Balance Idea: Farming

[LadyGoo]

Crops quality
Wheat quality could be upgraded by a hq herbalist table. Everyone knows that it's a huge hussle to actually select your crops and keep them up to date: you have to have several small fields you replant every 30 mins, so you will have highest chance of quality rise. It bores a lot of people and I am yet to see anyone who'd be very happy with the system and enjoy it. What I propose is to make it so that you can upgrade the quality of your seeds by placing them into the herbalist tables.
+ that way the meaning of hq trees will be as big as in Legacy.
+ less hassle with the quality rush and more relaxed farming gameplay. You can still do the crop quality rise if you really want to. The tree quality growth stops at a certain point.
- less seed trades.


Carrots quality
Carrots are currently being used as a way to get a high-quality mulch. Someone* has ran a bot that replants carrots on the earliest stage 24/7 on a 1-2 minimap long fields to grant them highest quality gains and rush the mulch for the trees. Imho, that shouldn't be the case, since non-botters cannot keep up with that. Crops should be balanced in a way, that their harvest and replant times should be approximately the same. As in: carrots harvesting time shouldn't be twice faster than other crops.

[ChildhoodObesity]

idk much about farming but the quality being RANDOM and having a chance to go down seems KENDRICK LAMEO

[Aceb]

The power of the Granger made me edit this post:

There's no solution. If not carrots : beetrots and stuff. There's no solution in what You post here. Only making things a little slighter tedious.


Rule of "three-fields" would be better.

[Sevenless]

Now that that's at least commented on by Granger, I'll toss my reply in:

High Q trees are typically in the hands of powerful factions. Farming right now is interesting in that anyone willing to put the time into farming and farming alone can maintain high quality. Not sure I'm comfortable with this suggestion as a result, it rebalances it more in favour of large factions (and we all know the game doesn't exactly need that atm).

Carrots are wonky for sure, but I kind of want to keep them enshrined as the highest Q plant in the game mostly as part of... a legacy of sorts I guess? If we rebalnce crop harvesting times to line up better, I feel that in order to keep this legacy alive we could modify the quality ranges on various plants. Like carrots if they got rebalanced to get 0>+7 as their range instead of -2>5.

[foomanchu]

[DERAIL CUT]

unfortunately, this current farming mechanic iteration benefits botters more than previous farming mechanics (speaking as a botter and a bot maker)
also, i cannot think of a good solution to fix it as farming mechanics in this game, being largely tedious and repetitive along with a long growth period and random decay ticks, has always given more benefits to botters than to actually playing (just like many other mechanics in this game)

if i knew of a meaningful fix, i would have suggested it ages ago.. but since this is a mmo with many mechanics based around time gates and repetitiveness, bots and forms of automation will always provide more benefits (or at least the same benefits for much less work).. as it stands, the only fix (more of a bandaid) would be to provide similar functionality of a bot (replant highest q in inventory mainly) to the default client but that is also a bit of a pandoras box as starting down that path would lead to clamouring about other botting practices that should be included in the default client

[Granger]

Wow, more reports than posts for this topic...

In giving everyone the chance to row back a bit on what's been said and will return after sundown (mine, not yours) to kill off what not been edited into being decent.

That has happened now, derails split into viewtopic.php?f=48&t=57549 - not much left here.

In case you have a view on the farming system feel free to give insights, point out flaws and offer suggestions on how it could be made better - preferably with the long-term goal of an eternal world (without wipes) in mind.

Should you have ideas for mechanics for farming (not general botting, in case you want to discuss this then search for one of the topics where this already has been discussed to kingdom come and add to that) that would lessen or even remove the incentive for unattended automation: please bring them forward.

Please spare us any details (or even coarse views) on who is botting, is doing it longer/harder/better or who sucks at it. If you want to stir up trouble go initiate some ingame action and brag about it in the moot.

[LadyGoo]

High Q trees are typically in the hands of powerful factions.

This is why I suggest re-balancing the animal spawns in the other topic (to even out the mulch, pots and tree qualities). The reasoning for the herbalist tables is to spare the need to constantly select some things. I have personally enjoyed not being bothered by selecting q of barley and wheat. On the other hand, current flax and hemp qualities are higher than the herbalist tables q. So the idea doesn't grant imbalance, but spares you of additional routine of selecting every single crop. Especially the stuff that are very boring and stupid: all the trellis crops are pain in the ass to select if you do not have a proper bot. In a nutshell: you won't have to bother with selecting that much, if you do not want to. You will just have to keep up with the flax and carrot qualities and that's it. The other crops aren't essential for the industry.

Summing up, the herbalist tables will help those who do not have the botting power and provide for the more relaxed gameplay. Flax and carrot sellection necessity still remains. So, hafen won't loose that aspect either. If you wanna get highest q whatever, then sure, you can still keep selecting, since the tree qualities cap eventually.

If we rebalnce crop harvesting times to line up better, I feel that in order to keep this legacy alive we could modify the quality ranges on various plants. Like carrots if they got rebalanced to get 0>+7 as their range instead of -2>5.

Rebalance sounds much better, yeah.

[Granger]

Regarding carrot: they should give seeds (which can be planted) only late at the last stage and planting a carrot itself should either only yield seeds or be removed.

[Grog]

Regarding carrot: they should give seeds (which can be planted) only late at the last stage and planting a carrot itself should either only yield seeds or be removed.

So if you're too late you'd still get carrot seeds?
That should be a bit mean, but not too much.

[Granger]

Regarding carrot: they should give seeds (which can be planted) only late at the last stage and planting a carrot itself should either only yield seeds or be removed.

So if you're too late you'd still get carrot seeds?
That should be a bit mean, but not too much.

The other way around: if you pull them to early you don't get seeds - then either pay the time penalty of having to replant them (to get seeds) or having to jump through hoops (to get seeds) or be shafted (should they turn not plantable). Idea is that you won't be able to multiply carrots directly and to extend the time it takes per cycle to slow them down.

Planted from seeds:
stage 1 growing from 5 seeds
stage 2 growing
stage 3 harvestable for 1 carrot
stage 4 harvestable for 2-3 carrots
stage 5 harvestable for 1-2 carrots and 5-10 seeds

Planted from a carrot:
stage 1 growing from 1 carrot
stage 2 growing
stage 3 growing
stage 4 harvestable 5-15 seeds