Ok, with TH's weekly "19 Questions" (each profession/area getting an answer every other week) I wanted to put together a thread where we can track questions we want posted to devs, and to act as an archive for answers. As we accumulate unanswered questions, those will be the pool that you should draw from when we select what we want to ask.

Legend:

• Question
• Dev Name: Answer direct from Dev. I will try to include links to the threads including the answers, since these will be usually be copied from public posts.
• Answer from devs filtered through correspondant. They prefer rewording rather than direct quotes, but these will have been "signed off on" by a dev.
• Speculative answer (no dev corroboration) or general comments.

As answers come in, I will add them with the appropriate coloring, and include the date it was answered.

Please contribute questions you feel we need answered, either by a reply to this thread, or in the bi-weekly post I will start to poll for Chef's next turn. I will start the poll thread on the Tuesday or Wednesday before our turn is up (every other Wednesday starting May 5th) to give time for some consensus to be reached.

Oh, and links may become outdated as threads get moved from In Live, In Concept, In Development, etc to "Development Cycle Archive".  If you happen to come across one that no longer exists, send me a PM and I'll track down the post in the archive and update the URL.

Why can't wookiees wear crafter's aprons, and when will it be fixed?

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=41451#M41451

Thunderheart: Please be patient. Its not just a matter of allowing Wookiees to wear the apron, the apron has to be created as a new art asset because Wookiees have a different skeleton than other playable races. This is something you can expect in an upcoming publish. (04-26-2004)

Why does the stomach filling remain after cloning when no other buff type has a re-buff limitation after death?

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=43606#M43606

Vass: The food/drink bars do not clear on death for game balance reasons. Clearing the food/drink bars on death has been suggested and considered, but it is not something that we currently plan to do. It is not a bug. Sorry. (04-26-2004)

My comments: stomach filling is food's only real limitation. It takes less time to eat/drink than to get a doctor/entertainer buff, requires no skill point investment (either the character's own points or another player's) to apply, has no downer, and is portable. For short-duration or instant effect foods, being able to instantly clear the stomach (even if it does require death) negates the "cost" that filling imposes.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_live&message.id=15208

Thunderheart: Foods have this limitation because there are some foods that are really powerful.  The reason stomachs don’t clear is so you can’t stack them after death and it’s partially a small death penalty.  Some foods give a very large bonus for a short time with a large filling (Flameout, Breath of Heaven, Vercupti, Ormachek, Blue Milk and a couple of others).  The major drawback to these is the fixed filling decay rate; the effect wears off before the stomach space is reclaimed.  If any method was available to negate this cost, these foods would either become unbalanced or would have to be reduced in power.

The other thing to think about is that as a buff, it’s not the same as other buffs.  The reason it is the only buff type with this limitation is because it’s the only buff that uses the player stomach.  Other buffs have time delays and other sorts of limitations.  To balance the many advantages foods have (they are portable, usable by anyone, does not require skill point investment or special location to apply, can be done during combat) that some drawback must be included; that drawback is filling and a fixed digestion rate that cannot be bypassed. (05-26-2004)

Is the 45m digestion time (compared to the 30m listed in the publish 6 patch notes) actually a bug, or was there an undocumented design change?

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=42341

Thunderheart: This is a bug that was reported by players and is currently being looked at by the programming team. (04-22-2004)

How do dodge foods work? Do you need to have the skill or equip a pistol/1-handed weapon? And why don't I see "creature tries to hit you but you evade" in my combat spam?

The dodge bonus foods (Air Cake, Pikatta Pie, and Deneelian Fizz Pudding) are not actually giving a buff to the Dodge skill. What they do is add a bonus to the player's defensive skills, which determines whether or not an attack hits at all.

These foods will not cause you to see "creature attacks you but you evade" in your combat spam. They should cause more attacks to miss you completely. If a hit does occur despite the food's bonus, then any evasion skills (dodge, counter, block) the player has may trigger, but that is separate from the effect of the food.

Since the bonus is added to the defensive skills of the general to-hit formula, it benefits anyone being attacked, whether or not they have the dodge skill.

