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

[thurgond]

I don't mind farming failures, if they would go away as skill increased. Since there do not seem to be new actions or schemes to farming, there should be some thing to show for increasing skill. It does not seem to be coded that way though. Failures at 5 skill are about the same as at 30 skill. Like you do not fail making thread at a fairly low tailoring skill, the basic plant/water/fertilize actions should stop failing in the 10-20 skill range. Higher skill would reduce multiple levels of weeds/pests in a single action.

If that is too much trouble to code, no failures would improve the experience.

In my testing, it's one gut per fertilizer whether it is a hamster or bear guts.

[MrDDT]

I will check the fertilizer function. It should (and will) give 4-8 fertilizer per gut / fish.

Regarding failure to plant, water and fertilize: these aspects were added when farming was started and I was assisted by other coders. Do these add at all to the farming experience? If not, I can remove the failure rate altogether (it's not part of my original design at all).

Only gives 1 fertilizer per gut/fish. Uses farming skill.

I think failing to plant is fine as long as the guts/fish/fertilizer is worked out. All add farming exp. Even failures.

[Bejaymac]

7) Food decay set to 1 week for raw and 2 weeks for cooked food. Can be preserved up to 4x in proper containers and a commissary. This may be adjusted further.

Is that a real world week or a game week?

I ask because all of my raw stuff is down to worn with 1/6, even the plants in the special plant basket are almost only fit for compost as they are down to worn as well. Cooked food in the food pouch is at 95/100 so that seems to be working correct.

[Emilie]

Failure in planting, watering etc is fine as long as success rate increases with skill. If it doesn't increase then just compensate by increasing yield with skill. I think having a failure rate adds something to the experience.

Very importantly, the yield from farming needs to change, IMO from what a previous poster stated. Having to use 10 foraged plants to yield 10 grown is nonsensical. Why grow anything then? In the real world you'd expect a significantly higher yield than 10 to 1 for most plants except grain. A yield of 1 to 1 makes farming useless.

Also having yield go up with farming skill makes a lot of sense, I wouldn't expect having to water or weed that much less for being an expert farmer, but I would expect to spill less when I do, and to get a better crop for my efforts than my hobby farmer friend.


How about being able to extract more seeds from a foraged plant depending on foraging skill? So at low skill you get one seed from each plant, then more up to 10-20 for 100 skill.

Failing to plant could also depend on seed quality, like in real life sometimes seeds don't grow if they are old, damaged etc.

[MrDDT]

Good points Emilie.

I would like to add that make sure that fertilized crops have greatly more yield than non fertilized crops, for 2 reasons.
1)Makes sense
2)At the current ratios (and even planned ones) if it takes 1 seed to yield 5 crops unfertilized, 1 seed + 1-2 guts/fish to yield 10, then no point in fertilizing when you can simply just plant another one. Fertilizing to 100% should give about 3x more yield (3 for unfertilized, 8 to 10 fertilized).

Also note that farming is 100% upfront cost. Land usage area, 4 fertilizers, 1 water, 1 seed. If you do not properly farm/harvest it correctly you are out all those resources.

Yield should be effected by skill. Allow the best farmers to want to plant/harvest. Let the trainees and workers learn skill by tending the fields, which have no effects on failures but only when the work is done. Allowing new players, and helpers to help with farming without messing up the crop size.
A large worry is that if you are low skill you will not get food, well farming at low levels will yield still a LARGE harvest IF you use fertilizer and it has the effect as noted 3x. But I think it makes sense this way while still allowing low skill helpers to get skill through farming without messing up the crops for skilled farmers.


I think getting more than 1 seed from extracting makes sense also (should be done for forestry also IMO) however, I think more than 5 is a bit over kill. You can base this on skill.

[Emilie]

2)At the current ratios (and even planned ones) if it takes 1 seed to yield 5 crops unfertilized, 1 seed + 1-2 guts/fish to yield 10, then no point in fertilizing when you can simply just plant another one. Fertilizing to 100% should give about 3x more yield (3 for unfertilized, 8 to 10 fertilized).

A very important point. I hadn't thought if that. I hope this is considered. Players expending effort = playing the game deeply using the game mechanics to their fullest, should always be rewarded in comparison with players expending little effort = just walking around in the game world picking up stuff.

I think getting more than 1 seed from extracting makes sense also (should be done for forestry also IMO) however, I think more than 5 is a bit over kill. You can base this on skill.

I'd like 10 to be max, it is quite realistic IMO, but even 5 is better than 1. One reason I hope for this change is that it would make foraging a more useful skill.

[MrDDT]

Yvonne also pointed out in game that Farming and Cooking skills offset each other in locks/+ on the skills list. You can only have 1 or the other set to lock/+. Not sure if this was planned like that or not.

Also there is only 2 skills in the pool yet they decay each other. Unlike other pools. Again not sure if this was planned like this or not.

Personally I do not care either way. Just making it noted here.

[GuideXaphan]

Primarily I am looking for feedback on any bugs, missing art, or anything that seems to be working incorrectly with the new systems.

Secondarily I am looking for feedback on any adjustable variables (farming times, buff power, buff duration etc.) that do not seem balanced.

Please keep feedback short and sweet to best assist me in getting this update to the public!

I'm all for talking about different ways of attracting players and how systems work or should work, we have general discussion for that if you want to start a thread, but this thread is for the aforementioned.

Please keep personal call outs and bashing down, it doesn't achieve anything to the topic at hand. You all will have personal differences regarding patches or feedback on systems but calling out that person for a difference of opinion doesn't speed up any progress and doesn't discredit or make your claims any more sound.

[Emilie]

removed- oops, I didn't see the post by GuideXaphan before I posted.

[Tupux]

I planted a Sego Lily( location Z:896 X:490.48 Z:511.47) of which I can see the bars but not the plant itself. With a lot of clicking I managed to select and fertilize the plant though.

After changing the camera view all bars above plants disappeared which was fixed by re-logging. Changing the camera view again replicated the problem.

Golden Retriever eyes can be used as primary ingrediënt but this does not show up on the status bars of the eyes.

For me too, the recipes from the Cook Book do not show the primary ingrediënts.
Adding the other ingrediënts and the skewer will start cooking and give a "missing ingrediënts"message after every cooking action.
No foods are actually cooked but the amount in the Cook Book does go up.

I like the amount of attention farming needs but am not sure if with all the materials and time spent it will be worth the trouble with a maximum yield of 10.

The rate at which nourishment and hydration drop now seems a bit too slow to me but is better than before when it went too fast.