An actual purpose to enchanting trees

[Ostentatio 1641]

Currently, enchanted grass serves some kind of actual purpose, even if you give up the ability to forage/botanize/gather on it. However, enchanting a tree is 100% useless.

 

From my testing over the past week or so, I've confirmed that an enchanted tree tile:

1. Cannot be foraged/botanized.
   
2. Cannot have grass gathered from under it.
   
3. Cannot have a sprout picked.
   
4. Cannot be harvested.
   
5. Continues to age like a normal tree.
   
6. Goes back to "Young" age after "Shriveled" like a normal tree.
   

In other words, in the current game, an enchanted tree is just a regular tree you can't actually interact with except by cutting it down. An enchanted tree is strictly and in almost every way less useful than a normal tree of the same type. This is abjectly pointless, and makes enchanting a tree a total waste of an enchant. It might as well actually have some use, no?

 

My proposal: Enchanted trees should act like they do now, except you can harvest from them (like a normal tree) and their age is frozen at whatever its age is at the time of enchanting. If you want a gigantic oak tree to stick around on your deed, enchant it when it's shriveled. If you want a bunch of nice lavender bushes or something you can harvest with less active maintenance, enchant them when they're mature or something. If this being too permanent is an issue, maybe make the enchantment wear off after some relatively long period (months?) so you may have to re-enchant at some point, to avoid deeds just doing it to every harvestable tile they have over a period of years, if that would be considered a problem at all. I feel like this would give enchanting trees an actual purpose without breaking much of anything.

 

Anyone agree, or see any problems with this?

Edited September 21, 2015 by Ostentatio

[Brynden 69]

not sure if you understand how they came to be useles,but it was a series of nerfings that did it.they used to be great.i would say just remove it from the game.

[Pidgeoni 272]

+1

[Ostentatio 1641]

not sure if you understand how they came to be useles,but it was a series of nerfings that did it.they used to be great.i would say just remove it from the game.

 

I understand you used to be unable to cut them down, or something like that. However, that's really only relevant historically, and doesn't have very much to do with my interpretation of their status now.

 

I get your reason for wanting to remove it, but why not make it useful instead, since the feature is already there?

[Alendhor 76]

Speaking of enchanted vegetation, or whatever type: what about change in the graphics?  I'm sure it's just me, but the super green from the enchantment seems out of place, and a bit ugly.  How about making enchanted vegetation look exactly like normal, but put a little shimmer or some popping sparkles; nothing too fancy or ostentatious (see what I did there? ), but makes you take a second look to ask "Did I really see that?"

[Ostentatio 1641]

Yeah, I think enchanted trees in particular could use a different look since right now they just look like normal trees with enchanted grass. Some kind of glow or something, maybe. That would just be icing, though; I'm more concerned with changes that would be (presumably) easy to implement and give some use for the feature.

[Etherdrifter 1817]

+1

 

They need some purpose really, as it is enchant has seen far too many nerfs as it is.

[Minobu Tetsuhara 50]

An enchanted field of grape plants, harvestable daily.  That would be nice.  Of course, then I would just be wanting wine to have more uses.

[Ostentatio 1641]

Man, being able to harvest them at all would be a step up, and I think deed decoration would be so much better if we could freeze tree age as well.

[Karrde 93]

It would be nice; however, atm enchanted cannot be messed with by most means, so some features might become too much.

Granted I'm unsure if easier harvesting as the OP stated qualifies as over-the-top. It seems fine imho.

[Hailene 349]

When I leveled WC, I hated the waste of cutting down trees, replanting them, etc. Why not have enchanted trees be super tough so we can grind on them like ore veins?

 

Maybe not as tough as them...maybe like x50 health what they have now?

[Ostentatio 1641]

It would be nice; however, atm enchanted cannot be messed with by most means, so some features might become too much.

Granted I'm unsure if easier harvesting as the OP stated qualifies as over-the-top. It seems fine imho.

[Kegan 3920]

I had always though they should allow animals to graze on tree tiles if they were enchanted. 

[Keenan 3376]

I think they deserve an entirely new mechanic.

 

An enchanted tree freezes its age as stated. If it's sprouting or fruiting at the time, then it locks that too.

Cutting a sprout or harvesting fruit from a locked tree would put the tree on a cool down. That would need to be balanced so that it's a slight advantage, but not too much of one.

The act of harvesting or sprouting the tree has a chance to remove the enchantment, a greater chance as time wears on or the more the tree is used.

 

Why?

 

Because rank 7, while it's not impossible, it does take time and effort to get to. The act of enchanting has an 18 hour cool down. With the threads about enchanted grass being worse off now, I really wish this feature had more purpose and use. 

