Add Crop Planting Abilities

[Hailene 362]

In a similar vein to how prospecting "unlocks" additional abilities as you level it, I had the idea that we could have more planting options for farming crops. It would be similar to how we plant sprouts (plant center, plant naturally). Numbers and bonuses are totally soft, but here would be a bare bone idea:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unlock at 10 farming, reduce growing time--Bonus: Reduces growth time by ~ 1 day (3-4 days to ripen instead of 4-5 that it is now) Negative: -15%final quality

 

Unlock at 15 farming, increase bounty-- Bonus: Increase farming yield by 1. Negative: -5% final quality

 

Unlock at 25 farming, increase quality--Bonus: Increase final quality by 5%. Negative: Adds one additional day to time to ripen.

 

Unlock at 30 farming, longer ripe time--Bonus: Takes an extra day for ripe crops to turn into weeds. Negative: None

 

Unlock at 40 farming, faster sowing--Bonus: Takes 50% less time to sow a crop. Negative: None

 

Unlock 45 farming, plant at higher slope--Bonus: Can sow a field at (farming skill)/10 rounded down more than currently allowed (8 slope?). Negative: None

 

Unlock 50 farming, extra tending bonus: Bonus Increase effect of successful tends. Negative: Ripe crops never tended will only yield 1 crop (I'm thinking 2 tends to break even with a normal never tended field, and bonuses from there. Throwing some numbers around, maybe if you don't tend a normal field you get 6 crops, if you tend it 5 times without this ability you get 10-11. But with this farming bonus if you tended it 5 times you might get 14-15 on average). 

 

Unlock 60 farming,reduce difficulty--Bonus: Reduce crop difficulty by 5 (maybe 10 might be better?). Negative: None

 

Unlock 65 farming, increase difficulty--Bonus: Increase crop difficulty by 5(maybe 10 might be better?. Negative: None

 

Unlock 75 farming, automatic resowing--Bonus: A harvested crop will revert to freshly sown after a harvest for farming/20 (rounded down) harvests (based on sower's skill). Negative: Triples the time required to sow a tile.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I will admit, I drew inspiration from Roccandil's crop trait suggestion. This system stream lines the idea. There aren't going to be "new" crops that throw a monkey wrench in the affinity list or add new recipes. A potato no matter what would still be a potato, even if it's harvested sooner or higher quality or what not.

 

I don't think we should change the hover over text on a crop tile, but maybe when you examine you get some some description that the crop is different. For example, for the higher slope planted crops you might see something like, "You see thick roots growing into the soil." Or something like that.

 

I also tried to throw newbie friendly abilities at lower level, but overall, while powerful in the beginning, they are not too useful towards higher farming skill because their abilities do not scale too well.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Hailene

[Flubb 773]

+1 overall, but:

I'm not sure about the difficulty modifiers, it feels a bit meta and contrary to the idea that certain crops need certain skill and are best used to gain XP on said levels, like cooking in forges or adding nails to your meals, which has been abolished. But someone arbitrarily making their garlic more difficult for better high end gains may not be too much of a problem as they're renouncing a practically useful trait in its stead.

 

[Hailene 362]

8 hours ago, Flubb said:

 But someone arbitrarily making their garlic more difficult for better high end gains may not be too much of a problem as they're renouncing a practically useful trait in its stead.

 

I personally think the difficulty ones are a bit weak. It would only be useful if you're using less than ideal crops to tend with your rake. Maybe to fulfill a work order or something?

 

And, as you said, you are losing out on some benefits. I wa s actually thinking of increasing the difficulty swing to 10 (from 5 that it is now).

[Yiraia 427]

On 01/12/2017 at 6:58 PM, Hailene said:

Unlock 75 farming, automatic resowing--Bonus: A harvested crop will revert to freshly sown after a harvest for farming/20 (rounded down) harvests (based on sower's skill). Negative: Triples the time required to sow a tile.

