As new players have started gardening, there have been multiple comments made about how it works. Here's a link to a thread from April 2016 about how Citan views gardening:
http://projectgorgon.com/forum/suppo...start=10#12709
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As new players have started gardening, there have been multiple comments made about how it works. Here's a link to a thread from April 2016 about how Citan views gardening:
http://projectgorgon.com/forum/suppo...start=10#12709
Thanks for reviving this thread.
I'm hoping i can get an official response from Citan and co. regarding my latest suggestions in that thread http://projectgorgon.com/forum/suppo...start=20#12807
Please bring over the conversation rather than simply linking it as those links may not be accessible in the near future. Thanks!
This is Citan's part of a longer conversation from the old forum:
Part I:
"Hi guys. So I have some bad news -- two of the big limitations talked about here are completely intentional and aren't likely to change: having to travel to get water, and having a limit on the number of plants of the same type. Other limitations are likely to get fixed up when the new GUI system eventually gives us some more powers -- and I'll talk about what's likely to get fixed up in a sec -- but those two limitations are important.
Here's why they're intentional.
First, the water limitation is in part to make sure that botting isn't trivial. Botting is a fact of life in PC gaming and you have to design game systems to be at least modestly anti-bottable. We can write all kinds of bot detectors, but at the end of the day, if the gameplay is as simple as "click this, now click this, now click this, get XP, repeat forever", it will be VERY hard to detect a player doing it versus a human doing it.
Gardening is supposed to be simple. No major time pressures. Somewhat relaxing. It's a different kind of gameplay than most of the rest of the game. It's not for everybody, and that's fine. But a simple mechanic like this is the kind that other players want to bot the most.
Making sure that you have to move between the fields and the water source is a very potent way of limiting botting. Because it's a LOT harder to write a bot that believably moves your character around than it is to make a bot that clicks some GUI buttons forever.
Beyond botting, I think that having to walk around a bit is an important part of the gardening "gameplay", such as it is. It keeps it from being too incredibly mindless.
(But having to move between places doesn't mean you'll also have to click a million times on the well -- we'll improve that part, see below.)
---
The second big limitation talked about is the limit on seeds of various types. This solves a lot of problem behaviors that would make the skill useless until you leveled it to max. It keeps max-level gardeners from being able to "drown out" low-level gardeners by just being much faster than them. Gardening is slow, and requires patience, and that should be the case whatever level you are.
I guess the easiest way to explain the point is to give you some example scenarios:
Scenario 1: players decide this month that zucchini is the most important vegetable in the world. There's a new spell that needs zucchini and people are paying top dollar for it.
Zucchini is a mid-level gardening seed (let's say), so most dedicated gardeners should be able to make it. But if level 125 gardeners can make 500 zucchini an hour, and level 70 gardeners can only make 100, then they might as well not bother. The high-level gardeners will flood the market, reap all the profits, and the only thing those low-level gardeners can do is level up to compete some day -- yawn. That's stupid design: a low-level plant should be just as gardenable by a low-level farmer as a high-level farmer.
Scenario 2: max-level players end up needing a lot of a certain flower for something. They aren't gardeners, they think gardening is stupid and boring and they hate it, but they sure as hell aren't gonna pay other players for a flower! No -- they insist on doing every single thing themselves. So they grind their Gardening to level 125 as fast as humanly possible -- with a lot of money, that's probably not too hard, either. Potions, statues, whatever else gets added. And then finally they can grow 500 of the flower they need and call it a day. Never have to deal with other gardeners.
The problem with this scenario is not that players can "twink" their skill with money -- I don't mind at all, as long as it's appropriately expensive and tricky to do it. The problem is that gardening is FOR GARDENERS -- that small percentage of players who actually find the gameplay relaxing and enjoyable. They deserve to have a market for their efforts. They deserve to be able to sell their produce and flowers to other players.
In this scenario, the player who twinks his gardening to level 125 will still only be able to grow 3 flowers at a time, just like everybody else. So if they really hate gardening, why would they bother? They are better off buying flowers. And that's what I want.
Now, I know right now nobody buys flowers from other players. That's a separate problem and one I'm actively working on -- there will soon be more tools to make buying and selling things like this much easier.
But a core limit is that *time* is necessary to if you want to grow a ton of any one thing. If you don't want to spend that time, then you need to buy from others.
The current system still lets gardeners grow more and more stuff at once as they level, because it's fun to have a big garden full of stuff. But high-level gardeners can't, say, flood the potato market any faster than a brand new gardener can. It's important that if potatoes are useful, the newbie gardener will be approximately as good at growing them as a senior gardener.
