Vite Ramen v3.0 Full Patch Notes

Vite Ramen Version 3.0 Full Patch Notes

A new patch for Windows PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch   Vite Ramen will go live in November. New changes and reimagining of what Vite Ramen can be, V3.0 is our most flavor focused changes yet, setting the stage for future iterations and improvements off the lessons we’ve learned along the way!

Elephant in the room: Why v3.0, instead of, say. v1.3?

Because it’s SO GOOD we skipped v2!

...

man that was supposed to be just a dumb joke but it still felt corpo HR

anyway

It's more because people didn't like 1.1, 1.2, etc with the periods and everything, so having the big number up front helps people better differentiate between all different the versions of our product.

Psychologically 3.0 reads as bigger, and therefore better, than 1.3 because of the left-digit effect which is really just a fancy way to say “people don’t like to read beyond the first number.” So y’know, take that as you will

Short form first, then long form explanations down below, including a slight directional shift in how we’re designing and making Vite Ramen from here on out.

Anyway, let’s get started. -Tim

What’s Changed?

UPDATE: Rebalanced Noodtrient base (again)

• Gluconates taste bad. Gluconate gets cut from the team.

• Tripotassium Phosphate sounds like the triforce of potassium so we went with that

• Trimagnesium Citrate sounds like the triforce of magnesium so we went with that

• Tricalcium Phosphate sounds like the triforce of calcium so we went with that

• See how I did that three times aren’t I clever

• Tri-means denser nutrients

• Still not denser than my skull tho tbh

• That’s because I get enough calcium from tricalcium phosphate :^)

• Same nutrition, smol, dense nutrients = tastier, less weird taste

 

UPDATE: Sodium cap increase to 33% instead of 25%

• Turns out people were adding tons of salt and soy sauce anyway

• Average sodium added basically negated our lower sodium

• The amount of THIS ISN’T SALTY ENOUGH comments made us sad

• There’s a strangely large amount of people who don’t know they can just add their own salt or soy sauce

• 33% increase to 33% is cool

• Not financial advice

• Don’t be salty about this change, k?

 

NEW: Garlic Pork Tonkotsu v3

• More garlicky

• More porky

• Hints of smoky bacon

• remember when everyone added bacon to everything

• Back when game of thrones was actually good

• And people unironically dabbed

• Fixed a bug that allowed Garlic Pork to teleport to unintended locations

• parsley flakes added for prettiness

• not pettiness

• We won’t boar you with more details

• Can’t let garlic pork hog the spotlight

 

NEW: Roasted Soy Sauce Chicken v3

• Increased sodium cap = more soy sauce

• 3 types of soy sauce now

• we’re tri-ing our best

• More chicken too

• Same amount of roasted

• Or is it?

• added additional spices

• wanted to shoyu our best

 

NEW: Vegan White Miso v3

• Miso is salty

• More sodium, more miso

• +Ultra miso

• Really not too much else changed

• Miso’d The Diff

• MTD for short

• Something something one tank

• I just really wanted to force in MTD here somehow okay

• If you understood all this go touch grass

 

CHANGE: Removed vegetable pack

• Survey says... people don’t like vegetables

• Lotta wasted veggies

• sadge

• Honestly they were just window dressing to look pretty anyway

• pretty like you

• We’re not throwing you away tho

• Look veggies and packing it costs money ok we had to make a choice

 

NEW: Added aroma oils

• The choice was to add aroma oils

• We’ve finally grown beeg enough to hit MOQs

• Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs)

• Like being punched in the nose

• But like, by good smelling things, so it’s nice

• Which i guess being punched in the nose isn’t

• But metaphorically we can pretend it is

• I dunno if nose tickling works as a metaphor replacement tbh

• dw these replaced the MCT oil so it’s not fattier

• not essential oils, actually makes a difference

 

CHANGE: Removed a lot of MCT oil

• Put MCT in a ring to fight aroma oils

• Aroma oils punched MCT in the nose

• MCT enjoyed it

• So really who was the real winner here

• also reduces saturated fat and some fiber

• Less gassiness if you don’t regularly eat fiber

• If that’s you, then you should eat more fiber

 

UPDATE: Package change

• Added chopsticks(graphically)

• The best way to eat ramen

• You can use a fork tho its a free country

• We won’t judge

• ...

