Major problem with Stat foods!! Devs please read!!

[TD_]

<DIV>Hi! I felt it was urgent before the food stats go live creating a HUGE demand for food- dealing provisoners the task of supplying this demand. I am very happy to see that food will be in demand but provisoners as they stand are only going to be able to produce<EM><STRONG> less than a third </STRONG></EM>of the stat food out there. The problem lies within our harvesting ratios and recipies. I know you don't have alot of time so I will try to keep this short.<BR> <BR>As it stands now our harvest ratio is out of whack. After April's big patch (failed gathers no longer count) there will be 9 harvestable goods coming from Bushes/Shrubs. Currently only 5 have any real use, making drinks. Whenever the stat bonus goes live, all of them will have a purpose- which will be great! No more deleting stacks of veggie foods and considering that harvest a "failure". <BR> <BR>However... drink is still <STRONG>></STRONG> food to players, even if they provide a small stat bonus. (and especially when they don't have a ton of coin to spend) Currently for making food it always takes herbs (ex. Majoram) or spice (ex. Cinnamon), except for very basic fish combines. (ex boiled crayfish) Problem is, <STRONG>all</STRONG> meat products require this <STRONG>single</STRONG> herb, including soups! Yet we have the same chance of getting the herb as you do of any of the meat or veggie's needing them for the final product. You end up having a ton of meat and veggie harvests for making food, but very very few herbs (majoram) to actually make the food. Overall, the food output of a provisoner becomes extremely extremely low. (1/14 can make a finished food product, 1/7 if spice is used to make candied food, which sadly no one does because using it for drinks is much more profitable)<BR> <BR>Cinnamon/honey (spice) due to it being so valued for making all sorts of drinks (gnoll bite as an example), provisioners will usually NEVER use it to make food. Those are the recipies provisioners skip over. However, Cinnamon (spice) will always be needed to make <STRONG>ANY</STRONG> of the proposed int/wis food (including some HP and Power food). This means a very <EM>very</EM> low amount of food for nearly half of all the classes out there will be made. (Mage and Priest) As you can cleary see this is a rather large problem, not only for provisoners but for half of the adventurers out there looking for this new food. <BR> <BR>Meat, Fish, and Veggie products will be found selling (fish more than anything else because the drop rates for meat from dens has been reduced to 25%) (-compared to candied food), however the amount of veggie/meat food created is directly proportional to the amount of herb you have. In each of those recipies you need herb, which is only 1 out of the 14 harvestable goods. So you've got a 6/14 chance of getting the raw food needed, but only a 1/14 chance of getting the herb to make the actual food. You could have 42 assorted meats and veggies, but only 7 majoram to make with. That means 7 food products made, 35 veggies/meat put back on the shelf to collect dust. Seems a bit out of whack.<BR> <BR>And finally, my last concern is because there are so many provisoners now, and so many harvests are needed in order to make a certain amount of food and drinks, it can be very fustrating getting only 3 harvests off these bushes. Increasing this number of harvests to 6 or 9 might help provisoners out when gathering as well as lowering the prices at which provisoner raw materials sell at on the broker. (raising the amount to 9 harvests per bush also puts provisoners on equal footing with other gathering classes- we have 14 harvests and 3 nodes to deal with- many claim now that interdependency has been tossed this penality for being independed of all classes should be removed) Also, due to the low quanity of each item harvests, adventures often price them higher than other class's harvests (low supply), which is a bit unfair and help raise food/drink prices. <BR> <BR>This is just some advice from a concerned (yet thrilled at the new changes!) fellow provisoner. Overall as a provisoner this is very very very very happy news, but I think we need a few more tweaks before we can handle an even greater load of work. Thanks for taking the time to read this. (sorry to bother ya) <BR> <BR>Cheers,<BR>-Tristy Gladestalker</DIV>

[a6eaq]

