I'm bamboozled

[Stevi]

I'd like to start off by saying I'm good at CSD 1. I can pull of a perfect day in expert mode, and in a 3 star restaurant too. But going into csd2... I'm lost. Now, any good game needs to start off well. And by that I mean it needs to ease you into the mechanics and such. When I boot up CSD2, I start up the game and do the tutorials. I kept up with the dev blogs, so the new mechanics weren't hard to understand. The main challenge would be to learn the keys and the ways to make the dishes.

I went into max wieners and got a silver medal. I had fun with that; and then I went into the CSD restaurant. Now when I see my menu, I'm like "what kind of restraunt serves this slop?" So I bought chicken tenders and pizza to replace the pretzels and cereal. I start day, the game glitches because I tried to boil macaroni when the day started, restarted the day, then noticed the pizza was REALLY hard. Even with the lowest buzz I was struggling to keep a combo. I thought to myself "How the hell is the pizza this hard? It doesn't have any upgrades yet!"

Then it hit me. There weren't any food upgrades. Now, the thing that made CSD fair is that you start only having a few ingredients to use for a food item, so you aren't dazed when you have 3 pages of ingredients. Even with soup you started with less than a page. Here you're expected to learn all of the ingredients and their bindings at once. I can hear you say "Learn the easier foods first," though you can't really carry over the knowledge from one food to another.

I then noticed a lot of other stuff was missing; equipment upgrades, food perks/negatives, battle kitchen, and even the secret ingredient mechanic that was supposed to be a new thing.

Speaking my mind, I think the devs were so focused on making this game sequel-worthy that they forgot it was a sequel. Right now the game feels like a beta build. Maybe if it was put on the store as early access, and those features were promised to be coming in the full release, I'd have a different mindset. But apparently the devs thought this was the better decision.

I'd like to be proven wrong, but don't make me play the game any more to do that. Otherwise I might not be able to get a refund. Sorry if I sound like the food critic from ratatouille, but this is probably the game with the biggest ratio of dissapointment to my hype.

EDIT: I see some of this stuff is planned to be added, but my points still stand.

[Stevi]

İlk olarak XratedSippyCup (Ehcks Dii) tarafından gönderildi:

practice the foods. practice the foods. practice the foods D*:

Perhaps, but in CSD1 just about everything was easy enough to understand at level 1 that you didn't need to practice a whole bunch, you just needed to know the general concept of how that particular food is made. You're given a few new ingredients each upgrade, and you're never really dazed by how complicated it is. Here, you need to learn everything at once, which is very overwelming. It's a shame that this is the case, because everything that made progression in CSD1 irritating was fixed.

[boarass]

There's a couple different things going on in this thread. First is the question as to whether the game is finished. I don't think anyone can credibly argue that it is. Just off the top of my head, here are features that the dev said would be in the game and aren't:

- Food catalog sorting
- Different day/night menus
- Boosters/detractors
- Emails
- Key binding customization
- Secret ingredients
- Limited time sales on foods in the catalogues

There are probably others, but that list alone is enough to justify calling the game unfinished. That doesn't mean the game is bad! I like it a lot, and its high ratings are well deserved. But it's definitely not done.

The second issue is whether food upgrades are a good idea. I see it both ways. On the one hand, upgrading stuff is satisfying and lends a natural progression to things. Not everybody wants to go into practice mode every time they buy a new food. On the other hand, I do like the new "what you see is what you get" vibe. It's pretty cool to buy a food like Pizza that just sells for $25 up front! It makes players feel special for getting good enough to play with the more challenging foods, and it doesn't lock players into a small number of foods. Back in CSD 1 it was like, "Soup and steak sell for $40 a pop, wanna pay $1000 for a baked potato that sells for $6?"

[Jacko]

İlk olarak boarass tarafından gönderildi:

- Food catalog sorting
- Different day/night menus
- Boosters/detractors
- Emails
- Key binding customization
- Secret ingredients
- Limited time sales on foods in the catalogues

- Already kinda implemented. Search function planned.
- Scrapped because it was too confusing. Might return.
- Delayed for a few days.
- Delayed for a few days.
- Delayed for a few days.
- Scrapped because it was too confusing / people would think p2w. Might return.
- Scrapped, most likely. Might return.

I do understand why people are mad about the lack of features on launch, though.

[DaetherX]

While I liked the food upgrading in CSD1, I also like that it isn't present in CSD2.
For instance, you don't make a whole Pizza for every customer that wants it, you make it in the HS and you can just click to serve it to multiple people before you need to buy another.

[boarass]

Jackeloko, I'm about to engage in some pedantic nitpicking of your post, so I'd like to preface it by saying that in general you make good points. In particular, I didn't realize that some features had been scrapped, and I don't think Chubigans committed any great transgression by releasing CSD 2 as he did.

