Would you like a crock pot/cooking rebalance or rework?

[Primalflower]

I've always had pipe dreams of gorge cooking being implemented into the real game, sort of replacing crock pots and giving just a bit more depth to the cooking system as it exists now. Mods made by friends prove to me that I would totally enjoy this concept, but at the same time, I feel like It can never be, due to the fact that there are crock pot skins that already exist and therefore would have to be rewritten to be something else in the scenario where gorge cooking happens, which is something I don't know if klei would be willing to deal with. just my two cents

[_mylilsunshine_]

if they do eventually do something about cooking, i hope that at least they would implement the mod "repeat crockpot", where you can repeatedly cook the latest recipe you cooked. if cooking is overhauled and that crockpot cooking style isn't here anymore, that's fine too

[Cheggf]

At most there could be a handful of dishes receiving some tweaks. For example, pumpkin cookies aren't really better than taffy despite being basically the same recipe as taffy with a farm plant added. Fishsticks are twice as good as fish tacos despite being easier to make. A few dishes like these could receive buffs, although obviously not the dishes which are intentionally bad as sort of "soft failure" recipes that only see situational use.

[Auth]

I already hardly ever make crockpot meals because I find moving ingredients from one place to another and then waiting to do it again to be quite tedious and time-consuming from other things that are more fun. (i.e. anything)

If this happened and replaced the existing system entirely, I'd probably just stick to basic food items and jerky for the grand majority of my playthrough.

If this was any other survival game, sure, but due to the sheer amount of food you need to constantly eat in this one, it usually means, for people like me anyways, you just prepare the meals you want in big bursts when you have the ingredients then coast off of what you made/forage in the meantime. 

IMO, it is not worth the time and issues that will arise.

If I were to say anything, though, maybe in the case of something like ratatouille or fistful of jam, where the cost can easily outweigh the produce, maybe make crockpots "smart" and have them produce multiple dishes to compensate for the value of the food put in. Doesn't really change anything balance-wise (they could've just eaten the ingredients raw) besides making such dishes less punishing to clueless players.

[Cheggf]

13 minutes ago, Auth said:

If I were to say anything, though, maybe in the case of something like ratatouille or fistful of jam, where the cost can easily outweigh the produce, maybe make crockpots "smart" and have them produce multiple dishes to compensate for the value of the food put in.

These dishes are intentionally bad, a step above wet goop. You should not be able to mindlessly throw in any random assortment of items and always benefit from it. You should cook with purpose. 

[Well-met]

Half the players would quit on sight if gorge cooking got forced into the main game.

[Kwaik]

34 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

if they do eventually do something about cooking, i hope that at least they would implement the mod "repeat crockpot", where you can repeatedly cook the latest recipe you cooked. if cooking is overhauled and that crockpot cooking style isn't here anymore, that's fine too

I think a more practical solution 

Upgraded endgame  crockpot combined with refrigerator (and lets just say an elastospacer) 

You could put a stack of food in each spot and have it output to an output slot (for the finished dish) 

This way you can set 4 stacks of food in a crockpot and just do the same thing without  having a repeat function. 

 

Even more ideal would be if it allowed you to have it stack the finished dish (ie make a stack of 20 meatballs)  which I think is reasonable as in my mind this would be an end game elastospacer type item 

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, Primalflower said:

I've always had pipe dreams of gorge cooking being implemented into the real game, sort of replacing crock pots and giving just a bit more depth to the cooking system as it exists now.

Not trying to come off as snarky but did it have more depth? I haven't played gorge in a bit but as far as I remember it's just 3 more or less identical structures that are essentially just crock pots that each have their own list of valid recipes + having to wait to take the dish out before it burns (this doesn't add more depth, it's just meant to give the dedicated cook something to do in that gamemode)

While I'm not against tweaking a good number of recipes I really don't think the mechanic itself needs any changes, nor do I think gorge cooking specifically would add anything of value to the base game

[Auth]

30 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

These dishes are intentionally bad, a step above wet goop. You should not be able to mindlessly throw in any random assortment of items and always benefit from it. You should cook with purpose. 