• too much

• Like buying in game cosmetic skins, but edible

• not the package

• don’t eat that

• had to clarify what kind of skins so it wasn’t weird

 

UPDATE: Instructions changes

• 2C water ---> 2.5C water

• Veg ----> Oil

• Good soup

• really it’s just more water

• noodles be thirsty

• just like you vtuber simps

• no i will not take any questions about our vtuber sponsorship spree

• more soup is good for aroma oil floating on top punching people’s noses

With the short form changes out of the way, keep reading for the long form explanations for how we’re designing and making Vite Ramen!

Conceptual rethinking of Vite Ramen:

You can’t get nutrition we worked so hard to put in Vite Ramen if you don’t eat it, and you likely won’t eat it if you don’t like the taste. One of the goals we’ve always strived for is to make Vite Ramen taste delicious even within the boundaries of nutrition, sodium, and calories that we’d set before. These previously were some pretty hard values, set at 25% sodium, 500 calories, 25% minimum of each vitamin and mineral, fiber, etc, etc.

Every single change--from onions added to more chicken to whatever--will change the nutritional output and micromanaging every single ingredient so that the final product meets our original boundaries creates extreme restrictions on what we're capable of.

I think since the beginning the big thing we’ve always struggled with is that some people didn’t like the taste. A lot of people do, but for others it’s either not salty enough, not flavorful enough, or they have a much stronger aversion to certain nutrients that others don’t, like potassium.

Going back to the drawing board, we thought about exactly what we wanted Vite Ramen to be. Originally it was a complete food designed for “near perfect” nutritional balance for the average person... But the thing is, the “average person” doesn’t really exist.

Even though we can take averages and medians, everyone’s personal nutritional needs are wildly different. Vite Ramen is high-protein, sure, but for someone like me who tries to hit 150g of protein a day I have to supplement it with additional protein sources. Other people can make two (sometimes even three!) meals out of a single disc of our ramen since their calorie and protein requirements are significantly lower.

So does this mean Vite Ramen will be made so that it’s no longer nutritionally complete? Nahhhhh. It’s still got all the good stuff that you know about Vite Ramen, we’ve just loosened our restrictions. One of the things you might notice is that instead of being exactly 500 kcal each, our packets are now a lot more variable in all of their stats. This gives us much greater freedom to experiment with flavors, create new types, and really move towards our new philosophy:

 

Flavor Is King

Left side right side ha o mukidashite pappappaa 

Going back to the idea of not getting nutrition if you don’t eat eat the ramen, we want Vite Ramen to not just be delicious, but be the best thing you’ve eaten and love to eat. V3.0 updates to the original flavors will be the first step of that journey, with loosened restrictions on sodium, calories, and other factors so that while Vite Ramen will still be chock full of all that good stuff and nutritionally complete, it won’t be exactly hitting all the numbers for the sake of numbers, but rather prioritizing flavor without going too crazy.

And hey, when you look at our sodium, we still have 50% less than the leading ramen brands, while needing to flavor a ton more noodles and broth. I think we did a pretty good job there, don’tcha think? You can always add more salt and soy sauce yourself too. :^)

Though... when I say first step, I do very much mean the first step. Keep an eye out for a lot of other cool new stuff on the way ;)

 

Noodtrient rebalance

The first step of that was our Noodtrients. When we first re-did them for v1.2, we were still focused on making nutrition as close to konpeki perfect as possible, selecting for higher bioavailability. This was good, in theory, as the higher the bioavailability, the more nutritious our ramen would be, even if the label stated the same amount of nutrition. However, what we didn’t account for was just how awful gluconates would taste.

See, v1.0 and v1.1 used the same kind of Noodtrients, which was the first type we developed. This included potassium chloride, which, honestly, tastes really bad. The sheer amount of potassium we needed to include to hit 25% Daily Value added a significant amount of metallic, bitter flavors, and it just tasted... well, not good. Everything else was okay though. Ish.

