Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Food Processing!
Charlie Ashwood
Member
INTRO
Hey all! I made a post on the Ashes subreddit a while ago and it was suggested I put it here for discussion so here we go. I made quite a few changes from my reddit post after discussing it with others on reddit. Due to the nature of this post being so long, I broke it up into sections to make skimming easier.
I am a fantasy nerd and foodie who has a homestead. I like to do things I experience in fantasy worlds in real life and one of the ways I do that is make mead, wildcrafted sodas and do other fermentation with the simplest methods possible (no obsessive sanitation or factory-raised yeast). Anyway, one of the things I often feel MMOs lack is a more immersive food system. What I have seen as a theme in MMOs is food is basically a vertical buff on a timer. There are specific recipes you use depending on your build. Because it is a vertical buff it is a requirement to compete in PvP and high tier PvE. What it ends up looking like is you make or buy a ton of the same thing and have to continually watch a timer and click on the food when the timer is out. It is always the same exact food that you get no matter where you are in the world. For me, it is a necessary inconvenience that isn’t fun. I totally understand that some people don’t mind that type of system but I think we are missing a great opportunity for deeper immersion.
Food plays a huge role in defining all cultures and AoC has the goal of unique, immersive regional cultures. Below is my idea for adding food preservation and a soft spoilage system. I say soft because my intention is not to suggest Ashes be a hardcore survival game. We have plenty of good survivals already, this spoilage system is simply to add more enjoyable complexity and encourage players to be more involved and immersed in each unique bioregion they visit.
FOOD PRESERVATION SYSTEM
Spoilage: Spoilage could be as simple as adding a timer to food when harvested. (I am no programmer or developer so I have no idea what this looks like on the back end.) When a player adds food to their inventory from its source, the timer starts. As I mentioned above, in a softer system these times would be longer so that they still add a little pressure to do something with the food while also not being too intense to derail the other things the player is currently doing. The spoilage system could be affected by weather and seasons too. Food will spoil faster in warm weather and much slower in cold weather. Timers could straight up stop in freezing weather.
For concerns about the production end of managing fresh food, the spoilage timer wouldn't have to start until the food is taken out of the pot or kitchen. That makes tavern kitchens even more practical. Player stalls could also make use of this system as street/market-side food stands. (I’m thinking Ramen Ichiraku from Naruto with a single bar with stools right off the street). The timer wouldn’t start until the food is placed in the customer’s inventory. So the chef could make the food in their kitchen whenever they want and store it there until purchased by a player.
Food Preservation: This system has potential for being its own processing profession or be incorporated into the artisan cooking profession. If it is its own processing profession, the profession could be called Food Processing and encompass other activities such as milling grains, grinding salt, juicing, etc.
There are four simple and ancient forms of food preservation I can think of that could become actual mechanics in the game giving more opportunities for other professions as well. These are salting, fermenting, smoking and drying. Food made with these methods would have their spoilage timers significantly slowed or stopped and last indefinitely but have weaker stat boosts with shorter buff timers. Cooked (fresh) food could spoil quickly while having bigger, longer-lasting boosts.
Salting: Combine salt with other ingredients to make a cured product. Example: Combine salt and meat and let it dry hang or sit in a salt barrel for a period of time until finished.
Fermenting: This is a very broad category but the mechanical structure would be similar to salting. Add the ingredients together (water, salt, veggies, honey, etc.) with the correct vessel and let it sit until finished. I have seen other people ask about brewing and the response was that it will be part of cooking. If fermentation was part of a food processing profession, it would go here. If you want to go even further you could have yeast strains or stir sticks like the ancient mead makers passed down through their families.
The fermentation process has sort of a reverse effect from weather because of the nature of what is happening. In warm weather, the time it takes for fermentation to finish is much shorter where if it is too cold, fermentation is extremely slow or just doesn’t happen at all.
Smoking: Add ingredients to a smoker, add wood/charcoal, light the fuel and let it sit until finished.
