Official Discussion Thread for "Update 6 Guide: Provisioning"

ChuckyPayne

5. “What’s happening with Drinks?”

No This is not good. There won't be a choise.
- There will be favourite builds and set ups. One of them (drink and food) will be useless. If the drinks got a huge rewamp then we say good bye to foods.
- We collect all provisioning materials, but why? We can't use both. It is mean most of the materials as now will useless.
- If we can use both we can build more viable sets, we can do maybe can't before. They don't want it.

sagitter

i was happy to be able to get food and drink buffs stacking. pls rethink about it, you can increase the regenerations from drink buffs unless it is 10 times better at least, i'll always prefeare food buffs expecially in pvp.

sovreign

No.. Do not take out items! Getting more inventory space is nice, but don't decrease the amount of items in game, give us extra bank/inventory/saddle space instead!
Removing items from the game only makes the world a smaller, less interesting place.

Blackmoon777

some food and drinks complements each other, for ex.
red meat + red wine
fishes / veg + white wine
fish sticks + collacoca :P etc

why not make it like that in ESO?

also in 1.6 we get:

Many new recipes have been introduced.

so we can use them in many combinations

My idea is to make sometching like "FULL MEAL" = food + drink
and it adds additional bonus, i think it should be unique like:

+5% exp more
+2% physical dmg
+2% dmg reduction
+2% mag dmg etc.

we also know most ppl use purple / blue recipes, green one are mostly usless
maybe those combinations of food / drink could consist of "purple" drink and "green" food or "blue" food and "green" drink etc

just my idea...

black-gryphonb14_ESO

MSchroeder wrote: »

I’d like to take a moment and address some of the questions that have come up in this thread so far. We’re all excited to hear your feedback, and I wanted to allay a few fears. Some of this is information we’ve shared before, but I figured it would be helpful to address as much as possible here.

...

...

We’ll be watching the usage of food and drink on PTS, and going forward on Live. If feedback and metrics show that drinks remain widely unused after the improvements, we will review our options (including but not limited to making them stack) and act accordingly.

EDIT: Forgot to bold question #4.

Thank you for answering these important questions. as someone else said - more informative than the news article.

Ouranos

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Will we lose the good recipes we already have? Will I lose the ability to cook those purple foods I already know the recipes for (or their new versions?)

What happens to all the potatoes I have in the bank?

From the post:

1. Yes, they will be gone and replaced with an (approximately) equivalent new recipe.
2. Yes, you will be unable to create current recipes that are getting phased out.
3. If they're an outdated ingredient, they will become "stale," gain a gold value, and not be usable in recipes. Don't think this will be the case for potatoes, though. Seems like a visual staple of vegetables

Palidon

Weberda wrote: »

I'm sorry but this is not really much of an improvement. Until you can stack beverages with food you're wasting a big portion of the craft. I cannot fathom how any improvement to drinks would put them even close to par with food especially in PVP. Seriously, go back to the drawing board.

I totally agree and I cannot understand why ZOS has not listened to the players requests to stack food and beverages. Why one negates the other is a total mystery to me and really ridiculous on the part of ZOS.

ThatHappyCat

It seems to me that people who want food and drinks to stack are thinking only of themselves and how to buff their characters further. When you think about the game as a whole, making food and drinks stack adds absolutely nothing to the game. There's no interesting choice to be made, no further diversity in character builds, no further complexity added to Provisioning.

It's the same thinking that makes people cry when they lose their precious PvP buffs, but refuse to actually PvP for them. Give me all the buffs!

Septimus_Magna

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

It seems to me that people who want food and drinks to stack are thinking only of themselves and how to buff their characters further. When you think about the game as a whole, making food and drinks stack adds absolutely nothing to the game. There's no interesting choice to be made, no further diversity in character builds, no further complexity added to Provisioning.

It's the same thinking that makes people cry when they lose their precious PvP buffs, but refuse to actually PvP for them. Give me all the buffs!