When v1.2 Noodtrients were developed, we wanted to tackle the potassium problem, and had recently been acquainted with a new type of potassium that’s bound to starch, making it taste significantly less bitter and metallic. Conceptually, this worked out-- We would use this instead of standard potassium chloride, and it did help significantly with the potassium flavor, making v1.2 taste much better.

Our big mistake, though, was gluconates. See, gluconate bound vitamins are highly bioavailable and easily absorbed, since they’re bound to an organic glucose molecule, and are very well tolerated. Trouble is... gluconate is big. Like, REALLY beeg. As in, it increased our total Noodtrient mass by over 50%.

Should be okay, right? It’s a glucose molecule, and glucose is sweet-- What’s the worst that could happen?

...Yeah, going back to the whole “gluconate tastes awful” thing... the worst that could happen was that it made things taste significantly worse when added.

Well, see, there was a secondary problem associated with all this. We don’t have investor money, and that means we operate on a JIT (Just In Time) system, which means really tight supply chains. All you industry/logistics people probably understand how that works, and especially how difficult JIT supply chains can get when you’re trying to swap to a completely new core component.

Also, v1.2 was released March 2020. Guess what else happened in March 2020? :^)

Because we had relatives in China, we’d gotten word ahead of time of the lockdowns, of how bad it was getting there, and so, all the way back in 2019, had to make a hard decision. We could go back and forth on the Noodtrients, taste test it, do updates, figure things out... But we were worried. Even H1N1 hadn’t shut China down like this new virus was.

So, fuck it. Full send on v1.2 noodtrients.

Between not having any noodtrients and noodles at all and having something that we knew was theoretically functional, but didn’t know how the taste would impact the broth we had, we made the right decision.

Even then, you’ll see we struggled with supply chains immensely in 2020, and a lot of other things, which also led to the making of Naked Noods. You can read that whole story here.

Now, when updating for v3.0, we had a bit of a breather. We established a solid supply chain for v1.2 (well, as much as we could for the craziness that was 2020 and 2021 supply chains), so we were able to go back and forth on taste testing and revamping the Noodtrients. This time, instead of just creating theoretical values, we did something that we really didn’t have the luxury of doing before-- Taste testing every single vitamin and mineral, and slowly testing the Noodtrients by taking each vitamin and mineral in and out to assess flavor impacts.

We spent a load of time assessing and weighing differences between bioavailability and taste, reviewed with multiple suppliers on molecular structures and densities, bitterness masking, blendability, solubility into soup, and even PH tested the effect to see if it’d create any acidity or alkalinity problems, among other tests. Phew!

The conclusion we came to was that the total mass of the Noodtrients would affect the flavor of the soup more than anything. Think of it in the extremes-- If you put 20g powdered sugar into something and only 1g soy sauce, even though the soy sauce is a much stronger flavor, that powdered sugar sure would overwhelm the soy sauce, wouldn’t it?

This created the crux of our big changes:

Calcium Gluconate ---> Tricalcium Phosphate. Denser form, less mass, you get the idea. When we talked about needing a lot of potassium, our bodies need even more calcium. Quite a huge amount, actually-- Calcium Gluconate made up almost half the mass of our previous blend. The “tri” in tricalcium phosphate and the other ingredients listed below indicate that there are three of the active micronutrients we want bound to the secondary component, meaning higher nutrition density for much less mass, especially since phosphate and citrate are smaller than gluconate. Yay, less total mass in multiple ways!

Bonus: this also allowed us to increase our phosphate levels. 

Sciency people, don’t tear apart my explanations, I’m trying to make it somewhat accessible :(

Reduction of potassium chloride ---> Replaced with Tripotassium Citrate. Tastes better, denser, meaning we can have much less total mass of potassium. Even those with extreme potassium sensitivity don’t taste it as much. Potassium chloride does still have a secondary attribute of making things taste saltier, so some of it is still left in some recipes to increase salinity perception without increasing sodium too much. Funnily enough, tripotassium citrate is actually more bioavailable than potassium chloride in some ways, so hey, win-win there.

