Game Development: Spit'n'Polish

[Coriander]

Great update - again. Now with my sturdy spade I can finally show those bunny tombstones, er stumps, who's the boss.

Regarding farming: The massive same seed quality at harvest sounds like it takes out some of the hassle/pleasure of gleaning out the best seeds. Perhaps an occasional crop related curio would spice it back up a bit?

[lachlaan]

In regards to the farming thing, from recounts of both early Salem and past Hafen farming mechanics, it seemed to me that what people enjoyed quite a bit, if counterintuitively so, was exactly that grind of finding those few good seeds amongst the others and replanting them. Homogenization for the sake of catering to the new wave of players will make the tasks just feel repetitive and unrewarding since the reward doesn't scale as much with effort put in but rather just happens regardless, a lot more hassle to do what was previously not that big of a hassle it seems.

[DaniAngione]

As far as I understand, the bonus (or lowering) of Q applies to all seeds but not necessarily will all of them have the same Q. Let's say, if you plant a q10 seed and a q16 seed and the batch system gives you +3 for this type of seed, you'll harvest q13 and 19 seeds. So, technically, if your original seeds had different qualities, (which is likely, since you had collected them while still increasing survival rapidly, farming, etc, etc...) it means that even though all of them raise (or lower) in quality, there will still be some discrepance to it. Dedicated players that enjoyed the chore can still look for the best seeds for replanting; people that didn't have the time or didn't like it, can have a slower (yet steady) growth in quality... so, yeah, I suppose the new system plesases both audiences, actually.

[Sam_Damon]

Each batch of a crop which is planted in the same area (roughly two minimaps), time (roughly five hours), and of the same type(carrots, peas, barley, &c), will be given the same random quality modification uniformly, and planted tiles of that batch will thus all have their qualities affected in the same way. This was intended to reduce what we perceived as the simple hassle of having to inspect each seed stack individually, and then perform the rather boring operation of simply selecting the best one. If you wish to maintain different crop "strains" -- presumably to have more samples with different random seeds to select from when replanting -- you may do that by planting several different fields at distances in time or space. We are not entirely sure how farming and potential crop selection should ideally work to be the most fun and engaging. Feel free to discuss.

Awesome change! That kind of gives the feeling of an overall "good" or "bad" harvest. IRL, farmers wouldn't search through mountains of individual seeds. This is a good mechanic that eliminates a very very VERY boring part of farming.

[Kaios]

it seemed to me that what people enjoyed quite a bit, if counterintuitively so, was exactly that grind of finding those few good seeds amongst the others and replanting them.

Who enjoyed that? Got used to it maybe... but enjoyed? I think if their attempt is to implement a system that completely eliminates the need to check for that, that is the right direction to be going.

[Sevenless]

it seemed to me that what people enjoyed quite a bit, if counterintuitively so, was exactly that grind of finding those few good seeds amongst the others and replanting them.

Who enjoyed that? Got used to it maybe... but enjoyed? I think if their attempt is to implement a system that completely eliminates the need to check for that, that is the right direction to be going.

I don't think anyone enjoyed it. However, it made you feel like you had some impact on the system. Your actions were the key to your quality increasing. Under the current system though you are just watching the crops grow and have no power or control over how they increase in quality.

[Kaios]

I don't think anyone enjoyed it. However, it made you feel like you had some impact on the system. Your actions were the key to your quality increasing. Under the current system though you are just watching the crops grow and have no power or control over how they increase in quality.

Oh yeah I can certainly agree with you that the system could use improvement or more active involvement in the actual raising of the qualities but going back to the old system of "open and look through tons of seed bags and select and pull the highest quality from each and then plant" may not be the best option.

[Sevenless]

Oh yeah I can certainly agree with you that the system could use improvement or more active involvement in the actual raising of the qualities but going back to the old system of "open and look through tons of seed bags and select and pull the highest quality from each and then plant" may not be the best option.

Agreed. Here's my suggestion on one possible solution:

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=42762

If you come up with other ideas feel free to make a counter proposal Lets get brains thinking, I'm sure this system has potential and frankly I love the reduced clicking part of it. It makes it physically possible for me to farm

[beansahol]

how am I supposed to kill bears now?

[jorb]

supposed to kill bears

lol. Look at this guy. He thinks he should be killing bears.

Bears should be killing you, and only for want of better AI do they not.