Can we feed our squadron?

[MikeWW]

Right now Culinarians don't have much compared to the other crafters. I am thinking if we could feed food to our squadron for different effects it could make culinarians more fun and profitable.

What I am thinking is allow us to feed food to our squadrons, with different food giving different effects.

Some example effects:

1. Healthy food can give permanent boosts to specific stats, with each such food being capped at 1-5 of a stat, with higher level food being able to increase more. Normal quality foods can only increase a stat by 0.5, while high quality foods can increase a stat by 1.0. For example, Sauteed Coeurl is a healthy food that can increase Physical stat, and because it is an "xyz" difficulty food, it can increase the Physical stat by up to 2 points. A squad person would have to eat 4x normal quality Sauteed Coeurl or, 2x HQ Sauteed Coeurl, or a combination of them to obtain the full 2 points.

2. Special food can give mission affinity squadron chemistry bonuses, whether with 100% chance at obtaining a specific bonus, x% chance, chance that scales depending on quality of food, and/or chance at different types of chemistry bonuses. A high RNG factor here can be used to ensure a large quantity of high level food are consumed as people try to reroll their squadron chemistry bonuses, but IMO, a moderate or even low RNG factor would still make Culinarians quite more profitable.

3. Dessert food can be used on the squadron for changing their physiology. It should be possible to feed your squadron a lot of cakes and other nutritionally empty foods and make them avoid exercise to increase body fat, and on the other side of the same coin, feed them healthy food and make them do regular exercise to reduce body fat. Not only that, once an excess of dessert foods are given to them, it should be possible for their stats to reflect their poor diet. Although not necessary, it would also be great if Culinarians could craft completely unhealthy foods such as a wide variety of alcoholic beverages and junk food, maybe even with expiration date timers or the ability to spike the food with poison, with the primary purpose of such items being to make your squadron inebriated, unhealthy, or even sickly. It should be possible that your squadron becomes so unhealthy they lose squadron levels and suffer from medical conditions that are reflective of the type of diet they have or of the types of poisons they have consumed. For example, a shriekshroom beer that not only intoxicates your squadron people, but can also have negative stat effects due to having been made of shriekshroom past expiration date and which have grown toxic mold that inhibits the body's metabolism and causes extreme cases of obesity, so people have an option to greatly accelerate the fattening process (and an option should be there to greatly accelerate fat loss). Once squadron people become sufficiently obese, it should unlock the option to place 4 star carpenter furniture in your barracks designed specifically for squadron you have fattened up. Although this kind of alternate progression will probably never result in rewards like doing squadrons normally, it will allow people to do more with their squadron which is a good thing in an MMO.

4. Culinarians should be able to cook in the barracks, and people should be able to eat at the same table with their squadron. Ideally, it should be possible to cook with your squadron, and if someone wanted to, he should be able to cook his own squadron. It is very wasteful that you can only dismiss your squadron due to the 8 squadron person limit. Consuming your own squadron should give bonus stats to other squadron who eat them, and if possible, even give permanent bonuses to the player character.

These are just some of the great ideas I have about improving the squadron experience. I will stop here because my other suggestions are not safe for work and would probably break some laws.

[Mithrahn]

Culinarian don't have much? Do you even CUL?

[MikeWW]

All 60's, books, overmelded. I do so much crafting that I am bored of making gil and have spent many hours offering free crafting on party finder and in shout often using my own crystals. I have done plenty of culinarian crafting in an attempt to make a profit, and during this new patch I went crazy and made hundreds of seafood stew and controlled 80%+ of the market for over a week on my server. But the profit I made from all that seafood stew probably didn't even match the profit I made from selling one or two blacksmith weapons. In all my free crafting, I've only been asked to make food like less than 1-2% of the time.

Is that CUL enough for you?

[Lulu89]

All 60's, books, overmelded. I do so much crafting that I am bored of making gil and have spent many hours offering free crafting on party finder and in shout often using my own crystals. I have done plenty of culinarian crafting in an attempt to make a profit, and during this new patch I went crazy and made hundreds of seafood stew and controlled 80%+ of the market for over a week on my server. But the profit I made from all that seafood stew probably didn't even match the profit I made from selling one or two blacksmith weapons. In all my free crafting, I've only been asked to make food like less than 1-2% of the time.

Is that CUL enough for you?

Bad luck then, I make 3M+ a week off CUL on my server. Even have ppl the come to me for their raid food.

[MikeWW]

Bad luck then, I make 3M+ a week off CUL on my server. Even have ppl the come to me for their raid food.

All this arguing against me saying culinarians need some love is like beating a dead horse to the point the horse's corpse has vanished. I can't see any traces of the horse left, even what particles of horse blood staining the ground has been atomized and blown far away, please... let it go.

Can we please just focus on feeding squadrons.

