Groceries and Home Cooking

[Sim]

Short description: Let residential properties create food items by consuming groceries, similar to businesses.

 

Detailed description: You've ever seen how your neighbor just never goes to the supermarket to buy groceries? People just go to supermarkets and buy cans of cola or donuts? What if you get invited to a barbecue but don't have a restaurant script at your disposal? Got a date over to your apartment but don't have any food to share and impress, and have to resort to pretend-food? I'm here to propose a suggestion that could benefit our day-to-day routines in GTAW.

 

Supermarket businesses (24/7) should have a new item called 'Groceries', this is similar to trucking and its components, you can then bring these groceries to your apartment and run a command, for example /unpackgroceries which will then fill up your Groceries counter in your property, letting you use /createitem recipe (AND ONLY RECIPE) for a limited amount of uses. Of course this counter would be waaaaaay smaller than a restaurant, making you go out to buy groceries more often so you can cook more food.

 

The system is all there, just needs to be tweaked a bit to fit residential properties.

 

Commands to add: /unpackgroceries

 

Items to add: Groceries (Any other name is also acceptable, but I prefer the more general name)

 

How would your suggestion improve the server?: It's just a quality of life improvement that I came up with when going to a bbq in-game and not having a method to create the food items, since it was a pretty big barbecue I didn't want to go with pretend-food, rather bring script items so everyone was on the same page.

 

Additional information: This is also a gateway to edibles, which I will be suggesting later.

[delanto]

This would be really neat and great for businesses. Yeah, sure you can just roleplay it and /do making a sandwich but the fact that we have the script and it’s just a small scale expansion seems like a nice addition. 

[Yoak]

Nah, not needed.

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

I'm actually all about this. I think it would be nice to be able to create something from cooking at the house. I realize this is venturing down the path of RPGish, but given the fact we're already allowing businesses to do this, I don't think this will really upset the balance. And I think it will also encourage players to open up markets of their own. 

 

Yes from me.

[Lomadias]

I'd love to see something like this. I love the small RP details like this, cooking dinner, experimenting with recipes and such, would add a lot for me.

[Ink]

I'm inclined to believe such a change would be overall a detriment to the server rather than a boon. While I agree it would be cool and encourage some types of RP if people could /createfood in their own houses, the current state of restaurants on this server is such that this change would negatively impact what little RP they have available.

 

As it stands, characters on GTA:W tend to keep pretty busy. Many characters have multiple jobs, multiple cars, tend to be in really good shape, tend to have lots of tattoos, tend to engage in multiple hobbies. I'm not saying it's unrealistic that they can also cook, and also will be at home cooking up these big grand feasts for when they hit up parties, but I am saying that very few people will adequately portray this. It'll just be another Mary Sue-ish element of a character that can "do it all."

 

Meanwhile, IC restaurants are having trouble selling their food, having trouble being hired to cater events, and are having difficulty finding people willing to RP cooks. If your character is able to cook well and you care about that being a part of your character? Have him or her get a part-time job at one of the struggling IC restaurants on the server. With permission from your boss, your character can likely use that kitchen to cook food for home, as well.

 

Is that a little convoluted? A tiny bit, yes. But for this server to thrive it's not always about just opening every single possible door for people, it's about figuring out what's the best give-and-take between realism, freedom, and still encouraging people to make meaningful decisions with their character. With the state of the server's current IC restaurant industry, if all characters could just buy some groceries and cook up any glorious, amazing, perfect dish right in their kitchen with a quick command to tack on "Gordon Ramsay" as part of their character's many skills in addition to "John Wick" "Ken Block" "Lee Iacocca" and "Arnold Schwarzenegger." Very few people on GTA:W want to RP being a "lowly cook" and believe that roleplay is boring, but if a home-cooking option was implemented suddenly we'd find that all these incredibly gorgeous and successful 20-something-year-olds and ruthless unfeeling criminal geniuses populating Los Santos are all just a phone call away from effortlessly competing in Iron Chef.

 

This is the same reason why we can't just do mechanic upgrades at home. Sure, in real life you could go and buy the tools, buy the parts, and just do replacements of bumpers and spoilers and all sorts of other things at home. Plenty of people in real life have the practical skills to do basic car mechanic work. Yet we don't feature this on the server because such a thing would negatively impact the flow of RP on this server. Yes, I know of a handful of characters who'd really benefit from being able to do their own mechanic work without working for a garage, but I know many dozens more who would just suddenly be hobbyist auto mechanics in their unreasonable spare time.

 

If you are going to a BBQ and want to bring food, then hire a restaurant to make the food for you. They can use the business, and they can use the RP. If not, buy some sandwiches from a 24/7 and RP them as being burger ingredients that you're grilling up.