That probably doesn't seem important right now, but it will be more obviously important in time, when there's a lot more players and activity happening.
Hm, ... I could go on with more scenarios but hopefully these give you a clue about the KIND of scenarios I was thinking of when I designed that limit. In a nutshell, it prevents people from feeling that the "RIGHT" way to garden is just to race to max level ASAP. Gardening is a slow journey and the game shouldn't overly reward players who can race to max level.
---
So those two things are unlikely to change. But things that ARE likely to change include:
- Having to click a million times to fill all your water bottles -- we'll have some other mechanism to save your wrists eventually. It will still take time, and will require you to move between the garden and the water source, but you'll be able to click once and wait 20 seconds (or whatever) for all your water bottles to fill. That will happen when the new GUI is available.
- Gardening being too boring. This is a tricky one because it's supposed to be relaxing -- not too hard or stressful. But there's some room for improvement, and we'll explore that when the new GUI gives us some more tools for simple interactions.
Basically, the new GUI will let me easily add a bunch of buttons when you click a plant. So instead of just a "Water Plant" button, there might be several different things you can do, depending on the plant's condition. If it looks like your plant's got bugs, maybe you want to use some bug remover... or maybe you decide to risk it and just let it grow, saving some money. Very small choices like that.
And it's important that the timing stays slow. So my goal with any changes will just be to spice things up so that it's not completely mindless. There should be ways that you can garden slightly "better" than other gardeners if you're paying more attention than them. But it shouldn't be something crucial, because I don't want you to have to watch your plants constantly like a hawk, either.
- General bugs, like "my plants can't be picked if I get knocked offline" or "my plant is hidden under the dirt and I can't find it" or so on. Those will of course be fixed in time.
- Better ways to organize your little mini-garden. Right now plants are spawned randomly around you. We may tweak that in various ways, based on feedback. It's just the easiest thing to code, so it's what we're using right now.
Anyway, that's the general plan. Things can always change -- even the things I've said aren't likely to change -- but they aren't going to change soon. They'd only change if I get the other systems in place and see that it still just isn't coming together. Right now, I think that the major limitations aren't in the skill itself but in the lack of market tools and, well, customers.
Last Edit: 10 months 1 week ago by Citan. "
Part II:
"You're trying to use real-world economics, which isn't very applicable to a game. The main reason why not is that games are supposed to be fun, and real-world economics is very punishing to smaller players in the economy.
Take the potato, for instance. Potatoes are low-level vegetables and newer players are likely to need far more potatoes than high-level players. There will never be intense monetary value in a potato because anyone can grow it. But to the extent that a potato has value, it should be value that can be equally earned by newbie farmers as by anybody else. Why? Because the point of being a pretend gardener is to make pretend money for your pretend food, and you should be able to do that as soon as possible. Obviously high-level players shouldn't be pushed out of a market artificially, but they shouldn't be able to inherently out-produce newbies in the newbie market. It's not realistic, but it's more fun if everyone has a chance to make money. So that's the background that should always be in mind: what is going to be fun for the pretend-food-producer as they level up?
The worst-case scenario is, unfortunately, very common in MMO crafting: a mindset that the skill is completely worthless until you max it out. I very much want to avoid that, because maxing out skills is going to be very time-consuming and if the fun doesn't start before that, the game fails.
In my scenario #1 above, I was hypothesizing about an item fad. We've already seen these show up a lot, and I expect they will be a routine thing in the game post-ship. Every time there's a new update, people will be excited about it for a few months and want to level up the new skills, and then demand will drop off. But it's exciting (for crafters) while it happens, and everybody who's leveled up their skills enough to produce the item should get an equal cut of the money.
Higher-level players will naturally have MORE of these opportunities than low-level players, because they can produce more kinds of things. And that's enough of a reward for leveling. They shouldn't ALSO be able to take more advantage of the lowbies' opportunities, too. That results in it being more fun for high level players than for low-level players, and lowbies will naturally resent them. And, ultimately, they'll get into the mindset that they can't "really" sell stuff until they max out their skill. Not fun.
Another aspect of real-world markets that doesn't apply to MMOs is the idea of prices evening out to a reasonable level of profit. The problem is that games reward players in lots of different psychological ways, and some players are more than willing to forgo the reward of "making pretend money" for the reward of "earning pretend skill levels" or "dominating the pretend potato market" or whatever else. This is why in most MMOs with a global auction house, lower-level crafted goods almost instantly sell for well below cost. That's incredibly un-fun for the person who actually wants to be a pretend farmer.
