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Sigzy_29's avatar
Sigzy_29
Legend
6 years ago

Can we get an overhaul to cooking already?

As you know, Fishing and Gardening have had overhauls/updates where they significantly improved (at least in my opinion) both skills.

With cooking, currently, the food quality does not make sense! Sims with level 3 cooking skill are making excellent quality meals, with 0 actual fresh ingredients or just normal quality ones. Meals in TS4 range from (according to what I have experienced): spoiled, poor, normal and excellent. So, there's currently no meaning or purpose behind using fresh ingredients to cook and on top of that the current meal qualities, even how many of them there are, don't match up with the skill level or harvestable/ingredient quality.

Currently, harvestable quality can range from: Normal, Nice, Very Nice, Good, Great, Superb, Magnificent, Pristine, and Perfect

What I'm thinking is:

  • Cooking, baking, grill recipes, recipes from the cupcake maker and festival stall foods from various packs could have a range from: Spoiled - Burned - Poor - Normal - Nice, Very Nice, Good, Great.
  • Gourmet cooking and experimental recipes should have a higher range of meal quality, being that these meals are suppose to be top notch. Ranging from Spoiled - Burned - Poor - Normal - Nice, Very Nice, Good, Great, Superb, Magnificent, Pristine and Perfect


Even when perfect ingredients are used on normal cooking the recipes shouldn’t go as high as great. This creates a clearer distinction between normal and gourmet cooking.

The meal quality takes us to the next point which is…what’s the purpose of it and why so many?

Well besides matching the quality of the ingredients used, each meal quality should raise a sim’s hunger bar differently and give different values for different moodlets of similar emotions.
Ex. : Eating both spoiled, burned or poor quality meals all would give a sim an uncomfortable moodlet. Now, as we go down in meal quality that uncomfortable moodlet would have a higher value so that the worse it “tastes” the worse the sim feels. The timers for these moodlets should all be about the same however.

The worse the food is the least amount of hunger it fills and vice versa.

Regarding quick meals, I think they should be adjusted so that they do not increase sim’s hunger bars the same as a normal full meal but remain the exact same when it comes to moodlets and such.

Beyond that it would be interesting if there could be a "fail" attempt at cooking that has a high probability when sims have low skill level and are in an uncomfortable/angry/sad/dazed emotion while cooking. This would be nothing less than letting the food burnt (but without setting the stove on fire that mechanic would remain as is right now). This would work in a similar matter to how sims burn their food in TS3 but more dependent on the sim’s emotional state.

Personally, I would love if sims HAD to stock their home fridge with ingredients to be able to eat, it would give the player somewhere to spend simoleons and make it a little more challenging. They could still maintain the free quick meals. But I guess that is arguable, not sure how people would feel about that.

Thoughts?

16 Replies

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  • Sigzy_29's avatar
    Sigzy_29
    Legend
    6 years ago
    "ddd994;c-17274064" wrote:
    What about the cooking system from sims 2 on console??
    You picked your ingredients from the fridge, and chose which appliance to use, wether to chop it up on the counter, chuck it in the processor (RIP food processor lol), straight in the oven etc.. and you’d get a different meal at the end of it, according to what and how you choose to make it? You could experiment with your own recipes which obviously led way to some crazy concoctions lol.. There was a recipe book dependant on your cooking skill .

    Everything else OP was saying sounds great though and would be a great cooking overhaul :)


    I absolutely adored the cooking "crafting" system in the Sims 2 for the PS2, I remember it well. Some foods even had hearts pouring because they offered special buffs. But since we are far into the TS4's life now I don't think they would change the whole cooking system and the already existing recipes to that extend. Adding/changing the qualities of the food like they did with the plants in gardening seemed like a much more realistic request for a patch which is what I mainly suggested in the thread.

    I would adore if we could have grocery stores, actual grocery stores not just the ones we can kind of make with GTW. With special objects where sims can buy ingredients for recipes like shrimp, oysters, chicken meat, pork meat, tofu, etc, things you can't harvest or fish. They could even have those registers with NPC's, with the moving carpets where the grocery basket/bag slides. And update recipes to use those ingredients. Similar to TS3. But again, it would probably be too much for them, if we are being realistic.
  • Sigzy_29's avatar
    Sigzy_29
    Legend
    6 years ago
    "@Uzone27;c-17274109" wrote:
    I'm definitely on the same page with the OP

    To simplify things, drop the stove and fridge scores. (They never made sense anyway)
    Give them an environmental buff and stick with the reliability metric instead.( If your stuff tastes like fridge it's because you left it in there too long silly Sim)

    I'm not sure bumping failure states at the low end is a great idea, (We don't want to discourage noobs from trying their hand at cooking do we?)
    However the quality gradient should definitely be a bit deeper than just normal or (practically) inedible.
    At the higher end there is definitely room for more gradients tied to the quality of the ingredients (and skill level of course)

    As far as mood modifiers. I'm not certain those should be linked to the quality metric.
    I think the way they are doing it now suffices. (New recipe options pop up when in a specific mood)

    Shopping for ingredients? Sure if there are certain recipes that can only be achieved if you go to the store...that could work
    Aging of ingredients that sit in your fridge? ...that's an obvious oversight.
    A perfect apple stays perfect in the fridge forever and ever and ever and ever...(I exploit this all the time)

    I'd also like to add cooking competitions...anyone ever play Star Ocean?
    They did a great job with cooking in that game.