Quite cryin about the amount you make!  On the Befallen server a meal that lasts 1.5 hours can cost over a gold a piece for lvls 30-50!  It in no way costs that much to make!  This patch is going to make it so that you will make even more of a profit than you do now!  What really sucks is to compare your food to an item with stats.  I buy a sword that has awesome stats, it costs about 5 gold.  It lasts for 10 levels, 10 levels!  Your food currently lasts a few hours and I have to pay throught the rear end for it!  You have no basis to stand on for any kind of a post except THANK YOU SONY!  They are making your food more valueable! Go harvest and TS and sell your overpriced food for an ungodly profit and please be adult enough not to cry because you have to farm more to keep up with the demand.  If you think you have it bad, make an alt and make it an Alchemist and then cry!  Please DEVS read this and take note, this patch is going to Provisioners too wealthy!:smileymad::smileymad::smileymad: <p>Message Edited by a6eaq on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:11 PM</span>

[mellowknees72]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> a6eaq wrote:<BR> Quite cryin about the amount you make!....Please DEVS read this and take note, this patch is going to Provisioners too wealthy!:smileymad::smileymad::smileymad: <P>Message Edited by a6eaq on <SPAN class=date_text>04-05-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>04:11 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Wha...?  When did the OP complain about not making money?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As a provisioner, I think the OP has some very, very valid points.  I spend almost no time making food anymore and make drinks for my guild almost exclusively these days.  Since we tend to hunt together and usually have at least 1 healer in the group, we don't have a lot of downtime waiting for HP regen (which is tied to food).  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What the OP states is totally true - I actually DO delete items that can only be used to make food if I'm running out of space in my bank to make way for more drink ingredients.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I don't play on the test server, so I can't pretend that I can address the changes that have been made there - but I will say this - I wholeheartedly support the idea of stat food because it will boost business for provisioners.  But I still would like to see a reduction in the amount of time it takes to make 1 food/drink item.  What the 2nd poster doesn't realize is that making food and drink is an amazingly huge time sink and pretty much NO amount of silver or gold will make me do it as a "business".  Most provisioners that I know spend time making stuff for their friends and guildies, who supply them with harvested raw goods to make the items with.  Most of us don't bother selling because if you count the time it takes to make the stuff, compared to what you can make just selling junk drops like musk glands and skeleton hands back to vendors if we adventured instead of tradeskilled, Provisioning becomes a non-profit enterprise.</DIV>

[Demothis]

<P>To the Op I agree with most of what you have to say on this, I have a 29 provisoner myself and gave up on it when a friend took up the class. For starters, dont sell short of the stats from the food over the power regen of the drink, players that are out there often whant every stat perk they can get, as long as the price is fair people will buy it. And I agree with the spice statment entirely, they might want to introduce a new type of node to seperate these up a bit.</P> <P><BR> </P> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> TD_13 wrote:<BR> <DIV><BR>Meat, Fish, and Veggie products will be found selling (fish more than anything else because the drop rates for meat from dens has been reduced to 25%) (-compared to candied food), however the amount of veggie/meat food created is directly proportional to the amount of herb you have. In each of those recipies you need herb, which is only 1 out of the 14 harvestable goods. So you've got a 6/14 chance of getting the raw food needed, but only a 1/14 chance of getting the herb to make the actual food. You could have 42 assorted meats and veggies, but only 7 majoram to make with. That means 7 food products made, 35 veggies/meat put back on the shelf to collect dust. Seems a bit out of whack. <FONT color=#ffff00>I said this to my fellow tailors when things where the other way and ill say it to provisioners now, the dens arnt the only sorce for these Items, if it is possible, you can mow through grey mobs of the same type you need. Now with the stats on the food though I can see it placed at 50/50 or somewhere close.</FONT><BR> <BR>And finally, my last concern is because there are so many provisoners now, and so many harvests are needed in order to make a certain amount of food and drinks, it can be very fustrating getting only 3 harvests off these bushes. Increasing this number of harvests to 6 or 9 might help provisoners out when gathering as well as lowering the prices at which provisoner raw materials sell at on the broker. (raising the amount to 9 harvests per bush also puts provisoners on equal footing with other gathering classes- we have 14 harvests and 3 nodes to deal with- many claim now that interdependency has been tossed this penality for being independed of all classes should be removed) Also, due to the low quanity of each item harvests, adventures often price them higher than other class's harvests (low supply), which is a bit unfair and help raise food/drink prices. <FONT color=#ffff00>But your fuel cost is much lower and xp gain is much higher then any other artisn. I dont see how this is a problem, you cant realy compair provisoners to any other artisen, they are a totaly diffrent beast. On a bright side though they are making it so there will be a guarenteed 3 items per node, even if you have to hack it it 100 times to get all 3, there will be 3.</FONT><BR>  <BR>Cheers,<BR>-Tristy Gladestalker</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>Other then the above 2nd statment, I have no real diffrence in opinion then yourself about nessesary tweaks and understand where you are coming from.<p>Message Edited by Demothises on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:27 PM</span>