Drying: Add food to a dehydrator or out in the sun. (I’ve built a non-electric solar dehydrator that sits outside in the sun and dries food very efficiently.)
There could be an additional monitoring mechanic for each as you monitor these processes in real life or it could be as simple as “combine the ingredients and forget about them until finished.”
Preserved foods could be consumed or they could act as an ingredient in cooking recipes making them a niche item group. This would actually complement their acting as a way to trade regional foods to other areas. Maybe you have to go to a specific region for fresh yellow perch but you can find salted or smoked perch on the opposite side of the world from where it is fished. This would also get people excited to explore other regions. They may go to a market and find preserved meat from another part of the world and want to go to where it's from to get it fresh!
I could see both preserved and fresh foods as having a place in the game. Preserved foods would be something people could reliably keep in their inventory to always have on hand or use if they are going on long expeditions. If they only provide a small boost compared to cooked foods it would make them more unique and still not take the place of cooked foods. Cooked foods would obviously be preferred for the bigger boosts but they would (maybe?) be more expensive and require more intense time management.
WORLD, CULTURAL & ECONOMIC IMPACTS
Food spoilage would decrease the supply of food, and more specifically food that spoils faster, and so would encourage a more active economy where the different professions and artisan classes have additional reasons to interact and coordinate.
It could also create an additional economy and mechanic in food preservation.
Salting: Would create a demand for mining salt giving miners an additional resource to gather. This could also be a resource unique to certain regions too but not necessarily just mountains like a lot of mining typically is. There could be salt flats and even harvesting from saltwater processing.
Fermenting: A crafting profession could make fermentation vessels like jars and crocks.
Smoking/Drying: Carpenters could build smokers and dehydrators. You could even have enchanters enchant these things to be more efficient or not require fuel or sun.
Freeholds and taverns could be fitted with root cellars that are cool, dry places to store food and slow down spoilage timers. Enchanters could also add chilling enchantments on root cellars and “ice boxes” to be used like refrigerators and freezers.
It seems like taverns are meant to be a big part of AoC (thank you!). I have seen a lot of players interested in being innkeepers. Many people even want that to be their sole focus in the game which I think is incredibly exciting! A food preservation system could deepen the immersion by adding to the complexity of food and give tavern owners and chefs more unique mechanics to work with. Taverns would then naturally have plenty of preserved foods on hand at all times for both cooking recipes and for sale as added revenue.
Also, this system could increase the value of cooked foods, making taverns even more valuable and worth prioritizing protecting from NPC/monster attacks. Losing the only supply of greater food buffs during the defense of a node could be a noticeable blow to the defenders. As Intrepid released in their last update, monsters will target specific buildings while attacking settlements. I can imagine many monsters, or even most, would have reason to target food sources!
Hey all! I made a post on the Ashes subreddit a while ago and it was suggested I put it here for discussion so here we go. I made quite a few changes from my reddit post after discussing it with others on reddit. Due to the nature of this post being so long, I broke it up into sections to make skimming easier.
I am a fantasy nerd and foodie who has a homestead. I like to do things I experience in fantasy worlds in real life and one of the ways I do that is make mead, wildcrafted sodas and do other fermentation with the simplest methods possible (no obsessive sanitation or factory-raised yeast). Anyway, one of the things I often feel MMOs lack is a more immersive food system. What I have seen as a theme in MMOs is food is basically a vertical buff on a timer. There are specific recipes you use depending on your build. Because it is a vertical buff it is a requirement to compete in PvP and high tier PvE. What it ends up looking like is you make or buy a ton of the same thing and have to continually watch a timer and click on the food when the timer is out. It is always the same exact food that you get no matter where you are in the world. For me, it is a necessary inconvenience that isn’t fun. I totally understand that some people don’t mind that type of system but I think we are missing a great opportunity for deeper immersion.
