Cow collect milk error message.

[zthali]

I have 2 cows:

Edie is 52 and zoelle is 37. Since the patch when I try to use the collect milk cow skill 2 or 3 on them I get an error message saying I must learn the lower level skill before using the higher skills.

I uncowed, recowed, removed the skills from the sidebar and replaced them. I sent in a bug report and also let one of the ingame admins know about it.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem?

Basically, both cows are only able to use collect milk lvl 1.

Thanks,
z

[Silkt]

I reverted back to cow today got the same error popup, then I noticed in the description for Milk 2 or higher that you must be vegetarian. Therefore I think the error is more in the wording of the error popup.

To me it also highlights the need for anything that has timers, they should be visible to the player, ie animal town 3 hour timer, timer till vegetarian etc. Both of these timers should also decrease in time as you skill up the same way the lycan skill up decrease to kills required to change form but that is a different arguement.

[Citan]

There is a bug with Collect Milk 2/3 that will be fixed in the next update.

We will never have a visible timer for things like "how long til I'm a vegetarian" or "how long until I'm treated like a real cow" because needing one tells me that you are gaming a system that is not supposed to be gamed. You aren't making a life decision -- you're just trying to min/max things. I don't want that. In fact I'm considering making the duration for things like that random to help prevent abuse. Animal Town (and future animal resources) are intended for people who want to play that way. They're not intended to be cheap storage for everyone.

[zthali]

Thank you for response Eric. I had accomplished/finished cheesemaking on 4.8 of my mains prior to making a cow and they were vegetarians. I thought carefully before deciding who would be a cow and it was odd to not have skills work with no mention in any of the patch notes or discussion thread.

Of course, Edie (not pronounced Eddie) seemed appropriate given Edy's ice cream. Pronounced the same just spelled differently.

[Silkt]

There is a bug with Collect Milk 2/3 that will be fixed in the next update.

We will never have a visible timer for things like "how long til I'm a vegetarian" or "how long until I'm treated like a real cow" because needing one tells me that you are gaming a system that is not supposed to be gamed. You aren't making a life decision -- you're just trying to min/max things. I don't want that. In fact I'm considering making the duration for things like that random to help prevent abuse. Animal Town (and future animal resources) are intended for people who want to play that way. They're not intended to be cheap storage for everyone.

Sorry but as a Cow or any other animal form that we choose, sometimes we need to revert back to humanoid ie Cows handing in cheese work orders to Spoony Pete who wants cheese but won't talk to animals, or cooking work orders or training from Laura Neth, I don't know about others but I find the then 3 hour wait to talk to a trainer animal is just annoying.

If wanting to know when I can talk to my skill trainer is gaming the system and trying to max min then we must have a vastly different concept of what they mean.

On the note of the animal town timer all I would like is it to be similar to the lycan change form timer that decreases the higher your lycan skills, so maybe every animal form training level unlock you get drops 30 minutes off it. Training level unlock I mean the lvl 51 to 60 type unlocks, if you have done 6 of these then you should of proved your time as an animal.

[Golliathe]

I don't know about others but I find the then 3 hour wait to talk to a trainer animal is just annoying.

On the note of the animal town timer all I would like is it to be similar to the lycan change form timer that decreases the higher your lycan skills, so maybe every animal form training level unlock you get drops 30 minutes off it. Training level unlock I mean the lvl 51 to 60 type unlocks, if you have done 6 of these then you should of proved your time as an animal.

This is a balance issue in that as an animal you get 200+ storage at animal town and have access to most of the biped storage as well (bookcase/casino/etc). He has more or less designed a cool down system where you can't easily cheat the inventory management. To be perfectly honest it would be fair if there were a 3 hour cooldown when changing from either animal or human for the appropriate npcs to talk to you. The current setup is not exactly fair to humans- not that I am not griping.

The problem with what you are suggesting is that anyone who has become a lvl 70 animal in the past suddenly gets the option to use extra storage on demand whenever they want.

[Silkt]

This is a balance issue in that as an animal you get 200+ storage at animal town and have access to most of the biped storage as well (bookcase/casino/etc). He has more or less designed a cool down system where you can't easily cheat the inventory management. To be perfectly honest it would be fair if there were a 3 hour cooldown when changing from either animal or human for the appropriate npcs to talk to you. The current setup is not exactly fair to humans- not that I am not griping.

The problem with what you are suggesting is that anyone who has become a lvl 70 animal in the past suddenly gets the option to use extra storage on demand whenever they want.

Why shouldn't someone with a lvl 70 animal get instant access to the animal form trainers? Maybe animal town storage levels needed some scaling back if the timer is purely about storage access.

[Citan]

Animal forms are intended to be semi-permanent, so animals have access to special resources in exchange for the other resources they don't have access to. There will be more animal-only resources and opportunities in the future (to compensate for new resources animals don't have access to in the future). If I reduced the resources in animal town, then long-term animal players would be extra screwed. That would be stupid. The correct fix is to stop people from switching constantly to get the best of both worlds. So I'll do this, iteratively over time (fixing some animal pain points to reduce the need to switch, making transitions take longer or cost something to prevent idle switching, etc.)

In other words, if you're switching back and forth constantly to take advantage of Animal Town resources, you are playing in a way I don't intend to support. That's not illegal or anything, and you have no way of knowing what my intentions are if the game doesn't make it clear. But understand that I will ultimately fix the game to be the way I intend it to be.

[Silkt]

Animal forms are intended to be semi-permanent, so animals have access to special resources in exchange for the other resources they don't have access to. There will be more animal-only resources and opportunities in the future (to compensate for new resources animals don't have access to in the future). If I reduced the resources in animal town, then long-term animal players would be extra screwed. That would be stupid. The correct fix is to stop people from switching constantly to get the best of both worlds. So I'll do this, iteratively over time (fixing some animal pain points to reduce the need to switch, making transitions take longer or cost something to prevent idle switching, etc.)

In other words, if you're switching back and forth constantly to take advantage of Animal Town resources, you are playing in a way I don't intend to support. That's not illegal or anything, and you have no way of knowing what my intentions are if the game doesn't make it clear. But understand that I will ultimately fix the game to be the way I intend it to be.

Well then please move the cheese work orders from an NPC that doesn't talk to animals. If I am short of funds for training on my animal character cheese work orders are my first source of funds, then survey then skins.

[Tagamogi]

The work order turn ins for NPCs that don't talk to animals (i.e. Pete and Laura) are on the list of things to be fixed. From an older post:

This is definitely in the bug list, and although I'm not sure if it'll be ready in the next update (it requires some fancy scripting stuff), it will be soon.

( I know the post is a bit old, but I didn't see anything to indicate that the plan to make work order turn ins easier for animals has changed. Just as all things PG, it will take some time and be ready when it's ready.)


Edit: While I'm posting in this thread: I once made the unfortunate mistake of storing my cow gear on Raul after deciding to be a biped for a while. I wasn't going to need my cow armor while I was two-legged, so animal town seemed a great place to leave it. After some weeks, I decided to be a cow again, went to grab my armor back and ... oops. Nothing to do but dance for 3 hours until Raul liked me enough to let me have my gear back.

I realize that was my mistake, but I do struggle with the concept of where to store gear I don't currently use, and I find the idea of having a random timer until my old friends like me again a bit confusing. I don't normally flip back and forth between forms - I find the gear issue (even if I stored it in the right spot) to be messy enough that I tend to stay in one form or the other for several weeks. I think that makes me a minority though.