Seafood Platters (And Most Food) Are Too Expensive

[Inkish]

I decided to take some time to do the math on the Seafood Platters to see if they were something viable my herbalist could make and to see if the fishing mini-game is worth the effort for cooking said dishes. It is my opinion that the answer is: No.

My reasoning is as follows:

1) The CP costs are too high.
- The costs for Seafood Platters (and from what I understand are 1 use items) are for Simple/Fine/Lavish to be 65/140/185. This is absolutely outlandish for a 1 use item.

2) The effects are too weak.
- For all the time and effort into getting the materials and crafting for the sole benefit of not having to eat or drink for 8/16/24 IG hours or, roughly 2.5/ 5 / 7.5 IRL hours, is absolutely underwhelming. Granted, if you're going into an event, I could see chowing down a Simple meal so you don't have to worry about it, but otherwise water/food management has always been rather cheap and negligible.

3) I can't sell it.
- Simply put, for the time, CP, and materials it will cost, no one is going to buy one of these meals. For roughly the same CP and relatively equivalent material load for a Lavish Platter (185 CP), I could make 10 Heal Potions, which frequently sell for about 2k at the low end. 20k gold. 20k buys like... 10k units in your choice mix of food/water. More than anyone would ever buy in their time playing a character. The most I could reasonably sell something like a Lavish Platter for, in regards to what it does, is MAYBE 500-1000 gold.

4) It's too much to make, materials wise.
- This is the itemized list, along with [CP costs] and (Extra materials earned) from making a single Lavish Meal

1 Lavish Seafood Platter [30] (+3 Jelly)
-5 Dark Roe
-2 Salmon Fillet
-4 Tentacle
-1 Shark Fin Soup [15]
--1 Water
--1 Wine
--1 Salt
--1 Speckled Egg
--1 Shark Fin
-1Fine Seafood Platter [25]
--5 Fruit
--1 Cod Liver
--5 Orange Roe
--2 Jellied Eel [30] (+2 Water)
---2 Mintspear Leaf
---2 Salt
---12 Jelly [20] (+4 Water)
----4 Water
----4 Salt
----20 Kelp
---2 Gutted Eel
--1 Simple Seafood Platter [20]
---1 Salt
---4 Crab Leg
---3 Fermented Mackerel [15]
----1 Water
----3 Salt
----3 Mackerel Chunk
---5 Sardine Skewer [30] (+1 Sardine Skewer)
----4 Mintspear Leaf
----2 Salt
----6 Gutted Sardine

While these things are not the most expensive to get (most materials for most crafting are not anyways), it is a laundry list of mats that exceeds pretty much any other requirement for any other item. Herbalism is pretty layered with high mat requirements anyways since there are potions that are used in other potions, but this takes it to a whole excessive level.


My recommendations?
Since I am assuming these are 1 time use items, as most food are, I am basing my recommendations and critique on that. There are no fish parts in the PCGG to test with.

These recommendations are meant to be exclusive of each other, not in conjunction with each other.

1) Make the items extremely cheaper CP-wise and/or components-wise.
-My recommendation for this is to drop the TOTAL CP costs to 10/15/20 if they remain with the same ingredients. This would also require a complete overhaul of the entire chain and CP requirements for all food items. I could see the CP being dropped to 20/30/40 if say the ingredients were cut down to 2-4 total items per tier rather than the 24 for Simple, 69 items for Fine, and 85 for Lavish.

2) Increase the number of uses.
-Probably the simplest fix. Increase the number of uses each meal gives. My recommendation would be at least 20 uses per Dish, but that would be a bare minimum.

3) Increase the duration.
- Also probably? an easy-ish fix is to increase the duration of the effect. I would say by a significant amount, instead of 8/16/24 IG hours, I'd recommend going excessively higher to 8/16/24 IRL days. 185 CP for something that could be sold for thousands so that a dedicated player wouldn't have to worry about their eating/drinking moodles for almost a whole month? Now that sounds worth it. I'd even recommend adding a fourth tier that actually uses some high end, end game reagents and components to make a Godly Meal, that completely eliminates the food/water moodles for the character forever. But, that's a fever dream.


In summary, the Meals as they are now simply are not worth making, selling, or even consuming. It's cool, they are something I'm sure people would love the effects of... but they are rather heavily gatekept even from the people who would be making them by just how insanely inefficient it is to make one.

[stoneheart-]

I have made these, one time.

I will never make them again.