While some level of competition is inherent in any market, which will slowly drive the prices down (and, for some things, drive them to below cost -- I expect potatoes will eventually be sold for next to nothing), we are taking some pains to minimize that effect for as long as possible. For instance, there's no plans for a universal auction house because that drives prices into the ground very quickly by making every producer compete with every other producer at once. It's pro-consumer, because they get the best prices possible, but not fun for crafters at all... unless they're strong enough to compete in the world market.
Instead we're going to try to straddle that line between features that are pro-consumer and pro-producer. It's a very tough job but some games have done it fairly well in the past and we can use those as models.
Last Edit: 10 months 1 week ago by Citan"
Understand that these quotes were part of a longer conversation and in response to specific comments by players--Grey
Shubi:
Mechanics
I would like to adjust my previous suggestion. Instead of scaling the decay time according to the number of plants, scale the growth time. Significantly. This means if you want to grow 50 peppers you better believe you'll be doing nothing else all day. Sure you could do a few very short dungeons or visit the market, but theres no way you could engage in an involved activity without risking the loss of your entire crop. I think that fits in well with the philosophy of let gardeners do the gardening. The average person will either just grow a few so it grows fast or grow 50 very ineffeciently. the only way to compete with real gardeners will b to sit in the garden all day growing a few at a time, just like it is now.
This idea just provides a sliding scale of freedom.
I look forward to seeing new ways to tend plants, like clearing bugs.
Structures
Sprinkler/Aqueduct
I like the idea of a well or irrigation buildable. It would not be usable as a well but could give a "irrigation" buff that auto refills water bottles randomly or something similar like an area wide effect that randomly waters a plant in range every period of time. This adds some fun non-advantage giving event that helps build community.
Compost Heap/Manure Pile
The fertilizer buildable can act similar to the Water one in which it either gives a buff that randomly refills a fertilizer bottle, or randomly fertilizes a plant in range, every period of time.
Construction
construction could be done with a future masonry skill or the structures can be permanent and require maintenance by anyone. There could be the option to buy stones, ropes, or manure from a garden NPC and it can be added to the various buildables in exchange for civic pride, similar to lighting lamps.
Skills
I think there should be a skill that allows one to tend all plants at once. I think this a well deserved, valuable, and non over powered skill appropriate for gardeners. Of course you'll need the right number of water or fertilizer or it will fall short and youll have to go searching for that one plant that didnt get watered.
Mechanics Implementation
The scaling growth time could be implemented by adding a scaling multiplier such as:
if potato_count > default_potato_count
growth_time = default_potato_growth_time * (1 + percent_of_disadvantage) * (potato_count / default_potato_count);
So for example, if it normally takes up to 3 potatoes 5 minutes to grow and I decide I'm really hungry for Hash browns and plant 20 potatoes, with no disadvantage I'm looking at 33.33 minutes of growth time. which is the amount of time it would take normally if i were to grow groups of 3 potatoes one after the other.
With a 50% disadvantage I'm looking at 50 minutes for my potatoes to finish growing. I could have grown 50% more potatoes (30) in about the same amount of time (with admittedly more effort) had I grown them in batches of 3.
The advantage of course, is that I could focus on some other skill nearby, in the meantime. So I could focus on raising my cooking skill high enough to cook hash browns in a nearby kitchen while I keep a close eye on my crops and wait for them to finish growing.
Real World Mechanic
Although I know that the aim of this game is not to mirror real world mechanics, I always find a sense of satisfaction when a mechanic can be implemented in a way that is both realistic and fun. And so it is pleasing to see that this method of scaling is similar to real world gardening mechanics, where the more of one particular plant is grown (or a plant of a similar nutrient profile) the more difficult it is to grow more of that plant in the future (in the same soil).en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiological_plan...Nutrient_deficiencies
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Taie:
I like shubi's suggestion to give us the option to mass produce at the cost of efficiency.
Gardening is supposed to be relaxing but now that I've been doing it, i really don't find it relaxing at all, in fact I feel like its somewhat stressful.
It's stressful because it requires a lot of attention in reality, it grows too fast for you to go and step out for a bit, and it grows to slowly for you to really just pay attention the whole time, it's really just a hassle at the moment.
I think it would be nice if gardening were somewhat more realistic in the sense that you plant something, and you leave it there for a day or two and come back and reap, it could be one in-ingame day etc. I would be ok with this more. I wouldn't mind standing still playing music for an hour AFKing but at least I can watch a show or something in the background while waiting.