    Great ideas Sigz05!


    I'm not sure what this means. Sims are rarely in a negative emotional state, so burning the food wouldn't even be that common. But it would be a fun gameplay element to have and further tie in emotions to cooking, making sims feel more realistic. I know of the special recipes, but those are only for flirty, energised and playful emotions. Noobs need not be scared, my sims in TS3 burned many foods and I made them eat them :D

    Most of all I would really like fresh ingredients to matter and food qualities to have different impacts on sims, it's only logical. ;)

    Freetime for TS2 had cooking competitions. They were a fun little thing to do. I wish we had them as well.

    As a matter of fact I wish they introduced a table where sims can hold various "craftable" contests. Woodworking contests, cooking contests, photography and painting contests, based on the quality of the craftable, skill of the sim, and a little randomness if they are the same across all contestants. Maybe relationship with the judge could also be at play.
  • Trykmi's avatar
    Trykmi
    6 years ago
    I agree. Cassandra Goth that has practically -1 skill in cooking in my game (she's married to Caleb Vatore and he's the one cooking) managed to autonomously make a perfect garden salad... Just because she was inspired.
  • invisiblgirl's avatar
    invisiblgirl
    6 years ago
    They did change it a bit with the gardening update - if you used 'normal' quality harvestables in your cooking, the result would be 'poor', no matter how high high your cooking skill was. I'm glad you no longer need 'perfect' harvestables for a decent meal, since 'perfect' takes a long time to achieve with the gardening update, but cooking has levelled out. Once a Sim gets a couple of skill points in cooking, everything is 'excellent', even if you use 'normal' harvestables, which you can buy by buying seeds online (so, it's comparable to the grocery store fruits and veggies). In the hands of a skilled cook, that wouldn't matter, but a cook with low cooking skills should be limited to 'normal' at best.
  • thatsme_ever's avatar
    thatsme_ever
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago
    I couldn't agree more with the original post! It was changed, at least to some degree, with the gardening overhaul update, but of course nothing over the top happened and it still needs fixes and changes. I would love it if they could add some more recipes and slightly change the appearance of some of the existing ones. Not they are ugly or anything, but it would be awesome if, for instance, the dish appeared in two different versions instead of one. But maybe that's too much to ask, I don't know.

    More cooking appliances would be great as well, I know I'm in need of those in many of my builds.
  • Sazzmoo's avatar
    Sazzmoo
    6 years ago
    i agree. completely. i LOVED in sims 3 that my sims could toddle themselves off to the shopping district and fill up the fridge with what i wanted to varying degrees OR i could go onto the computer and buy the groceries (might be getting mixed up with sims 2 a little bit tho XD)

    i also loved that i could grow my own cheese, sausages, egg and steak im pretty sure if i had gardening skills high enough.

    for sims 4, my garden has basically become a means to money. ill make a garden salad it it uses two vegies and still costs money. i dont understand why. i have alot of vegies in the fridge why should it cost me anything.

    i like alot of people would be down for a farming/eco type pack. if thats ever bought in and we get things like chickens and other farm animals without a cooking update it would be a gaming crime IMO. a pack like that would allow cooking in game to be more realistic

    in terms of meal quality i am all for the suggested update. regardless of sims cooking level, once they have level 1 or 2 i rarely, IF EVER, see sims make a poor meal in sims 4. its like theyve suddenly become Michelin star cooks and everything is amaze-ing. gone are the sims 3 days where our sims at max cooking and with the skill journal completed (menu maven etc) could still, very rarely, burn a meal.

    i suggested this in the major feedback thread but id like to see better organisation of the recipes our sims know. i find it very frustrating trying to find cakes to cook among the list of cook options. id LOVE to see it have filter options so when i click 'cook/gourmet cook' it has a drop down for breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper, desert, special recipes. of course some items would be in several categories but itd be easier than scrolling for a basic cake. or move cakes to 'bake'. id also like to see selvadora and san myshuno (cant spell those) recipes get their own notepad list so i can quickly at a glance check what my sim knows and doesnt know to avoid over feeding them when on vacation or at a festival.

    like many skills cooking needs an overhaul as its ridiculous that we can have all the fresh ingredients under the sun but our sims still have to pay for meals and the produce just builds and builds up to the point wed all have thousands of dollars worth just loitering in our sims fridges

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