The raw benefit you receive would depend on your existing defensive skills (melee/ranged defense, center of balance, etc) and the offensive skills of your attacker (weapon accuracy, bonus from posture, range modifier from weapon, etc). Someone with only 20 in defensive skills may see a large difference after eating a +20 Pikatta Pie. A master of an elite combat profession may see a smaller percentage increase in missed attacks since the Pie's +20 has a smaller contribution relative to their inherent defenses. (04-12-2004)

Questions pending answers:

How is the Havla and Ruby Bliel's "Heal recovery bonus" intended to work?

Is it a percentage reduction of the medic/doctor's unbuffed heal time? An increase to Injury/Wound treatment speed (so the relative speedup would be relative to their unbuffed skills)? Or something else? These two foods are currently bugged, except when you get Havla to a 100 bonus using BE additives, at which point it reduces the wait time to zero.

Why is the Nutrition/Flavor categories of Garrmorl and Durindfire dependent on PE/FL when the required resources lack those stats? This caps the experimental percentage at 33%, far below equivalent food/drinks.

Garrmorl's extrapolated Nutrition and Flavor at 100% matches up with the max buff/duration range for Vasarian Brandy and Accaragm. Durindfire's theoretic 100% matches up with the other "Defense vs. X" drinks like Ithorian Mist. Being capped at 33% (only having OQ in the resources) puts a pretty serious limit on these drinks.

Are Barrels going to be fixed? What multiplier will they have? Are they only intended for certain recipes (and if so which ones)?

It wouldn't surprise me if barrels gave a large quantity multiplier, but only for certain low-stack drinks like BoH and Flameout. Having a 4x or 5x multiplier to something like Brandy (with a minimum stack of 6) might be a bit much.

What is the status of the "manf_error_7" bug in factories? This happens when the output hopper (or perhaps output + input) gets to around 60% full.

What is the status of adding new food recipes?

The chef revamp removed around 25-50% of the number of items we can make, although the ratio of useful foods (even if some are special-case) is much better. The devs mentioned (through SirVimes) that new recipes would be added in future publishes/expansions.

Update (04-28-2004): Death Watch NPCs have a rare schematic drop for "Mandalorian Wine".  It requires Master Chef to learn, and has resources similar to Breath of Heaven (just with fruit substituted for oats).  This may or may not be intended to be on Live this early, there are rumors that CSRs are closing/deleting auctions for other looted schematics (new weapon components and weapons).  It's possible that these NPCs aren't supposed to be found outside the Death Watch Bunker, which isn't scheduled to go Live until the second mini-publish after Pub 8.

The existing "Defense vs. Poison/Disease" food (Cho-nor-hoola) seems inadequate in defending against CM poison/disease packs, even with BE additives. What are the chances this recipe will be tweaked up, or a new higher-power recipe added?

What are the plans on adding eating/drinking animations, or allowing food to be "equipped" so that the player's toon is visibly holding a glass or plate?

Some info from the "Core Systems" 5/26 "19 Answers" (they specifically mentioned eating/drinking animations):

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_live&message.id=15208

Thunderheart: We are currently developing our veteran rewards program and there are going to be a lot of new emotes as part of this program, though none for furniture sitting/laying down at this time.  It is something we do intend to put in, but considering all the states and animations a character can be in at any given time causes it to be a pretty big job. (05-26-2004)

Smuggler's delight does not give any downer reduction if it gets experimented up to 100% reduction.

Is this still a repeatable bug?

Are plates (quantity multiplier components for foods) a viable addition to chef items?  The community's preference is that these would be an optional component (so no equivalent of a drink's "small glass"), but the return on investment for BE additives is much less with food when compared with drinks, because there is no way to increase the number of doses of food.  Well, other than using a quantity additive, but that blocks being able to use more useful ones like Nutrition.

What role are food buffs intended to have in SWG, especially in relation to other buff types (doctor, dancer/musician, and spices)?  What are the balance choices as far as skill points required (both to create and to apply the buff), portability, player interaction, buff size, buff duration, resource requirements, and disadvantages?  What is the intended "focus balance" of foods: skill buffs, stat buffs, special effects (such as damage reduction)? 

What plans are there to improve the "storage crunch" of chefs and other crafters?  Between stacks of different resource types, components, vendors and tools, most crafting classes need a couple of houses just to have someplace to put everything.  Can we expect larger item limits on houses?  Larger crate sizes on components?  Special "storage only" structures, such as a warehouse that acts like a safety deposit box?  Item storage furniture (chests, cabinets, tool lockers, etc) that increase a building's item limit?