 

But that opens a can of wurms, because there's plenty of meditation abilities that are way more useless than making a tree look pretty. One could argue that Refresh is Love's most useful ability, and by far one of the easiest useful abilities to get next to Get Info.

[Karrde 93]

Cannot be messed with in what sense? Enchanted trees can be cut down like non-enchanted ones.

In the ways you stated yourself:

1.Cannot be foraged/botanized.

2.Cannot have grass gathered from under it.

3.Cannot have a sprout picked.

4.Cannot be harvested.

5.Continues to age like a normal tree.

6.Goes back to "Young" age after "Shriveled" like a normal tree.

Also couldn't cut them down once, which turned out to be an issue when tree collision was in.

For example consider trees that grew so big they blocked traffic across the tile. Olive trees were really bad for this.

Now consider what happened when they were enchanted... an invulnerable barrier.

Overall the point is to consider all aspects of how something may impact gameplay. Granted issues can slip through until coming up later. Once we didn't have tree collision, then it was added... and now we are back to no tree collision again.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Karrde

[FranktheTank 1891]

-1

[Ostentatio 1641]

I think they deserve an entirely new mechanic.

 

An enchanted tree freezes its age as stated. If it's sprouting or fruiting at the time, then it locks that too.

Cutting a sprout or harvesting fruit from a locked tree would put the tree on a cool down. That would need to be balanced so that it's a slight advantage, but not too much of one.

The act of harvesting or sprouting the tree has a chance to remove the enchantment, a greater chance as time wears on or the more the tree is used.

 

Why?

 

Because rank 7, while it's not impossible, it does take time and effort to get to. The act of enchanting has an 18 hour cool down. With the threads about enchanted grass being worse off now, I really wish this feature had more purpose and use. 

 

But that opens a can of wurms, because there's plenty of meditation abilities that are way more useless than making a tree look pretty. One could argue that Refresh is Love's most useful ability, and by far one of the easiest useful abilities to get next to Get Info.

 

Yeah, this would be pretty decent. I intentionally kept my suggestion to something that would be decidedly non-controversial and fairly easy to implement, but I like your ideas if a bigger change were to be made.

 

... And don't get me started on how ridiculous Refresh is. That's a whole other topic.

[Pandalet 1195]

+1 to enchanted trees being somehow useful

[Anarres 237]

+1

 

After months of not hearing about enchanting trees or thinking about them (or seeing them), when I heard about them again I assumed they must be "frozen" at the age they were enchanted. Otherwise, that's the meaning of this at all?

 

As this thread proves, no, they aren't, lol. I think that intuition isn't bad though, they should be "frozen" at the age they were enchanted. Kinda like enchanted grass is "frozen" (as long as no animals are there).

[Ostentatio 1641]

Just to drive the point home, this is what enchanting trees does:

 

[21:28:51] You see  an enchanted old Lemon tree. No lemons grew to mature state, and they have weird brown spots.

 

Yes, enchanting trees does basically nothing but make them diseased and infertile.

[Eldurian 86]

I think they deserve an entirely new mechanic.

 

An enchanted tree freezes its age as stated. If it's sprouting or fruiting at the time, then it locks that too.

Cutting a sprout or harvesting fruit from a locked tree would put the tree on a cool down. That would need to be balanced so that it's a slight advantage, but not too much of one.

The act of harvesting or sprouting the tree has a chance to remove the enchantment, a greater chance as time wears on or the more the tree is used.

 

Why?

 

Because rank 7, while it's not impossible, it does take time and effort to get to. The act of enchanting has an 18 hour cool down. With the threads about enchanted grass being worse off now, I really wish this feature had more purpose and use. 

 

But that opens a can of wurms, because there's plenty of meditation abilities that are way more useless than making a tree look pretty. One could argue that Refresh is Love's most useful ability, and by far one of the easiest useful abilities to get next to Get Info.

I really like this idea. Enchant your grape bushes while in season and they continue to produce grapes until the dice rolls are against you. It's also not ridiculously OP because the seasons don't last long enough that you would be able to do this more than about 2 times a season. It's handy but not game breaking.

[zigozag 915]

+1

 

I actually thought they were supposed to stop aging once enchanted, and that was one of the reasons i picked PoL, hehe.

[Steveleeb 1010]

I think Fo would have something to say about this.


+1

[Wilczan 1540]

BIG +1

 

I want middle fir trees forewer instead of gigantic one.

[MisterTeddy 284]

ugghhh these are useless and SotG remains as is, bummer

 

imo they should get some bonus to harvesting (either quantity and / or quality), I'm impartial to age lock