Provisioning Revamp

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Katniss_Everlark wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌, what will happen to the recipes that I already know? Will my provisioning stay at 50? Will my skill points stay as they are under provisioning? If we keep all the recipes we already know & our skill points stay as well I think it's a great idea. When would this change take place?

Read what they posted, they explained what they intend to do, though obviously at the moment the fine details aren't in place.

Rodario

Without any further information on the exact implementation of these changes, all I can say is it sounds great.

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ I have one concern though:

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.

As someone who has gone to great lenghts to stockpile all the food mats he finds, I'd very much appreciate them not becoming useless. Maybe those that will no longer exist could be converted to still existing ones of equal value/rarity. Alternatively, the stale versions should have a fitting gold value (common ingredients 2-8 gold, onions etc. 20 gold, Potatoes ect. 50g, tomatoes and oats 500-1000g).

I'd just hate it if 3 alt inventories full of food mats would become useless, considering how much of my playtime has been spent on gathering and organizing them and what level I could possibly be now if I just ran past all those containers...

Thanks for taking this into consideration.

HeroOfEvbof

Let me say upfront I have an obsession about cooking in MMOs. I have over 200 recipes on my main and it pains me that I gave the three Plump Worm recipes to an alt in order to conduct an experiment (using Plump Worms alone plus the overflow of tier 1 bases due to vet bug, I went from Provisioning 8 to Provisioning 48 and still had 100+ thin broth, 100+ meal and 75+ drippings left in storage). I have a bag alt carrying 86 slots of drink ingredients on the hope that they may someday prove useful. When the VR1 blues and greens were dropping like candy during early access and the first week, I grabbed them all in guild stores cheap not even knowing what the hell veteran was.
The following long-winded post is not a rant. I love provisioning. I have had some good laughs and real fun with it. But it is not perfect. It has serious flaws on at least three levels.

Consider this:
Green Fishy Sticks never ever got fixed.
Pinguis, Imperial Flour and Imperial Stock never dropped.
Invigorated Bervez Vitae got broke during Craglorn and never got fixed.
One of the blue Horker recipes was broken (needed crawdad) and never got fixed.
Saltrice Slurry never dropped.
These are actual broken things that never got fixed.

Now consider some of the things that weren't broken but were clearly less than ideal:
It was well known that drinks were almost useless and hirelings delivered grapes/hops/canis root close to 65% percent of the time.
VR was expanded to 12 but no VR 10 recipes made their way into the game.

Lastly consider some fundamental roleplay inconsistencies:
Bosmer influenced drink recipes use Aged Meat and Pig's Milk for example. And yet those Green Pact friendly recipes still used malt and grapes and were flavored by fruits and hops. Not the definition of 100% Green Pact.
What is Desert Heather and why is it found in Rivenspire instead of an actual desert zone?
It would seem Argonians dominate the kitchens of the Pact. Plump Worms, Plump Rodent Toes, Plump Maggots,
Saltrice is a Dunmer delicacy, not Bosmer.

My point is this. Will an overhaul actually result in something much more closer to fixed? I'm not looking for perfection upon launch. I designed software for the US Navy for six years and for the New York City Fire Department for twelve. Software is something that you have to see run live in order to truly get a sense of what is wrong. But so many of the problems I have identified should never have made it to launch and should have been easily fixed.

I remember Craglorn went live and all of a sudden recipes had 0 value. What happened? It is clear that the tables and databases that make up this game are complex and interlinked in ways many people cannot forsee before actually launching.

I point all these out because I am a serious provisioner. My alts are named Kiss The Cook, Ramon the Starved and The Traitorous Grocer. I don't mind any concept for provisioning as long as it is one that doesn't have a dozen broken aspects. I don't mind an overhaul so long as it goes live and we can cook for all levels of toons without waiting a week for a hot fix.

Let me end with one more example, this time not Provisioning. Summoned minions can now be directed to attack an enemy. This is awesome, but there is a catch. If an enemy you had the minion target dies a certain way, the minion will stand next to the spot where it fell forever unless you specifically recall it. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason to what causes the minion to get lost in thought. I have adjusted. As I run across the expanses of Tamriel, every 100 meters or so I recall my minions. When I enter combat, 95% of the time I lead off by sending my minion after a mob. But 1 in 20 fights are where I agro some other nearby group of mobs. I turn to take them on, but my minion is lost in thought no more than 10 meters from me. Adding control over minions = good. Breaking some basic minion mechanics = bad.

