Q to Devs, How Difficult Is Updating Food Items?

[Randnum]

I would like to see another 'great change' to food effects, but I understand that the Development Team is very busy, so I have some questions about how difficult certain things are.

1. Does changing the effect on existing food, in the code, take a long time or require a lot of testing?
2. Is there a long testing process required to confirm balance on food effects? Would there be long duration testing on effects that already exist on food?
3. Is it intended that the strength of a food effect does not always match the rarity of the ingredients or the time taken to gather them?
4. Is it possible to update only one or two food items at a time, along with other changes on the Test Server?

I would like the players to get together and contribute testing and ideas to how existing food could be changed, in order to give us more options. This is because most useful food is very expensive, and there is not much cheaper food with smaller effects that are still significant.

However, I have asked my questions to find out if this sort of input from players on these forums would be useful. If it would, is there a preferred way for us to format our suggestions/information?

[Llana_Virren]

I would like to see another 'great change' to food effects, but I understand that the Development Team is very busy, so I have some questions about how difficult certain things are.

1. Does changing the effect on existing food, in the code, take a long time or require a lot of testing?
2. Is there a long testing process required to confirm balance on food effects? Would there be long duration testing on effects that already exist on food?
3. Is it intended that the strength of a food effect does not always match the rarity of the ingredients or the time taken to gather them?
4. Is it possible to update only one or two food items at a time, along with other changes on the Test Server?

I would like the players to get together and contribute testing and ideas to how existing food could be changed, in order to give us more options. This is because most useful food is very expensive, and there is not much cheaper food with smaller effects that are still significant.

However, I have asked my questions to find out if this sort of input from players on these forums would be useful. If it would, is there a preferred way for us to format our suggestions/information?

What kind of "updates" to food are you talking about?

[Mirage]

I would like to see another 'great change' to food effects, but I understand that the Development Team is very busy, so I have some questions about how difficult certain things are.

1. Does changing the effect on existing food, in the code, take a long time or require a lot of testing?
2. Is there a long testing process required to confirm balance on food effects? Would there be long duration testing on effects that already exist on food?
3. Is it intended that the strength of a food effect does not always match the rarity of the ingredients or the time taken to gather them?
4. Is it possible to update only one or two food items at a time, along with other changes on the Test Server?

I would like the players to get together and contribute testing and ideas to how existing food could be changed, in order to give us more options. This is because most useful food is very expensive, and there is not much cheaper food with smaller effects that are still significant.

However, I have asked my questions to find out if this sort of input from players on these forums would be useful. If it would, is there a preferred way for us to format our suggestions/information?

Without being a dev, I can answer a few of those.

1. There's unlikely to be any coding involved in adding more food, unless the food implemented entirely new types of buffs that haven't been in the game before. It would just be adding a few new entries to a database somewhere. There might even be a graphical user interface for developers to add new food, where you input a name, select existing buffs from a list, and then specify the duration and skill level/ingredients to make it.

3. Probably not. It is simply hard to predict the exact distribution of players who will be doing certain types of content or kill certain types of mobs and for how long. This leads to a variable supply of certain items, as people start/stop doing stuff. It is probably better to add just a lot of recipies and let the free market figure out which things are worth making based on the continously changing supply/demand. It would take a huge amount of resources to continuously change loot distribution for tons of monsters/events in order to keep a certain dish at the same price compared to other food over a long period of time.

[katz]

I would like to see some sort of book available for foods that displays their effects. While looking down the list of foods, I noticed some that I never heard of like crepe forestiere. Even though it was introduced in 2010, no website has what the food effect is other than it lasts 60 minutes. Players will alway use what they know. If you dont know what effect there is people just dont make it or use it.w