Definitely not benefit from it, but at least get a slight return on investment. For the most part from what I've seen, players learn recipes organically by throwing stuff into a crockpot and seeing what comes out. The crockpot is effectively eating the bulk of the ingredients sometimes and while it's not really an issue (if you have the ingredients to spend on slapping stuff mindlessly in a crockpot you have the ingredients to slap stuff mindlessly into yourself) I just think it'd be cool if the game would kind of compensate a little. (4 pumpkins is 150 hunger, cooking them together in a crockpot vaporizes it down to 25; getting 1-2 other helpings from the crockpot in this specific case so it's instead 50-75 would feel at least a little nicer while still proving that this recipe shouldn't be repeated)

Admittedly more of a flavor addition that'd barely come up in active gameplay.

But also I'm the kind of person that thinks using ice as filler should lead to wet goop unless the recipe specifically calls for ice, so. It doesn't really matter.

[_mylilsunshine_]

34 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

Not trying to come off as snarky but did it have more depth? I haven't played gorge in a bit but as far as I remember it's just 3 more or less identical structures that are essentially just crock pots that each have their own list of valid recipes + having to wait to take the dish out before it burns (this doesn't add more depth, it's just meant to give the dedicated cook something to do in that gamemode)

While I'm not against tweaking a good number of recipes I really don't think the mechanic itself needs any changes, nor do I think gorge cooking specifically would add anything of value to the base game

and when we look at other games like, maybe stardew valley, minecraft, terraria, etc. how much depth do they really have in cooking? it's all just using X ingredients to craft/produce Y food, it's not like you're playing chef simulator in any of those games.

even when we look at more intensive games, like monster hunter wild, genshin impact, skyrim, etc. they all want to streamline the cooking process so the players won't have to spend too much time on it, so that they can engage with other, better developed content.

DST is actually the first game i've played with a more involved cooking mechanic. you still need a structure, ingredients, recipe, and time, but fillers and food types add another layer to it that others don't quite have.

i don't like mass cooking and then bundle/bin all of it, feels laborous and mundane, but it think it's a different issue from cooking mechanic. if the cooking mechanic had more depth/was more involved, this mass cooking process would be even more of a drag and people would dislike it.

[cybers2001]

Man, people hate the idea of change so much, they will happily play a game for thousands of hours and spend hundreds of those hours in the same kitchen designs with the same tight circle of crockpots around the same salt/ice boxes if it means not having to adapt to new mechanics.

[Cheggf]

32 minutes ago, Auth said:

Definitely not benefit from it, but at least get a slight return on investment. For the most part from what I've seen, players learn recipes organically by throwing stuff into a crockpot and seeing what comes out. The crockpot is effectively eating the bulk of the ingredients sometimes and while it's not really an issue (if you have the ingredients to spend on slapping stuff mindlessly in a crockpot you have the ingredients to slap stuff mindlessly into yourself) I just think it'd be cool if the game would kind of compensate a little. (4 pumpkins is 150 hunger, cooking them together in a crockpot vaporizes it down to 25; getting 1-2 other helpings from the crockpot in this specific case so it's instead 50-75 would feel at least a little nicer while still proving that this recipe shouldn't be repeated)

Admittedly more of a flavor addition that'd barely come up in active gameplay.

But also I'm the kind of person that thinks using ice as filler should lead to wet goop unless the recipe specifically calls for ice, so. It doesn't really matter.

I think ideally this mod should be made base to make it a little easier to see how things are affecting you instead of needing you to remember 3 numbers then do math on 3 new numbers, and certain fringe cases should be handled with new dishes. For example, your pumpkin example could be better. While I don't think 4 pumpkins should result in a good recipe, I think pumpkins should get their own unique failure dish that's less bad than ratatouille. Something like anything with at least 2 pumpkins that doesn't make a real recipe (priority a little higher than ratatouille) could make a plate of gourds or whatever that restores 75 or 90 hunger. It's probably better to just eat the raw pumpkins, but it isn't such an enormous difference, and you could use it to freshen the pumpkins up or eat them as Warly. 

[Guille6785]

33 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Man, people hate the idea of change so much, they will happily play a game for thousands of hours and spend hundreds of those hours in the same kitchen designs with the same tight circle of crockpots around the same salt/ice boxes if it means not having to adapt to new mechanics.