 

To give one final example of why I'm not supporting this: Our server has about seven? Different IC breweries that I know of. Your average night club or bar on this server is entirely uninterested in roleplaying with these breweries and purchasing liquor from them unless they're getting a REALLY good deal. The reason? Because any random Tom, Dick, or Harry can go pick up the brewing script, buy a plastic barrel at Home Depot, and start making perfectly fine drinks for them in their apartment. And they don't even need to do that--they can always just hit up a liquor store and just buy the liquor there. For a lot of clubs, they'd rather just pay the extra money to an NPC liquor store because it's easier, faster, requires zero roleplay, and allows them to buy liquor 20 minutes before they decide to open their club and then rename the liquor to top-shelf shit.

 

Not supporting, on behalf of promoting the limited restaurant RP already on the server. To repeat, if cooking is a major part of your character, there are plenty of avenues for your character to explore this part of themselves, gain a tangible benefit, and help out some struggling RP concepts which really need the support. GTA:W is not about being a 1:1 representation of reality, it's a roleplay. Everyone plays their parts. If there are people who are already trying to play a part, it makes no sense to just toss their lines to all the other actors and cut them out. RP is about give and take, it's about sharing the spotlight. Share the spotlight with other characters--support the IC businesses and the human players who have made food roleplay their main focus--from both ends, both as a customer, and as a potential employee.

 

Your character can do just fine without also being a master home chef in addition to all the other things they're probably already great at, and if your character has strong feelings about bringing food to a party, there are restaurants open every single day on this server which would be glad to RP creating a big order. And once more: If your character IS a good cook, consider exploring that with an actual IC restaurant--thus gaining you access to the /createfood command as intended.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Ink

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

3 hours ago, Ink said:

I'm inclined to believe such a change would be overall a detriment to the server rather than a boon. While I agree it would be cool and encourage some types of RP if people could /createfood in their own houses, the current state of restaurants on this server is such that this change would negatively impact what little RP they have available.

 

 

There's only been a handful of restaurants on this server actually make it, because they've actually stuck with it. It's not a matter of people not wanting restaurant RP. It's a matter of people not feeling like they're getting a return on their investment because as in most other aspects of this server, people value the money they're getting over the quality of RP.
 

3 hours ago, Ink said:

 

As it stands, characters on GTA:W tend to keep pretty busy. Many characters have multiple jobs, multiple cars, tend to be in really good shape, tend to have lots of tattoos, tend to engage in multiple hobbies. I'm not saying it's unrealistic that they can also cook, and also will be at home cooking up these big grand feasts for when they hit up parties, but I am saying that very few people will adequately portray this. It'll just be another Mary Sue-ish element of a character that can "do it all."

 

How is this going to be different from any other aspect of the server? It's not being policed obviously. That's why we have 22 year old CEO's who are also models and racecar drivers. And yeah "Report to RPQM. Got it." I don't think this is a reason to hold it up because of characters who aren't actually playing characters anyways, just little winning machines. Good at everything they do.

3 hours ago, Ink said:

This is the same reason why we can't just do mechanic upgrades at home. Sure, in real life you could go and buy the tools, buy the parts, and just do replacements of bumpers and spoilers and all sorts of other things at home. Plenty of people in real life have the practical skills to do basic car mechanic work. Yet we don't feature this on the server because such a thing would negatively impact the flow of RP on this server. Yes, I know of a handful of characters who'd really benefit from being able to do their own mechanic work without working for a garage, but I know many dozens more who would just suddenly be hobbyist auto mechanics in their unreasonable spare time.

 

I think there's a small difference in this. Cooking a steak at home is not the same thing as building a race car which is what I'm thinking you're thinking would happen if you could just install your own parts at home. And you're probably right. But I think it's a comparison of apples to oranges. It's just two massively different skillsets. Could they bleed over and be more similar? Sure. But are they on average? Probably not.

 

3 hours ago, Ink said:

If you are going to a BBQ and want to bring food, then hire a restaurant to make the food for you. They can use the business, and they can use the RP. If not, buy some sandwiches from a 24/7 and RP them as being burger ingredients that you're grilling up.

 

First off, nobody hosting a BBQ is going to have it catered at their house when you can do it yourself for a third of the price at least. I get it, people probably do this in game because they make a shit tons of money for just existing, have no actual bills or real financial commitments, but in real practice? If I'm hosting a party or a BBQ? I'm trying to do this as good while as inexpensive as possible. Plus my BBQ is better than any restaurants anyways.