Huge -1 to that unless the "negative" is changed. Tripled time + automatic resowing is perfect for grinding with limited land. Without the negative trait on this one Id +1 all

[elroth 279]

i think this complicates farming.

if you want to set bonusses to farming make it more like gardening.

perhaps

at 50 you can see how many times you tended this field

at 70 it will give you an estimate of the yield

 

but dont change quantities or qualities, since quantitiy already goes up with level, and qualities is based on skill already, if you implement this there is no incentive to get really high skill

 

the auto resow is interesting but can you turn it of ? in case i dont want to replant at all?

 

-1 for me

[Yiraia 427]

4 minutes ago, elroth said:

the auto resow is interesting but can you turn it of ? in case i dont want to replant at all?

... these are abilities... Right? The skills she mentioned are not passive. You have the option to plant in specific ways and they are unlocked by skill. If you want to increase difficulty or lower it, then you can. If you don't want the auto resow, you can just not auto resow. At least thats what i got from the suggestion. Would be weird if 60 decreased difficulty by 5 and then 65 increased it back to normal...

[Hailene 362]

5 hours ago, Yiraia said:

Huge -1 to that unless the "negative" is changed. Tripled time + automatic resowing is perfect for grinding with limited land

 

What's wrong with it? It's just sowing time (so the action timer where you plant seeds. Turning a dirt tile into a "freshly sown" tile).

 

It doesn't lengthen the time to grow into a ripe crop?

 

4 hours ago, elroth said:

the auto resow is interesting but can you turn it of ?

 

All abilities are completely optional and mutually exclusive. You can only use one at a time (or none if you want to use regular sowing like we have now).

 

Yiriaia is correct.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Hailene

[Yiraia 427]

2 hours ago, Hailene said:

What's wrong with it? It's just sowing time (so the action timer where you plant seeds. Turning a dirt tile into a "freshly sown" tile).

ah i was thinking Tilling. +1

[Hailene 362]

3 hours ago, Yiraia said:

ah i was thinking Tilling. +1

 

Extending tending timers would have been a bit too..meta-gaming, even for me.

[Roccandil 959]

I'm not sure about this one. Were it me, I'd remove the negatives, since I see the opportunity cost as negative enough. So, for instance:

 

Unlock at 15 farming, increase bounty-- Bonus: Increase farming yield by 1. Negative: -5% final quality

Unlock at 25 farming, increase quality--Bonus: Increase final quality by 5%. Negative: Adds one additional day to time to ripen.

 

Without the explicit negatives, there are still implicit negatives: either I increase yield by 1, or I increase QL by 5%, but I can't do both. So the yield bonus has an implicit negative of -5% (once you unlock 25), and the 5% QL bonus has an implicit negative of -1 yield. For me, that's balance enough.

 

Note that the difficulty bonuses would have no effect on Epic.

[Hailene 362]

10 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

So the yield bonus has an implicit negative of -5% (once you unlock 25), and the 5% QL bonus has an implicit negative of -1 yield. For me, that's balance enough

 

Using that logic, choosing any single ability has many implicit negatives. Did you want to sow faster? Did you not want to have to resow for 3-5 harvest actions? Did you want to harvest a day earlier? You're losing out on all these options when you select another ability.

 

There's a reason why I selected those first two abilities the way they are. The first one to decrease growth rate is because new players are often off-put by the length of time things need. I figured by reducing crop growth rate--at the start--would make things a smoother transition. The hefty penalty to quality doesn't really hurt new players (17QL or 20QL? Meh!) but it's not particularly attractive to high level farmers. Maybe for cooking bulk meals to grind HFC? Or to get a seed base if you only wanted to forage for a few of a new crop.

 

The increase bounty is pretty powerful at lower levels. If you're only harvesting 2 or 3 crops, it's an effective doubling or 50% increase in yield (since you do have to reseed for the next harvest). It's great. For higher skilled farmers, it's really not too useful. I get anywhere (with regular tending) 9-12 crops per tile.

