Condiments for Meals, Additives for Potions

I understand that this idea can be argued as adding unnecessary hassle, complexity, or development to a system that does not need it. However, MMOs can become very stale and repetitive without sometimes-odd or unexpected shake-ups to their systems, even in small or forgettable areas of design.

I think it would add a fun or interesting extra dimension to Consumable crafting and usage if Consumables could be enhanced with optional extra items, similar to the way that Equipment can be enhanced with Materia.

The system could take several possible forms (using CUL products as an example):

• First use the Condiment (granting a temporary buff), then use the desired Meal (consuming the Condiment buff for added effect).
• Combine the Condiment with the Meal (perhaps in a specific interface), creating a new 'enhanced' Meal.
• Allow Meals to be 'melded' with Condiments, in the same way that Equipment can be melded with Materia.
• etc

Some examples of possible benefits could be:

• Increasing the effectiveness of the baseline buff effect by a percentage.
• Adding an extra effect (for example, an Additive that will cause a Stat Potion to also grant some Critical Rating).
• Extra benefits or effects granted by choosing a 'Delicious' or 'Catalyzing' combination (for example, adding Soy Sauce to a Meat Miq'abob will grant a stronger boost than adding Soy Sauce to a Triple Cream Coffee).

That seems like an over-complication for the sake of being new, when all you're really doing is just adding another ingredient to a recipe to craft a new food item.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

That seems like an over-complication for the sake of being new, when all you're really doing is just adding another ingredient to a recipe to craft a new food item.

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Yeah... Personally I already find CUL/ALC the most tedious because of the sheer amount of mats even the low level stuff requires. :S Not sure I'd like to see even more crammed in there.

All this would do is create a new BiS food and pot to sell, only because of the complexity in building it and adding the "melds", you'd get food and pots that were 3-4x the price of the current BiS. Having the "option" to add X to Y to make Y better, in the end is not an option at all. Look at the melds now required on blue gear. Adding the ability to meld to your gear didn't really improve anything; just look at the crit on a ton of crit gear; the fact that one crit5 meld will max out crit on that gear indicates that crit was removed from the gear in order to give you the "option" of adding "more" crit.