Food plays a huge role in defining all cultures and AoC has the goal of unique, immersive regional cultures. Below is my idea for adding food preservation and a soft spoilage system. I say soft because my intention is not to suggest Ashes be a hardcore survival game. We have plenty of good survivals already, this spoilage system is simply to add more enjoyable complexity and encourage players to be more involved and immersed in each unique bioregion they visit.
FOOD PRESERVATION SYSTEM
Spoilage: Spoilage could be as simple as adding a timer to food when harvested. (I am no programmer or developer so I have no idea what this looks like on the back end.) When a player adds food to their inventory from its source, the timer starts. As I mentioned above, in a softer system these times would be longer so that they still add a little pressure to do something with the food while also not being too intense to derail the other things the player is currently doing. The spoilage system could be affected by weather and seasons too. Food will spoil faster in warm weather and much slower in cold weather. Timers could straight up stop in freezing weather.
For concerns about the production end of managing fresh food, the spoilage timer wouldn't have to start until the food is taken out of the pot or kitchen. That makes tavern kitchens even more practical. Player stalls could also make use of this system as street/market-side food stands. (I’m thinking Ramen Ichiraku from Naruto with a single bar with stools right off the street). The timer wouldn’t start until the food is placed in the customer’s inventory. So the chef could make the food in their kitchen whenever they want and store it there until purchased by a player.
Food Preservation: This system has potential for being its own processing profession or be incorporated into the artisan cooking profession. If it is its own processing profession, the profession could be called Food Processing and encompass other activities such as milling grains, grinding salt, juicing, etc.
There are four simple and ancient forms of food preservation I can think of that could become actual mechanics in the game giving more opportunities for other professions as well. These are salting, fermenting, smoking and drying. Food made with these methods would have their spoilage timers significantly slowed or stopped and last indefinitely but have weaker stat boosts with shorter buff timers. Cooked (fresh) food could spoil quickly while having bigger, longer-lasting boosts.
Salting: Combine salt with other ingredients to make a cured product. Example: Combine salt and meat and let it dry hang or sit in a salt barrel for a period of time until finished.
Fermenting: This is a very broad category but the mechanical structure would be similar to salting. Add the ingredients together (water, salt, veggies, honey, etc.) with the correct vessel and let it sit until finished. I have seen other people ask about brewing and the response was that it will be part of cooking. If fermentation was part of a food processing profession, it would go here. If you want to go even further you could have yeast strains or stir sticks like the ancient mead makers passed down through their families.
The fermentation process has sort of a reverse effect from weather because of the nature of what is happening. In warm weather, the time it takes for fermentation to finish is much shorter where if it is too cold, fermentation is extremely slow or just doesn’t happen at all.
Smoking: Add ingredients to a smoker, add wood/charcoal, light the fuel and let it sit until finished.
Drying: Add food to a dehydrator or out in the sun. (I’ve built a non-electric solar dehydrator that sits outside in the sun and dries food very efficiently.)
There could be an additional monitoring mechanic for each as you monitor these processes in real life or it could be as simple as “combine the ingredients and forget about them until finished.”
Preserved foods could be consumed or they could act as an ingredient in cooking recipes making them a niche item group. This would actually complement their acting as a way to trade regional foods to other areas. Maybe you have to go to a specific region for fresh yellow perch but you can find salted or smoked perch on the opposite side of the world from where it is fished. This would also get people excited to explore other regions. They may go to a market and find preserved meat from another part of the world and want to go to where it's from to get it fresh!
I could see both preserved and fresh foods as having a place in the game. Preserved foods would be something people could reliably keep in their inventory to always have on hand or use if they are going on long expeditions. If they only provide a small boost compared to cooked foods it would make them more unique and still not take the place of cooked foods. Cooked foods would obviously be preferred for the bigger boosts but they would (maybe?) be more expensive and require more intense time management.
WORLD, CULTURAL & ECONOMIC IMPACTS
Food spoilage would decrease the supply of food, and more specifically food that spoils faster, and so would encourage a more active economy where the different professions and artisan classes have additional reasons to interact and coordinate.