 

And the latter part of the statement is really going against what you had said in the previous sentence. You said they can use the business and the RP. But it's cool to go buy a script item and just RP it as a burger you're grilling. My question is, how is that any different that the ability to be able to cook at your house? It's really not. It's still at the end of the day not giving a restaurant which are apparently barely surviving any money and still not letting these chefs get to RP.

 

This has nothing to do with chef RP and has everything to do with giving the people the ability to cook food in their house for themselves. Because I can tell you right now, I would be so happy if I could actually make a dish from the game that my character hunted, so I could start living that Joe Rogan life of only eating the meat he kills. If character is making a 12 course meal on the regular, yeah I can see the problem in that. But to give people the ability to cook up something instead of being forced to eat out all the time? I don't see a problem with this. The people who will RP this realistically are already probably RPing realistically anyways. And the ones who won't are probably already not RPing other aspects of their character realistically anyways. And those are the perfect 22 year olds that are CEO's, in perfect shape, are walking canvases that speak half a dozen different languages and have five or six high end vehicles. So I don't think you hinder the server from some kind of forward progress on the notion that a select group of people won't RP it correctly. They just need to policed. And that goes with every aspect of them.

 

Not everything has to support a business, and what're basically advocating is  to give them the monopoly on food RP. Some characters, like I said just don't want to have to eat out all the time. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Dom.]

there was a samp server i played that actually did shit like this it was insane

i can see it as a cool addition

[ENDREAS]

Cool idea. It would actually give us something new to rp at home. Always thought it was shitty you can't actually cook food in your own house and have to resort to eating sandwiches/donuts when none of the 2-3 restaurants that are still active are open. 

 

[Ink]

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

 

There's only been a handful of restaurants on this server actually make it, because they've actually stuck with it. It's not a matter of people not wanting restaurant RP. It's a matter of people not feeling like they're getting a return on their investment because as in most other aspects of this server, people value the money they're getting over the quality of RP.

 

 

I disagree with this for a number of reasons. No restaurants on this server "make it." None. There are two restaurants I can even think of which have had staying power on this server, and that's the two kebab restaurants--Lil Armenia and Habeeb's. In Lil Armenia's case, it's a one-man show run by our beloved Wolfgang, and he's "making it" only in the sense that the script is paying him generously for his work. He earns it. It's laudable what he's doing because he opens up pretty much every single day and has done so for months upon months, which is something you rarely see on this server for any type of business. He has also had a lot of difficulty finding literally anyone to RP as a member of his staff for longer than a few days, and he has the additional benefit of an official faction to draw talent from.

 

Restaurants don't make it on GTA:W. You don't "make it" -- it doesn't matter if you stick with it or not. People don't want to RP cooks and restaurant staff on GTA:W. At most, they'll wing it for a couple weeks until they get bored of it, or their character gets hired to a much sexier sounding job position somewhere else, or they finally get approved to run their own business, or RP picks off for them with a faction or on another character.

 

I challenge you to identify any restaurant on this server which has "made it" because I can't think of any.  Return on investment isn't even the predominant issue here, it's a matter of how much roleplay you can even generate as a restaurant, and how many people you can find willing to RP as staff. A restaurant has the potential to make its owner at least 52k every opening if they open once every two days. The issue is not so simple as money alone, because if it was then that would have been solved by now.

 

The issue is interest. The issue is how many people on this server are willing to RP cooks. If we could cook at home, wow, suddenly every character is a capable cook and when it comes to impressing a potential ERP partner they're able to cook meticulously crafted culinary masterpieces. But when it comes to employment opportunities, why would anyone want to RP as a cook on GTA:W when they can RP so many other sexier things like night club managers, sex shop moguls, gangbanging tough guys, motorcycle club hot shots, mafiosos, and any other number of more interesting things.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

How is this going to be different from any other aspect of the server? It's not being policed obviously. That's why we have 22 year old CEO's who are also models and racecar drivers. And yeah "Report to RPQM. Got it." I don't think this is a reason to hold it up because of characters who aren't actually playing characters anyways, just little winning machines. Good at everything they do.

 

It's not  different,and that's exactly why I don't think a business script's sole unique function should be made public for the whole server with a tiny buy-in from a 24/7. All you've done here is argue into exactly why this should not be done. The argument of "how is this going to be any different" is why there is no need to complicate the script further by offering ways for people to do the functions of a business script on their own.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

I think there's a small difference in this. Cooking a steak at home is not the same thing as building a race car which is what I'm thinking you're thinking would happen if you could just install your own parts at home. And you're probably right. But I think it's a comparison of apples to oranges. It's just two massively different skillsets. Could they bleed over and be more similar? Sure. But are they on average? Probably not.

