Please for the love of Brodgar (Farming is too mundane)

[MagicManICT]

"minigame every industry, infinity capacity"

I can think of a couple of MMOs where everything is a mini-game. One still runs (Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates). One was a victim of its own popularity (Free Realms). Given the age group it was targeted towards, there wasn't enough means of monetization, or rather the means there were weren't enough to turn a profit for the game (people not old enough to have jobs tend not to spend much money). There are a few more I can think of where most everything is done via some mini-game or puzzle system.

[Mr_Bober]

"minigame every industry, infinity capacity"

yea yea i already prospected every ore in a long radius, and it was a rat race between neighbours, now im late to minehole rat race

this is quickly becoming a poverty simulator, inb4 farming limited by terrain depletion, there was a note about limiting farming in last dev stream

and then minigame cooking, and then minigame table manners, maybe then your subjective fun criteria will be met

No need to turn it into a mini game, just adjust it so it's not that annoying.
Take tree planting for example. It's not a mini game, nor an exciting task, but it doesn't take hours at a time, so it's ok.
You put your stuff in the pot, put the pot on the herb table, and go do something else. You come back an hour later, grab the sprouted trees, plant them, and you're done.
Even if you want to make it multiple times a day, because maybe u don't have enough pots or tables, it will still only take you a few minutes. Same goes with gardening.
As long as you use good soil and water, u'll see quality improving. And everything can be done very fast, without need for huge amounts of it.
It requires little time, it's rewarding, and gives you time to do other stuff before u need to start over.

Farming is the opposite. It takes hours and lots of energy, it's punishing (u need to be on every 5 hours, at least 3 times a day, to get a decent chance of improving quality. And from what I'm hearing lately, it seems that's not even working well anymore), and
it requires constant work so u can't really do anything else (unless you are ignoring several crops, or doing it in such a small scale that you couldn't even feed a pair of each animal to make cheese... but then you are as much of a farmer as I'm a miner because I mined some iron a few weeks ago).

Hell even silk farming isn't this boring, and that's one of the few things plenty of people prefer to just buy rather than do themselves because it's boring AF.

So yes, either make it faster (such as making the scythe more effective and maybe plowing too, as suggested in another thread, through the use of animals), or more rewarding (screwing less with quality, even just a guaranteed +1 each harvest could work, as long as u don't loose quality constantly), or add some other feature to it. If I had the perfect solution I would suggest it, but I don't. All I know is that I've tried almost all roles over the years, and farming should be seriously improved. Can't have something this important be this tedious.

Just make farming cause horrible injuries, then nobody will be able to farm more tiles than is fun

Right, because what farmer need is another random injury. Like if beekeeping wasn't enough... (and no, I don't use a suicide al for bees).
But hey, if that's the case, then 0 tiles is the amount. Because not even farming 1 tile is FUN.
"Let's click this, and hope for a positive dice roll. Oh, look at that, my crop is even worse than before now! How fun!"

[Narski]

Let me say that I have read all your posts. While my idea may have been a stretch. I truly believe there is something to look into about farming and upkeep time. The problem isnt the 2000k tiles to farm. The problem is the quality grind in conjunction with the field sizes.


I love haven and for all the grind it has to offer. Many games don’t offer that anymore which is why I enjoy it so. But farming shouldn’t be this mind numbing discouraging players from planting fields of crops. That is just my opinion. When I get off work and I dread having to harvest the fields before I actually get to play the game, my kids are asking me “what’s for dinner?”. Naturally I tell them CARROTS , lots of CARROTS (sarcastic)

Jorb once stated that if players are bottling then there is a problem with the game/mechanic that makes it not fun and I think I could speak for the community as a whole - there are more farmer bots than any other bot out there.

[loskierek]

if the job is too big for you get some help, ez as that.

[Imaru]

I do not understand why your friends do not help you with the harvest? Even if they do not have the skill of farming, they could pick up fiber / pumpkin / poppy flowers / lettuce, whatever. I understand that I would like to speed up the harvesting process, but still just think: you will spend the same amount of time on storing / sorting barrels / crates of seeds that you collect at tripled speed. The total time spent will be the same

[Mr_Bober]

you will spend the same amount of time on storing / sorting barrels / crates of seeds that you collect at tripled speed. The total time spent will be the same

Your math is wrong. Now I spend X to harvest and Y to sort, making a total of X+Y. If harvest was 3 time faster, I would only spend 1/3 X + Y, which is less time spent.