Maybe they like those mechanics??? wth

[Chewabacca]

47 minutes ago, cybers2001 said:

Man, people hate the idea of change so much, they will happily play a game for thousands of hours and spend hundreds of those hours in the same kitchen designs with the same tight circle of crockpots around the same salt/ice boxes if it means not having to adapt to new mechanics.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you saying that Klei should change things up just for the sake of change? If so, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense since you being tired of the crockpot mechanic isn't the same thing as there being a problem with it. Or are you saying that the way the crockpot works currently forces people to use that same kitchen design? If so, that also doesn't make sense because I've gone hundreds of hours without once using that design except on pubs.

[hyoton123]

I wouldnt mind some *minor* rebalancing, or making it take less clicking, but i’m okay as is. Or more convenience with cookbooks.

[Maxil20]

I think as others have expressed concerns, directly adding gorge cooking might not be the best approach. I think unlike farming, which had considerable flaws and only had a very small minority that actually liked using the old system and a refresh was low risk, a lot of people are neutral/neutral-positive about crockpots, and the flaws of said system really boil down to very lategame usage and/or undertuned dishes. I think it's a system that, while simple, does pretty good at staying relevant while not being overcomplicated, and allowing a bit of strategy to "game" the system in your favor with the ingredients used.

That's not to say, of course, that things can't be adjusted with the current system. I really wish in particular bulk cooking (which you are heavily encouraged to do later on via the bin), was more streamlined. I'm able to have a reasonable time via some mods to streamline the process as much as the client possibly can, but It's still very lengthy, and is not possible on consoles where the cumbersome nature of bulk cooking is very apparent there (You not only need to do quite a number of short animations to input ingredients and play a "normal" animation to even start cooking, you also have to manually walk by each pot to harvest the dishes!). I think the "easiest" choice has been suggested here quite a bit, where you can elasticspace a crock pot to shove stacks of ingredients at once to bulk cook dishes. It would help a ton for bulk cooking, especially on consoles.

As for crockpot foods, I wish they did what they did in Staying Afloat and buff dishes that are rather undertuned at the moment. Melonscicle, pumpkin cookies, fruit medley, and stuffed eggplant are my choices for dishes that feel very mediocre for the effort but could be buffed in simple/unique ways to make them more appealing (I still wish crockpots utilized the system of giving multiple items per "dish" way more than they do, it's such a cool concept for jellybeans and things like pumpkin cookies making 2 per batch would have some serious potential).

Little things like that would go a long way. It certainly wouldn't add an absurd amount of excitement, but changes like that are quite nice.

 

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

These dishes are intentionally bad, a step above wet goop. You should not be able to mindlessly throw in any random assortment of items and always benefit from it. You should cook with purpose. 

As weird as this is to say, Fistful of jam is one of my favorite dishes because it's not meant to be a punishment dish/intentionally detrimental, and does have a unique purpose.

Jam's main gimmick is you lose a little bit of hunger in exchange for a significantly better spoilage time. Compared to the berries 6 or juicy berries 2 days, fistful of jam lasts a surprisingly long 15 days. It's one of the few dishes where I feel a gimmick like that actually pays out. Doesn't really matter much when you have thousands of hours in this game, but when I was a "new" player I used to unironically make the dish quite a bit, especially since in combo with an icebox the jam will stay fresh throughout most of a season.

[WilsonHiggs]

I dont know any survival with a cooking system as complex and varied as dont starve's. Some recipes need tweaks, sadly klei cant nerf the dishes that makes most dishes redundant, but adding a system that consists on being afk vigilant of one dish...isnt fun, new players would hate it and would be annoying when you have 274732 other stuff to do at once

In gorge the system looks cooler because you are basically only cooking...

[Cheggf]

32 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

I dont know any survival with a cooking system as complex and varied as dont starve's. Some recipes need tweaks, sadly klei cant nerf the dishes that makes most dishes redundant, but adding a system that consists on being afk vigilant of one dish...isnt fun, new players would hate it and would be annoying when you have 274732 other stuff to do at once

In gorge the system looks cooler because you are basically only cooking...

There are no dishes that make most dishes redundant. 

[WilsonHiggs]

28 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

There are no dishes that make most dishes redundant. 