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Gardening Limitations 9 months 4 weeks ago
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Shubi:
That's true some of the time. Sometimes its relaxing to garden faster. So I think we should have both options.
Also I'd say that there should be some global limit on the plants that someone can plant at a time in addition to the other limits. so they dont take over the whole garden.
I agree. It feels too fast to do something else and too slow to watch it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
Also, I'd like every plant you can grow to match the number of bottles of fertilizer it needs. This means veggies would be 3 per batch, and cotton would be 6 per batch. It's irritating to decide you're done gardening for the day and then have to grow "one more batch" to get the last bottle or two of fertilizer out of your pack.
Regarding your suggestion, I rather have the ability to simply empty bottles. I dont think its unfair to request that and would solve the issue of having to sometimes afk in town drinking stacks of water when Im done gardening, as well as trying to decide which plant to use my last bottle of fertilizer on when i really rather just dump the fertilizer and keep the bottle.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eachna
I do enjoy enjoy the garden skill although I feel that it can be relaxing it could certainly use at least a small boost somewhere. Some downtime is good, to much downtime can get boring. I enjoyed being able to reread part of the old posts and I felt that overall Shuibi had some sound suggestions. I like the idea that you should be able to waste a bottle of liquid (IE: Fertilizers, potion, etc) in order to re purpose the bottles if needed. I like that you actually have to go to a water from source and am very glad to hear that a change in how water bottles will be fill is in the future. I also really like the suggestion of being able o collect/make/find you own "strange dirt" from cows and manure. I was a supporter of planting more than two of each type of plant but after reading the post I can see some of the flaws in that logic. I do however feel that planting is a little to slow. I like the down time but at times it becomes way to much. I think Shuibi was hitting this point some and would like to offer my view as well. There are two ways I think might help gardening for everyone.
1) Make gardening overall a longer process. Instead of growing potatoes from seed to plant in 5 minutes make plants available over a much longer time such as with fletching boxes. A player could plant some vegetables now and in a few hours come back and reap the benefit. If during that time a player periodically watered, provided fertilizer, applied music boosts, and took care of bug infestations the overall yield might be more than if I just planted them and forgot about them. Furhermore this might improve some community aspects to gardening. If Player A was in a field planting vegetables and saw that Player B's plants needed water or bugs removed he might be able to assist. Could even leave a message saying something like "last watered by Player A" so the good deed might not go un-thanked. The longer overall grow time is also much more realistic than the current speed growing system.
2) Make the yield per plant higher. Planting one potato should yield more than just one, otherwise how would there ever be any new seeds for planting. Each should yield at least 2 and maybe more with other variables added (maybe extending it to 3 for plants with some care to 5 with plants who were excellently cared for). This would also give the true pretend gardener a benefit/bonus of being more attentive than the plant and go kind. I like that music provides a bonus. I believe that green peppers and cotton yield more than one at a time and makes this process more tolerable, would be nice to see other plants mimic this some. I don't hat a boost to the overall yield would change the intended balance much. Some people will always be willing to buy what they don't want to find/grow, some will always prefer a skill such as this, and then there is always the grinder.
Thanks!
-LaRaj
-LaRaj
@LaRaj I agree with 2 of your points.
1.when ppl tend another persons plant the owner should be notified if he is nearby in order to increase player interaction
2.One of the most enjoyable aspects of gardening for me in any game is getting seeds from my plants. It brings a feeling of accomplishment and soothing. The cost of gardening is already heavy. I think the negligible cost of seeds is a hindrance more than anything and detracts from the true joy of gardening
I love the gardening skill, mostly because i find it the least relaxing skill in the game. Trying to determine just the right numbers of each plant you can manage in a given amount of time is harder than it seems, since you have to factor in not only the growth times, but also the time it takes to locate a plant that needs water. It's not really possible to grow 2 carrots, 2 broccoli, 2 squash, 4 beets, 6 cabbage, 6 onions, 6 potatoes, 6 bluebells, and 5 cotton (for example) in one 3 minute period (at least at my skill level), even though none of them have more than a 2min55sec grow time. The scanning to find which plant needs water/fertilizer and replanting just takes too much time.
Learning little tricks like separating out the ones you are going to re-plant so you can more reliably click on them has made me a better gardener over time and makes me find this the most strategic skill in the game.
This is a dang good idea. Sure, I don't mine drinking a couple, but I ended up drinking twenty the other day and that took a long time to metabolize.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
A general 'recycle' command or bin in the city to drain bottles, destroy items that can't be sold or otherwise.... It would be handy.