It could also create an additional economy and mechanic in food preservation.
Salting: Would create a demand for mining salt giving miners an additional resource to gather. This could also be a resource unique to certain regions too but not necessarily just mountains like a lot of mining typically is. There could be salt flats and even harvesting from saltwater processing.
Fermenting: A crafting profession could make fermentation vessels like jars and crocks.
Smoking/Drying: Carpenters could build smokers and dehydrators. You could even have enchanters enchant these things to be more efficient or not require fuel or sun.
Freeholds and taverns could be fitted with root cellars that are cool, dry places to store food and slow down spoilage timers. Enchanters could also add chilling enchantments on root cellars and “ice boxes” to be used like refrigerators and freezers.
It seems like taverns are meant to be a big part of AoC (thank you!). I have seen a lot of players interested in being innkeepers. Many people even want that to be their sole focus in the game which I think is incredibly exciting! A food preservation system could deepen the immersion by adding to the complexity of food and give tavern owners and chefs more unique mechanics to work with. Taverns would then naturally have plenty of preserved foods on hand at all times for both cooking recipes and for sale as added revenue.
Also, this system could increase the value of cooked foods, making taverns even more valuable and worth prioritizing protecting from NPC/monster attacks. Losing the only supply of greater food buffs during the defense of a node could be a noticeable blow to the defenders. As Intrepid released in their last update, monsters will target specific buildings while attacking settlements. I can imagine many monsters, or even most, would have reason to target food sources!
8
Comments
I actually surprisingly like the decay/preservation system's depth that you describe here. I think it would definitely make it so that knowing a good cook or having a good one in your guild could make large differences in buff quality. I would just add that specializing in either cooking or the gathering part of the profession (butchering?) should give bonuses to ingredient perseveration so that an expert chef/butcher, with some effort, would be able to serve fresh yellow perch which is normally found somewhere far away to follow your example. This would make caravan and transportation efforts of chefs valuable and they would be able to make better use of ingredients in the market than a novice cook.
I like the idea of a perk that extends preservation! You could potentially have people specialize in different areas. Taking a perk/skill like that would be more important for someone who works more with meat than with food that takes longer to spoil. It would be very interesting to see how it would affect the economics of food in the game.
The rarer foods could generally spoil quicker making them a little more coveted and require a bit of intentional retrieval and venturing.
Really I would love to see a survival level food system (spoilage, simple nutrition in place of blanket buffs, spoilage, wide open cooking, preservation, etc). But that would appeal to no one.
Nobody would bulk up on food anymore and probably more people would choose the easy ones like potions.
If the other professions don’t follow the same rule or have other disadvantages, it will decline.
The balance between food preservation & spoilage needs to be bang on. And after that the food needs to have some appeal to players to buy, but not to much so they don’t abuse it like wow worldbuffs.
Now the processing of food sounds a lot more fun and worthwhile.
And it would be cool to have a foodbonus/ food tied to your race or class.
Might as well also add in mandatory bio breaks.
Nobody wants that ish.
When Py'Rai govern a Node, we should expect them to cultivate different plants than when Ren'Kai govern the same Node. At the same time, plants that remain native to the region will hopefully be used to create Py'Rai cuisine rather than Ren'Kai cuisine.
Could be interesting to get the equivalent of set bonuses when using Py'Rai native ingredients with Py'Rai cooking tools and recipes for Py'Rai cuisine.
I found it very frustrating in New World to be looking forward to making Barley Soup, but then I would have to run all over the map to find the ingredients because they weren't all in the same region.
If I'm making a local dish, I should be able to find all the ingredients locally. If I'm making a regional dish, I should be able to find all the ingredients regionally.
I think I'm OK with the notion that perhaps salt mines are fairly static.
Perhaps Dünir are more likely to cook foods that add salt from mines, while Niküa are more likely to cook foods that include fish.