It's just not worth all the time, it's extremely hard to gather everything, even if you are an avid fisher like myself. Ingredients like jelly, dark roe, mackerel chunk and kelp are very hard to accumulate in the needed quantities. You dont even really get much for making them.. they're heavy, take up 4 slots in the inventory, and Lavish has a kind of unappetizing icon to boot lol. Their "bonus" is not having to eat or drink for a day, which is kind of a token benefit because there are plenty of foods now that increase your food by a lot for much cheaper. I don't really see why anyone would go out of their way to make these currently.

I will say though that I don't really have any complaints about any other recipe. But that's just me.

[Baseili]

For clarity, the platters are single item, single use that prevent food and water meters from dropping for so many hours depending on the complexity. I think last I priced the most complex platter was nearly 10,000 gold in materials and crafting points, and goodness help you if the 1 roll hits on this nested recipe without a god save. They're useful but so painful and tedious to make that the majority ignore them, if the complexity was lowered it might just make them more appealing.

The rest of the foods may be slightly pricey, particularly if they use a spice/cocoa/coffee item but their increased food and water bonuses tend to make up for them.

[Rei_Jin]

It only stops Hunger decreasing, not thirst, and it's server specific. Change servers, and it goes away.

A member of my kobold tribe made some platters for me, and I spent half an hour RPing eating the various things in it, which was fun, but for the investment to make them, the benefit they provide is, simply put, not worth it.

Suggestion: These Seafood Platters actually become temporary fixtures that provide +25 Food and Water to those who click on them for a set time, so that they can be used in events or for RP (6 RL hours, 12 RL hours, 24 RL hours or until server reset)

[HeyLadyOfDecay]

Just raw materials maybe?

[stoneheart-]

Just raw materials maybe?

This might help, yes, but in the interest of providing more detailed feedback, I'll isolate what I feel are the "problem ingredients".

Mackerel chunks: despite being a common fish, mackerel aren't that common in my experience. Sure, they're not "rare", but they're not as common as you'd need to make even more than one of this dish. Sardines are by far and away the most common fish I catch at sea, not mackerels. Fermented mackerel requires 3 chunks each, and this recipe wants 3 for ONE platter. The recipe yields 3, but if you're making more than one (inviting people over for a dinner, which I view as the intended use of these) this does become a problem.

Jelly: You can either get this from jellyfish, sharks, or crafting. Jellyfish are somewhat rare, sharks are really rare. When you catch either of these you will get 1-3 jelly. If you craft it, it's 4 kelp. You can find kelp (1 at a time) from fishing, or from kelp plants underwater, which requires a diving bell. The result is 3 jellies from crafting, which is at a loss from the kelp required (4). To make a single seafood platter requires 2 jellied eel, which is 12 jellies. That's catching roughly 12 jellyfish or sharks, or 48 pieces of kelp.

Dark Roe: You get this from sturgeons, usually 1-3 at a time (and not from every sturgeon, lol!). That's fine, but these require HUGE BAIT to catch. Not only is it the most expensive bait, but it's way better use to catch sharks at sea, for probably FOIG reasons. The Lavish platter requires only 5 dark roe, but if you're making this for a dinner party or whatever you could be looking at 5-8 plates. Anyway, for the one plate, since roe does not drop every time from sturgeons, you could potentially be looking at anywhere from 2-8 sturgeons, which again is that much in huge bait. To add to this, you're not guaranteed to catch a sturgeon with the huge bait, so you're expending a bait every time for a CHANCE at getting one, which is made only more agonizing when you get a sturgeon that doesn't drop any roe.

I do appreciate the reason for the nested recipe, to represent the act of assembling a "spread" of sorts. But as usual with nested recipes, it results in something that is confusing, annoying, and needlessly materials-intensive. I think lowering the quantities required of these 3 ingredients would help, somewhat, but i think reducing the required materials--especially those that are derived from "bonus" drops from fish--would not be amiss.

The benefit is not worth the trouble, frankly, as roast fowl (2 medium meat 1 salt) fill you up 40% for ONE use. So if you eat 2 you're at 80% hunger easily, which is functionally the same as not having to worry about food. I really like the idea of luxury food, so I hope this gets better.

What would make this truly worth it is if it were like a food "fixture" that you could place, and people could go up to it, use it, and select "take serving", and receive a food item. It would be really, really nice to be able to feed a party/event without spam crafting the same thing over and over and putting it in a tailoring table, causing lag. Even if it had no other benefits, this would make it worth the trouble.

edited a few things for correctness and clarity