I agree, and it will only make end game pve and pvp more expensive for the players. Too bad I made all these purple beers thinking that they would stack with food in update 6, well that was a waste..

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

MSchroeder wrote: »

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink

Terrible decision.

By making food/drink choice in group instances effectively a per-encounter decision then you're forcing us to massively increase our consumable spend/grind and risk creating a situation where only the rich or those able to play 24/7 to gather ingredients will be able to use food at all regularly.

ThatHappyCat

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

MSchroeder wrote: »

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink

Terrible decision.

By making food/drink choice effectively a per-encounter decision then you're either forcing us to massively increase our consumable spend/grind or else create a situation where only the rich or those able to play 24/7 to gather ingredients will be able to use food at all regularly.

How is choosing to use either food or drink more expensive than always having to use both?

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

MSchroeder wrote: »

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink

Terrible decision.

By making food/drink choice effectively a per-encounter decision then you're either forcing us to massively increase our consumable spend/grind or else create a situation where only the rich or those able to play 24/7 to gather ingredients will be able to use food at all regularly.

How is choosing to use either food or drink more expensive than always having to use both?

Please re-read my comment again .. I am predicting that at the start of each FIGHT the min/maxers will demand everyone consume the 'right' food/drink for the encounter.

So, I foresee this:

Boss 1 - EAT food
Boss 2 - DRINK drink
Boss 3 - EAT food
Boss 4 - DRINK drink

instead of

EAT xxx food and DRINK xxx drink at the start of the run. The more bosses of course the more the problem grows.

I am of course assuming that consuming one will automatically cancel the effect of the other; this is what will happen obviously, since both buffs won't be possible as they aren't now.

Nightreaver

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

How is choosing to use either food or drink more expensive than always having to use both?

Scenario 1 - One drink + one food
Enter dungeon, consume one food and one drink, each with a duration of 2 hours and 20 minutes. Complete dungeon, total provisions used: 1 food and 1 drink.

Scenario 2 - one or the other
Enter dungeon, consume food to boost max stats for trash. Reach first boss, consume drink to boost stat regen. Repeat sequence throughout dungeon. Complete dungeon, total provisions used: 1 food for each boss plus 1 drink for each boss.

Gyudan

MSchroeder wrote: »

5. “What’s happening with Drinks?”

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink – some situations call for food, while other situations call for drink. To this end, we’ve improved the regeneration(s) granted by drinks by a significant margin, but we’ve left food and drink unable to stack with one another.

...

We’ll be watching the usage of food and drink on PTS, and going forward on Live. If feedback and metrics show that drinks remain widely unused after the improvements, we will review our options (including but not limited to making them stack) and act accordingly.

Thanks for giving additional information on your design choices.

Unless drinks get very high numbers for regeneration, I don't think that they will be used as often as food that provides flat stats.

Who wil use food?
- Magicka DPS (higher magicka = more dmg)
- Stamina DPS (higher stamina = more dmg)
- Healers who feel confident enough to use spell symmetry and don't have magicka managements issues
- Tanks who focus on max health over regeneration (best for 12p content)
- Burst damage in PVP

Who will use drinks?
- Solo players (maybe)
- Healers in small groups or with magicka management issues
- Tanks who want to spam AoEs and DoTs and need more regeneration
- Tanks who can't rely on an effective healer
- Sustained damage for long PVP fights (if they don't get outperformed by players with large stat pools)

TL;DR: food = endgame, drinks = casual content and maybe some PVP

I understand your concern about build diversity, and as the numbers are right now, making food and drink stackable would result in everyone using some variation of blue/purple food + drink. Is that really so bad though? At least it would have a positive effect on the economy, doubling the amount of provisioning crafts that players would be able to trade.


Suggestion for additional bonuses to drinks

Regardless of drink level, each would increase some statistics based on consumable quality.

Alcohol (health-based) would increase health regeneration and damage mitigation.
- 4% mitigation for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Tea (magicka-based) would increase magicka regeneration and spell power.
- 4% spell power for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Tonics (stamina-based) would increase stamina regeneration and weapon power.
- 4% weapon power for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Note: this is still compatible with food and drinks stacking

SantieClaws

This one has one further comment, bearing in mind this one has a bank full of fish waiting for this update ...

