Dismiss Notice
This Section is READ ONLY - All Posts Are Archived

Agriculture is a click-fest

Discussion in 'Release 26 Feedback Forum' started by Lord Baldrith, Feb 3, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Lord Baldrith

    Lord Baldrith Avatar

    Messages:
    2,167
    Likes Received:
    7,051
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Wizards Rest
    I am hoping that in the future there will be a more fun and less grindy way to plant our gardens.

    Currently, you have to click the dirt, drag the water seed and hoe to the crafting box, click okay, click the dirt again, click okay to confirm you want to add water again. That is 7 clicks for each plant. I have over 100 plants in my village lot garden. It took me over an hour to plant last night. It wasn't very fun and it was very wearing on my fingers.

    One suggestion I would make is to turn off the confirmation option for watering. A check box in options. Also, the soil around the plant could turn a darker color to show that it has been properly watered. I find myself clicking on plants again when I lose my place.

    Also, the dragging interface could probably be improved. Perhaps if I highlight all 3 items they could be drug 1 of each to the crafting window...

    Love to garden tho...hoping for some improvements in upcoming releases :)
     
  2. NRaas

    NRaas Avatar

    Messages:
    3,984
    Likes Received:
    5,841
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Glenraas
    An additional suggestion would be to implement a "Recipe Book" for Agriculture, in the same manner as other "Crafting Stations".

    That way, once we know the recipe for planting an Apple Tree, we can simply double-click on that recipe to plant another one. :)
     
    Maka, Mata, Lace and 7 others like this.
  3. Lord Baldrith

    Lord Baldrith Avatar

    Messages:
    2,167
    Likes Received:
    7,051
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Wizards Rest
    Futher suggestions:

    Perhaps it's not very effective to make a crafting table out of the planters...I played Arch-Age for a few months and agriculture was one of the things I liked about the game very much. You simply dragged the plant to the ground (we could still use the planter if it's needed for our system). You could add water to the plant to reduce the time it would take to grow. I love the life cycles they had there. Every plant had a timer on it as to when it was going to mature and be harvestable. But it was much less grindy to plant your land.
     
    Stahlknecht, Maka, Quenton and 6 others like this.
  4. StrangerDiamond

    StrangerDiamond Avatar

    Messages:
    4,355
    Likes Received:
    4,999
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Great great suggestions here !

    If we recall UO the drag one item at a time mechanism was great for some things, for example : When changing weapons in mid combat it added a layer of realism as you could misplace the item and drop it to the ground, or drop it back in your backpack, that also happens in real life, and in the heat of battle even more.

    Same principle applied for looting, you had to be quick about it sometimes and if you misclicked it reproduced the real life effect of stress and imprecision, perhaps you really wanted that black pearl but since it was so small it would be hard for your character to pick up.

    same for targetting spells... when UO released macros and third party programs made this all automatic I honestly facepalmed.

    Way to go ruining the whole point of being skilled at drag and drop... I applauded when they said they would ban such programs but then shortly after when Origin changed hands they actually put some of those macros in the game so that was a pain for those of us who spent alot of time perfecting our mouse technique. Suddenly everyone was good at targetting and thus the game became a bit more about numbers than real skill.

    FOR GARDENING HOWEVER, Its something thats supposed to be relaxing indeed and people don't need those operations to make it fun. It should be as simple as possible, if you want to make it eat time, add a timer like for ressource gathering, and perhaps little animations showing what the avatar is doing.

    I'm all for AI and the Avatar not being "dumb by definition" exept in stressful or critical situations where skill and being able to handle stress becomes an advantage.

    To be perfectly clear I would say that there SHOULD still be some AI applied to combat, that was why I was a bit against FULLY random card combat. It was pushed on us as a more realistic combat system because "in the heat of combat" you should sometimes not be able to use this or that skill. But stuff like healing and self defense dosen't work like that.

    Even the avatar with the less intelligence should know that he is low on health and in fact the only thing he cannot forget in such a moment is a heal or escape skill.

    Being fully random in those cases seems a bit silly. Sorry I lost the fight because I forgot how to cure poison... OOC I didn't get the right cards, which you'll agree seems a bit silly.
     
    Maka, Mata, Ice Queen and 3 others like this.
  5. 4EverLost

    4EverLost Avatar

    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    2,742
    Trophy Points:
    125
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    In a Swamp far away from the beaten path
    I'd hope that eventually all crafting became less of a click feat and more of an action oriented activity. Would be more fun.

