ChefVille Aftertaste: Are Gourmet Dishes the wave of the future?
With the launch of the Cake Oven in ChefVille, we've seen Zynga try something new when it comes to cooking dishes, as "Gourmet Mastery" has been added to just a few dishes in the game. These Gourmet Mastery Points and Ribbons are earned by adding additional ingredients to cakes before they're cooked. Is this feature the wave of the future for ChefVille? And if so, is that a good thing?
On the one hand, the more Gourmet Dishes are implemented into the game, the more hardcore players have to do and unlock before running out of content. So long as Gourmet Mastery is earned by adding ingredients that are cheap or otherwise easy to earn, it might not be such a bad addition either. On the other hand, there's a fine line between an acceptable amount of required Gourmet ingredients and a scenario that's completely unacceptable, as we've already seen within the Cake Oven. At some point, the rate of return on these Gourmet Dishes simply won't be worth wasting dozens of ingredients for a single dish.
Take the Pound Cake recipe, for instance. In order to fill its Gourmet Meter, you'll need to spend 13 Eggs, in addition to the three Flour, one Sugar, and one Stick of Butter that the dish requires regardless. Without an Egg Crate, Eggs can only be earned once every 30 minutes. They're also required for so many dishes that it's a bit ludicrous for Zynga to assume that players will be willing to stock up on dozens of Eggs just to spend them to earn a chance at unlocking Gourmet Desserts.
Again, so long as the Gourmet Dish feature remains voluntary, and isn't required to earn any Mastery Points on dishes whatsoever, I suppose its addition to the game really doesn't hurt the entire experience. It's definitely something to keep an eye on though, just in case Zynga decides to implement this feature more than it probably should.
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What do you think of the Gourmet Mastery and Gourmet Dish feature in ChefVille? Have you unlocked Gourmet Mastery for many of the cakes in the game? Sound off in the comments!