 

The 5% increase quality is aimed generally for very specific tasks where even a little bit of quality is worth the extra time. Like for personal meals. It's a nice advantage that's pretty costly for similar mechanics (runes, imbues, and rare items), so the drawback is also significant.

[Roccandil 959]

10 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

Using that logic, choosing any single ability has many implicit negatives.

 

Yep. That's enough for an interesting choice. (Opportunity cost isn't necessarily obvious, but it's real.)

[Hailene 362]

22 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Yep. That's enough for an interesting choice. (Opportunity cost isn't necessarily obvious, but it's real.)

 

So you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Accept the negatives .

[Roccandil 959]

7 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

So you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Accept the negatives .

 

I have no idea what you mean. But I don't accept needless negatives.

[Hailene 362]

13 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

I have no idea what you mean. But I don't accept needless negatives.

 

I explained thoroughly why I put in those negatives. It's for balance.

 

And if you say, "well, there is already an in built negative for using this ability instead of any other", yes, that has already been accounted for. But even with that accounted for, the ability was still too good.

 

So two options, 1. Nerf the original bonus (which reduces its delta of power which reduces its effects and potential as an "interesting" choice) or 2. Slap a negative on it.

Edited December 5, 2017 by Hailene

[Roccandil 959]

9 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

I explained thoroughly why I put in those negatives. It's for balance.

 

And if you say, "well, there is already an in built negative for using this ability instead of any other", yes, that has already been accounted for. But even with that accounted for, the ability was still too good.

 

So two options, 1. Nerf the original bonus (which reduces its delta of power which reduces its effects and potential as an "interesting" choice) or 2. Slap a negative on it.

 

I get that, but one effect of any explicit negative in a choice is to discourage using the choice. As a player, I would look at that list and very likely ignore most of it outright unless I had a very specific need.

 

Removing explicit negatives means there's no reason at all not to pick a bonus (even if small), which encourages engagement and decision making, which is good.

[Hailene 362]

39 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

I get that, but one effect of any explicit negative in a choice is to discourage using the choice. As a player, I would look at that list and very likely ignore most of it outright unless I had a very specific need.

 

That is exactly why it is there.

 

39 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Removing explicit negatives means there's no reason at all not to pick a bonus (even if small), which encourages engagement and decision making, which is good.

 

It's the complete opposite. If there is a clear and obvious choice every time then that discourages engagement and decision making.

 

If you want to change your perception of it all, you can assume that crop quality is your farmingskill*.85. Every other option gives you bonus ~117.64% bonus quality to your harvest but using the reduced growth time doesn't.

 

It's just the whole WoW double rested experience or experience penalty without rested experience.

Edited December 5, 2017 by Hailene

[Roccandil 959]

3 hours ago, Hailene said:

 

That is exactly why it is there.

 

 

It's the complete opposite. If there is a clear and obvious choice every time then that discourages engagement and decision making.

 

If you want to change your perception of it all, you can assume that crop quality is your farmingskill*.85. Every other option gives you bonus ~117.64% bonus quality to your harvest but using the reduced growth time doesn't.

 

It's just the whole WoW double rested experience or experience penalty without rested experience.

 

I agree oppositely. That is, I agree that an obvious choice is no choice, but if staying normal is the obvious choice, then, well, there's -still- no choice.

 

On the other hand, if the bonuses were smaller but no penalties existed, suddenly that's a choice -everyone- can get into; there's no reason to not choose a bonus, nor will the "right" bonus always be obvious.

