So with the recent food nerf, its hit pretty hard on folks who play more casually and only check in occasionally for the most part. A large part of this is because there's more focus on incentivizing cooking food, which in turn requires frequent check ins. I'd like to propose a fee similar to the gardeners that you can pay Thumbs, perhaps using Jam or maybe even some pebbles, and then select a recipe. From there, Thumbs will automatically cook every available piece of food into that recipe. So say you select the recipe for large meat chunks- it will take all of your meat chunks and queue them to cook into cooked meat.
Immediate Problem: This would be a conflict of interest with the pot upgrades. As such, there should probably be some sort of penalty that incentivizes active play when players are available but still gives the option for players who want to or need to AFK cook. Some possible solutions include:
- No EXP gains from queued items
- Lengthen the time each individual recipe takes (ie each meat chunk would take 1.5 the normal time)
- You can only claim the queued items once all items are cooked
- The active cooking pot is not available while using the queue
- No moonstone shards from the auto queue
- Limit how many items can queued at once (but larger than the active pot limits)
Not every single penalty needs to be included, but a mix of them should be enough to still make active cooking worth it. Imo the lengthened time per item is a huge one that absolutely should be included, for this to work.
IF there is a pebble fee associated, it should either be flat or a small fee per item, ie 5-15 pebbles per item. It may not seem like a lot, but over the course of a week a lot of players will use the auto queue (even if they're just queuing up while they sleep) and take a lot of pebbles out of the economy.
The idea is that the auto queue should not replace normal cooking. Players who are actively playing and checking frequently will still be incentivized to use the active pot and purchase upgrades for it, while still having an option while AFK or for players who don't check in super frequently for whatever reason. This will also incentivize more trade between players, as players who get raw materials will be able to sell in bulk more easily, either as is for players who will use their own queue or in bulk for players who want to skip the process entirely.
As always with my ideas, this is more to get a conversation rolling on possibilities and plant seeds for the devs. It doesn't need to work exactly as proposed, just so long as it still hits the goal of not replacing normal cooking while being a valid option.
Murkwood players please ignore that I accidentally posted this in our forum first.