This seems to be the track record of each thing rolled out for this game. So before we all get giddy for an overhaul to provisioning, let us reflect on whether we can take the pain that will come with it.

KiriX

Sounds good!
I'll be glad to see this changes.

Islyn

KiriX wrote: »

Sounds good!
I'll be glad to see this changes.

Do you do Provisioning?

How many of these *Oh goody* posts are by actual provisioners?

Islyn

oren74 wrote: »

SO I've been planning a TON to build up to 60 purple VR5 foods...and about 70 blue +health+Magicka VR5 (Fortified sweetrolls).

Now imagine making 100+ a day.

R0M2K

Nice changes, id like also (to match other proffesions):

- V12 recipes

- Yellow recipes

- Rework the passive that increases the buff duration (+5 min per skill point is a joke) to add instead 15,30 and 45 minutes.

- No more "Hireling only ingredients"

- Include Fish in recipes

- Include ingredients in some monster loot tables (killing deer gives deer meat ie)

- Refund Skill points

- Ponnys

Lanae

The whole idea of an overhaul is nice I do see however a couple of things I would like to see considered.

1. Replacing my recipes automatically by what would seem like a best fit sounds nice but I would feel happier if I had some controle over this. Especially since suddenly drinks are going to get so much better.

How about if I could get credit for each rare / epic recipe I owned and could replace them one time from a new chef somewhere?

2. If you make my ingredients go stale and want to find an offload then give me the option of replacing the ingredients from some sort of grocer. Yes technically you could offload it for money but money is pointless. A lot of the materials I have stocked are ones that are just hard to come by scavenging containers daily.

3. I really hope changing gathering logic for ingredients will solve finding them somewhat. With the recent change that contains can suddenly also drop JUNK gear it has become nearly impossible to gather decent quantities of the right materials. So some consistency in being able to gather materials would be nice.

4. If you are considering revamping the system then perhaps you can also make it so that ingredients might be able to show which recipes that you have learned they are good for. See if this sounds familiar: Go to cooking fire, check recipe to be crafted, run to bank, retrieve materials, run back to cooking fire. Instead it would be nice if an ingredient showed me what I can use it for.

Islyn

It is not impossible. I do it all the time.

HeroOfEvbof

There are several, not many just several, posts so far that ask for things that already exist.
I use Feed An Army, an addon that gives me a slider. I can hit one button to make a recipe using every bit of ingredient or another to make one batch or a button to make what I set on the slider.
I use Harven's Provisioning Tooltips and Sous Chef. Between them I easily identify spices and flavorings, what specific level a meat might be and usual alliance of ingredients. Admittedly I have had to memorize the alliance when looking at recipes, but that is simply because I'm not running Recipe Book anymore, which gave that info.
Deer drop venison and liver. Goats drop goat meat. Sheep drop mutton and sweetmeats. I once killed thirty sheep in order to collect mutton. I was vet1, had no need for the mutton. I simply didnt have enough mutton stored on an alt to meet a possible if highly unlikely food order from a guildie. Suddenly a guildie calls out for blue grilled mutton ribs. I immediately kill some bandits and use their fire to make his order.
BTW: The salt and the drippings were in my bank. Most of everything I have ever cooked were with ingredients in my bank.

What I am saying here is that the current system is fun. It has problems, many problems. But at least for right now it is working.

Many of the things that people complain about are legitimate greivances but the issues are not game breakers. I have played all the way to Vet4 without ever using a drink and without ever eating purple food. Most of the people I know leveled all the way to 20 without using blue food.

Only the most obsessive of the provisioners out there have a problem with inventory, whether its a lack of bag space or lack of ingredients. I am obsessive and have two mules dedicated to my ingredients, but that is because once the whole system was fixed I was going to FRAP a cooking session where I cooked and ate every food and drink. My three closest friends do not have any ingredients taking up bag space. Two of them send me everything and the other only loots runes and heavy sacks. I have one contact who sells me every spice he comes across and another contact who gives me first option on recipes.

As for oats and tomatoes, my main and three mules have 3/3 hireling. This still leaves me three character slots to make new adventuring alts once theives guild comes out and all the dungeons are expanded. I dont have many oats (only 42) or tomatoes (only 78), but I don't have a vr5 purple either.

