Agriculture - Dissapointment and Intended future use?

Hello,

Ever since the very early days of Sota i have been looking forward to agriculture. I have been using it, aswell as looking forward to future uses. I keep asking questions about it every single telethon, and it *ALWAYS* gets ignored/unanswered which hardly can be a conincidence. So here i am, in the light of the most recent update to agriculture, the only thing on my mind is.... " Ehhh, What? "

Now, i know that alot of people dont do agriculture, because you need either a greenhouse row house or a village or larger to generally grow things, so let me explain the basics.

- Planting or harvesting thru Agriculture grant no Experience.

- To grow something, you need 3 things. Seed, Tool and Bucket of water.

- Once you start growing something after you plant the seed with a bucket of water, using a tool, you then need to water the plant again within time intervals , depending on what you plant.

- For things that grow quick, let's take carrots as an example, you need to water the plants 4 times in total to get maximum yield. And that is 4 times within the growing period, which with a greenhouse is 12Hours.


it works like this:
Planting at: Today at 9:00 PM

First Water: along with planting

Second Water: immediately after planting up to third watering

Third Water: Tomorrow between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM

Fourth Water: Tomorrow between 5:00 AM and 9:00 AM

Harvest after: Tomorrow at 9:00 AM

This means, that i have to water the plants EVERY 4 HOURS to get maximum, and if i miss one of the watering windows , like when you sleep or are at work/school i will spend as much money on the seed, tool and water ( not to mention time and effort ) to get the same amount that i would get by just buying the carrots directly from a vendor. if i miss two waterings, i will lose money on doing agriculture, while getting nothing. Yupp, NOTHING. I lose money by spending time and effort on something, and is (should) be intended as crafting/gathering.

Key thing for the TL;DR People: Unless you log in every 4 hours to water your plants, you will not gain anything out of agriculture.

As i mentioned previously , i have followed this topic by heart for a long time, and the few times Agriculture has been discussed, its always just been said that " its not done " , " its a work in progress " , " skills effecting yield will get into game " etc... Yupp, indeed, and here i am after the first update to Agriculture, and i just.. Im confused. I dont really know what to say.

So i have a few huge concerns that i need to have adressed, and i would love to get some feedback from the devs:

- Why have you added skills to agriculture that are the ONLY skills in the entire game in the crafting that doesnt effect the quality or outcome of using the skill? The only thing the skill does is make it quicker to grow and harvest plants, you still need to get in every 4 hours for it to be useful.

- Why is Agriculture the only crafting skill in the game that doesnt generate Experience?

- You mentioned that tool effects for Agriculture will come in future releases? The current one have Success chance, but there is no fail/success element of Agriculture, and none discussed or mentioned

- What is the intended future use of agriculture, if have to spend an hardcore amount of time in the game to get anything out of it, and where i cant have ANY kind of impact on it other than logging into the game at X times ?

And a few suggestions on what needs to be adjusted , this is not farmville online:

- Growing and harvesting plants need to generate Experience as everything else in the game.

- Plants need to have the same chance as "outdoor" plants to gain rare resources such as Beetles.

- There need to be some way for me to improve the yield, and i see you already have a " fuel " intended ( Fertilizer ) .

- Skills need to be adjusted to have a Success chance and chance to get multiple things out of one plant.

The current skills are a joke, they could be thrown together as ONE or two skills as a compliment, just as mining / skinning etc has.

Yes, most people couldnt care less about agriculture. But many do, and i would love a discussion regarding this.

Thank you for reading and thanks for your feedback!

 

I personally hate the current crop timing system and wont use it. its to much effort for to little reward which means no fun.

I honestly think that's exactly what they are going for. they are so worried about people making to much gold and it being bottable that they don't want a lot of people doing it so are putting little effort and love into a feature that many people want to enjoy.

many people have complained for along as time about it but they are not interested in it...

but its my opinion and that's all.

 

If timing is an issue for you I suggest not using a greenhouse, if that's still not enough time plant in a basement that'll grant you ten times the baseline maturation time.

 

I realise that, but that means it would take 10 days to grow a carrot, with still no Experience and only a 5 gold win... 5 gold.. over 10 days.

 

These "skills" under Agriculture are still shaded out for me after updating. Is there a 'trainer' we need to see first?

 

From a personal point of view what you suggest would be great for me, but from a game health point of view i'm happy they made the decisions you disagree with

I will answer with my personal opinion to your suggestions.

1) Growing and harvesting plants need to generate Experience as everything else in the game.

This makes land = time based, zero risk crafting xp.
If this is implemented i would get an alt and literally "farm" crafting xp for use in other crafts. This makes land have a competitive advantage, making having a deed more PTW. Add-on store stuff is cosmetic not game play useful.
Now i know PTW can be argued due to player run economy of selling gold and therefore buying gold and getting better equipment. But currently this is only from player to player not developer to player. COTO price is set by players not the developers

2) Plants need to have the same chance as "outdoor" plants to gain rare resources such as Beetles.

