Cooking in RPGs

[ds]

Crafting in general is usually either pointless tedium or makes unique loot redundant, both of which are pretty crappy. At least cooking produces consumables so is less likely to have the second problem but its still important that it fills a different need than other items you can find, e.g. with food providing baseline long-term healing or buffs while magic potions provide more drastic effects - or the opposite, cooking with rare ingredients giving more powerful results than whatever ready-made provisions you find laying around.

Food as a pure survival/buff mechanic tends to fall into the tedium end unless it is overpowered (for buffs) or can be ignored (for survival). I think it works better when used to make the world feel more realistic or when it is used for creative quest solutions by e.g. giving an NPC food prepared with ingredients that you have learned will get him to run to the toilet - so essentially when its more of an adventure game mechanic.

At most you assign a character to cooking like Kingmaker. it can be a logistical concern, but if you're stuck on a crafting menu to make soup, the game is probably fucking up.

A separate cooking menu is probably not the best way to implement this - I like it more when you can combine items directly in the inventory like in point & click adventures. That does limit how complex recipes can realistically be but that's perhaps not a bad thing.

 

[Tweed]

I like cooking in games. I enjoyed baking bread in Ultima 7.

Spoiler

:^)

 

[deuxhero]

with Ashfall you can just stock up on cheap scuttle and bread in any inn, its mechanics never become intrusive

That's the problem: If it's trivial to mitigate the need for food, the system might as well not exist. To make a hunger system worthwhile it needs to actually be a concern when your next meal is, not just a rout of "when hunger low, eat cheap item that you carry for this and this alone" or it's a pointlesss annoyance. I think for food to mater it would need to
1: Spoil. This is a big one that I can only recall seeing in KCD. If food doesn't spoil, there's no reason to not just stock up on the best cost-per-hunger/weight ratio food and ignore the mechanic. Dragon's Dogma also had a spoiling mechanic, but no food mechanic. It does get a note for (mostly) forcing the pick between light food that spoils, or heavy jarred food that doesn't.
2: Require some kind of balanced diet. If there's just one "hunger" bar, the player is encouraged to stuff their mouth with the cheapest food alone. No need to fully simulate a diet, just Calories, Protein, Vitamin C and maybe Calcium are enough to force a varied diet since it's impossible for a single ingredient to give everything in any quantity (you'll need a full kilogram of carrots or half a kilogram of potato to get a day's vitamin c). Also calorie need should depend on user activity instead of flat burn so there's some incentive to not just do jumping jacks everywhere.
3: Realistic weights for food. No quarter pound cob of corn that gives 9 hours of food. Assuming a 2000 calorie diet, deadly low for someone as active as the Courier, and a flat burn rate, since it is flat in NV, the corn on that cob provides 750 calories (and a decent amount of water). In reality a quarter pound of dried cornmeal, with no wasted cob, is merely 410.501122 calories. Don't even get me started on the bottles of water that literally weigh nothing (weight of empty bottle=1 pound, weight of same bottle when full=1 pound). Failure to do this, above all other issues, is what trivializes hunger mechanics. Being chained by how many supplies you can carry, with the unreliable extension of foraging, actually makes hunger interesting. Being able to carry 10 loafs of cheap bread and eat them over a week does not.

(Games like Tales of and Bloodstained where characters don't actually need to eat but food is a source of stat bonuses aren't the same thing)

Would be an interesting mechanic if money (or food itself) was ever scarce enough in RPGs for it to be valuable as either a cash sink or as a way to influence companions and other NPCs socially. I always felt that mealtime at camp or the night at the inn serves as the natural spot for the lengthy character discussions and planning. Too often does food just wind up rewarding some retarded stat boost, when a roast dinner at most it should be cheering you up while draining your fatigue.

Arguably Kenshi does the money sink and scarcity part. Food security is the main logistical hurdle to expanding your party since hires are a one time fee or unreliable rescues. While the cost is bearable (mostly) for a solo adventurer, it quickly balloons for a small gang, especially as vendors don't have a huge surplus of food. Unfortunately it's over entirely once you have any kind of self contained farming and cooking setup.

I get you, but in KC:D you can also easily trivialise the mechanic by just keeping a reserve of wine, because that doesn't spoil and fills you up without getting drunk. Same with dry meats, it even gives you a "balanced diet" buff if you manage to not become hungry for a week iirc. I exclusively played the game in hc mode and never had to worry about food.