Some info from the architects' 5/26 "19 questions" answer:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_live&message.id=15208

Thunderheart: No, we will not change the resource stack size.  It should be mentioned that manufacturing runs of 1000 items happened because of a UI bug early on.  The slider only went up to 100 items, but players soon found out they could type in 1000 units on the manufacturing schematic.  We haven’t fixed this bug because we know players will consider it a big nerf, so we have hedged against doing this for the time being.  There have been discussions and debates (and posts) in the past contrary to this position, but it was ultimately decided that is not going to change.   The team will be meeting to see what is possible on the technology side and what is healthy for the game on the design side. (05-26-2004)

How likely would it be to remove the serial number restriction on components that do not effect the final item?  Drink containers (glasses and casks) do not require identical serial numbers to be used in a factory run.  Doing this on every item may make items requiring "x identical components" too easy to craft, but what about items that only require one component?

What process is there for adjusting foods whose effect is too out of sync with the chef level, buff usefulness or resource requirements? 

Some foods don't make much difference in the game as it exists now: Cho-nor-hoola's +20 poison/disease resist (with an additive) has little effect against a Combat Medic's poison attacks.  Some foods aren't useful enough for the resources required: T'illa T'ill reduces food filling bar by 25% (with an enhancement) but requires three rare inert gases and has a drink filling in the 70s or 80s.  Some foods give bonuses to skills that players don't care about, or give too small of bonus: Jaar (wookieroar), Vayerbok (block), Dweezl (trapping), and Chandad (surveying).

Message Edited by sciguyCO on 05-26-2004 07:05 PM

Some foods give bonuses to skills that players don't care about, or give too small of bonus: Jaar (wookieroar), Vayerbok (block), Dweezl (trapping), and Chandad (surveying).

imo the problem is with the skills themselves not the foods

I've used Dweezel and Chandad if you want improved exp gain they are very useful.

If traps were considered a major asset to hunting group (rather than just an assumption that someone is holgrinding ranger or starting a BH) or if sampling could even begin to compete with automated harvesting then these foods would sell pretty well

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sciguyCO wrote:

Why does the stomach filling remain after cloning when no other buff type has a re-buff limitation after death?

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dev_archive&message.id=43606#M43606

Vass: The food/drink bars do not clear on death for game balance reasons. Clearing the food/drink bars on death has been suggested and considered, but it is not something that we currently plan to do. It is not a bug. Sorry. (04-26-2004)

My comments: stomach filling is food's only real limitation. It takes less time to eat/drink than to get a doctor/entertainer buff, requires no skill point investment (either the character's own points or another player's) to apply, has no downer, and is portable. For short-duration or instant effect foods, being able to instantly clear the stomach (even if it does require death) negates the "cost" that filling imposes.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_live&message.id=15208

Thunderheart: Foods have this limitation because there are some foods that are really powerful.  The reason stomachs don’t clear is so you can’t stack them after death and it’s partially a small death penalty.  Some foods give a very large bonus for a short time with a large filling (Flameout, Breath of Heaven, Vercupti, Ormachek, Blue Milk and a couple of others).  The major drawback to these is the fixed filling decay rate; the effect wears off before the stomach space is reclaimed.  If any method was available to negate this cost, these foods would either become unbalanced or would have to be reduced in power.

The other thing to think about is that as a buff, it’s not the same as other buffs.  The reason it is the only buff type with this limitation is because it’s the only buff that uses the player stomach.  Other buffs have time delays and other sorts of limitations.  To balance the many advantages foods have (they are portable, usable by anyone, does not require skill point investment or special location to apply, can be done during combat) that some drawback must be included; that drawback is filling and a fixed digestion rate that cannot be bypassed. (05-26-2004)

 

Message Edited by sciguyCO on 05-26-2004 07:05 PM

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Mayor_Woosh wrote:

I agree 100%. Filling remaining in a new clone makes no sense what so ever. Dying has enough penalty associated with it in the form of equipment decay. One thing that I hate about any online game (why I left DAOC) is waiting to have fun.