I dont fish yet. Some people I know fish for the acheivements and several more I know have launched fishing hobbies because of dyes. Nonetheless I have never had problems getting ingredients for my cooking. At one point I had 450 beef and 300 sh@nk. I certainly did not have 750 flour/oil/broth. Right now I have 175 mudcrab meat stored. Between Glace Viande, Baker's Flour and the oil, I could probably cook off only 90 of them.

When I eat my blue vet1 food, I get about 12 extra damage on my heavy hit spells (volcanic rune, velocious curse). Never measured the up-tick on my weapon due to stamina. This is good. It is on par with several other mechanics in the game (I see about the same effect switching between a defending weapon and a sharpened weapon, I saw the same up-tick due to the Apprentice Mundus stone once it was fixed and I see a similar up-tick to spells if I properly take advantage of the Might of the Guild passive)

There are three blue mudcrab recipes. I've had them a long time but even as a vet I know they drop easily. The four guild stores I am in have at least one page each of the blue vet1 and vet5 recipes. I carry 30 or more of each blue mudcrab food in my bag in case someone yells in zone chat that their toon is hungry. I am the first to respond only a third of the time because there are tons of cooks out there. Coldharbor was the same way for me, I had tons of beef and sh@nk blues.

Nothing in the provisioning system right now is so broken as to render it unusable. There are some very maddening aspects for sure. My concern is what will an overhaul bring? Will an overhaul work at its launch or will it take at least two weeks. I still cant PvP. I turn off every add-on and log out and log in and I get 11 FPS. I can walk away and quest in a village not to far from the action and get 27 FPS. Something in the last overhaul regarding PvP graphics did not make things better for me. It outright broke that aspect of the game for me.

For serious provisioners out there, consider this. What if an overhaul breaks the whole thing for two weeks? What if the overhaul then has a dozen or so little cracks that linger for three months?

Invalidsalad

(Sarcasm) Please couple provisioning with enchanting, magical bread sticks sounds yummy. (Sarcasm)

Dominoid

Just wanted to point out because I've seen several posts along the lines of, "Well if Chicken and Flour create a level 50 food, then isn't flour a level 50 ingredient?" No, because then Beef and Flour can create a level 5 food.

All ingredients will be use throughout the recipe hierarchy resulting in no leveled ingredients.

Braddass

I do not want any system that makes it harder to brew blue or purple recipies.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

There are several, not many just several, posts so far that ask for things that already exist.
I use Feed An Army, an addon that gives me a slider. I can hit one button to make a recipe using every bit of ingredient or another to make one batch or a button to make what I set on the slider.
I use Harven's Provisioning Tooltips and Sous Chef. Between them I easily identify spices and flavorings, what specific level a meat might be and usual alliance of ingredients.

<snip>

What I am saying here is that the current system is fun. It has problems, many problems. But at least for right now it is working.

Actually you demonstrate why the system ISN'T working at the moment, your library of add-ons shows where the current system fails.

Katniss_Everlark

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

Katniss_Everlark wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌, what will happen to the recipes that I already know? Will my provisioning stay at 50? Will my skill points stay as they are under provisioning? If we keep all the recipes we already know & our skill points stay as well I think it's a great idea. When would this change take place?

Read what they posted, they explained what they intend to do, though obviously at the moment the fine details aren't in place.

@fromtesonlineb16_ESO‌, I did read it. If those questions had been answered in the original post do you think I would've asked them? I realize the fine details aren't in place but now they have questions from myself & other players to have answers ready for once they do get all the fine lines finalized.

Katniss_Everlark

Braddass wrote: »

I do not want any system that makes it harder to brew blue or purple recipies.

@Braddass‌, I'd be more concerned about finding the blue & purple recipes after this change.

Katniss_Everlark

Lanae wrote: »

The whole idea of an overhaul is nice I do see however a couple of things I would like to see considered.

1. Replacing my recipes automatically by what would seem like a best fit sounds nice but I would feel happier if I had some controle over this. Especially since suddenly drinks are going to get so much better.

How about if I could get credit for each rare / epic recipe I owned and could replace them one time from a new chef somewhere?

2. If you make my ingredients go stale and want to find an offload then give me the option of replacing the ingredients from some sort of grocer. Yes technically you could offload it for money but money is pointless. A lot of the materials I have stocked are ones that are just hard to come by scavenging containers daily.

3. I really hope changing gathering logic for ingredients will solve finding them somewhat. With the recent change that contains can suddenly also drop JUNK gear it has become nearly impossible to gather decent quantities of the right materials. So some consistency in being able to gather materials would be nice.

