Is agriculture back in the game?

Is agriculture back in the game?

In a not to distant time ago, we were able to grow crops of all types with the motive that all real farmers have, to be an economically viable game play. Yet one of the developers left for another project just after taking all agriculture out of our game from being an economically viable way of play.

There were a very small few crops that remained viable, yet 90% of what was in our game left at the same time that developer did, the developer that eleminated it. That's when my SOTA gaming took a turn, having lost 90% of 80% of my playtime motive for playing or paying for SOTA.

It was said that our agriculture was "changed" due to incoming upgrades and new game play, yet agriculture was abandon after that.

So my question is, "it's been a very long time since we lost "most of and the largest parts" of SOTA agriculture gameplay.

Is this still the state of agriculture?

I invested quite allot of real money into our game based on what agriculture "was" before all we had worked on was eleminated. While this is a free to play game now, it was not when agriculture was fully economical in our game.

Has agriculture returned, or was that eleminated from our game all but the few crops?

Kickstarter/SeedInvest/COTO Store... being sold a game and then having such a great part taken away from it has been very disapointing.

Agriculture when where and how?

I want that other 80% of my game back and for that reason I find no reason to play because I feel we lost that part of our game, taken away as someone elses property.

We once had agriculture, do we have that back in game yet?

Thanks for any replies, excuses, sales receipts where we lost that part of our program to, or anything info related.

I truly want that part of our game back because it's why I invested (when we had full agriculture) and I want to play it.

So what's the current state of agriculture?
Is it still less than what it once was before the changes?
What do you think the future of our agriculture is, or does it even have a future?

Currently lost in game time waiting for sota agriculture's return...
Thank You! ~Time Lord~

*BTW this has nothing to do with any fight between me and Catnip. I love Catnip as it was Catnip that saved and continues to save SOTA from disappearing. This is about a long standing argument that agriculture was taken away from our game and the changes to it can be directly linked to the reduction in audience population numbers. Some things that are done are bad decisions and taking away/changing agriculture was a very big one. Full agriculture economic viability in all it's crops without further prossessing should be simply replaced back into our game.

 

I'm confused about this post. The only "negative" thing they did was make it so that you couldn't stack planters so close together vertically. Other than that, they made it so that plant based resources were more expensive on the NPC merchants, which actually benefits players who want to grow stuff.

 

Cotton is still the only obvious cash crop selling to NPCs, if that's what you're after. Or it was two or so months ago-- the last time I grew it to sell it. If you use agriculture for materials or reagents then you can't beat the time and money savings it provides for whatever you're after.

 

they significantly lowered the cost of watering as well. ag is one of the best money makers in the game and also amazing at gaining crafting XP. selling cotton to an NPC you will double your investment as long as you hit all the waterings. if you wanted to make a business out of ag there are certain crops that sell almost immediately. also you can prep for double XP periods and grow a bunch of pumpkins... very popular items during double XP. i think ag is very much alive if it is what you wanted to do.

 

Additionally, the Barley plant that is grown is the single top most consumed item in the game, at 2.35 Million destroyed in crafting last 30 days.

 

i tried to keep barley in stock at one point but gave up. all i got done was growing barley very good crop to grow if you want to sell to players.

 

Please @Time Lord elaborate a bit.
Exactly what all was in the 90% you say "left" the game ?

 

A carrot, letus ext... it's a very large list of crops that became non-viable in quantities when sold to NPC, which left us with cotton.

We did not get treated seeds or anything from the loss of that part of our game when that programer left our game for another project.

The promise of all farming could be helped fund our game's creation, it was a funding promise, and now what we had is gone, packed away in someone's suitcase or deleted without backup.


~TL~

 

Honestly not sure how long its been for you to play but there are indeed alot of new things. All the plants/crops needed for making beer, wine and spirits. The advent of newer foods now that food is extremely essential to players. Alot of folks would buy wheat from you just to turn into flour so they can make their goodies. Cotton is still the money maker...always will be i guess. But FOOD items is the key. So any crop needed for that is essential. Also crops for dyes as well. Bananas, pumpkins and such. You will need to sit down and go through the recipe books to look up what crops you would need to spend time on. Another thing is now you have the chance to get seeds back when you harvest, get decorative plants from harvesting as well. So I would say that AG is very viable.

 

What was once fundamental to our game is gone and I suspect gone forever. 100 player will have to start eatung and drinking prepared 10,000 food stuffs a day to make a player based economy work.

See you all in maybe a year from now to see if what was is again... or if the game is still here.

Very disapointing to have a game reject certain play styles that were once viable for funding and played in original state for more than a decade.

Is growing a carrot and then selling it to an NPC evil? I see it done in real life all around me, which is why the current state of agriculture will never be immersive, because it goes against all life I know of.

But now I'm just ranting into empty air which also seems very useless.

Thanks for the replies, I know you mean well.
~TL~

 

I still don't get where you're coming from. Growing plants was never "fundamental to our game". And, it's more viable now than it ever was.