Magnesium Gluconate ---> Trimagnesium citrate. Also a denser form, with less total mass. This allows us to lower the amount of bulk in our noodtrients and improve flavor. Trimagnesium citrate is still highly bioavailable, and incredibly nutritionally dense, with negligible bioavailability difference with Magnesium Gluconate.

 

Removed vegetable pack

We did a survey and found that most people didn't really like or use the vegetable pack. People were mostly ambivalent towards it. Worse, some people’s vegetables wouldn’t hydrate very well and they’d bite into a hard carrot or something and we’d get grumpy emails about it. They don’t contribute too many nutrients or flavor, so we just adjusted it in our other materials.

Sorry for those people who really enjoyed it-- If we get enough demand for it, we’ll make some big bulk containers of the stuff you guys can get to add yourself. The swap for aroma oils is worth it, trust me. Speaking of which...

 

Added aroma oils

Aroma oils are a key component of restaurant style ramen. We’ve always wanted to add them, but at the scale we were at when we started, we couldn’t buy the massive amounts that were part of the MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) needed to get them. Now that we’ve grown a bit, we can finally get them! To be perfectly honest, some of them are still a bit on the high number side, but we’re making it work through the magic of... Y’know, sometimes I don’t even know anymore how we’re making things work at this point. We’re doing our best, aight?

Anyway, they're called aroma oils because their main purpose is to increase olfactory sense stimulation. That’s a nice and fancy way to say they tickle your nose with nice smells, and a huge amount of our sense of taste is actually influenced by our smell. They don’t necessarily have that much flavor that can be detected by the tongue, but boy, do they really change things up on how complex our flavors can be.

Just wait and see how we’ll be utilizing it for some future flavors and developments-- I’m really excited for those.

Anyway, the actual oils:

-Green onion, caramelized garlic oil added to Garlic Pork Tonkotsu

-“Sesame” oil to Vegan White Miso (allergen-less! It just tastes similar to sesame oil without being sesame, it’s suuuuper cool), along with a dash of green onion oil

-Green onion, caramelized garlic, and soy sauce oils to Roasted Soy Sauce Chicken

-Removed significant amounts of MCT from the recipe, which reduces saturated fat, and lowers fiber as well that was causing some intestinal distress to some people.

The coconut MCT oil really provided a great mouthfeel and helped add additional fiber and balance the macronutrients up. However, they also had their downsides, like higher saturated fat (before people get on me about this, I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad, research is still up in the air about it, just that people complained about it), and used a lot of fiber.

More fiber is good, right? Well, yes, generally speaking, but introducing too much fiber to a digestive system that isn’t used to it can cause some... undesirable effects and lower body distress, let’s say. That also caused some people to be upset with us.

This means our overall fiber has been reduced to compensate, because turns out that you can have too much of a good thing. Whoops.

The changes we made to our broth made sure that the mouthfeel is retained though. Can’t even tell the difference in mouthfeel unless you’re really experienced. :^)

 

Package change

Just some visually distinct package changes to differentiate it from v1.2 and touch it up a bit. Added some chopsticks to the design, as well as emphasized our values in the lower left. We’ll probably be playing around with gradients and stuff too while sticking to the same sort of minimalist type design we’ve been using.

 

Gameplay... er... instructions changes:

We did a lot of testing to figure out how much the way you cook your ramen affects the flavor. Let it simmer once it reaches a rolling boil, instead of keeping it on high. There’s more flavor and you’ll end up with just the right amount of broth this way, too!

We’ve also bumped up the recommended water to use so you get more broth, and designed accordingly. This works especially well with the aroma oils. Yummy.

 

Conclusion

And that’s about it for the patch notes! I hope this was informative, and I can’t wait for you to try v3.0! Let us know what you think, as always, so we can continue to make Vite Ramen better!

Happy slurping, and don’t forget to send us your nood pictures!

-Tim Zheng, CEO/Founder