This allows rare items to be farmed, with again, zero risk to the player. All this would do is decrease the value of rare items, in fact at this point i would not call them rare items at all.

3) There need to be some way for me to improve the yield, and i see you already have a " fuel " intended ( Fertilizer ) .

There already is a way to increase yield. As you pointed out watering within the current time periods does exactly this.
So if they implement this it should be that doing whatever to get to to the yield you have now, Not doing it will make it a worse yield than we currently have.
But to be honest this one i'm not too fussed with. As long as agriculture does not become a huge gold faucet. If the NPCs buy the items at a cost that make time to plant and water sell gold price equal or lower than questing/adventuring gold return for the same period of effort time (time you actually have to do stuff not just wait offline) then i see no problem. Passive gold faucets are very bad for player run economies, just makes huge inflation.

4) Skills need to be adjusted to have a Success chance and chance to get multiple things out of one plant.

This again like point 1 makes having land a competitive advantage with zero risk. Adding chance gives the advantage to people with bigger "farms" again making more land = more competitive advantage.



All the above only concerns online play. If they did what you suggest to offline play, then fine, who cares, the economy in offline mode is of no interest. There is no economy PvP/competition in offline mode.

Regards
Spung

 

Every other crafting skill in the game generate XP. milling wood, creating cotton straps, making butter out of milk etc. All of this comes with no risk.

And ALSO, this is CRAFTING. There should be no Risk to crafting, except monetary risk ( if i fail something, it cost me money, i can only get money by taking risks ).
This is one of the biggest mistakes the devs have done wiht Sota, Forcing crafters to be better hunters than they are crafters.

 

Yes, but you should be able to see the skills and what they do?

But indeed you need to visit a crafting trainer at your local NPC town!

 

This does not negate the fact that if agriculture gave crafting XP, then buying 50 city lots would very quickly make me the best crafter in all of Novia = PTW.

 

???

Agriculture cost money, its not free. You need to buy the seeds etc.

I can buy 10k milk from vendors and sit in my house with a prosperity tool and make butter out of it and grind XP. And that doesnt require 50 City lots.

 

I was not sure i wanted to post this on the forums, but run the maths on buying seeds, buying water and doing all watering and selling to the output the NPC.

THEN still tell me it cost gold.

 

NPC crafting trainer only offers Water and Harvest skills, is there an 'expert trainer' at one location for the sow skill?

Also, when i use Water on either 1 planted seed or on all planted seeds in AoE ( about 15 plants at my level) I get the same skill increase. Was this planned? For now I'm using the skill one planted seed at a time just to help level up my radius for those days I'm in a hurry Wondering also, will this skill only be a circular AoE ( nice for pots all over the place) or planter box specific? Example: lvl 20 covers a small box, lvl 40 medium, lvl 60 large since these boxes are narrow and represent the diameter of an AoE circle. That makes for a huge AoE for cover just one large planter. Most people don't plant in circular patterns but use these planters. Thoughts?

 

Assuming you water it 100% , it doesnt cost money, but that means you get a tiny profit for the effort alone.

I can buy wood cheap, process it ( and get XP ) and sell it for more. Same thing with less effort. That is the my point, every single thing in the game except Agriculture grants XP.

 

...that's pretty unfortunate. Here's hoping it gets tweaked.

 

@Arradin - it is my belief this is just the first of some Quality of Life on Agriculture and that we will see other skills.

I recommend, however, asking 3 questions on this topic for the upcoming hangout. This is specifically targetted at this release and should receive some attention in the Q&A.

1) About agriculture xp
2) About future agriculture skills
3) About relaxing the window for watering windows on plants with shorter maturation cycles.

(Or whatever to the point questions you feel are best).

Do not lose heart in the first iteration!

 

The current skills are a really good step in the right direction. My main complaint is that when I use the "water plants" skill, it uses 1 bucket of water per plant. That makes the issue with using a well, persist. Using a well is SUPER annoying. It doesn't provide any immersion and the amount of water used to water plants make zero sense. There are a few solutions to this.

1. Make it so we can gather multiple buckets of water at a time. 20 would be fine. That would put water gathering in line with all other crafting. I realize.. gathering water isn't crafting.. but there is no skill which governs gathering water nor should there be, as it's a very mundane task.

2. Make it so 1 bucket of water is used per use of the "water plants" skill. The higher the skill, the more plants you can water with 1 bucket of water.

Side note: (Also, perhaps the higher your watering skill, the less often you need to water your plants.)

Or better yet, do 1 and 2.

 

Harvest water from a well, or go kill a couple mobs and buy the water and get WAY more water for your time.

 

Sure, but since gathering water is a game mechanic, it should make sense.

 

There is an element of risk that is planned by Port for agriculture which is why we need these:



Birds and pests will be introduced eventually and will bring with them the threat of significant (ingame) monetary loss.

note: a crafted version of the ornate scarecrow is available