 

Hey TimeLord so good to see you. I'm not quite sure I got what happened to forsake you. Some changes were made to the cooking recipes to make each recipes viable. You know how you could eat two foods for buffs well now with changes to how food works imo growing different ingredients for foods to cook so you can mix and match to total 6 food slots combining different foods eaten for buffs. For example: now foods use slots as shown in this post by Elrond.


https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ent-food-buffs-and-the-channel-system.165326/

Notice where the foods show the amount of slots they use. One problem I see with the system is that now that we have the point system to fill what we eat is that the times listed for how long each food buff lasts is less relevant since imo the point is to make all foods viable thus making all ingredients we grow and hunt all viable. So imo that change was very awesome and more in line with the kind of complexity and detail I always wanted for this game. Yes we need more especially in agriculture. We do need to have fertilizer implemented and wilting plants if we don't take care of them and we do need to simplify the growing times and provide more and interesting tooltips regarding what we are growing. Like show the wilting or say your plant is wilted it is bug ridden and needs bug spray or its wilted because it needs fertilizer, water etc. Lots more details to give it interest.

Anyway now things are working a bit differently around here since we have so very few devs. Old threads with wish list ideas are not as viable anymore imo. So if you would like to remind the devs and get players involved my suggestion is to create a detailed wishlist for agriculture ideas you have and get that out there. Well if you are interested in that road. I know we have each done a tremendous amount of very detailed ideas for this game along the way and it is easy to think of giving up and saying its not worth it or it won't help but we still have a few dedicated devs who are trying to do what they can to make the game the best it can be. If something is doable and worth it to do it then hopefully it can get done. Never in a million years did I think the food system would be made over and imo it is interesting. There were no skills added to the cooking tree but that could happen one day since it does need a couple of additions. I understand the hesitation though since one change affects many things. So that probably make some choices not viable to do.

From the grapevine I am hearing we shall soon start seeing treasure maps and functions come into the game. Now here's hoping the new treasure system will not be a grind fest and have interesting details like a dig animation with a shovel, clues, and reminiscent of UO, Risen, etc. Anyway Here's as always wishing for the best and to all those still around. *cheers and best wishes*.

edited

 

The cost of the plant side of most of the better foods is trivial next to the cost of the dragon haunches or other specialty items needed. You can buy your onions from a player to save 5%-10% on your food item, but due to how the economy/leveling system works, I found precooked food for even cheaper than the cost of the ingredients more often than not.

 

There once was a time you could farm heavily and unload your crops to NPC vendors for substantial profits. The devs rightfully nerfed that, while also scaling back what produce you could buy from NPC vendors, though they've since walked back that last part. I guess it comes down to what you consider viable.

 

unfortunately i think that holds true to nearly all crafting/cooking in SotA. if you are trying to sell your crafted goods it will be really hard to make a profit if you dont gather/grow everything needed yourself.

 

Yeah, it is the natural outcome of design decisions made ages ago, reinforced by the very early redesign of the skill system. Traditional economics don't really have an answer for how to run an economy when there is a near unlimited pressure to over produce specific goods to the point that many are so under produced they never see the light of day.

 

They didn't nerf cotton, which is the largest cash from NPC crop to plant. All other crops that made less than through NPC than cotton were taken from the game, making everyone who does agriculture "cotton farmers "ONLY"... despite that all other crops made far less money when sold to npc.

It is because math matters that the argument that all those other crops other than the most profitable, cotton, was taken away for economic reasons.

There was no economic reason, all those crops that profited less than cotton to npc were taken from finacial viability.

The only thing they took from agriculture when they took that from our game was...
"reality immersion as a farmer, forcing farmers to all to become cooks or cotton farmers"

They turned everyone who wanted to farm into cotton slaves, which was then and still is today, the largest for npc profit crop.
~TL~

 

@Time Lord did you read all the responses? You missed a lot. Go back and check it out.

To sum it up. The devs took away an easy way to make gold and made it more interesting. You actually make more gold now too lol. What you're complaining about is kind of weird and just shows us you aren't really playing the game.

 

TimeLord is one of the original stans for the game, if you are dismissing him from the honored rolls...

As to your point, yes farming was broken, kind of still is from the exploitation of cotton, but it was slow to receive the nerf hammer because farming at scale requires vast amounts of land which takes deeds which typically means crowns so generally the issue has to be pretty bad to upset that apple cart.

When Catnip (I think it was Catnip then) applied that nerf the deal was that farmers would still be able to sell plenty of produce since Cooking Ingredients merchants had their list of products drastically reduced meaning players would have to turn to them or not be able to cook the good meals.

The second part of the change got walked back at some point, I'm not sure when, it was the change that drove me away from the game at the time, but the first part didn't also get reversed, so produce farmers got hosed with no real upside.

I've always assumed whiskey worked the same, it has a tolerable gold value and for the amount of barley grown the amount of whiskey on player vendors was woefully short to cover it all.

 

We pride ourselves for being good gamers with an understanding of how games work, but it seems we are not all interested in time management games.

The counter argument from the peanut section says that agriculture is an exploit when sold to NPCs.

Our NPC seed salesmen sell quantities that are far beyond anything an actual person in Dallas Texas could hope to find. Only feed stores would have a few basic seeds in large quantities. In that way our game dealing with quantity of seeds does not fit in our gaming enviorment. In real life a person would have to have such amounts of seeds shipped to them. What I mean to say, said in another way, there should not be such large quantities sold.

We need to sell "a bag of seeds" and sell as many bags of them the player wants to buy, because a bag of seeds is a mix of seeds. The only importants to the contence of the bag, is that it contain all three harveting times; Quick, Medium and Slow. In this way, when a player buys a bag of seeds, they will have to plant, water and harvest all three time groups inside the bag to turn a profit (industrial farm).

A bag of seeds
~Time Lord~