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

[thurgond]

I am not seeing a big difference in rarity of crop plants when foraging. Got 35% crop plants and 65% herbs and berries with 100% foraging.

On my alt with 24 foraging, I got 9.7% crop plants, 33.3% other plants, and 55% nothing.

My test with one fertilizer showed that there was a tiny amount left at 75% maturity, so cutting off crops with no fertilizer at 75-80% growth would achieve the result you want. In one test an unfertilized potato only went to 80% maturity with one day left. On my 2nd test an unfertilized cattail was at 80% with 11 days left and reached 100% with 6 days left.

If you put in the limit on plants without fertilizer, I suspect that most players will use one fertilizer. This will pretty much insure the plant will be at 100% maturity if the player logs on 3 real world days after planting (27 game days or 5 days left till plant death). With or without this change, I suspect a lot of crops will go without fertilizer when players start out and tend to spill a lot of fertilizer.

The buffs from food are good enough I suspect players will use higher level recipes when they can. Specially if they are hunting or doing a lot of terraforming. I'm not sure players will routinely use the highest recipes since they take a lot of ingredients.

I like making foraging more regional. I doubt this will encourage more trade in seasonings since they are perishable. Crop seeds could make a good trade item.

On the bug front, the use count on saved recipes gets reset when the server resets.

[Bejaymac]

On my 2nd test an unfertilized cattail was at 80% with 11 days left and reached 100% with 6 days left.

That is strange as the cattails I tested reached 100% with just 3 days left, all I did was keep their water over 50% and weed and pest them, wonder if growth rate is also tied into QL of the seed and skill level.

[MrDDT]

I predict almost no one using buffed food after about 1 or 2 months and using it just for hunger mostly because buffs rarely matter for a +10ish or less.

The first 1 or so months people will likely be running through the resources they have, so leveling up skills, testing buffs, and using up resources before decay.

I think the buff system on food is good, just that until some reason why we need these buffs. Most games have end game content that require high stats. Either PVP, or Raid Bosses etc. Considering a 1 week old toon can get gear from players that anyone can wear and kill the hardest animals in the game. Being there is no PVP in the game (PVP server is dead) there is no competitive aspect to use buffs.

I expect the side of buffs being used from cooking is likely to lower the eating time, eating them for healing HP or energy. Buffs are likely not a major factor. Eating food in 8s vs 30s is a factor.

[Whorlok]

PVP is not dead "ABT" we are with 4-5 daily active .. and a small amount of other people

I predict almost no one using buffed food after about 1 or 2 months and using it just for hunger mostly because buffs rarely matter for a +10ish or less.

The first 1 or so months people will likely be running through the resources they have, so leveling up skills, testing buffs, and using up resources before decay.

I think the buff system on food is good, just that until some reason why we need these buffs. Most games have end game content that require high stats. Either PVP, or Raid Bosses etc. Considering a 1 week old toon can get gear from players that anyone can wear and kill the hardest animals in the game. Being there is no PVP in the game (PVP server is dead) there is no competitive aspect to use buffs.

PVP is not dead "ABT" we are with 4-5 daily active .. and a small amount of other people

I expect the side of buffs being used from cooking is likely to lower the eating time, eating them for healing HP or energy. Buffs are likely not a major factor. Eating food in 8s vs 30s is a factor.

[mmogaddict]

Foragaging: 71.4
Int: 79.3
Spirit: 52.2
Cha: 52.8

Foraging Attempts: 50
Foraging Terrain: Grasslands

23 different plant species.

Consisting Of:
-- 7 non-crop edible varieties (berries and such)
-- 10 non edible varieties
-- 6 crop varieties

Total Individual Quantities:
-- 41 non-crop edible (berries and such)
-- 63 non edible
-- 37 crop

Checking for a specific buff (decided to use FORT as I as sum it will be more popular than most)
3 plants had Fort buff, 1 edible, 1 non edible and 1 crop.

Out of 141 plants collected, 13 had a Fort buff (6 lowered PER, 7 lowered INT).


BUGS:

[Extract All] on crop plants does not count as a skill attempt. (Extracting singularly does - Foraging)

[Extract All] not present on Cones (tested only Douglas), Single Extract on Cone works ok and counts towards Forestry.



ADDITIONAL TEST:

Picking up any combination of branch, twig, cone, sap, seed, or leaf on the same spot 4 times still leaves the ground as bare earth

[MrDDT]

PVP is not dead "ABT" we are with 4-5 daily active .. and a small amount of other people

How much PVP have you done while you were "active" over the last week or 2? I rest my case.
Let's go with this, how many people outside of your own toons and tribe have you seen in game? Not talking in global but wondered around and ran into them.

It's really pointless to have a debate when people try to misrepresent the facts. It would be like saying Xsyon is doing great because there is lots of people playing. Wanting it to be so, and it being so are not the same.

[wastelandstoic]

Currently I can get 300 foraged items in 5 mins of foraging.

It's really pointless to have a debate when people try to misrepresent the facts.

"Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth."

[Xsyon]

Some quick notes:

1) Seasonal foraging variation is something I want to do, just not for this update. It's in my notes.

2) Stat uses (and skills) do need balancing, but again that's for a future update. This update does give some additional value to some less used stats and skills.

3) I like the idea of getting guts and fillets from fish and have push this on my list.

4) After testing foraging amounts with assistance over the past few days, I found that the greatest difference between this type of gathering in Xsyon and in other games I've played is that you don't have to move much in between foraging attempts. This makes it easy, especially for high level players, to quickly gather an abundance of plants.