The bigger issue is that absolutely nobody cares if you eat food from their pots. The game has an elaborate crime system, but pots of food are immune to it for some reason.

Crafting in general is usually either pointless tedium or makes unique loot redundant, both of which are pretty crappy. At least cooking produces consumables so is less likely to have the second problem but its still important that it fills a different need than other items you can find, e.g. with food providing baseline long-term healing or buffs while magic potions provide more drastic effects - or the opposite, cooking with rare ingredients giving more powerful results than whatever ready-made provisions you find laying around.

Food as a pure survival/buff mechanic tends to fall into the tedium end unless it is overpowered (for buffs) or can be ignored (for survival). I think it works better when used to make the world feel more realistic or when it is used for creative quest solutions by e.g. giving an NPC food prepared with ingredients that you have learned will get him to run to the toilet - so essentially when its more of an adventure game mechanic.

At most you assign a character to cooking like Kingmaker. it can be a logistical concern, but if you're stuck on a crafting menu to make soup, the game is probably fucking up.

A separate cooking menu is probably not the best way to implement this - I like it more when you can combine items directly in the inventory like in point & click adventures. That does limit how complex recipes can realistically be but that's perhaps not a bad thing.

Cooking should be done as a camp action, which takes the cook's times, ala Expeditions (and whatever the game they took the camp task system from). Abstract it so that compatible foods used together get a slight boost without increasing time and let the player imagine what is cooking. That, or do what Kingmaker (and Tales of) did and have certain recipes give buffs while forcing you to use particular ingredients.

 

[oscar]

If it's a survival-ish game in a very impoverished, low level or desolate setting it can make sense.

Fuck no if I'm some RPG billionaire with ten magic swords that could each buy the damn inn fifteen times over. Why the fuck would I be wasting my time chopping carrots and gathering rosemary when I'm the only thing between a dragon or army of demons destroying the world? Did Hannibal and Julius Caesar spend two hours a day preparing stews? With 50,000 gold pieces in my inventory surely I can afford a chef to whip me up something nice.

In general survival mechanics are dumb in RPGs and don't connect to the story at all (especially past the very early game).

 

[Tihskael]

Do it like the Japanese or go home.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Did Hannibal and Julius Caesar spend two hours a day preparing stews?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

No, generally its pointless. Same as potion making or smithing.

If you are a warrior then that is your profession, you would not have 40 years to spend mastering a craft such as smithing.

However, I think its ok to have characters in game that can make weapons, armour and food for you if you pay them enough, find them rare ingredients, materials and so on. I think that works.

 

[thesecret1]

I liked it in archolos. Worked as both naturally foraged health potions (and, economy being tight in Archolos, a money saver like that was always appreciated), and a way to permanently boost your stats with certain recipes. Worked as a great incentive for exploration, as even a stupid mushroom you can find all over could be turned into something that made you permanently stronger eventually

 

[Krivol]

I liked it in archolos. Worked as both naturally foraged health potions (and, economy being tight in Archolos, a money saver like that was always appreciated), and a way to permanently boost your stats with certain recipes. Worked as a great incentive for exploration, as even a stupid mushroom you can find all over could be turned into something that made you permanently stronger eventually

Exactly this. It was the one and only cooking I could stomach in any game.

 

[Konjad]

Cooking and crafting are two things popular in RPGs that I despise.

 

[thesecret1]

For crafting, I had a good experience with the Horizon overhaul for FO4 (with additional loot scarcity cranked all the way up). There were virtually no healing items to loot (ultra rare drop, basically) and buying them from shops was prohibitively expensive. You had to craft them yourself. Ditto for basically everything else in the game, be it weapon mods, armor, or even bullets. You could loot the base item, but it'd be in terrible shape and need repair. Combined with extreme loot scarcity, you were essentially always short on everything, which made rooting through the junk that shitty game throws and finding a rare material actually exciting.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Outward (2019) was an experiment in adding survival mechanics to an Open World RPG, with cooking as a means to create items that were needed for logistical reasons:

 

[Stella Brando]

I did get some serious cooking done during Fallout 4.

 

[Hag]

Most of the pleasure in cooking is often is the social aspect of sharing a good meal. I'm a pretty decent cook and prepare usually one or two meals a day but when I'm alone I usually don't do it much. Also the pleasure is in smelling and tasting, so there is no point in doing it for fake in front of a computer.
Plus the systems are always shitty.

