I cant really see the yields going above 100% of what you put in due to the developers not wanting resource gathering to be obsolete. I could see 90% or 95% being an absolute maximum with efficent farming but there will always be some kind of grind to get plants
Resource gathering exists for tons of other mats, why would you need it for this new, separate thing?
I’m in testing atm, and the best yield I can get is a 67% seed return rate.
Not simply for the farming but the economy as a whole as well as how gameplay works. If you can even get a 15% yield over 100, you could end up with tens of thousands of a certain plant without ever losing seed or having to go out and gather again, and really, without putting much effort in. The devs said, once your farm is established, you don’t need to upkeep anything other than the seeds. It would make anything that can be farmed essentially worthless.
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This is false, you still need fert which is only obtainable from exo’s in addition to seeds. You have to surface gather just as long as regular surface gathering but then wait up to 11 hours to get your mats. Remember anyone can surface gather from level 1 yet those mats still have good value. You are also discounting the effort and time needed to plant and ferrilize said crops. Go try it and say it is easy lol.
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67 seed return rate is only one part of the equation.
Current block farming meta for yams:
Find farm spot
Get AOE forge tool for that spot
Get/forge Regen bombs
Use forge tools (disability drain to use) gather 1 yam every X blocks
Repeat
Farming:
Find plants break them for seeds (no forge needed)
Create / build farm spot
Get Till item
Till land
Plant seeds
(Plants grow while you do other things)
Harvest plants for X yield
Repeat
Farming is easier vs AOE Regen farming it is also different.
Seed return is only one part of the equation. If each exotic yam plant when fully grown dropped 600 yams…then when we wouldn’t be talking about seed returns at all.
Each end of the equation can be balanced. Low seed return? Okay, then up the yield of the plants so it is worth it.
Seed return is super high?? Then the other side of the equation takes a hit and plants yield less items.
Would you rather 1 seed generate 60% chance of a seed but drop 10 of the item?
Or 100% seed and only drop one?
Because if we are talking time investment…then less per harvest = more time investment.
So why not balance it the other way and make each seed super awesome??
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@Kal-El @Xaldafax I really like this idea and think it’s a lot better than my own ! You guys should take a look
Current balance makes the whole deal just surface gathering with an extra time gated step involved. This can be resolved in alot of ways.
-letting you reinvest crops into seeds.
-adjusting seed returns.
-adjusting crop returns.
There are alot of good ideas, end of the day farming is separate from surface gathering and thats fine. Arguing that smacking 1 shot plants with a basic totem should be protected because it is a part of “gathering” is a false equivalency, it just is not the same.
Current balance needs another pass and thats what this thread is about.
An alternative to adding another machine would be to bring a little more depth to the crop layout.
Some catalyst blocks could boost crop yield (as they do currently) whilst others could boost seed yield. The farmer can then decide on the balance they want.
(In game development it’s common to use placeholder assets in early prototypes. The trick is to make sure that the placeholder assets are cubes and spheres. If you use low quality assets that are crappy versions of the final assets then players can get extremely distracted by the assets. Show them a prototype with spheres and cubes and they’re think the gameplay is cool. Show them the same prototype with low quality assets and they’ll think the gameplay is rubbish. The learning is that if the models aren’t final quality, make sure they’re no-where-near final quality. The same is true for balance.
Many comments are based around the return of 67% of seeds. We should have made this 6.7%. Then the conversation could have then been around the system and not the balance. Balance is balance. Balance is numbers in a spreadsheet. Systems are weeks and weeks of coding. Take the current systems make the crops yield 95% seeds and make wild crops yield 5x seed then you radically shift the time balance from gathering to farming. Balance changes, not system changes.
The learning is: only release to Testing with cubes and spheres for balance, or release to Testing with final quality balance. Nothing in between.)
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I really prefer this because of the increased player investment when they have to make decisions that result in a tradeoff and the outcome gets personalized. It’s not “I have a crop of earthyams and bulbs ready, I guess I gotta go harvest it” it becomes “my crop of earthyams and seeds is ready! I have to go harvest it!!”
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I’m not fussed about reduced seeds on harvest. Just a few more things when I’m relaxing gathering glowing lamella, beans, and shadow orbs.