No? Not only dishes but also ingredients like pierogis/blue caps vs most healing dishes or bacon and eggs/honey ham/meat stew vs every single hunger dish? There is no point of going out of your way to get certain ingredients to make a recipe that isnt even as good as the ones you can make with what you get by playing normally 

[Szczuku]

3 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Not trying to come off as snarky but did it have more depth?

-3 structures rather than one

-ingredients actually go into a vessel and then into the structure

-firewood needed and cooking speed depends on the fire, rather than just hitting 'start cooking' button

-actually needed to monitor the cooking process as dishes could end up burned

-using the cooking structures to create ingredients needed for cooking from inedible materials (sugarwood sap into a syrup)

-ability to improve a dish using salt and silverware

-the need to actually prepare some ingredients before hand, rather than using them directly in the cooking (wheat into flower and grinding up spice)

Yeah, I'd say it had plenty more depth than the current 'here's a crafting station for dishes but with a different interface when compared with other crafting station and you have to wait a bit'

[Edible Coal]

rather than just making a new crock pot system or moving forge system into dst
they should add new ingredients that require specific structure to make them and cant be forge in the wild

[Guille6785]

17 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

-3 structures rather than one

-ingredients actually go into a vessel and then into the structure

-firewood needed and cooking speed depends on the fire, rather than just hitting 'start cooking' button

-actually needed to monitor the cooking process as dishes could end up burned

-using the cooking structures to create ingredients needed for cooking from inedible materials (sugarwood sap into a syrup)

-ability to improve a dish using salt and silverware

-the need to actually prepare some ingredients before hand, rather than using them directly in the cooking (wheat into flower and grinding up spice)

Yeah, I'd say it had plenty more depth than the current 'here's a crafting station for dishes but with a different interface when compared with other crafting station and you have to wait a bit'

this is not what depth is, what you're describing is complexity, adding more steps to a process does not make it more deep (and half the things you're describing aren't even part of the cooking process, just the gorge in general)

[Cheggf]

39 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

No? Not only dishes but also ingredients like pierogis/blue caps vs most healing dishes

Pierogis are expensive and have the slow eating animation, and blue caps drain tons of sanity. Those are not very good sources of healing, those are what you make at the start of a world because you're rushing something and your options for immediate healing are limited. 

40 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

bacon and eggs/honey ham/meat stew vs every single hunger dish?

And also beefy greens, and dragonpie, and tall scotch eggs, and if you happen to have the resources turkey dinner or stuffed fish heads, and if you're in a pinch or certain characters meatballs, and if you have monster meat but nothing else omelets. Which hunger dishes are even left at this point? Which ones are "redundant" to that huge list?

43 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

There is no point of going out of your way to get certain ingredients to make a recipe that isnt even as good as the ones you can make with what you get by playing normally 

"Playing normally" = whatever it is that you do every single world with no variation, improvisation, or adaptability, and if anything ever goes wrong you just die I guess. Even if you're "playing normally" it's just as easy if not easier to get beefy greens and tall scotch eggs, and those other dishes like stuffed fish heads (sailing) and turkey dinner (killed moose) are infinitely easier to get for infinitely less effort than other food sources.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I could imagine there being kitchen upgrade, moving a lot of crockpot foods over to more complex stations + adding stacked cooking.

Either those or Klei would make crockpots extra tall and goofy looking and say job done for cooking large quantities of food.

I would love us having kitchen progression and locking away some foods from crockpots in order to get to much higher quality and increased amounts of food cooked per unit. I been begging some sort of change to cooking in DST considering that farming exists now and food balance all over the world with the ingredients being either super available or way too rare before becoming common for us to get some sort of depth to these mechanics.

I'd even beg for drying rack rope extensions for multiple dries. Jerky I guess doesn't need a container to hold them fresher but just needs to have more ways to produce more of it without placing too many of those large ugly structures.

[Mike23Ua]

I love the WintersFeast cooking mini game thing, I love the building a table, throwing food in large oven, placing on table etc.

But I’d really enjoy for Klei to do the same thing for Cooking, that they did for Fishing, Gardening & Sailing, they’re all more complex, they all involve more player involvement and dare I say this: They’re all actually fun.. or well *More fun than they were before*

Standing around waiting for a crockpot to finish cooking food is boring..  I want to do neat stuff like I don’t know, stirring the food in a large pot. Im sure a lot of people won’t share my same opinion, but I think it’d be fun if done right.