Also there are 2 reasons for not asking villagers to help:
1st. it's not their job. If the lumberjack has to go get logs, he shouldn't ask villagers to go cut down trees just because they don't screw the quality. Same goes with farmer or any other role. They have other stuff to do.
2nd. they mess it up. I've seen people trying to "help", ending up feeding the harvest to animals, or mixing the seeds in a granary/barrel. No grief intended, but they still do it because they don't know better. And if you confront them about it, they go back to point number 1: not their job.

I don't get why so many people are against making harvesting faster. I won't give you more work (plants still grow at the same rate), it won't really make a difference to those with bots, it just helps the poor solo farmers.

farming shouldn’t be this mind numbing [...] When I get off work and I dread having to harvest the fields before I actually get to play the game.

This.
Farming is no fun. At any level. With any field size or any number of farmers.
And the fact that so many people use bots for it, is just proof of how much they don't enjoy it.

[MagicManICT]

1st. it's not their job. If the lumberjack has to go get logs, he shouldn't ask villagers to go cut down trees just because they don't screw the quality. Same goes with farmer or any other role. They have other stuff to do.

When I say "get others to help," I'm not talking about those with labor/time intensive jobs. Though if they aren't busy doing that, they could help if it's not an "every day" job. Just some labor alts can be enough to help out around the farm, and most modern computers can multibox. Set it to harvest in the background while you do other "more important" things. The main farmer should be the director of labor, job foreman, shift lead, whatever you want to call it.

2nd. they mess it up. I've seen people trying to "help", ending up feeding the harvest to animals, or mixing the seeds in a granary/barrel. No grief intended, but they still do it because they don't know better. And if you confront them about it, they go back to point number 1: not their job.

Better training. Also, harvest and drop it to the ground. Let those who know how to sort and what goes where deal with storage while others are harvesting.

All things considered, this is one of those areas of the game that show a huge deficit in people's work mentalities and job skills--those skills that apply to every job you will ever have such as teamwork, division of labor, etc etc.

[Hrenli]

I don't get why so many people are against making harvesting faster. I won't give you more work

It will. Faster harvesting will trigger "I can plant moar!!!!111" thought in way too many heads.

[Sevenless]

I don't get why so many people are against making harvesting faster. I won't give you more work

It will. Faster harvesting will trigger "I can plant moar!!!!111" thought in way too many heads.

^

Also, as much as puzzle pirates holds dear to my heart, minigaming everything if the game isn't designed around it initially is risky. I hate what it did to runescape.

[Mr_Bober]

When I say "get others to help," I'm not talking about those with labor/time intensive jobs.

In small groups, everyone has time intensive jobs. Let's not just focus on 30+ people villages please. Plenty of people play solo, or in group of 3-4 active players.

Just some labor alts...

I'll stop you right there. I don't like alts, and I think that any task that requires it is something that needs fixing. I do my own terraforming, I do my own farming, and I do harvest my own wax/honey and so on.
If you use alts for those tasks, it means you too consider such tasks too punishing to use your main character. And if they are daily tasks, such as farming (opposed to terraforming), something needs to change.

Better training. Also, harvest and drop it to the ground. Let those who know how to sort and what goes where deal with storage while others are harvesting.

This could work, assuming whoever helps you is online at the same time. If not, u either have a shitload of crates, or things will end up mixed in barrels after a few days.

All things considered, this is one of those areas of the game that show a huge deficit in people's work mentalities and job skills--those skills that apply to every job you will ever have such as teamwork, division of labor, etc etc.

I agree. But let's remember this is a game, and should feel like one.

I feel like most users on this forum are part of a large village. Small groups don't have the manpower to turn any task in a group task, unless they ignore another field of labor. With 3-5 people, everyone will always be busy doing their jobs, and certainly can't help daily with someone else's task. Maybe occasionally, but that wouldn't do much for farming.

Not to talk about hermits, but in my point of view the hermit life is kinda like playing on hard mode (assuming a true hermit, that doesn't use 10 alts or bots).

It will. Faster harvesting will trigger "I can plant moar!!!!111" thought in way too many heads.

Then it's not giving you more work. You will still harvest the same area in 1/3 of the time you use now for the same area.
It's not forcing you to plant more, so its your choice to do so (and have more to do, which unless you sow 3 times more, would still be faster).

Also, as much as puzzle pirates holds dear to my heart, minigaming everything if the game isn't designed around it initially is risky. I hate what it did to runescape.

How is faster harvesting turning farming into a mini game?

We are talking about making the scythe do pretty much what the metal shovel does. Instead of harvesting 1 at a time (or digging 1, as per wooden shovel), you harvest 3 (as you dig with a metal shovel).