4. If you are considering revamping the system then perhaps you can also make it so that ingredients might be able to show which recipes that you have learned they are good for. See if this sounds familiar: Go to cooking fire, check recipe to be crafted, run to bank, retrieve materials, run back to cooking fire. Instead it would be nice if an ingredient showed me what I can use it for.

@Lanae‌, I agree with you on bullet one since I have multiple blue recipes for both food & drink. I wouldn't want every thing I already know to just disappear into thin air like I never had it.

Islyn

Katniss_Everlark wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌, what will happen to the recipes that I already know? Will my provisioning stay at 50? Will my skill points stay as they are under provisioning? If we keep all the recipes we already know & our skill points stay as well I think it's a great idea. When would this change take place?

This is answered in OP.

nelsonus_ESO

I didn't ready any comments besides the ZOS reply, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents in:

I love the proposed changes. Right now the system is convoluted with a million types of grapes and wheat and I stopped even picking things up because it was a hassle to organize them and get rid of the unwanted stuff. I got provisioning to 50 and basically just left it alone since the mats are too cumbersome. A single tier system makes it a lot more fun mixing and matching mats and is easier to handle. Much improved.

Katniss_Everlark

Islyn wrote: »

Katniss_Everlark wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌, what will happen to the recipes that I already know? Will my provisioning stay at 50? Will my skill points stay as they are under provisioning? If we keep all the recipes we already know & our skill points stay as well I think it's a great idea. When would this change take place?

This is answered in OP.

@Islyn‌, No it isn't. They don't give a time frame of when this would happen. They didn't say whether or not the skill points in provisioning would stay there or if players that have done provisioning will have those points refunded. They didn't say they were wiping all the players knowledge of the recipes already used or if we keep them just that they will be changed. They didn't say anything about players keeping provisioning at 50 either. So no, none of that was answered in the OP.

Katniss_Everlark

nelsonus_ESO wrote: »

I didn't ready any comments besides the ZOS reply, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents in:

I love the proposed changes. Right now the system is convoluted with a million types of grapes and wheat and I stopped even picking things up because it was a hassle to organize them and get rid of the unwanted stuff. I got provisioning to 50 and basically just left it alone since the mats are too cumbersome. A single tier system makes it a lot more fun mixing and matching mats and is easier to handle. Much improved.

@nelsonus_ESO‌, What page was the ZOS reply on? I just read the OP & then commented my questions.

Mescalamba

I really dont like removing ingredients. Thats wrong way to do it.There should be variety and rarity in ingredients.

Other ideas are rather good..

Also would like if up to VR, those recipes followed lore. Why? Cause game should be consistent. ESO more or less works cause its TES game. Some may play it cause its MMO, but some play it cause they like that universe, so be nice and keep that universe intact.

Im not against making some things bit simpler, but once you start making game too easy and too "dumbed down", it will end like any other MMO. And if you like your customers, thats something you really shouldnt do...

Slurg

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[*] We're going to try to update the existing recipes that you already know to equivalent recipes in the new system. There may be some exceptions and some trade-offs...

[*] This revamp will absolutely NOT affect the rank in provisioning that you have achieved.

The proposed revamp sounds good overall. The above answers 2 of the questions I had after reading the original. My remaining question is what happens to the food we already made using the old recipes? Is that converted too, or can we still use it?

PS I really like the idea of stacking food and drink. But I don't like it as much if it means the buffs for both will be decreased by a significant amount.

Katniss_Everlark

@Slurg‌, I didn't notice the second bullet you quoted when I read the OP last night. I must've been really tired & skipped over it.

Plus I was reading it on my iPhone which is near impossible to do since you have to zoom in all the way to read any thing.

nelsonus_ESO

@Katniss_Everlark‌

Page 3, about halfway down.

Slurg

@Katniss_Everlark‌ I'm quoting from Gina's page 3 response so that may explain why you didn't see it. I use the forums from my iPhone too and I miss all kinds of stuff!

HeroOfEvbof

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

There are several, not many just several, posts so far that ask for things that already exist.
I use Feed An Army, an addon that gives me a slider. I can hit one button to make a recipe using every bit of ingredient or another to make one batch or a button to make what I set on the slider.
I use Harven's Provisioning Tooltips and Sous Chef. Between them I easily identify spices and flavorings, what specific level a meat might be and usual alliance of ingredients.

