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Can we get an overhaul to cooking already?
Sigzy05
Posts: 19,406 Member
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:
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?
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?
12
Comments
do they even work that way now? I had always recalled that they were less efficient at filling the hunger need. Maybe I'm wrong tho
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I think you’re right. I don’t think all cooking is the same either, though. From what I’ve seen foods like chips and salsa or ceviche aren’t as filing as spaghetti or something.
Well, there is one level over Excellent, which I think is only possible if you've completed the Chef Aspiration.
I agree that the quality of ingredients should impact the quality of the dish, and that without fresh ingredients, excellent should be difficult (and there is one above that, if you've mastered the Chef aspiration) and rare depending on skill. A skilled chef can make an enjoyable meal from leftovers and canned food (they'll probably complain about it the whole time if they're a professional, but it can be done.) I mean, that's the whole point of some episodes of Chopped or Cutthroat Kitchen (or even the occasional episode of Top Chef.)
I don't agree that gourmet food should have a different quality scale. I mean, the label "gourmet" doesn't actually mean the food inherently tastes better, after all (despite what some may claim). It may be made with uncommon ingredients, or better cuts of meat (something that is a non-issue for Sims) and usually it involves advanced cooking techniques, but Gourmet Chili (to pull out a random example) is still Chili. Those spices are going to cover up any gourmet qualities of organic beans or finer cuts of meat (that really have no business being in anything as spicy as chili.) As one episode of Chopped demonstrated ... adding lobster to Chocolate mac and cheese doesn't actually improve it just because it's lobster.
Plenty of people also prefer a simple home-style cooking meal over any of the more complicated flavors of most high end offerings. One of the early (season 3, I believe) episodes of Top Chef pointed out that only about 30% of the US population that does eat out, eats at high end restaurants, even if they can afford it.
That said, I do think a cooking overhaul would be a good thing. I'm just not sure what, beyond having ingredient quality actually have an impact on the food, that should be. A new, broader scale over all would be good, as would a fail that didn't involve setting the kitchen on fire. But I'd have that scale apply equally to Gourmet and Home-style cooking.
Maybe an ability to substitute ingredients, with a corresponding increase in difficulty to get an excellent?
The US population isn't the whole world, I'm sorry to break it to you. Still, this skill already exists in the sims 4, so why is it that it should be another copy past version of the cooking skill?
That said, gourmet does mean that it's a higher quality food! Go to the dictionary if you need to. Of course it can still be as bad, which is why it would still include all of the low qualities, not just the higher ones. However it would have unique higher qualities, for both realistic purposes and for making it a more interesting and a unique skill compared to normal cooking.
Another interesting option however, that would also be interesting, is if all Gourmet Cooking skill recipes required you to have fresh ingredients similar to baking, for sims to be able to cook them. Instead of buying it straight from the fridge.
The chef aspiration is just for food that doesn’t spoil. You need the “Stoves and Grills Master” trait from outdoor retreat to get Impeccable food, as far as I know.
Something about the cooking skills that bothers me is that, when 'Baking' skill is present due to GTW, basegame/other ep cakes and pies are still part of 'Homestyle Cooking'. I feel like they should get recategorised if GTW is installed! (especially as someone who irl can bake decently and cook not at all)
It also annoys me that all City Living recipes are level 1 recipes? like a samosa is a bit more complex than a BLT! I get that its so sims can learn the recipe regardless of their skill level when they eat it, but maybe eating CL foods could add the recipe to their future level-up-recipe-gains, or have a popup like in Dine Out, 'sim would've learnt this if they had level X cooking/baking/gourmet skill'.
I wouldn't limit ordinary food to just great, infact i'd like to put it right up there with gourmet foods. how you prepare the food, what ingredients you use and how you cook it can make all the difference in the end, and then there is the random chance that even an unskilled cook, just an ordinary sim can hit 1/1000 chance of it being almost perfect to eat on that chance. But even a perfectly skilled cook can make poor quality food as well, so there should be a chance for that as well.
I never cooked a grilled cheese sandwich on a frying pan before a week ago, okay it was slightly burned but the first time was excellent with the right bread, of course in europe we have different stuff in our breads compared to American breads. but i tried it.
Also made my first coffee cake a few weeks ago, that turned out really good as well. But you never know if the next one is going to be better or worse.
I wouldn't mind the idea of having supermarkets in the game and greater use of garden features to grow fresh fruits, vegs and tatties, that way you got to make a choice: Do you go for cash crops or fresh produce to survive long enough to make something of yourself first? I'd find the challenge of a new sim in Crick Cabana, Nookstone or Havisham House in having to find the money to pay for their groceries. And due to the unique layout of some places like the center of Windenburg or the Island and other inaccesible locations like in Sulani and remote places like San Myshuno and Granite Falls, you need to go shop as you can't have food delivered to your doorstep.
Finally, limiting cooking foods while in an inspired mood to improve cooking chances doesn't make much sense, as long as you have a reasonly good mood, your food will come out great because you got a positive attitude and know what you are doing. if you are angry, sad or tense, of course you are more likely to make a lot of mistakes and your food is likely to come out less desirable than you'd like (and i avoided using negatives as a rule as it is stilll possible to have made something good even when angry).
Edit: Forgot about having a storage area of foods, a pantry. it would be nice if that was made an addition with various features to store foods away in a safe location so they can be brought out and used at another point. it also adds an extra design to the house.
Also could it be possible to use something smaller to make cupcakes because there’s no space in my kitchen for the cupcake factory machine.
I think it could be nice if sims could create their own recipes.
And I want more cooking appliances.
indeed. whisks instead of wooden spoons (and without that silly animation of stirring food in a pan without it spilling out), blenders (for smoothies and generally chopping up food if a knife is too much, it could be used at low level cooking skills where the knife replaces that at higher cooking skill).
more portable solutions like water coolers and vending machines for special lots, so sims can get a quick bite to eat.
Mini fridges for home use in bedroom/living room to avoid having a large fridge in the area (but are limited to only holding cooked foods), this way they are seperate from the main fridge and the food can be move around so a sim doesn't need to travel half way across the galaxy to get to the fridge and back.
Sandwich makers and waffle irons, for those lazy sims looking for a high fat less healthy option of grilled foods and doing a Homer Simpson, and let's face it we all wish we could have a day off to just go crazy making moon waffles!
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 [would be cool on a side note if you could choose to keep certain recipes and ditch others depending on households, like a family recipe cookbook? Plasma fruit pie for vampires, gumbo for hillbillies etc.. If they made more of a thing of recipes and ingredients, would also be cool if some could only be unlocked via looking online or watching the cooking channel, or even working in the culinary career?].
Everything else OP was saying sounds great though and would be a great cooking overhaul
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 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.
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
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.
I was just offering an opinion/commentary on your post
i mean exactly what I said.
More cooking appliances would be great as well, I know I'm in need of those in many of my builds.
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