    To actually hoe something with the hoe, plant the seed in the ground, water the plant with the bucket - carefully or you might wash it away.

    And to go a bit off-topic, pounding away with my hammer, stirring my pot, mix my beakers, cut the fabric with my scissors, etc. :)

    Still 4 more episodes to work on (the devs). :D
     
    majoria70, Mata, Ice Queen and 2 others like this.
  6. Lord Baldrith

    Lord Baldrith Avatar

    Messages:
    2,167
    Likes Received:
    7,051
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Wizards Rest
    Totally agree here! I am looking forward to more than just click for my crafting as well. Dragging a hoe over my land to create a garden for gardening rather than planter boxes. Perhaps the planters would be better suited for housing roofs and interiors (once they allow that again).

    I would also like to see plants look like they are dying if they need watered for too long (perhaps even die if you let it go dry for more than a day :eek:)

    I love interactive crafting/harvesting. Hoping for improvements in the future for sure!
     
    Maka, Shortina, majoria70 and 6 others like this.
  7. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

    Messages:
    18,188
    Likes Received:
    35,440
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    I too really love the addition of agriculture and look forward to future iterations. It's actually a lot of fun for me right now to build up a garden and try to stock it and get kind of a system going. But it's not fun to continuously wonder if a plant has been watered or what cycle of growth it's in. There really needs to be more information given to the player that requires less clicking and more visual queues.

    We should also strive to make agriculture more interactive and sophisticated without making it needlessly cumbersome. This is where I believe servants could really play a fun role. NPC's would do all the "watering" and "crop rotation". You as the player would be the architect of the garden, and you'd instruct the NPC to water this type of plant 3 times but this other type 5 times. Of course, then the plants have to have variation where 3 times produces X but 5 times produces Y where both X and Y are "good" they're just different choices. Other instructions like "stop planting at 100" and "rotate garlic after carrots" might also provide variation.

    The point of the servants would be to allow the player to go out and do other things while crops are growing. It's very cool to build all that up, but a watched pot never boils, as they say. I don't really want to constantly be visiting my garden and performing micro management. :)
     
    Maka, Shortina, majoria70 and 3 others like this.
  8. StrangerDiamond

    StrangerDiamond Avatar

    Messages:
    4,355
    Likes Received:
    4,999
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Hehe, when you have a garden in real life that is exactly what happens... even the same kind of plant sometimes drinks twice as much and it seems a mystery :)

    But indeed this is a mini-game and it should remain very simple. Especially if planters are forced for math reasons.

    You shouln't have to for example use the "verify plant health skill" on each plant one by one, but rather the whole planting box, then the Avatar would say "Plant 3,6,9 and 12 look like they need some watering"

    I agree with 4ever in the sense that there needs to be some details to discover along the way, for example if you plant a minuscule cactus seed in a huge pot and use a bucket to water it, it might sink down in the earth and take for example twice as long to germinate.

    I'm not saying use extremes and waste people's time here, rather let some people who take time to discover the secrets be rewarded with better performance and faster growing speeds.

    Each seed should have its special needs, each plant, some harvesting technique maybe even.

    Maybe if you do monoculture then your crop would be suceptible to disease, but if you plant this special plant along then you realise there is no more problem :)
     
  9. Waxillium

    Waxillium Avatar

    Messages:
    3,311
    Likes Received:
    9,043
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Rift's End
    I had to ask in guild chat how to garden....

    In my defence, who uses a 6 foot hoe to plant a tiny seed a few inches deep in a pot?

    I was totally trying to do it with my hands.


    Seed + soil + water = why not working?

    :rolleyes:
     
  10. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

    Messages:
    5,676
    Likes Received:
    11,810
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Location:
    Dara Brae
    In the words of Google ads- more clicks! More clicks!!
     
    Ice Queen and Lord Baldrith like this.
  11. CrandalltheFoole

    CrandalltheFoole Avatar

    Messages:
    594
    Likes Received:
    624
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    DFW, Texas
    I cannot get the planting to work.
    Have all the parts, the Plant button never activates. I do not see an Okay for me to click.

    I found a solution, you have to have only one bucket and one seed.
    shift-click-drag to get just one.
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2016
  12. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

    Messages:
    10,347
    Likes Received:
    24,869
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    United States
    double click planting spot which shows as green highlighted
    this should open up a window drag your hoe, 1 water, 1 seed and then the plant icon should light up. It could be lagging, we've had a lot of lag in this release. Good luck to you. I hope that helps and welcome :)
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.