 

You're a clever person, but you're completely missing the point. Arguing the semantics of "this is an entirely  different skillset" is missing the point. Because the fact of the matter is, like most human pursuits, there is little difference between cooking a good meal and replacing your own car's bumper. The core of it is the same: Be meticulous, be willing to watch and learn, follow instructions, and put in the time and effort. If a character is willing to set aside the time and discipline to cook a good meal at home, they can set aside the time and discipline to do some auto-work on their car. 

 

We're on a roleplay server. All of us are playing characters who are taking upon roles. One role being mechanic, one role being cook. We don't have character sheets, we don't have point allocations, we don't have any method for determining what our characters can do and how well they can do them besides independent honesty and reasonability. This is exactly the reason why we have Mexican gang bangers from Rancho cooking up premium craft liquor in their apartments and night clubs buy it and sell it as though it were market-quality booze. 

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

First off, nobody hosting a BBQ is going to have it catered at their house when you can do it yourself for a third of the price at least. I get it, people probably do this in game because they make a shit tons of money for just existing, have no actual bills or real financial commitments, but in real practice? If I'm hosting a party or a BBQ? I'm trying to do this as good while as inexpensive as possible. Plus my BBQ is better than any restaurants anyways.

Sure, in real life. But this is not real life. This is a roleplay server. In real life, you have 800,000 people in an American city. On GTA:W, the most people we've ever had in Los Santos in the whole existence of this community is a staggering 1050 people. That means the specific, individual roles people play are significantly more important than they would be "in real life." You can't rationally compare the economics of real life to the economics of a roleplaying server. 

 

I've been to many BBQs in my life. Most people just go to the supermarket, buy some ingredients, and give it a go. I'm sure you have some legendary BBQ chef friends in your real life, but I'd say 90+% of BBQs I've been to? The food is entirely mundane and nothing worth writing home about--the very equivalent on GTA:W of someone handing you a "Sandwich (Food) - 150g" item. It's just food. It's just a meat patty heated up, chucked on some buns, topped with some generic ass vegetables and condiments.

 

You still have not responded in any meaningful way in your entire block of text about why your character, who is apparently a very good cook and this being an important enough part of your character which is worth being featured en masse in a group of roleplayers... doesn't just get a part-time job cooking. Is your character too good for it? Are you, as a player, outright denying the possibility of your character cooking? Why do you feel entitled to roleplaying as a cook, but yet you're unwilling to do that roleplay outside of a part-time leisure activity for your character?

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

And the latter part of the statement is really going against what you had said in the previous sentence. You said they can use the business and the RP. But it's cool to go buy a script item and just RP it as a burger you're grilling. My question is, how is that any different that the ability to be able to cook at your house? It's really not. It's still at the end of the day not giving a restaurant which are apparently barely surviving any money and still not letting these chefs get to RP.

 

Let's respect one another's input and not try to bullshit plot holes or other logical leaps into them. Nothing I wrote goes against anything I said. I offered two choices: If you want to have an easy cookout without involving any third parties or introducing an opportunity for anyone outside of your immediate needs to have the spotlight in your RP, you have plenty of opportunities in the current script to do exactly that. Go to a 24/7, buy some sandwiches, roleplay around it. Easy. If you give a shit about the food in your roleplay, involve a third party and throw them a bone.

 

Hold your own discourse to the same standard you hold people when they discuss matters of hunting. 

 

The problem is not giving a restaurant money, and it's fundamentally disappointing, regressive, and telling that you've focused your response on money. The issue is the roleplay. Most restaurants on this server will gladly cater an event at cost or for just enough money to fairly pay the people involved without any interest in profit. The issue is not your precious virtual moneys. The interest is that this suggestion is seeking to cut out an entire market of people who already have difficulty finding people to RP their customers, and people to RP their employees. It's fascinating how nobody wants to roleplay a cook on this server, but yet suddenly everyone will yearn to crawl out of the woodwork and roleplay a perfectly capable cook in leisure time if they could circumvent the business script.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

This has nothing to do with chef RP and has everything to do with giving the people the ability to cook food in their house for themselves.

 

Just roleplay it. Why do you need the functionality of a business script if you just want to RP cooking food for yourself? What importance does the item have? It's pretty clear the importance of having the item is so that people can circumvent restaurants and host their own banquets, parties, and impress their own ERP partners with hand-crafted food items. From personal experience with watching this exact same situation with this server's liquor economy, 90% of these items will also be created within 10 minutes of the event they're for with zero roleplay.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

Because I can tell you right now, I would be so happy if I could actually make a dish from the game that my character hunted, so I could start living that Joe Rogan life of only eating the meat he kills.

