Feedback Request 08/01/2014: Farming and Cooking (Test Server)

[thurgond]

16) Cooking and farming should not be capped as there are only 2 skills in their current group.

Cooking and farming are linked. I've lost 2 cooking points leveling farming.

[Emilie]

Regarding fertilizer, I am not sure if this is already the case but it would be nice and realistic if using fertilizer lessened the risk of plants attracting pests (IRL, if a plant is well nourished, it has a much better resistance to pests and disease). I think it would be a nice balance to have the extra work and care of making and applying it pay off in somewhat less chores in tending. Weeds would not be affected. It should also have a noticeable effect on yield IMO, say a 30-40 % increase. Otherwise I think I'd rather eat the fish than make it into fertilizer, since I don't mind waiting a little longer to harvest.

[Bejaymac]

Bejaymac, please patch through the launcher and check your crops now. The meshes for dead rice grass weren't properly patched as we noted in game. I just patched them so your crops should be visible.

If something still seems to be missing, please let me know.

Looks like that fixed it, now have a farm full of dead rice grass plants that I can destroy

[MrDDT]

I hate giving balancing changes when they are really minor that hold up the update/patch.

Having said that, I think fertilizer should have a larger effect overall, it's where most of the resources are going to cost. Meaning, putting a plant down the costs are mostly in fertilizer and your time.
I think the yield amount for 100% crops are fine getting about 18, with high skills/stats. Getting to 100% seems to be fine on the speed. My worry is that people will put in 0 fertilizer wait the extra 10 game days and then have a 4-6x less cost yielding the same amount of crops.

The amount of fertilizer from guts and fish seems low, I can't seem to get 8 out of anything as you say they should be, I'm getting 1 to 3. Having said that, I think 1 to 5 should be fine.

thurgond, the power of the animal gives more resources. So a max power animal will give 4x the resources.

Foraged plants need to be lowered by about 10x in my opinion. Seasonings should be mostly foraged, and from farming. Foraging shouldn't be a good primary source of feeding yourself.
Fishing is underrated because of how strong foraging is, if lowering foraging to 10x, I think all the food supplies are balanced. Meat from hunting, Fish from fishing, Foraging goods, and Farming yields.

I think most of these changes are minor, and really getting it on the live server will help balance test the small stuff. Seems like we are waiting days for feedback, and only from a few people, on very minor updates.

[Xsyon]

I'm restarting the Test Server with these minor changes:

1) Cooking and Farming should not decay with skill balancing.

2) Text box size for plant information increased (to fit full Ready to Harvest message).

Regarding fertilizer: Fertilizer simply increases the rate that plants get to maturity. I can't revise the system to make fertilizer directly increase the yield right now (the work involved would far exceed the gain).

What I can do is adjust the times. There are various options here.

1) Extend plant life and have plants mature to 100% without fertilizer right before they expire. With this option fully fertilized plants could reach maturity maybe 4 times faster than unfertilized but plants would last more days before expiring.

2) Require fertilizer for plants to reach 100% maturity. Basically without fertilizer, plants may reach somewhere between 75% and 80% maturity before expiring.

Regarding guts: The amounts gathered from creatures are slightly different than on the main servers as I adjusted the amounts to be more based on the creature type (more guts from larger creatures, less from the small critters).

You also get more fertilizer from guts of the larger creatures right now. I can adjust this so the gut to fertilizer ratio is even for all creatures (in other words 1 gut or 1 fish = base 2 + up to 4 more based on skill and stats, regardless of the creature it comes from). I'm open to feedback. Thanks!

[Emilie]

I think fertilizer from fish and guts should be 1 fish/gut yields 2-8 fertilizer. A yield of 1 is too low IMO, you have to take into account that at the early stages you spill a lot on the ground so it ends up being something like 7 fertilizers used to fertilize one plant. That is 7 fish I could just be making into kabobs and eating straight up. That is a very high initial cost, for no real yield increase.

I think eating berries instead of food should be possible but you should need to eat a lot. Like 20 berries should just about make your hunger bar go into the yellow.



EDIT:
Regarding the above options, since I'm not clear on exactly how much the harvest is affected by early harvest I don't know which is better.

Would it be possible with a combination of those two things? Like, increase plant life a little and make fertilized plants reach maturity 2x faster (4 times seems a bit much IMO) and also make it so that unfertilized plants don't mature past 80%.

That would give a clear advantage to using fertilizer but without making farming too long winded OR too fast, whilst also keeping the unfertilized option viable- just less so.

[MrDDT]

Regarding fertilizer: Fertilizer simply increases the rate that plants get to maturity. I can't revise the system to make fertilizer directly increase the yield right now (the work involved would far exceed the gain).