[Pence]

You're trying to compare culinarian income to blacksmith? It's like comparing the wages of a full time employee to a casual. Culinarian and Alchemist are in a unique position in that after the first few weeks of a patch launch they are still relevant to endgame. People will still buy potions and foods once they're decked out in 250+ gear. But the 250 crafted gear itself? Not so much. It'll plummet in price.

Think of it as Culinarians/ALC having a salary, a full time job. You can always expect an income regardless of the patch cycle.

Everything else? Casuals. They have their seasonal work but not much else.

[MikeWW]

You're trying to compare culinarian income to blacksmith? It's like comparing the wages of a full time employee to a casual. Culinarian and Alchemist are in a unique position in that after the first few weeks of a patch launch they are still relevant to endgame. People will still buy potions and foods once they're decked out in 250+ gear. But the 250 crafted gear itself? Not so much. It'll plummet in price.

Think of it as Culinarians/ALC having a salary, a full time job. You can always expect an income regardless of the patch cycle.

Everything else? Casuals. They have their seasonal work but not much else.

A full time job, where each HQ seafood stew costs 10k gil when there is no peak demand, and 16k gil during peak demand? Sorry, I'll take the full time job where I can craft ironworks gear at ~1m gil per sale when there is no peak demand, and by the way, on Cactuar server, ironworks gear prices and profit went way up above ~ 1m each during this new patch since people are trying to gear up to craft the 250 gear. Regardless of patch cycle, culinarian is less, or more accurately, much less, profitable than just about any other crafting classes.

Seriously, why are people arguing with me? I am making suggestions that would make culinarian more interesting, more profitable, and make squadrons more interesting as well. And my response is people erroneously claiming culinarians are profitable enough, as if that is a valid reason not to implement feeding squadrons? Wow, I better refrain from posting on weekend holidays from now on I can't handle the madness!

[Mithrahn]

Seriously, why are people arguing with me? I am making suggestions that would make culinarian more interesting, more profitable, and make squadrons more interesting as well. And my response is people erroneously claiming culinarians are profitable enough, as if that is a valid reason not to implement feeding squadrons? Wow, I better refrain from posting on weekend holidays from now on I can't handle the madness!

Great idea actually.
Let's extend it to gearing our squadron up with CRP, BSM, ARM, GSM, LTW, WVR, ALC.
Also, let's extend it to feeding our Retainers with CUL food.
I mean, really. We should have had that from the start. Feeding our retainers with food too.

[SessionZero]

Seriously, why are people arguing with me?!

Yes hello, welcome to the forums. Here's your jacket.

More on-topic, it's a neat idea. Making crafting more lucrative beyond a source of income would, I think, encourage more people to participate. That said, applying it to squadrons first and foremost may fall flat, as it doesn't seem like many people want to participate, or enjoy the GC squadrons content.

[MikeWW]

Yes hello, welcome to the forums. Here's your jacket.

More on-topic, it's a neat idea. Making crafting more lucrative beyond a source of income would, I think, encourage more people to participate. That said, applying it to squadrons first and foremost may fall flat, as it doesn't seem like many people want to participate, or enjoy the GC squadrons content.

I agree there's probably a lot of people who aren't interested in GC squadron right now, but I think it has a lot of potential. The two main issues I see right now is that it isn't that involving, and the rewards seem to be quite bad. It can be made more involving by giving players multiple ways to improve and interact with their squadron, and rewards can take many different forms without breaking the economy or causing it to be a source of income for goldsellers. For example, rewards can be entirely no-drop so that they can't be sold for gil, and/or they could be entirely cosmetic.

Just an example of the kinds of rewards they could give, squadrons can earn players cash shop points that can be redeemed for certain or all cash shop items, old event items, and maybe vouchers for x number of days of free subscription, with the caveat that none of the items purchased with cash shop points can be traded or sold on the marketboard so as to remove incentive for goldsellers to misuse the cash shop point system and to prevent market saturation.

And people who want to argue that what I suggest will cut into Square-Enix's cash shop or subscription revenue, to the degree that is a concern for Square Enix, they can just specify exactly what items will be purchasable with cash shop points and adjust the cost for those items in order to satisfy both their accountants and their customers. Although they will for sure lose some revenue by implementing this cash shop point system, they will also be gaining revenue from people who decide to keep subscribing because of the cash shop point system. For example, Square-Enix can make the difficulty of obtaining rewards such that players doing squadrons might result on average 1 less cosmetic item sold per month per subscriber (let's just say $1 revenue loss for the example, but we can't begin to guess at potential revenue loss without cash shop sales data), and maybe $1 revenue loss on subscriptions per month per subscriber, for a total of $2 loss in revenue per person per month. But if on average people subscribe longer or there are more subscribers thanks to the implementation of said cash shop point system, it may be they will earn a net revenue gain. I bet there's lots of people out there who would definitely consider subscribing longer than they otherwise would if they felt participating in some game activity like squadron could result in being able to obtain old event items, cash shop items, and vouchers for free subscription days.