipe that backs up this line of thinking, Aqua Vitae. I found a nice quote regarding it.

Amaldus of Villanova (d. 1315), a professor of medicine, is credited with coining the term aqua vitae: "We call it [distilled liquor] aqua vitae, and this name is remarkably suitable, since it is really a water of immortality. It prolongs life, clears away ill-humors, revives the heart, and maintains youth."

I am kind of curious why they put the [distilled liquor] in there as if translating aqua vitae. It is distilled liquor, but literally translates as Water of Life.

As far as the meat and vegetables, we have the same thing. I've responded to someone else's separate comment about meat and vegetables, but in a nutshell:

Meat = protein, which is what you need to grow muscle, which is what you need to grow big and strong enough to do all the physical things these non-sedentary specimens did, and our characters do.

Vegetables contain vitamins and minerals necessary for energy production, i.e. stamina. Being low in calories, they're not a healthy alternative in a society where the daily requirement may exceed 10,000 calories.

The developers have done their homework historically. Questioning their logic on why certain foods are useful in a certain way is like asking why some of their armor uses toggles or hooks instead of buttons. How about we keep the recommendations to areas that will improve the provisioning system instead of nitpicking what they happen to call certain items?

Romo

1.6 won't be out til Mar. 17 the day the game goes BTP. So wonder if holding on to all those mats is really useful, esp. with POTs being in the cash shop.