Does BDO also have a preservation system like the OP is proposing? I think if you have a preservation system, food spoilage is not painfully realistic. Actually having food spoilage without food preservation would be unrealistic.
BDO's only current (and historically, all I can find) food spoilage is freshly caught/gathered fish becoming useless after 24 hours real time if not processed for preservation (dried).
I think we don't need that extra step in potion production in Ashes, I think the OP's system adds to the food economy, whereas it's been pretty boring to me in other MMOs.
My point is, in its hay day, it didn't really create a profession out if it. Anyone could cook up a million fish steaks in an instant. Raw and cooked fish steaks were literally lining the streets of towns from the training fishermen trying to offload unneeded weight. You couldn't sell them on your vendors and it was a pain to sell them to NPC vendors. Nowadays, food has become more useful in games but I feel they still don't quite get it right.
I really dig Charlie's ideas. I like the idea of a spoilage system to force more production from cooks which demands more of the gatherers, hunters, fishermen, and farmers. I like preservation methods to manage the spoilage system a bit, also giving the crafters and gatherers another job to fulfil in creating or supplying the resources for these preservation methods. I even like the need to feed mechanics of survival games and their hunger and thirst systems.
I DON'T like having to eat or drink becoming a primary focus point when I'm trying to go on an adventure, craft items, or simply train up some skills. I don't like having to eat tons of food to fill up my hunger bar when it feels like I just did so. Like, how tf could anyone eat so much food? I don't like running out of food in the middle of my adventures and having to abandon them to go eat before I starve to death. I don't like having to allocate a large portion of my carry weight to food and water just so I can avoid this. This, to me, adds a great deal of constant stress to games that I'd just like to sit down and enjoy. As a father of 3 girls, I've got enough stress LOL.
I prefer food and drink to be more on the supplemental side. In the Elder Scrolls games, the food and drinks were not required at all, but COULD be used to heal or buff your character in a variety of ways. This caused me, personally, to never carry food. I didn't need it at all. Therefore, completely avoiding a decent mechanic in the games. Sort of a bummer. On the other hand, I wasn't constantly worrying about if I had enough food to finish what I was doing.
Finding the balancing point between creating actual NEED for food and drinks with a hunger/thirst system without making it a massive stress factor while also creating steady supply and demand with the gatherers and crafters through the right spoilage system, is going to be a tough one. But if done right, I think it could be an enjoyable aspect of the game for everyone. As well as create incentive for players to frequent inns and taverns. The food system should also somewhat compete with alchemy, but neither can snuff each other out. Potions may NEED a spoil timer, or be much heavier, less effective, or more expensive so as to not outweigh the benefit of carrying food and drink. Maybe be unable to eat when full creating a need to carry an alternative way to replenish resources, heal or apply buffs. It will be a fine line.
On other notes, I'd like to see foods and drinks that not only replenish hunger and thirst but also health, stamina, mana, whatever other resources. I like the ideas of regional products crafted from materials you can only find in certain places. In all crafting professions. I like the idea of certain meals and drinks having a more beneficial effect on certain races (or even classes maybe), depending on their ingredients, or where they came from.
Also anytime we can add multiple steps, with quality implications at each step, that provides for better and varied gameplay.
Regional differences also make sense. If we are different races, living in different environments, many leagues apart, there is no reason we should regularly be using the same recipes.
On the flip side, potions should work very differently imo, no spoilage. I have always been and continue to be an advocate of the Path of Exile potion system for an MMO. Not the wrist breaking part, but the 'it refills as you do things and you press it reactively' part. You could have 3-5 usable potions on your belt at any given time, and you can pick the buffs/types that appeal to you and your play-style. Crafting-wise, the bottle itself (or its enchantment) would be crafted and have impact on for example the duration of the buff, while the content of the potion would be crafted independently (so you give your bottle to an alchemist to fill with the potion you want). The potion would refill over time and would give you a couple hundred/thousand uses (based on crafting quality) before requiring a refill.