[Kroder]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> a6eaq wrote:<BR> Quite cryin about the amount you make!  .......    Please DEVS read this and take note, this patch is going to Provisioners too wealthy!:smileymad::smileymad::smileymad: <P>Message Edited by a6eaq on <SPAN class=date_text>04-05-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>04:11 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Ok, I dumped out the details of that.  I did like the part about making an alchemist alt though, that was really cute.  Kinda silly though, since the poster is apparently clueless as to what being a provisioner is like.  They really assumed a bunch of things.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>See, prices are high on food for a very good reason.  A major portion of the existing provisioners cannot be bothered making anything to sell, since Sony has elected to make this craftskill a major timesink.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Major timesink, you say?  Bah, rubbish.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Fine.  Consider this though:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <UL> <LI>It takes over 2 hours of effort to create a single stack of high end food or drink.</LI> <LI>This does not include gathering time for raws, it presumes purchase off of other players.</LI> <LI>Other players generally don't sell raws cheaply.  Popular raws are known to frequently be very expensive.</LI> <LI>A casual player generally only has around 2 hours of play time any given night.  Or, they can make <STRONG><EM>one stack of goods</EM></STRONG>.</LI></UL> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Small wonder prices are what they are.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But since you mentioned alchemists, perhaps you can relate.  I like alchemists. My roomate plays one.  Great guy.  They have one advantage provisioners drool over, however.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Multiple outputs to the bulk demand items, like washes, oils, tempers, and resins.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV>Imagine what alchemists would charge for these if they could only make one at a time?</DIV></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Since it is common practice to sell it in stacks, food and drink can be safely described as a bulk item.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Get the picture?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Ramtaku]

<P>Good OP</P> <P>Food and Drink (especially drink) should be readily available and shouldn't be "expensive". Especially since they're intended to be the primary means of HP/PP regen in the game.</P> <P>I've argued several times that provisioners should get multiple results from each combine - reduced time to create and increased supply = reduced price.</P> <P>Since it doesn't appear that they're going to allow for multiple results, the next best thing, based solely on your post, is to make the spices you mention available from the crafting instance vendor. Having stacks of materials that can't be used due to the rarity of one harvested item does not contribute to increased supply and the prices will remain as they are or increase. This will negativily impact demand since drink costs so much now that I have no intention of paying more to get a minor stat increase.</P> <P>Good luck, I hope your arguement at least generates some thought. </P>

[Gno]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>a6eaq wrote: Quite cryin about the amount you make! On the Befallen server a meal that lasts 1.5 hours can cost over a gold a piece for lvls 30-50! It in no way costs that much to make! This patch is going to make it so that you will make even more of a profit than you do now! What really sucks is to compare your food to an item with stats. I buy a sword that has awesome stats, it costs about 5 gold. It lasts for 10 levels, 10 levels! Your food currently lasts a few hours and I have to pay throught the rear end for it! You have no basis to stand on for any kind of a post except THANK YOU SONY! They are making your food more valueable! Go harvest and TS and sell your overpriced food for an ungodly profit and please be adult enough not to cry because you have to farm more to keep up with the demand. If you think you have it bad, make an alt and make it an Alchemist and then cry! Please DEVS read this and take note, this patch is going to Provisioners too wealthy!<hr></blockquote>You seem to be taking a rather myopic view of food and drink biased heavily by some serious anger toward provisioners. First, your response has little if any relationship to the original poster's points which were not about making money. Second, if what you want is food and drink to be less expensive, then if you calmed down and thought it through you would be agreeing with the original post, not flaming it. I suggest that changes which will increase the amount of food and drink being produced and make production quicker and easier will benefit consumers even more than provisioners. As I've posted before I have a provisioner that is far and away my least favorite artisan and is only used to supply my wife's and my own characters. It would take more improvements than those recommended in the original post to get folks like me to create food or drink for sale. If you want prices to drop to something reasonable, then you want the supply to be dramatically increased. As for alchemist's issues, I know my wife's alchemist is sure looking forward to having the potion durations increased from 3 minutes to 30 minutes. We've never bothered to make the useless potions, but as of update #6 perhaps they'll actually sell, or at least we might want to use them ourselves. <blockquote><hr>Ramtaku12 wrote: Food and Drink (especially drink) should be readily available and shouldn't be "expensive". Especially since they're intended to be the primary means of HP/PP regen in the game.<p>I've argued several times that provisioners should get multiple results from each combine - reduced time to create and increased supply = reduced price.</p><hr></blockquote>I agree completely. This remains the best resolution to the food and drink issues that I've read about yet.