 

[turkishronin]

It's cool in Dragon Dogma when food can spoil

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout New Vegas prove that cooking and eating (hardcore system) is something of a niche interest.

 

[NecroLord]

Anyone here have a passion for cooking?
Or just Burger Kang and stuff like that?

 

[Alex]

with Ashfall you can just stock up on cheap scuttle and bread in any inn, its mechanics never become intrusive

That's the problem: If it's trivial to mitigate the need for food, the system might as well not exist. To make a hunger system worthwhile it needs to actually be a concern when your next meal is, not just a rout of "when hunger low, eat cheap item that you carry for this and this alone" or it's a pointlesss annoyance. I think for food to mater it would need to
1: Spoil. This is a big one that I can only recall seeing in KCD. If food doesn't spoil, there's no reason to not just stock up on the best cost-per-hunger/weight ratio food and ignore the mechanic. Dragon's Dogma also had a spoiling mechanic, but no food mechanic. It does get a note for (mostly) forcing the pick between light food that spoils, or heavy jarred food that doesn't.
2: Require some kind of balanced diet. If there's just one "hunger" bar, the player is encouraged to stuff their mouth with the cheapest food alone. No need to fully simulate a diet, just Calories, Protein, Vitamin C and maybe Calcium are enough to force a varied diet since it's impossible for a single ingredient to give everything in any quantity (you'll need a full kilogram of carrots or half a kilogram of potato to get a day's vitamin c). Also calorie need should depend on user activity instead of flat burn so there's some incentive to not just do jumping jacks everywhere.
3: Realistic weights for food. No quarter pound cob of corn that gives 9 hours of food. Assuming a 2000 calorie diet, deadly low for someone as active as the Courier, and a flat burn rate, since it is flat in NV, the corn on that cob provides 750 calories (and a decent amount of water). In reality a quarter pound of dried cornmeal, with no wasted cob, is merely 410.501122 calories. Don't even get me started on the bottles of water that literally weigh nothing (weight of empty bottle=1 pound, weight of same bottle when full=1 pound). Failure to do this, above all other issues, is what trivializes hunger mechanics. Being chained by how many supplies you can carry, with the unreliable extension of foraging, actually makes hunger interesting. Being able to carry 10 loafs of cheap bread and eat them over a week does not.
(...)

I think this would end up making the system too much of a pain, to be honest. Not saying it wouldn't work in a game where survival is supposed to be the focus. But the point of the mod, as I see it at least, is more of adding an interesting thing to do some of the time. It is easy to solve both hunger and thirst by just making a good stew (and getting some good stat bonus on top of that). Personally, I have no problem with the mechanic being just a side aspect of the game rather than a major one.

 

[Krivol]

Fallout New Vegas prove that cooking and eating (hardcore system) is something of a niche interest.

I actually liked HC content, but never actually used cooking in FNV (well, I used campfire to make bighorn steak a few times).

 

[Kev Inkline]

The Witcher is basically a cooking game with some rhythm game minigames ever so often. Some people claim it has some rpg elements, so I guess it counts.

 

[Cross]

Arx Fatalis does both cooking and crafting right, in a simple and intuitive way.



Later on you can get a spell that nourishes you and removes your hunger outright.

 

[JarlFrank]

I like cooking mechanics more than other crafting mechanics.

- it's completely optional
- I like food
- it's nowhere near as grindy as other forms of crafting

 

[Fargus]

I've been eating lots of meat lately and i rememebered how WG from New Vegas cooked their brahmins. That's how it should be done.

 

[Vic]

on this topic, my earliest PC gaming memories are making bread in Runescape, getting wheat, grinding it in the mill, getting a bowl and pot, mixing it to dough and finally baking it were really awesome to 10-year-old me.

I’ve tried to recapture this feeling since but gave up. Cooking is just another crap mechanic in games.

That being said, I’m currently playing the fan-translated Star Ocean for the SNES and I don’t know if it’s the same people who made the Tales series but I can see the similarities. Leveling up cooking and trying to figure out how to make everybody’s favorite dish is actually interesting and not just an excuse to shower the player with more loot.

 

[vitellus]

it's more often than not tied to some half-baked hunger mechanic, which leads to situations of constant annoyances.