This way food and potions operate very differently, fulfill their own roles, and require (not too frequent) interactions with different crafters creating player inter-dependency.
But the more i think about it the more i feel it should be a system that only affects the cooks.
This is a system that gives cooks more joy and realism but is a headache for the devs and this can be abused by players if its not done right.
I tend to love systems that add more depth, and I like the thoughts behind this idea!
I'll try to poke a few holes where I see potential weaknesses. Maybe you or another have some good ideas to strengthen those areas.
1. Inventory management
If every food item has a decay timer after it leaves the kitchen/shop, you can't really stack items. Since inventory is slot based, I can see an issue that needs to be solved there. It also has to be readily apparent which food items are oldest and closest to expiring without having to mouse over each item every time.
2. Play-time differences
Some players play a lot more than others. Some have to take breaks all the time during play, to take care of the kids or whatever RL situation arises. So should food decay only happen during online hours? Or offline hours as well. And then if we add the whole effect from local weather/temps too, it might become too much trying to keep track of food timers all the time.
3. Realism can kill the fun
Since Ashes isn't a survival game, I am fairly certain some people don't want this kind of realism, where they have to think of food preservation every time they go out on an adventure. If fresh food buffs are a lot better than canned food buffs, they will feel they are forced to take part in uninteresting micro management of the game to stand a competitive chance. And if there isn't a big difference in buffs, then why have the system in the first place?
It's closing in on the territory of those mandatory bio breaks Dygz mentioned. Is it realistic? Yes. Does it add positively to gameplay? For many people I would wager the answer is no. And yeah, it would make sense if it applied to potions as well. Some might last forever, and others using fresh ingredients would spoil.
What is the overarching goal here?
Is it to add depth and value to the cooking profession? Is it more that you like the added realism? If the latter, then the system makes sense I think.
If the former, I think it might be worthwhile looking at it slightly differently, using either the already planned tavern system that you also mentioned, or perhaps ways that cooks can improve food buffs for the party while out adventuring out of tavern range.
For example, placing feasts for the party/raid that we see in WoW, using many different cooked items to create a buffet. Or an ability on a cooldown that, while active, boosts the buff gained from any food consumed for everyone within proximity to the cook. It could be the cook has a little camp fire animation going for 1 minute, and during that time players can reheat the cold pizza slice they brought along in order to gain an extra 10% food buff.
You shouldn' t need to "keep track" of the food timers, the food timers should be visible and the game should do all the math for you, if you have a steak with 120 mins left, and you enter in a winter biome it should recalculate the timer taking into consideration the biome, and if you leave for a warmer biome the timer should change acordingly.
The idea of having different preservation methods only affects dedicated artisans (usually the people who enjoys realism and complex production chains). Adventurers who just want to kill mobs and PvP will be the customers of those artisans and they will only need to care about the spoliage timer of the things they are buying.
I think the overall goal is making cooking an engaging experience so people can focus on cooking and still having fun.
Generally I find that these things are already built into the cooking system in the games I play that have cooking, though. Some amount of the 'cooking' profession is actually JUST the 'preservation' aspect and generates 'preserved food', usually of the kind that can be eaten directly in that form.
Humanity has formed a lot of their food methods around preservation for quite a long time, so it's just 'par for the course'. It wouldn't necessarily be outside the lore either. Sanctus is a world without magic, so depending on what they eat there, I'd expect to see much of the same.
All that happens if you make 'roast chicken' spoil after 5 ingame days is that people end up running around more, I think. You might get some people who will 'buy beef jerky' as their secondary food when they are out grinding for a long time so that they don't have to go back to town for more chicken, even with a stat difference. It might be cool to have designated people to run food out to a big adventuring party.
But personally I think that if food is so oversupplied, or people are able to build up large unnecessary stockpiles, the problem may be moreso with the underlying materials supply to make that food, economically. And while it will prevent people from attempting certain market monopolies and undercut-wars on food, I'm not sure it would make it better even for the type of cook who doesn't much handle the economic side of it.