And now, the pedantic nitpicking. :)

1) That the missing features were delayed for only a short time does not change the fact that they were missing when the game was released, i.e., the game was not finished when it launched.

2) The food sorting is not "kinda implemented" by my definition of "kinda implemented." A menu system in which you manually have to click into each food to see its price is not a sorting system; it marks the absence of one. In CSD 1 you could sort by selling price and purchase price, at least; you can't even do that in CSD 2. There's also no way to search for foods by name, which is kind of a big deal in this game since there are so many foods.

Let's say I'm about to play a C4H level for the first time and I want to practice its foods beforehand. It's quite a chore! I have to:

1) Memorize the picture, because the interface won't show me the name of the food (!?)
2) Back out twice
3) Open the food catalog
4) Scroll down through 50+ entrees searching for the picture that I've memorized

Calling the current state of the foot catalog sorting system "kinda implemented" is in my personal opinion being a little too generous. :)

[Stevi]

İlk olarak boarass tarafından gönderildi:

There's a couple different things going on in this thread. First is the question as to whether the game is finished. I don't think anyone can credibly argue that it is. Just off the top of my head, here are features that the dev said would be in the game and aren't:

- Food catalog sorting
- Different day/night menus
- Boosters/detractors
- Emails
- Key binding customization
- Secret ingredients
- Limited time sales on foods in the catalogues

There are probably others, but that list alone is enough to justify calling the game unfinished. That doesn't mean the game is bad! I like it a lot, and its high ratings are well deserved. But it's definitely not done.

The second issue is whether food upgrades are a good idea. I see it both ways. On the one hand, upgrading stuff is satisfying and lends a natural progression to things. Not everybody wants to go into practice mode every time they buy a new food. On the other hand, I do like the new "what you see is what you get" vibe. It's pretty cool to buy a food like Pizza that just sells for $25 up front! It makes players feel special for getting good enough to play with the more challenging foods, and it doesn't lock players into a small number of foods. Back in CSD 1 it was like, "Soup and steak sell for $40 a pop, wanna pay $1000 for a baked potato that sells for $6?"

I still think that the game is "feature incomplete", since a lot of that stuff was planned for launch. But if what jack says is true, I don't have to worry too much. Which is good, cuz I left the game running in the background on accident when I left the house and I can't get a refund anymore :/

The day/night menu thing is probably the main "new" feature I'm sad got cut. I know videogames cut many corners on realism, but who in the world wants beer at 9 AM and has the money to buy it? If the modifiers are coming back, this would be a great way to give some gameplay incentive to having a changing menu too.

[boarass]

I missed the announcement that the day/night menus got cut, and I'm sad to see them go. It would have added some strategy to the campaign mode.

[RedLightning]

Honestly .. I do not feel as if I am really doing anything but cooking...

No sense of progression whatsoever.. accept the unskippable objects that I 'earn'. I would hate to have to start over and have to <Enter> my way past those again.

[Jacko]

İlk olarak boarass tarafından gönderildi:

Jackeloko, I'm about to engage in some pedantic nitpicking of your post, so I'd like to preface it by saying that in general you make good points. In particular, I didn't realize that some features had been scrapped, and I don't think Chubigans committed any great transgression by releasing CSD 2 as he did.

And now, the pedantic nitpicking. :)

1) That the missing features were delayed for only a short time does not change the fact that they were missing when the game was released, i.e., the game was not finished when it launched.

2) The food sorting is not "kinda implemented" by my definition of "kinda implemented." A menu system in which you manually have to click into each food to see its price is not a sorting system; it marks the absence of one. In CSD 1 you could sort by selling price and purchase price, at least; you can't even do that in CSD 2. There's also no way to search for foods by name, which is kind of a big deal in this game since there are so many foods.

Let's say I'm about to play a C4H level for the first time and I want to practice its foods beforehand. It's quite a chore! I have to:

1) Memorize the picture, because the interface won't show me the name of the food (!?)
2) Back out twice
3) Open the food catalog
4) Scroll down through 50+ entrees searching for the picture that I've memorized

Calling the current state of the foot catalog sorting system "kinda implemented" is in my personal opinion being a little too generous. :)

1) Of course. I was only stating the fact that these features have not been ignored by the developer.

2) By "kinda implemented" I do mean sorting foods by type (entree, side drink), ownership status and HS function. I agree that this is not the best sorting system, but there at least is one.

Food names in restaurant screens will also be implemented in the near future.

Unfortunately, the breakfast, lunch and dinner menus were scrapped because it was not fun and way too difficult to manage during the day, from what I've heard from the dev.