If this one guts fish why will this one get meat instead of delicious fish? Surely a fishie once gutted would produce fish no?

This one would prefer to eat them raw and fresh from the river but when in Glenumbra this one supposes this is frowned on by the locals.

Edit: Also this one is hoping on Jone and Joad that you leave the moon sugar cookies alone!

Darkonflare15

Gyudan wrote: »

MSchroeder wrote: »

5. “What’s happening with Drinks?”

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink – some situations call for food, while other situations call for drink. To this end, we’ve improved the regeneration(s) granted by drinks by a significant margin, but we’ve left food and drink unable to stack with one another.

...

We’ll be watching the usage of food and drink on PTS, and going forward on Live. If feedback and metrics show that drinks remain widely unused after the improvements, we will review our options (including but not limited to making them stack) and act accordingly.

Thanks for giving additional information on your design choices.

Unless drinks get very high numbers for regeneration, I don't think that they will be used as often as food that provides flat stats.

Who wil use food?
- Magicka DPS (higher magicka = more dmg)
- Stamina DPS (higher stamina = more dmg)
- Healers who feel confident enough to use spell symmetry and don't have magicka managements issues
- Tanks who focus on max health over regeneration (best for 12p content)
- Burst damage in PVP

Who will use drinks?
- Solo players (maybe)
- Healers in small groups or with magicka management issues
- Tanks who want to spam AoEs and DoTs and need more regeneration
- Tanks who can't rely on an effective healer
- Sustained damage for long PVP fights (if they don't get outperformed by players with large stat pools)

TL;DR: food = endgame, drinks = casual content and maybe some PVP

I understand your concern about build diversity, and as the numbers are right now, making food and drink stackable would result in everyone using some variation of blue/purple food + drink. Is that really so bad though? At least it would have a positive effect on the economy, doubling the amount of provisioning crafts that players would be able to trade.


Suggestion for additional bonuses to drinks

Regardless of drink level, each would increase some statistics based on consumable quality.

Alcohol (health-based) would increase health regeneration and damage mitigation.
- 4% mitigation for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Tea (magicka-based) would increase health regeneration and spell power.
- 4% spell power for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Tonics (health-based) would increase health regeneration and weapon power.
- 4% weapon power for green
- 3% for blue
- 2.5% for purple

Note: this is still compatible with food and drinks stacking

Do you really need health regen in all of them?

Darkonflare15

Palidon wrote: »

Weberda wrote: »

I'm sorry but this is not really much of an improvement. Until you can stack beverages with food you're wasting a big portion of the craft. I cannot fathom how any improvement to drinks would put them even close to par with food especially in PVP. Seriously, go back to the drawing board.

I totally agree and I cannot understand why ZOS has not listened to the players requests to stack food and beverages. Why one negates the other is a total mystery to me and really ridiculous on the part of ZOS.

They have listened. They just chose not to do it. It would be boring to stack them anyway. I mean with soft caps gone are characters would be cheaply buff like how it is now but worst. I am only sad that drinks will continue to be useless. Drinks should never buff only regen because it will never compete with food buffs. Since food buffs buff characters main stats. Drinks are going to have to do more than boost regen if they want it to compete with food. Lets hope they find a way to make them useful.

Gyudan

@Darkonflare15: fixed, thanks!

Darkonflare15

Gyudan wrote: »

@Darkonflare15: fixed, thanks!

@gyudan Ok that makes better sense and I highly approved.

Rev Rielle

Garwulf wrote: »

Seems to me this is a shuffling of the deck chairs with nothing really new being offered.Reducing number of ingredients is equivalent to increasing bank space. Sure we get new recipes to find and new ingredients and some spoil but like all the other crafting in this game it is very shallow and presumably aimed at not very intelligent 12 year olds.