Yeah, I like this idea… simpler to implement than what I was thinking for sure. Also on the layout, maybe what you grow near to it could play in as well, like how IRL some stuff will help if you grow them together like tomatoes and basil, others can tend to kill another off, that could be interesting.
The idea that the player can decide what to post on the farm with blocks sounds workable.
Cause then the player can decide do i do a crop run on the field or do I do a seed run on the field?
But this would only work if the seed run would return more than 100% sowed in, so the seed run would sustain the crop run afterwards.
On the other notion, the design that seed return should always be below 100% no matter what the farmer does, is kinda confusing to me. From my understanding this means if a player wants to be a farmer and sell food items, he also needs to be a surface gatherer cause he cannot provide enough seeds for farming to work.
You could argue that the farmer could hire a surface gather to gather the seeds for him, but that doesn’t really work cause the farmer has nothing that he can really give to the gatherer. Compare that to the arrangement between craftman and a miner and or hunter, craftman forges the weapon or hammer sells it to the hunter/miner and they go of doing their thing, the miner brings back minerals the crafter wants to buy, the hunter has creature drops the crafter needs and will buy.
The farmer has what for the gatherer? maybe, finished food but then he would be a baker/brewer (you can do that on top of farming) but even then the gatherer already has the food items from gathering in the wild, so he doesn’t need to buy them of you, he just sells them straight to the baker/brewer and gets the food of them. So the farmer is left out, or it becomes a semi hobby for a baker/brewer or anyone who has seeds lying around, but for that it seems to involve way to much work.
TL,DR: So please make the farmer a sustainable job/character option, that doesn’t need to surface gather to do the thing they want to do in the game.
EDIT: The system itself sounds really nice and tinkering with the layout to get optimum results sounds amazing, cause that means I have to think about the layout for efficiency and how to make it beautiful at the same time.
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Additionally the gathering that the new wild crop plants consist of is very different than standard surface gathering, if you have to do it for every crop then in effect it is not farming but a different form of surface gathering.
This solves all concerns.
People that want to set up endless farming can…it is all in the design.
Those that want to run and gather then plant can do it.
Seeds keep value and product keeps value! Win win
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I’m not sure about the specific suggest you mean but I am truly sorry if I missed something. Sometimes I might be very focused on a certain context and I don’t deviate or respond to other parts. But if I supported whatever you’re talking about from someone else’s statement then I can certainly support or at least clarify why I might not have said something on your comment.
I always seen conversations as evolving… it is a discussion to shift around and understand each side of the points being made…
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This has actually been a great discussion. I want farming to be something unique unto itself rather than just surface gathering with time gating. I really think being able to turn produce into seed stock is the right direction to go as it opens the option for both gathering and sustaining a farm.
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Thank you responding considering what I am sure is a lot of balance and bug work…
Well you know how much I like asset and feel we need a broader depth of tools and items to fill our workshops up with. But, I do understand that requires the modeling as well as in this case the additional mechanic of what to do with these seeds and is it worth the additional game play.
Personally I’d prefer the funds/modeling work to go to some of the other items we talked about that increase game functionality in a broader way (shop book, contract book, item based mailbox, etc). Due to that I’d say that we focus on the catalyst block game play. Since you already have that mini-game in the farming design then we certainly should improve it. It gives players options - more yield, more base resources, etc.
I do think the community is a bit hurt because some of the specifics aren’t being shared and to find true optimization might be a lot of work. But then again, I think people need to explore and try and learn more in this game instead of just doing a quick 4 things to get the biggest bang for their buck and finish the new content in 9 hours…
Love the game development details… I think the more the community understands on how to really contextualize themselves into what YOU ALL face, the better our feedback can be.
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From my understanding that is already in the farming… certain things help beyond just water and soil. I don’t know about the “kill off or hurt” aspect… but I do like things like that - risk/reward type models.
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I wouldn’t expect that in any form or fashion. We cannot have a perfect full loop. The game is already skewed due to regeneration. This would compound the problem. Even farmers today in full sustainability need to provide something into the system to keep it going.
Of course it shouldn’t be a high return but still need something of an input. Otherwise it will knock other things out of balance like bomb mining did, stone XP with xp buff, etc.
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