 

Dying and then having to wait to jump back into the action because I cannot use some food is NOT fun in my mind.

 

Please reconsider and change it.

 

 

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The problem is that if you can use foods immediately after cloning, it will become necessary to always use foods in order to be competitive. In essence, the richer player can buy victory. (Imagine you could synthsteak, brandy, and what not while your opponent couldn't.) Skill will take a lesser role in combat, and who can burn more money on foods and drinks will have a definite edge... I imagine the reasoning will become more understandable (and the effect of food more pronounced) post combat revamp.

As for the question listed above of "what is the role of foods as compared to doctor buffs", I thought I read a dev (possibly TH in a 19 answers, I don't remember) say that doctor buffs would become muted but long lasting, and that spices and foods would become the very short term intense effect buffs. I don't remember where I read that though, so it might not be worth posting in your answers section.

Message Edited by jfang on 06-21-2004 02:54 PM

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jfang wrote:

 

 

Edit: By the way, I agree that combat is somewhat messed up right now such that if you die once you are at a major handicap. I hope that the combat revamp fixes that so that doctor buffs and what not are "edges" and not "requirements" to do things. The not clearing stomach space is probably in preparation for that time, where buffs are useful but not necessary. Clearing the stomach would make it easy to always be chef buffed, and thus make it a requirement again...

Message Edited by jfang on 06-21-2004 02:54 PM

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First I'll say I would prefer stomachs to empty on cloneing.   I don't know many people against this.  It obviously helps most people.

However I do have one good(well at least I think its good ) reason for it staying it.  Right now death has virtually no penalty.  Decay I guess is a small penalty, but with the amount of credits people seem to have now days, I really don't think anyone cares much anymore.   As a crafter I care more if I die just because of my exp cloths if I happen to have them on.  My armor decays 50 times faster by just fighting than when I die.

Is this a good penalty though?  Not sure.  Its right on the line between letting the player have the most enjoyment they can and coming closer to reality.  Should people be able to duel non stop for hours as long as they have enough credits to buy the food?   Or should there be some required down time in there.

I've relaxed on the issue a lot.  It doesn't bother me as much, just because if I died, I usually have to wait a while anyway to reapply buffs, heal bf, ect..  The downtime is already there, something else just goes on at the same time now.  I don't go on a lot of raids and I don't PvP a whole lot though.  I'm sure these cases might be different

I will also add that food is not necessary.  Many people do think that and have that mindset.  Obviously you can't sit there spamming specialls with no food, but that doesn't mean you have to eat food.  There are many people out there that don't eat food.  It will always be a bonus.  For those that get used to the bonus, it becomes a requirement.   That requirement will never go away, because the person always becomes used to useing it and their play style changes because of it.

Up until the revamp I never ate a single piece of food, I just never needed it.  Looking back I'm surprised I didn't use it, but that doesn't mean I was worthless in combat for those 6ish months. 

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Numen wrote:

I've relaxed on the issue a lot.  It doesn't bother me as much, just because if I died, I usually have to wait a while anyway to reapply buffs, heal bf, ect..  The downtime is already there, something else just goes on at the same time now.  I don't go on a lot of raids and I don't PvP a whole lot though.  I'm sure these cases might be different

I will also add that food is not necessary.  Many people do think that and have that mindset.  Obviously you can't sit there spamming specialls with no food, but that doesn't mean you have to eat food.  There are many people out there that don't eat food.  It will always be a bonus.  For those that get used to the bonus, it becomes a requirement.   That requirement will never go away, because the person always becomes used to useing it and their play style changes because of it.

Up until the revamp I never ate a single piece of food, I just never needed it.  Looking back I'm surprised I didn't use it, but that doesn't mean I was worthless in combat for those 6ish months. 

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jfang wrote:

 

The problem is that if you can use foods immediately after cloning, it will become necessary to always use foods in order to be competitive. In essence, the richer player can buy victory. (Imagine you could synthsteak, brandy, and what not while your opponent couldn't.) Skill will take a lesser role in combat, and who can burn more money on foods and drinks will have a definite edge... I imagine the reasoning will become more understandable (and the effect of food more pronounced) post combat revamp.

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Message Edited by Zynix on 06-28-2004 10:41 AM