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ramtaku12 wrote:<BR> <P>Good OP</P> <P>Food and Drink (especially drink) should be readily available and shouldn't be "expensive". Especially since they're intended to be the primary means of HP/PP regen in the game.</P> <P>I've argued several times that provisioners should get multiple results from each combine - reduced time to create and increased supply = reduced price.</P> <P>Since it doesn't appear that they're going to allow for multiple results, the next best thing, based solely on your post, is to make the spices you mention available from the crafting instance vendor. Having stacks of materials that can't be used due to the rarity of one harvested item does not contribute to increased supply and the prices will remain as they are or increase. This will negativily impact demand since drink costs so much now that I have no intention of paying more to get a minor stat increase.</P> <P>Good luck, I hope your arguement at least generates some thought. </P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I agree with this thought entirely, if fact I've suported it in the past. I have had the misfortune of working in the food service indusry for a while, last time I check I made coffee by the pot, not the cup. For class balancing issues I can see why they wouldn't allow multiple results on the 1-3 shot combines, but on the long shot combines like caserol, and trail mix, and maybe the green faries having multiple results.

[Miral]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> TD_13 wrote:<BR> <DIV> <BR>However... drink is still <STRONG>></STRONG> food to players, even if they provide a small stat bonus.</DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>not neccisarily true. as a soloing warlock I'm more likely to buy food than drink, even before the food had stat buffs. why? I can use painful meditation line to refill my mana, but I can't heal myself!</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Ramtaku]

<DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV> <DIV>not neccisarily true. as a soloing warlock I'm more likely to buy food than drink, even before the food had stat buffs. why? I can use painful meditation line to refill my mana, but I can't heal myself!</DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV></DIV> <P> </P> <P>Very good point</P>

[WuphonsReach]

100% of the playerbase wants power regen.10-20% of the playerbase wants health regen.About the only folks who care about health regen are either:- soloing, without the ability to self-heal between fights- advanced players who want every possible edge- players who can convert health to power (which is basically power-regen)Simply supply-and-demand indicates that if the market demand for drink is 5x that of food, then prices on drink will be high and food will be low. Worse, this is compounded by the issue that a 1-combine drink ~36 min while a 1-combine food is ~54 min, 2-combine drinks are ~54 min and 2-combine foods are ~1h51m. So, for the same effort, a provisioner can produce twice as much food (in terms of duration) as drink.The price for drink reflects a few market conditions:1) Time to make, I can usually do 40 combines/hour of effort, on average. So, 1 hour to make a stack of 54 min drink, or 2-hours to make a stack of 2.5-3.0 hour drink. At level 40, an adventurer can earn 2-4gp/hr. So a tier 5 provisioner should be able to earn roughly the same coin per hour of effort, or else they may as well go out and adventure.2) Cost of raws, either I pay broker prices, or I spend time/effort getting those raws through other means (such as spending time harvesting, or making barter arrangements). That time is not free and neither are the raws on the broker. Depending on my schedule, sometimes it's more expedient for me to purchase raws rather then harvest. Prices for raws on my server for T4 range from 3sp to 10sp each, and T5 ranges from 3sp to 20sp each.3) Fuel costs. Not negligible, figure 1.5sp for a 2-combine T4 item, or 5.0sp for a 2-combine T5 item. Basically, it simply raises costs a bit.4) Target market. Realize that the target market for a level 40 drink is a level 40 adventurer (or anyone in the 35-44 range). If these folks are earning 2-4gp/hr, a reasonable per-hour price is going to be ~10% of that. However, every adventurer places a different value on food/drink. (Cheapskates should buy the next tier lower food/drink.)5) Supply vs demand. Low competition = high prices, which leads to more crafters entering a particular market. As competition rises, prices fall, until they drop so far that crafters begin to exit that particular market and look elsewhere for business opportunities.