No experimentation for example leading to a Master chef, just grind the recipes and ingredients. Just like in the real world where anyone can be a Master Chef armed with a cook book and some ingredients ....

And do not get me going on crafting writs which like Undaunted are essentially authorised grinding.

Sorry ZOS but you have lost the plot. You need to expand the game so we want to continue playing it, not simplifying it for the idiots who like Grinding Undaunted to get passives and specialised equipment that even a Master Craftsman cannot make.

In one word BORING.

We're all entitled to our opinions of course. Personally, I think it's a step in the right direction. Nothing's ever perfect, but just because something isn't I don't think automatically should mean it's no good at all.

Rosveen

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

This one has one further comment, bearing in mind this one has a bank full of fish waiting for this update ...

If this one guts fish why will this one get meat instead of delicious fish? Surely a fishie once gutted would produce fish no?

This one would prefer to eat them raw and fresh from the river but when in Glenumbra this one supposes this is frowned on by the locals.

Edit: Also this one is hoping on Jone and Joad that you leave the moon sugar cookies alone!

I assume fish is considered a type of meat (which it technically is). So we'll get fish that's used in health foods.

I was looking forward to two things in this update: usable fish and food and drink stacking. I'm glad to hear fishing finally has a purpose other than achievements, but disappointed that stacking was removed. Freeing some inventory space is nice, but I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble of reworking the whole system. Of course, PTS will tell; any news on that, ZOS?

Psychobunni

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

It's the same thinking that makes people cry when they lose their precious PvP buffs, but refuse to actually PvP for them. Give me all the buffs!

I gather or buy all my own materials and make food for all my toons with my provisioner, not to mention I don't sell any foods for income. So, when I say I want the buffs for both, I did the work, thank-you very much.

It's a stupid mechanic that has thus far kept drinks useless, and unless they make ingredients so easy to come by while also making drinks equally usable as food, they will remain useless. As others have said, if it is not as cost effective as eating 1 food at the start of the dungeon, most will continue to use the food item that provides a larger pool overall.

Edit: I do sell tomatoes/salt/pepper because I don't use them, and trash most of the other stuff the hireling brings. But I still don't make and sell finished product

Rosveen

Something that stands out to me... ZOS always said they want to make their systems intuitive, that your average player doesn't crunch the numbers, just goes with what feels right. I think this is a part of the problem with Provisioning. Buffed attributes are easy to understand for everyone: I have more magicka, I can cast more spells (that also so more damage), great. But to appreciate the value of drinks, you have to calculate how long a fight must be to make faster regeneration more useful than bigger overall pool. It's not simple to figure out just by taking a look at the character sheet. People will do this at endgame, but what about content before that?

Divinius

And there you have it. Bad decisions regarding this revamp are already well underway.

If one were to read the original dev post regarding the provisioning revamp, one would immediately notice that the vast majority of the people responding said that the best part of the whole update was food and drink stacking. Some (like me) felt it was the ONLY useful part of the whole revamp. So what was the first idea that the devs scrapped? Staking food and drink. Typical.

People keep claiming that provisioning is "broken." Opinions vary, but as far as I'm concerned, there's only a handful of things that are actually "broken" about it. First, that drinks are totally useless compared to food in basically every possible situation (and unless the buff they are proposing to drinks for this update makes them about 20x stronger, they will STILL be useless), and second, the fact that the player can out-level the ability to find lower-level recipes (in that, you can go back to a lower-level zone to get ingredients, but the recipes you find are totally dependent on your character's level).

Both of those things could have been very easily fixed without any of the other changes they are making. And yet, they have confirmed that they are NOT fixing the problem with drinks (buffing will not help them), and they haven't mentioned anything about changing the mechanic for looting recipes, so I'd bet that will remain broken as well.

The only other issue with provisioning as it stands, which is more of an inconvenience than actually broken, is the unnecessarily large number of mats due to the zone-specific foods/drinks. This could have also been easily fixed simply by combining all the lower-level items into one food/drink for each tier, instead of three, just as it is for level 40+ consumables. Instead we get more complicated recipes that pull from a smaller pool of total ingredients, but potentially require that we actually keep more different items on hand for crafting a single type of food.

