[OPEN] [DO] Top level chefs in restaurant cooking poor quality food

[DagmarSLNY]

It's not a viable workaround because it's not even a workaround.  Getting customers to order the most expensive dishes doesn't address their poor quality which in turn affects the rating they give for your restaurant and lowers your restaurants rating average.  I can't get customer ratings above 4 with poor quality food served to them.

[Jes2G]

I've been able to get my food to normal quality with this, so it's working for me.

[FreeasabirdS4S]

Are you ever going to fix this? Along with other modifications since this pack I now dread my Sims eating at all. I stopped playing this game for months due to the length of time to eat and the fact I paid for this ex pack and found the chefs are useless no matter what training they have. Please fix, as the moment this pack is not fit for the purpose purchased.

[mfbx2kd6]

Workaround Update: I tried having my chefs cook carefully, and used the organic ingredients (10%) rather than fresh GMO ((25%) in order to save costs and it still works! Also put paintings in the kitchen which gave an inspired moodlet, and have the perks which cause sims to buy more expensive food, all the discount perks, and patient diners perk. Chefs seem to be quicker at cooking carefully than they were last time I played. Was able to turn a 1500 simoleon profit. Fully skilled chefs are now producing a mixture of excellent and normal food across skill levels 3 -5. However, it is definitely a lot more difficult than it has been in the past, plus i noticed a few other bugs :

• Some diners arriving later to their tables than the other guests. Sometimes this has little impact, other times they sit there and do not get served if this links to the next bug, and then the whole table gets impatient. 
• Food being left on the chef's station - appears to be linked to late arriving guests
• Diners not staying in their seats and talking to other diners
• Diners now leaving the lot, e.g if there is a park bench, going to the park bench, and even going jogging in pairs (??) The jogging ones take ages to come back and eat which i turn prevents other sims from being seated.
• Waiters needing the toilet around 10hr mark even with maximised/disabled need decay.
• Employee satisfaction seems to be linked to decor giving positive moodlets (??) not sure if this is intended or a bug. Was only able to get employees to normal, but putting paintings in has made them all satisfied.  

[Jes2G]

Excellent! I'll have to try the 10% although I'm not having trouble returning a profit at 25% even though it still only generates normal quality food. It's funny how drinks are not affected. My chef my excellent drinks.

Oddly enough though, all but one of my employees are now satisfied and I have no idea why. The only one who isn't is the chef. I'll have to try the inspired moodlet thing and see if she changes. The only other thing I've experienced that you mentioned was the customers talking to each other instead of being seated. Some of them never actually get a table, but because of that they never get impatient so...no skin off my nose lol. One of my waiters went for a jog upon my Sim's arrival to the lot. When he got back, he got to work in his regular clothes.

One other thing I've noticed is that opening the restaurant while my Sims are not on the lot behaves differently now. Previously, I'd open an hour or two early and then go to the lot so there would be a restaurant full of diners and sometimes have already made a profit. However, now everyone shows up when my Sims show up. The employees have just arrived, and a whole herd or diners bum rush the doors and immediately sit down. This is a problem because if this persists, none of your other restaurants will ever be profitable because you still have to pay the employees even though they aren't there, and the restaurant will never make money. I think I'll raise a separate issue on this.

[DagmarSLNY]

Chef's do not produce Excellent food or drinks past difficulty level 3.  I have used the best ingredients, the slowest cooking speed, the Inspirational Speech perk, and 3 Inspiration boosting kitchen/bar items from the Culinary career line for each station.  All my menu items are difficulty levels 4 and 5 and over the course of many shifts the Chefs have never prepared a single dish or drink that is higher than Normal (nor have they ever produced one that is Poor).  Further to that, the Inspiration boosting items do not appear to have any impact as I have also operated multiple shifts with them deactivated with the exact same results, Normal food only, nothing Excellent and nothing Poor.  Whatever is negating the influence of the Chef's Cooking and Mixology level 10 on food and drinks may also be negating the impact of being in an Inspired mood (or the Chef's may not be affected by the items when on shift as there is no way to engage them in dialogue to reveal their mood).

[mfbx2kd6]

Ok so the problem isn't fully fixed. I had a volcano pasta come out as excellent last time I played, although I'm yet to get the highest level drinks to come out excellent. I can't say why that happened in my game and not yours.

I don't have Twitter, but has anyone tried directly tweeting the Sims gurus about this?

[Jes2G]

I thought about it after I posted my message to Nick here, but I didn't. I'll do it now.

[SimGuruNick]

My QA team is definitely aware of this issue, and has reproduced it as well. I don't know when this will be fixed, but from what I understand the issue is due to overly complicated tuning, and thus it's not a simple fix. Apparently there are way too many variables involved with determining the final food quality. It seems that there is almost no quality gain from being a high skill chef, but there is a massive quality hit from recipe difficulty. 

There's not much more I can say (as that's all I know), but thank you so much to everyone who provided me with info and save files and helped our QA team narrow this one down.  

[Jes2G]

Thanks for sharing, Nick! Nice to know it isn't forgotten but sucks that it's so difficult to figure out and fix. Hopefully someone will have a breakthrough soon. Maybe read a few books or ponder chess moves first.  LOL