Food buffs work during combat...YAY!

I totally love this change!

You totally made cooking an extremely worthwhile profession. Kudos.

 

Me too and I was such a big whiner about food and it not being as important if we weren't getting the food benefit at all times, plus it was way too strange and took away from the need to eat to being an important aspect of this game. It validates cooking and it validates decision making like 'don't forget to eat'. .

 

Woo hoo! Great news indeed! Thank you for the change, Devs!

 

If it's something that is always beneficial and something that everyone should always be doing... then how is it something worth making decisions about?

if (buff.active == false) {

eat(food);​

}

That's not a very appealing decision to make...

 

This is going to make my life SO much easier..

 

It is a reason for food and if you do not eat you will not get the buff. If the buff matters and is worth it then it is all worth it. It adds depth to the game and I know you see it as just another thing to do, but a cook who wants to sell his wares will appreciate us always needing to eat his food.

 

Hate to spoil the party but this is just temporary since from how I read it, they will make it so normal regen does not work in combat. This was under great debate in dev+. In the end, my guess is that we will end up with food working in combat and normal regen not working in combat for a new change that is equal with the exception that you really need to eat food. Right now, focus regen is far to fast. My hope is that people recognize that this will change so that the forums dont crash from all the complaints when later it is changed and people are getting what is normalized regen.

 

no Darkstarr said they changed it.

 

Technically if I recall, DarkStarr said they dialed it back to 33% for now and I read it to say that what they will just be dialing it down to 0 over time.

 

I expect that this will get a fat nerf soon.

[edit] They knocked the base focus regen for combat down to one per second on QA and it was painful (food also didn't apply during combat). They said that they were going to boost it a little and that food would apply in combat. I think they accidentally boosted the base combat regen a bit too much.

 

I buy my food from a dedicated cook already and I have no issue with the process involved (as opposed to our previous discussion about sleeping). What I have an issue with is the illusion that there's any depth or choices on the matter.

In contrast, potions (if you ignore how weak their effects are) work far better when it comes to making choices. Health potions, for example, offer multiple possibilities the instant you're bellow 100% health.

• Is the glyph available?
• Do you even have the glyph in your build?
• Is the fight worth it?
• Do you drink it immediately?
• Do you try to ration it instead?
• If you're out of combat, do you save time and drink it anyways or do you wait for the passive regeneration to do heal you up?

And that's largely due to the fact that they're expensive and that their effects are instant... all the while, the alchemist still appreciates my business just the same...

Let me ask the question from another angle: What would be the reasons to NOT eat food? If the answer to that is "nothing", then how is that a choice worth making?

It's not about not eating food if I don't want to but the "why".

Because the food regeneration didn't occur in combat previously, it gave you reasons to switch out of combat... increased regeneration at the cost of your combat bar resetting. If I knew that I was going to be in a prolonged fight, I knew that eating food would be a waste.

... and I would be relying a lot more on my theoretical dedicated healer friend.

 

It doesn't make sense to eat food and have it not be working all the time. It was silly and I don't dispute your ideas necessarily. I don't know why it matters. Food works all the time after you eat it now.

 

With the current insane base focus regen i don´t even need to eat food

 

It seems to me the solution to the problem you raise, then, is to increase the costs of food. Even with the changes, the first thing I do when I'm done fighting is sheath my weapons.

Another idea is have it effect out-of-combat regen, then have in combat regen be a function of out of combat regen (after the bonuses have been included). That way it's not useless, but it's also not giving you 100% of the bonus.

I think it's only reasonable that food have an effect in combat (as they say, armies march on their stomachs).
I also think it's not unreasonable to have that regen be a percentage of "normal" regen.

 

Sheathing your weapon did add some (small) layer of depth to it (because you reset your combatbar for it) but the problem is primarily that there's no thought process behind the decision of eating food. Like, of course you'll eat food! The kind of food will be dictated on what the meta game establishes as the "best food" for your build. But it doesn't offer any interesting game-play scenarios and the cooks will start selling only those types of food.

I believe what makes the potion a much more interesting consumable is that its effect is near instant. Like food, all potions are good to have but you have to decide on WHEN to drink it. Since we can't have that for food (because having it as an instant effect wouldn't make sense and it would be redundant with potions), I was kind of relying on its out of combat exclusivity.

Reducing the amount of regeneration in combat in comparison to out of combat doesn't really fix the issue. Because if the regeneration is decent, then you have no real reason to sheath your weapons. If it's too low, then what's the point of the regeneration at all?

I think it'd be more interesting if food had a "regain X resources after killing an enemy" while in combat rather than a straight up passive regeneration. It would then (at least) encourage confrontations and still offer the "do I sheath?" decision.

 

I still make a decision regarding food. Food costs either gold or time (which are kind of equivalent). I won't use food if I don't need it for what I'm doing. If I only need a little buff to keep me in active combat, I use a cheaper food that gets me what I need. If I'm doing something really challenging, I use premium food. As well, different kinds of foods provide different stat bonuses, which require decision making depending on build. I don't think it comes down to, 'Now I must have this kind of food all the time to be effective'.

 

It is definitely too fast now. While I enjoy it Im sure it will be balanced.

 

There are other things that use focus besides combat

Then it is not balanced yet.

@Chris

 

I don't think it makes food much more relevant. Regen is slow, and generally, you're either facing tough fights -- where you're receiving a lot of heavy hits, and the food regen isn't enough to overcome the hits -- or you're facing easy fights, where it's not an issue you have to worry about at all -- so the regen doesn't affect the outcome. Sure, there's some benefit at the margins, but I don't think it matters on average. I didn't feel much incentive to eat in R37 and I still don't in R38.

On the other hand, I do think regen in combat makes sense, because limiting regen just because your sword was unsheathed was a bit arbitrary. It makes sense that you can patrol with your sword out and ready for combat and still heal. You also don't have to play these games where you exit combat mode and run around in circles to heal, avoiding enemies so you don't re-enter combat mode.

SO, I like the change, but I still don't think it makes food feel relevant. I'm sticking with my view that in order to make food relevant, you have to give a penalty for not eating.

 

Agreed, I ran around last night never even losing Focus. On occasion I would drop some health and need to heal. Before this release, I would have to stop for a minute after every kill.