[Zoki]

Well in commentinig about the alchemists vs. provisioners.  Try making a stack of pristine ink  as an alchemist.   This takes 60 combines which must all be pristine.  Guess what that takes an hour or longer to make (depending on the RNG).  You have to harvest for your supplies?  Well, why dont you try harvesting the item needed to make the reagent for the ink.  Those rocks are almost ALWAYS harvested as people are trying to get another rare.  So, although I feel for you, at least you can sell your end result items.  What an alchemist gets from using the inks, is needing to make another pristine FINAL combine to make a spell.  Since all alchemists use final combines on spells to level, guess what?  You geussed it there is a glut on the market for any alchemist spells.  So, for all that work and hours spent making inks/spells I end up selling my spell to an NPC for 17s at tier4 because all of my 14-20 slot bag/boxes are full and I have no room to do anything else. If you are going to compare provisioner to alchemist for food/drink to something.  That something should be complarable, like inks.  Where there is ONLY 1 final item.  Besides the point, Washes Oils Tempers and Resins....hey I have an idea lets let every class make their own so alchemists can rarely sell them.  Talk about screwing a tradeskill class.. <div></div>

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV>I have to disagree with the OP regarding you can do all kinds of Jerky (which has up to 2:00 duration) with just meat/fish and spice.</DIV>

[TD_]

<DIV>Err, aye, but you kinda missed the <STRONG>entire</STRONG> point of my post Adict. :smileyindifferent:</DIV> <DIV>It's on the ratios of our harvests and ability to create an<STRONG> equal</STRONG> varity of all foods. Sure, great, we can make tons of fish jerky- but that's only AGI stuff. What about Int/wis/Str/hp/pwr stuff? Each requires a herb or spice that is dispropotionate to the food gathers- (and spice would rather be used for drink! So candy food is especially rare) In the end you end up with alot of classes who won't be able to find their desired food, and the food market back to the way it was.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My post was not that we can't make food OR we can't make money (as the first guy misflamed me for) it was on that we can't make an equal amount of food- putting less than a third of the classes out when it comes to their desired stat food.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The second half of my post states that the harvest rate of bushes should be increased because there is an increased amount of provisoners looking for the goods + the imbalanced harvest ratios.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Hope this clears things up a bit.</DIV><p>Message Edited by TD_13 on <span class=date_text>04-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>02:33 PM</span>

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV>I agree that its impossible to harvest enough stuff like basil, thyme or marjoram to use up EVERYTHING ELSE we harvest along from bushes. And crafting sweets is only possible in mentionable numbers until you need cinnamon :smileyvery-happy:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Some balancing wouldnt be a mistake, yes.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>PS: you cannot only do fish but also pork jerky, deer jerky  etc. (which gives STR) only on packets of spice <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV> <DIV> </DIV><p>Message Edited by Tradeskill_Addict on <span class=date_text>04-07-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:34 AM</span>

[TD_]

<P>PS: you cannot only do fish but also pork jerky, deer jerky  etc. (which gives STR) only on packets of spice <IMG height=16 src="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif" width=16 border=0></P> <P></P> <HR> <P>Yes, that is well known. However, you'll find that you are able to gather fish at an EXTREMELY high rate compared to the other meat- they have their own node for it- the only water node. Therefore you can get 3/3 fish just by going around the shore line. Meat, on the other hand has a 25% chance of dropping from a Den- others find it is even less in some areas. So every other node might give 1 meat. That's all the Str food you can make.</P> <P>As in my first post, the harvesting ratios are way off, and need to be fine tuned if every class wants a share fair of it's desired food, and for provisoners to make a fair share of everykind of food out there, which was my point.</P>