 

Anyhow, don't get me wrong, I like that you're suggesting options. And, I wanted to look at these three optimization options a bit more closely:

 

On 12/1/2017 at 6:58 PM, Hailene said:

Unlock at 10 farming, reduce growing time--Bonus: Reduces growth time by ~ 1 day (3-4 days to ripen instead of 4-5 that it is now) Negative: -15%final quality

 

Unlock at 15 farming, increase bounty-- Bonus: Increase farming yield by 1. Negative: -5% final quality

 

Unlock at 25 farming, increase quality--Bonus: Increase final quality by 5%. Negative: Adds one additional day to time to ripen.

 

- The speed option might be useful as emergency crops for new players (though I wonder, does premature harvesting already provide that?).

- The quantity option sounds good for grinding or maybe prepping "decent QL" mats for missions; players would just need to figure out if faster growth or increased yield would actually provide more crops per tile.

- Is high crop QL useful for crafting? I honestly don't know. Otherwise, the only thing I see that high QL might really help would be saccing, and only then if the higher QL made up for fewer crops.

 

At any rate, I see the options as settling down to "if you're saccing, the obvious choice is X, if you're grinding, the obvious choice is Y, if you're crafting, the obvious choice is Z".

 

Is that what you were looking for with your suggestions?

[Hailene 362]

54 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

agree oppositely. That is, I agree that an obvious choice is no choice, but if staying normal is the obvious choice, then, well, there's -still- no choice.

 

On the other hand, if the bonuses were smaller but no penalties existed, suddenly that's a choice -everyone- can get into; there's no reason to not choose a bonus, nor will the "right" bonus always be obvious.

 

You're eliminating the choice of "normal planting". Thus limiting the number of choices. Thus reducing possible interesting choices.

 

54 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

- The speed option might be useful as emergency crops for new players (though I wonder, does premature harvesting already provide that?).

 

It also reduces the quantity gained. This keeps quantity gained at lower quality.

 

55 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

- The quantity option sounds good for grinding or maybe prepping "decent QL" mats for missions; players would just need to figure out if faster growth or increased yield would actually provide more crops per tile.

 

Depends on farming skill, but I aimed the first 2 definitely at newer players and the third at lower/mid tier farmers. The 1 extra crop is like night vs day when you're starting out.

 

56 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

- Is high crop QL useful for crafting? I honestly don't know. Otherwise, the only thing I see that high QL might really help would be saccing, and only then if the higher QL made up for fewer crops.

 

Every bit counts, sometimes. If you are pushing the limits of your cotton QL for cloth tailoring, need better food, or want a bit higher quality for your wemp for your cordage ropes, sometimes a little bit more quality can make or break the plan.

 

57 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Is that what you were looking for with your suggestions?

 

The "best option" still varies a bit with what you're doing and what your own skills are in pertinent skill lists.

 

Like if you have 90 farming and 40 CT, then having higher cotton QL isn't really needed. But if your farming is 50 and your CT is 55, then squeezing out higher cotton QL is much more important.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Hailene

[Roccandil 959]

38 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

You're eliminating the choice of "normal planting". Thus limiting the number of choices. Thus reducing possible interesting choices.

 

Normal planting would indeed go by the wayside, but the way I see it, two interesting choices for everyone is better than a few interesting choices for a small number and no real choice for anyone else. (Still, I wouldn't like make normal planting obsolete.)

 

38 minutes ago, Hailene said:

It also reduces the quantity gained. This keeps quantity gained at lower quality.

 

Gotcha. That's still a very similar bonus to early harvesting.

 

38 minutes ago, Hailene said:

Depends on farming skill, but I aimed the first 2 definitely at newer players and the third at lower/mid tier farmers. The 1 extra crop is like night vs day when you're starting out.

 

Is it? I haven't experienced that. Serenity had so many resources lying around moldering when I started... :/

 

38 minutes ago, Hailene said:

Every bit counts, sometimes. If you are pushing the limits of your cotton QL for cloth tailoring, need better food, or want a bit higher quality for your wemp for your cordage ropes, sometimes a little bit more quality can make or break the plan.

 

Gotcha. Again, Serenity had so many high-QL resources lying around (including 90+ QL cotton and wemp)...