What I can do is adjust the times. There are various options here.

1) Extend plant life and have plants mature to 100% without fertilizer right before they expire. With this option fully fertilized plants could reach maturity maybe 4 times faster than unfertilized but plants would last more days before expiring.

2) Require fertilizer for plants to reach 100% maturity. Basically without fertilizer, plants may reach somewhere between 75% and 80% maturity before expiring.

Regarding guts: The amounts gathered from creatures are slightly different than on the main servers as I adjusted the amounts to be more based on the creature type (more guts from larger creatures, less from the small critters).

You also get more fertilizer from guts of the larger creatures right now. I can adjust this so the gut to fertilizer ratio is even for all creatures (in other words 1 gut or 1 fish = base 2 + up to 4 more based on skill and stats, regardless of the creature it comes from). I'm open to feedback. Thanks!

Given these options, I like #2 but worried because you can not harvest before 75% maturity unless I'm wrong. This means the window would be extremely short.
I would like to see option to harvest at 50%. Allow non fertilized plants to get to 50% (with everything else correct) in about 80% of the max time. Allowing 20% growth timer left for extra growth and harvesting times. So at best plants can unfertilized plants would yield 60% yield if harvested 1 second before they died. Max fertilized plants currently take 75% time to get to 100% harvest. Unless I'm wrong. This would give a large boon to fertilizing, and still leave people with the feeling they don't have to log on at special times. Plus with proper planning you can even set the 100% yield rates based on your log in times, with using the right amount of fertilizer.

My worry is that making the window small will hurt people that are not able to log in at special times to harvest.
Increasing the total time a plant can live, while making it take longer for unfertilized plants to get to 75% would be the best idea I can think of, if that is doable.

Like I said my worry with both of these options is the forcing of people to log on at special times to get any harvest at all.

Having said this, I think the current ratios are good enough for now, and I would hate to hold up a patch/update for minor changes.

Guts from larger animals is a great idea, I've not tested it on the test server, so not sure the #s yet.

[MrDDT]

I think fertilizer from fish and guts should be 1 fish/gut yields 2-8 fertilizer. A yield of 1 is too low IMO, you have to take into account that at the early stages you spill a lot on the ground so it ends up being something like 7 fertilizers used to fertilize one plant. That is 7 fish I could just be making into kabobs and eating straight up. That is a very high initial cost, for no real yield increase.

I think eating berries instead of food should be possible but you should need to eat a lot. Like 20 berries should just about make your hunger bar go into the yellow.



EDIT:
Regarding the above options, since I'm not clear on exactly how much the harvest is affected by early harvest I don't know which is better.

Would it be possible with a combination of those two things? Like, increase plant life a little and make fertilized plants reach maturity 2x faster (4 times seems a bit much IMO) and also make it so that unfertilized plants don't mature past 80%.

That would give a clear advantage to using fertilizer but without making farming too long winded OR too fast, whilst also keeping the unfertilized option viable- just less so.

I agree with everything stated here.

Minor disagreement posted below.

[mmogaddict]

Personally I don't see why the need to have the crop die at all, just have it stop growing once it's reached it's maximum days.

That would be far more casual friendly.

If doing that, I would then structure it so that an unfertilized crop only 75% (minimum harvest) by the time growth had completed.

Then not only would you have a reason to fertilize but you would also encourage more casual farmers, at the moment I think a casual player is going to look at the farming system and go 'why bother with all that', it's a game, not a job.

Plus then I could use a crop as a nice decoration

[thurgond]

thurgond, the power of the animal gives more resources. So a max power animal will give 4x the resources.

The ratio of guts per innards has been changed so, as Jordi stated 3 rounds down to 1.

On the production servers the guts per innards power ratio is something like:
1 guts / 0.2 innards power, 2 / 0.4-0.6, 3 / 0.8, 4 / 1.0
On test, this becomes:
1 guts / 0.2 - 0.8, 3 / 1.0

Since 1.0 power creatures are nearly extinct, this means every creature will give a maximum of one guts based what's on test currently. Plus, any 1.0 power guts would be much better utilized in bonecrafting than for fertilizer.

What I'm advocating is going back to the old guts / innards ratios, and leaving the fertilizer per guts based on the creature size. The fertilizer per guts should probably scale up from one for hamsters/squirrels to 10 for mutant bears, rather than the 1/3/5 scale that is on test now.

As far as adjusting crop maturation times, I could live with either one but for option 2 would increase the maximum yield to 24 or 25 to keep the non-fertilized maximum yield to 20.

And thanks for two really fast fixes. You're the man Mr. Grau.