 

So what's prohibiting you from roleplaying it currently? You're completely allowed to do so. The only thing you lack the ability to do is to create tangible items to distribute to other people. And at the end of the day, the character you're describing is by far the exception. Most characters do not fit even remotely within the paradigm you present.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

If character is making a 12 course meal on the regular, yeah I can see the problem in that.

 

But only if it's a 12-course meal? So it has to go straight to the extreme for you to see a problem with it, right? You're missing the whole rainbow of problematic use of this script which would be monumentally disruptive to this server's fragile ecosystem and would serve to undermine and diminish one of the weakest industries this server has?

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

But to give people the ability to cook up something instead of being forced to eat out all the time? I don't see a problem with this.

 

They can cook something up. It's called roleplay. My character has cooked for friends before--of course, she sucks at cooking and the food she produced was incredibly mediocre--but she has cooked for her friends and it was fun roleplay. I didn't need a business script in my apartment to do that. But when my character has gone to a party and wanted to feed multiple people, or when my character has wanted to feature food for her customers at her businesses, I've gone through the extra steps to involve other IC businesses or players who specialize in such RP to handle it. 

 

Not only is it realistic, it's just good courtesy.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

The people who will RP this realistically are already probably RPing realistically anyways. And the ones who won't are probably already not RPing other aspects of their character realistically anyways. And those are the perfect 22 year olds that are CEO's, in perfect shape, are walking canvases that speak half a dozen different languages and have five or six high end vehicles. So I don't think you hinder the server from some kind of forward progress on the notion that a select group of people won't RP it correctly. They just need to policed. And that goes with every aspect of them.

 

That's exactly how it works though. You have this incredibly idealistic, fantastical view of how "well those are a few bad apples, they don't affect the whole server." Except they do. I've given examples up above of exactly how they do. This is the same argument of "well the people who poorly roleplay liquor creation are not your problems who will destroy the liquor market on this server." Yet they have. The IC breweries on this server struggle to find people who are willing to RP properly with them because of all the shitty RP that happens around liquor production with the readily available brewer script.

 

This suggestion is seeking to create another equivalent of the brewer script for food. And it will have as much a detrimental effect on the food market on this server. A failure to see that is either ignorance or close-mindedness.

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

 

Not everything has to support a business,

Hot disagree. It's not about business, it's about people making decisive choices with their characters. The people who make the decisive choice with their character to be a cook or to provide food deserve the roleplay around food before someone who just tacks it on their character. As I said in my earlier post, if it's important to you to have food items at your event, involve the people who base their entire character concepts around food. 

 

It's a matter of OOC courtesy and being decent at sharing the stage. You've missed this entirely from my post, not once have you even briefly mentioned the importance of sharing the spotlight and that RP is, at the end of the day, a collaboration. There are people on this server who dedicate their characters to this RP and they are currently suffering for the decision. This suggestion would further that rift.

 

6 hours ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

 

and what're basically advocating is  to give them the monopoly on food RP. Some characters, like I said just don't want to have to eat out all the time. And there's nothing wrong with that.

 

It's not about eating out all the time. Nobody's advocating for any sort of monopoly. If you want to RP that you're grilling hamburgers, there should be no issue with handing out sandwich items. Tons of people do this on the server. If you want the lovingly hand-crafted custom food items, involve the people who have built their entire character concepts around that. This is really along the same lines of someone complaining "well I want to RP a character who can create jewelry at home, I should be able to go to a store and buy a generic Jewelry Pieces item, unpack it in my apartment, and be able to /createitem jewelry out of it! -- It's only realistic! Jewelry stores shouldn't have the monopoly on this! Not everything has to support a business! The people who are RPing realistically will RP it properly!"

 

I wish you, and the people who supported your view points, had more of an open mind to the realities of the artform we all participate in as a hobby. It's not always about you, and what you want to do with your character. There are always going to be a few exceptions who suffer from the limitations of the system and who have to jump hurdles and hoops to accomplish their vision. For instance, I operated at a 50k/day personal loss to run a restaurant as I envisioned it on this server. Nobody reimbursed me. Nobody made any suggestions on my behalf. The admins told me "oh well, you're an exception, sorry." There are definitely some characters on the server who totally should have the ability to create their own food without a business... but they're the exception. For most people, it makes no sense. Your average Davis gang banger shouldn't spend all day out and about selling drugs, staging robberies, and having gang politics disputes and then go home and cook 40 portions of a meal for guests of a BBQ. That's just not a thing that happens in reality, and it's not a thing which makes sense in the real, distributive machinations of a roleplaying community.

 

Share the stage. Give other players a chance to play their damn characters.