 

38 minutes ago, Hailene said:

The "best option" still varies a bit with what you're doing and what your own skills are in pertinent skill lists.

 

Like if you have 90 farming and 40 CT, then having higher cotton QL isn't really needed. But if your farming is 50 and your CT is 55, then squeezing out higher cotton QL is much more important.

 

Gotcha. Overall, I don't mind seeing more options, though I'd still prefer selectable traits.

[Hailene 362]

54 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Normal planting would indeed go by the wayside, but the way I see it, two interesting choices for everyone is better than a few interesting choices for a small number and no real choice for anyone else. (Still, I wouldn't like make normal planting obsolete.)

 

I think all the choices can be useful to individuals, depending on their particular circumstances.

 

The first three we have discussed already.

 

The fourth is useful for weekend warriors or people who will be busy roughly when the crops ripen (say a Christmas party or going to an Impalong).

 

The fifth is useful for anyone short on time or just hates sowing in general.

 

The sixth is useful for people wanting to use the higher difficulty from sloped farming, likes the aesthetic of more sloped areas, using normally too sloped area into usable farm land, and for saving dirt for people making those slopped terraces.

 

Seventh and eighth abilities are used for people who need to farm a particular crop (say, wemp for cordage), but want a bit better skill gain.

 

Eighth is for active players with limited land.

 

Ninth is for people who had sowing (like me).

 

59 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Gotcha. That's still a very similar bonus to early harvesting.

 

Similar. But you take a less quality hit and no quantity hit.

 

59 minutes ago, Roccandil said:

Is it? I haven't experienced that. Serenity had so many resources lying around moldering when I started... :/

 

I might be biased. Was tougher going as a new player on my own 6 months after Pristine opened.

 

1 hour ago, Roccandil said:

Gotcha. Overall, I don't mind seeing more options, though I'd still prefer selectable traits.

 

Technically these choices aren't mutually elusive. Could do both.

[Hailene 362]

Seems like a generally positive reception.

 

Anyone else have any other ideas? Criticisms? Support?

[Corsan 199]

As someone with 81, nearly 82 farming...I would like to see more variation in it...especially since it just seems like a way to keep you interacting with the game by having to check on your crops.

Personally, I don't like the 'only 1 yield' bit you included as a negative...because I currently get upwards of 11-14 yields from a single lower difficulty crop, but I also don't like how garlic, onions, and sugar beets (Among others) all barely provide anything currently...so some adjustments should be made somewhere.

I used to tend the whole field once when I logged in, and once when I logged out...and that was generally the only tending my fields got because it can turn into a full-time job if you constantly check each tile that goes to needing tended. More tending doesn't even really seem to do much currently. Maybe if they do something that lets you know it's been tended as many times as they 'need' for max production...that would be useful...so you're not just tending and tending and tending for no other reason than hopeful skill-gains. (At my level, it's like why bother skilling.)

I'm tired now, or I'd add more suggestions/make more observations.

[Nukkinak 36]

+1

[Hailene 362]

On 12/11/2017 at 1:49 AM, Corsan said:

Personally, I don't like the 'only 1 yield' bit you included as a negative...because I currently get upwards of 11-14 yields from a single lower difficulty crop, but I also don't like how garlic, onions, and sugar beets (Among others) all barely provide anything currently...so some adjustments should be made somewhere.

 

Well, the yield only one would be in the worst case scenario (sow, no tending, and harvest). It's supposed to be a high risk how reward sort of thing. You can get more from a field if you tend it a lot but you can also get a lot less if you don't tend it much.

 

On 12/11/2017 at 1:49 AM, Corsan said:

More tending doesn't even really seem to do much currently.

 

I find the difference between tending every day and even missing one tending tends to drop my overall productivity by at least 1 harvest.

Though I am still skilling farming, so there tends to be a mixture of failures/successes at 99+ farming.