<snip>

What I am saying here is that the current system is fun. It has problems, many problems. But at least for right now it is working.

Actually you demonstrate why the system ISN'T working at the moment, your library of add-ons shows where the current system fails.

I have illustrated that the current system has problems and limitations. It has not failed. My concern is that an overhaul will be put in and it will fail, in other words it will be broken such that we cant make useful food for two weeks until hot fixes are ready. Furthermore after the hot fixes, the overhaul may require the same amount of addons, just new.

I am unconvinced an overhaul will make something less messed up than what we already have. My concern is that it will address many issues, ignore some others and introduce new issues.

All the addons I run I expect they will still be required after the overhaul. I use a slider. I also use a slider for blacksmithing. If ZoS had it in its head to put sliders in, they likely would have mentioned it for all crafts. I use an addon to identify lvl and alliance of ingredients. I use an addon to identify styles for blacksmithing and clothing. It took ZoS over two months to change it so that we knew what lvl an ore or rough wood was.

I dont see addons going away. Addons are not part of the failure of the system. Recipes that dont make the right food, recipes that dont drop at all, ingredients that dont drop at all are what really make provisioning a pain in the butt. I do not believe an overhaul will eliminate these types of problems simply based on track record. None of them have been fixed in four months although all of them were reported in the first month.

Katniss_Everlark

@nelsonus_ESO‌ & @Slurg‌ Thank you guys.

Kraven

This is going to be a very unpopular opinion but I think it does need to be revamped and that everyone with provisioning should be reset and the needed xp increased to bring it on par with other crafts.

I have a max provisioner so it does affect me too however it takes literally less than two hours to max it out. Every other craft in the game is a time investment however with amount that V5 foods are selling for and the fact they are a consumable that needs to be replenished Provisioner stands next to Alch as money makers while actual time investment crafts including Enchanting fall behind in the long run. Having consumable crafts being the most profitable makes absolute sense but also having them as the absolute easiest crafts doesn't to me.

Provisioning and Alchemy level so fast and with the addition of poisons planned for alchemy the other crafts time investment means nothing.

Joy_Division

Not that I expect my post to see the light of day by any Zenimax employee that has any input into the game...

But I am wondering how many of these +1, thumbs up, and "yeah!" posts actually come from people who invested time, effort, and gold into provisioning? I can get behind the bank space issues, but something is not being addressed in GinaBruno's posts.

I have spent a lot of time, effort, and inventory space harvesting red wheat, baker's flour, mudcrab meat, salt, pepper, garlic, honeycomb, shank steak, and suet. And it's not just me. I have sold mubcrab meat to multiple people for 100 gold per crab! And now, I'm told this is all going to become stale? Or, that I'm supposed to have faith that the baker's flour I've spent hours hunting down I'll still want because you'll "TRY to update the existing recipes that you already know to equivalent recipes in the new system."

And what exactly does this mean: "By having ingredients sourced in clear ways and using combinations of food items instead of tiers of ingredients, we will be able to cut the number of ingredients in half."? This sounds like to me, most ingredients (save the special "oats") will be generic, common, freely and easily available to everyone. This is a mistake. Right now, there is a real value on certain ingredients like salt, baker's flour, red wheat, etc., (usually a specific ingredient that makes a green food blue) because they are uncommon and generally a pain to find. THIS IS GOOD. Reward dedicated folks who go through every container! If there is just now going to be "flour," "meat," and "cheese," then the value of every non-special "oat" ingredients become trivial. My point here might be addressed with an assurance that some generic ingredients required for blue recipes such as "flour" will require the same dedication as "baker's flour" currently does, but such was NOT said in either of GinaBruno's posts.

What you will wind up doing with these proposed changes is turn what was a pretty neat skill that required some dedication into something bland and generic that requires little effort (save the purple recipes that will require "oats"). Maybe people who don't want to be bothered finding mubcrab meat will just throw down a +1 and give a thumbs up. However you won't get it from me as I think exploration and dedication should be rewarded. And I will guarantee in the whole "TRYING" thing to make the red wheat I have collected still both desirable (to me) and valuable will absolute frustrate me and many others who have invested in this skill similarly.

---

This doesn't mean I don't like some of these changes. In fact, some of them are long overdo.

Drinks and food should have been stackable from the start. (Though I'd like to see provisioners get a larger benefit from the stacking).

I like what you see is what you get.

I do think there should be alternative ways to get "Oats".