I feel your pain. Thats basically gardening for me every time I try.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
I don't think we should be able to destroy anything though. I like the fact that everything needs to be dropped. It gives ppl a chance to pick up junk and is more natural than magically destroying things.
I was thinking of a recycle bin or somethings in town. Maybe others could root through it (dumpster-dive?) but unlike a vendor, no cost would be associated. It would lower performance of a region less than lots of dropped items.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
Great idea ! Maybe place it in the inn and remove 1 hygiene point for every unique item u take out as well as reward one hygiene point for every unique item u place in
Oh, that's a good idea. Some people also suggested a municipal bonus based upon unique items, too. But making it equivalent to washing your hands would make it cool, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
Unfortunately if we did that someone would max the skill the next day, even if it was 1 point per itemQuote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
EDIT: I originally meant to add that this would be the case *unless* we implemented it specifically for *unique* items, basically repeating what was said in the previous post. I did not intend to invalidate the suggestion, only to provide feedback about balance without fully reading the previous comment or expressing myself very well.
Unfortunately responses like this lead to shitty development whereby nothing gets done because hey! We never think about how to make things work, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
Maybe one might wonder why no one maxes the skill when you can just pour oil into lamps and get skill... Hmm.
Yeah i have to agree. Not really sure what sense Shubi's comment makes. What if it was a billionth of a point per item. Would people still max it in a day?Quote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
I guess what i'd like to see is some kind of penalty to civic pride for littering. (This would stop people from simply "drop trading" for the xp). Of course it would be necessary to better define littering, as some items with low face value have much higher intrinsic value. But surely, some items like single arrows or crude underwear can universally be seen as liter.
Here's a better question: What's to stop someone from putting the same item in and taking it out over and over in order to farm points? That's the point I'm trying to make. We need to think of a practical way to balance it.Quote:
Originally Posted by alleryn
Following the many suggestions for a grid layout in gardening, I've created a mockup to demonstrate the idea
https://jsfiddle.net/6yexyfqu/27/
uses this fomula
Code:var snapInt2Grid = function(/*number*/ int, /*number*/ gridSize) {
var remainder = int % gridSize;
return int - remainder;
}
A nice thing about a modulo (%) based formula, is that you don't have to do distance checking between plants. Since all plants are snapped to the same grid, you just check to see if an entity is in the exact same spot that you are about to place the plant.
Though considering how the engine works, doing distance detection for entities in a certain radius might be easier to implement than looping through an array of entities manually.
Maybe a way we can give community points without opening the system to abuse is to flag trashed items so that they will never give points for trashing them again
Maybe trashed items can be modified to give -1 or -2 hygiene and have their name changed to "recycled". Just for fun, maybe recycling items can have a random chance to give an item some kind of bonus. So that people will actually trash items on a regular basis instead of dumping them on the ground.
To prevent dumping things, I think that people should lose a hygiene point when they dump items instead of trashing them. Additionally, elves might reduce your favor by done if you drop things on the ground in front of them (though maybe thats taking it too far)
In summary, Dumping something in the trash recycles an item. Recycling an item would transform an item permanently giving it some debuff such as (-1-2 hygiene as well as possibly reduce the items value) and grant the recycler 1 civic point.
This should add some interesting aspect as well as keep the floors clean, preserve items, and discourage abusing the system for points.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja
I'm not sure, but my reading of 'unique' is that you would only get the points once from each unique item.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
At the time I didn't have any perception of how to achieve this without creating a database for each user of all items they put in the trash which seemed technically impractical, so I did not consider detecing unique items to be a possibility. However, once I considered the idea that each item can be tagged with metadata that is modified when the item is trashed for the first time, it seems practical.Quote:
Originally Posted by alleryn
Well, for instance, maybe you can only get a few points a day. Or every object only gives points once. Or the trash fills up and only gives out so many points. There's so many different ways to do it I couldn't possibly describe them all.
I really, really dislike posts that shit-can ideas, especially when I can think of three ways to do it off the top of my head. There might be reasons those ideas aren't practical - but shit-canning people's ideas is both unfriendly, unhelpful, and makes for a negative experience for others.
While my one post was in fact poorly expressed and seemingly ignorant of the post it was replying to, you can see from my many other posts, I am definitely not against this idea when it is implemented for unique items. I'm sorry you had the impression that I was "shit-canning" the idea of others. I have gone back and edited the post in question so that it is clear that, this is not my intention.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crissa
Thanks for apologizing; it wasn't really needed - I was perhaps a bit more abrasive than I needed to be. We can try to do better in the future!Quote:
Originally Posted by ShubiMaja