TL;DR: This update will attempt (and likely fail) to "fix" a whole bunch of things that were not broken, while totally ignoring all of the actual problems with the Provisioning craft.

Please ZOS, prove me wrong here.

[edited for typos]

Kat_Cnaa

Please, I would really like to see crafted consumables gain a 'crafted by' marker. With crafting writs, this matters! If I'm looking through my inventory, I can't turn in foods I pick up, am gifted or buy. I have to make the items. If I have spent a point on upping the number of foods per recipe crafted, then I wind up with excess, which I store for the next writ that calls for them.

HeroOfEvbof

Drink regen is going to have to gigantic in order to be competitive with food. With food, I bump my max and thus at the opening of a pull I setup all my 6 sec and higher duration spells and bang a potion.
I can put reduce cost enchants on my jewelry or reduce potion cooldown enchants. Both these choices are big helps in resource management. Meanwhile food increases my damage and my sustainability (damage shields scale of attribute) and thus one food buff does triple duty as compared to a spell harm enchant.
Health regen drink will almost never be competitive with Health food in group content where the healer does not want to overheal. Burst heal spells will always be more effective if the recipients max is higher, not if the recipients regen is higher.
Oh, and the best way to avoid resource problems is to get the pull done quickly. The best way to get the pull done quickly is to pop as many key skills as fast as possible making as much use of you max at the start of the pull and potions as soon as possible.
Drink is going to have to be huge, otherwise it is futile. I will not continue to dedicate bag and bank space to drink ingredients. Given WYSIWYG, I will instruct my guild to ignore picking up drink ingredients and thus save them considerable amount of time managing the shuffle of ingredients. And most importantly I will not put 3 skill points in Brewer.
Look at all the savings I get by ignoring drinks. Look at all the better ways I have of regen resources compared to drink. Look at all the tactical aspects we can make use of that don't depend on something ticking every 2 seconds. Drinks are going to have to be so competitive that they give us options for our jewelry enchants, potion rotation and tactics.
If ZoS want exclusive drinks - I suggest they no longer be regen. There are so many more attributes that can be explored with drinks. Regen is a once every 2 second tick and is of no value whatsoever in the vast majority of encounters in this game

Anazasi

Did anyone look at the pictures? Over 2k health food buff? Are those pictures real or what? Yeah I hope the stack but heck 2k health buff from food.

trimsic_ESO

MSchroeder wrote: »

5. “What’s happening with Drinks?”
During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink – some situations call for food, while other situations call for drink. To this end, we’ve improved the regeneration(s) granted by drinks by a significant margin, but we’ve left food and drink unable to stack with one another.

In my humble opinion, drink will still be barely used. As the soft caps are removed, it's very interesting to eat food: the bonus is really cool as it can boost both the pool of resources and the output damage we can deal with that pool.

There are several situations:
- PvP: combats are resolved quite rapidly; having more health, more stamina, and more magicka is much more interesting than having a higher regeneration rate.
- PvE: a tank will prefer to have more health than a stronger regeneration rate. A tank must resist the burst damage of the bosses, and is focused by the healers.
- PvE: a healer will generally prefer to have a good regeneration rate, so as to maintain the capacity to heal the group during the whole fight.
- PvE: a damage dealer will generally prefer to have a greater output damage.

In short, if drink might be the primary choice of the healers in PvE, I don't see any other valuable use case for it.

Therefore, I would recommend to let food and drink stack with one another.

Rosveen

Anazasi wrote: »

Did anyone look at the pictures? Over 2k health food buff? Are those pictures real or what? Yeah I hope the stack but heck 2k health buff from food.

All stats are scaled up in update 6, so those buffs stay about the same relative to your new increased health pool.

Anazasi

Really here's the funny. To make drinks equal to food the regen would have to fall in around 75-100. That would be insane. Tanks would never die, healers would never run out of magic, Stam would last forever. Pts will be very interesting indeed.