I've adjusted this distance and may adjust it further.

[Xsyon]

The Test Server is up with some changes.

1) Growing plant life extend to 38 game days. This is slightly over 4 real days. I adjusted the time so that the expiration time for a plant falls within the same hour range as the planting time. This should work well for players that only log in during certain times of the day. This also allows for a larger harvest window.

2) Mature plants do not grow during an update if not fertilized. This limits plants never fertilized to 75% maturity.

3) Distance between foraging attempts increased from 10 m to 25 m. I may increase this more. (as noted above)

4) Foraging max amount per gather adjusted and now based on skill and stats. Previously the amount was random between a fixed min and max.

5) Foraging chance to fail revised. Low level characters will fail less often than before. 100 skill players have a small (5%) chance of failure.

6) Foraging chance of rare and very rare plants revised.

7) Plant rarity indicated by the color of the plant's name using the same system as scavenged materials.

8) Character gains skill (foraging or forestry) when using Extract All.

9) Guts from animals revised, ranging from 1 to 8 based on the type and size / power of a creature.

10) Fertilizer amount from guts revised, ranging from 2 to 5 based on skill.

11) Chance to spill fertilizer reduced.

12) Extract all should work on cones.

13) Use count on recipes saves during a server restart.

14) Homestead are set to have 0 commissaries (as mentioned earlier).

Some of these changes are based on my own personal tests over the past few days, trying to get the feel for foraging and farming that I want. Personal tests like this is something I rarely get the time to do!

Regarding amounts and distances, I would rather err on the side of making things too difficult or having amounts be too low right now that to have things be too easy. Resource upkeep will be coming in game and will provide bonuses such as increased amounts, smaller distances, less chance of failure and possibly faster gathering times. If things are too easy as is, these bonuses won't have value. Please keep this in mind when providing feedback.

I welcome all feedback and confirmation of fixes or reports of any outstanding problems. Thanks!

[mmogaddict]

1) Growing plant life extend to 38 game days. This is slightly over 4 real days. I adjusted the time so that the expiration time for a plant falls within the same hour range as the planting time. This should work well for players that only log in during certain times of the day. This also allows for a larger harvest window.

2) Mature plants do not grow during an update if not fertilized. This limits plants never fertilized to 75% maturity.

Not Tested yet

3) Distance between foraging attempts increased from 10 m to 25 m. I may increase this more. (as noted above)

Seems fine, 50 attempts had me wander the length of my valley around 800 coord units. I wouldn't recommend going any larger than 25m though.

4) Foraging max amount per gather adjusted and now based on skill and stats. Previously the amount was random between a fixed min and max.

Foraging Skill: 71.7
Primary Stat: 79.4
Secondary Stat: 52.2
CHA: 52.8

Foraging Attempts: 50
Foraging Terrain: Grass only, High danger zone

Amount of Edible non Crop Plants: 22 common, 3 uncommon
Amount of Non-Edible Plants: 18 Common, 13 uncommon, 15 superior, 9 rare
Amount of Crop Plants: 3 rare
Total Amount of plants: 83

Seems fine mechanically, but it is a rather boring way to live. Between the time it takes to gather food and prepare before you can get on with your current non-food project you kind of get the feeling that you are 'wasting your time' a little.

Will need to see how we go after a couple of weeks on live to make a judgment if the 'work'/'play' balance is correct.

It certainly acts as a disincentive for casual solo players to continue/start. Hardcore players will see it more as an annoyance. I would be less inclined to recommend the game to friends/guildmates unless I thought they were a more hardcorish player.

5) Foraging chance to fail revised. Low level characters will fail less often than before. 100 skill players have a small (5%) chance of failure.

Noticed the improvement, only had maybe 3~4 fails out of 50 attempts, last test it seems almost around 15~20% fail rate.

6) Foraging chance of rare and very rare plants revised.

Rarety seems ok. Maybe crops too rare (1 find of 3 units in 50 attempts with moderate high skill) , will need more testing since sample size is too low to make proper judgment.

7) Plant rarity indicated by the color of the plant's name using the same system as scavenged materials.

Good improvement

8) Character gains skill (foraging or forestry) when using Extract All.

Working, though I think 'extract all' would be better if it worked like batch processing of crafting, that is to say that each green bar 'extract' should just be 1 extraction and all 'extract all' does is automate each extraction attempt. So a stack of 10 cones for example would automate 10 extractions on the stack each extraction being 1 rather than 1 extraction being all 10 cones.

Therefore extract all on a stack of 10 cones/plants would be 10 skill attempts and take 10 times longer than extracting a single cone.

'Extract all' should just be saving all the mouse movements and clicks/RSI rather than doing a whole stack in the same time as it would take to do 1 cone/plant.

9) Guts from animals revised, ranging from 1 to 8 based on the type and size / power of a creature.

10) Fertilizer amount from guts revised, ranging from 2 to 5 based on skill.

11) Chance to spill fertilizer reduced.

12) Extract all should work on cones.

13) Use count on recipes saves during a server restart.

14) Homestead are set to have 0 commissaries (as mentioned earlier).

Not tested yet.

Regarding amounts and distances, I would rather err on the side of making things too difficult or having amounts be too low right now that to have things be too easy. Resource upkeep will be coming in game and will provide bonuses such as increased amounts, smaller distances, less chance of failure and possibly faster gathering times. If things are too easy as is, these bonuses won't have value. Please keep this in mind when providing feedback.

Sounds fine.