MMORPG: Release 25 - Future Farmers of New Britannia

MMORPG has a new article up discussing R25:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/...lease-25-Future-Farmers-of-New-Britannia.html

Some teasers:
-"The big change in this update is the new inclusion of crops, and they have a pretty cool system planned for Shroud of the Avatar. This is an update that had Richard Garriott literally cheering as we got to it in the conversation. Crops can be planted in pots, raised beds, or furrows. Players can place pots inside houses, but raised beds and furrows require contact with native soil."

- "Richard pointed out that they have plenty of reserve cash to go through the end of 2016, but that there is a definite desire to get the game to a completed state well before then. Completed, as Starr commented, means that they’ve delivered on all their Kickstarter promises, players have access to their rewards, and the game has the appropriate security hardening and customer service tools needed to maintain it in a production state."

Check it out and discuss below!

 

Some interesting news in that article.

Just off the top of my head, we still have a number of big things left to do.

- All quest content working correctly for 40 hours of single player content.
- The cover system.
- Combat balance.
- Economy balance.
- PVP balance.
- Pledge rewards working.
- POTs completed.
- Land Rush.

There's more. How the above could happen during the next 6 months is beyond me though. I think closer to the end of 2016 sounds about right.

 

Oh yeah, and the article also brings up the importance of "farm land" in the game. It will be interesting to see how that impacts the world as we know it now. The thought of having tons of empty lots with nothing but agriculture in the middle of Owl's Head seems like an undesirable byproduct. I think "housing" would somehow need to counter balance the importance of farm land as it does in real life if we want our player towns to look anything like we'd expect them to.

Are we now going to see tiny little houses with flower beds packed into any and all available space while crafting tables are pushed inside giving barely enough space to move? You bet.

I hope the devs have a plan for this.

 

I don't know where you live but that actually sounds like an accurate description of most real life small towns

 

Personally thinks, having farmland plots around Owl's Head would finally give meaning to all the livestock in the middle of town. Seemed so out of place to have so many of them there without the 'farm'.

 

I have nothing against people using lots for farm land. If done in a meaningful way it would be very cool to see in game. But if it's a simple min/max calculation that is going on where people say "oh well my lot is making money for me if it's 80% farm land so I'll just not really 'live' anywhere to make that loot!" that's not good. Housing would have to have a way to balance that out and I don't think "status" is going to trump "making da cash" in this game for a lot of people.

 

You know, I don't mind the game itself not being done.. It's the losing what I'm working towards (i.e. wipes) that keeps me from being in-game and playing to a deeper extent. They could be in alpha for the next year and I would not give a hoot if I knew the wipes were done.

 

I would hope some type of zoning restriction and more a rural area for farmland implemented. Perhaps a small flower garden for city and small garden then so on so forth . Then perhaps a designated rental area outside of towns to rent for larger farms. That way your Town is not so cluttered nor amassing copious amounts of fertilizer.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but it would irritate me like crazy if I couldn't find a lot for my house -in town, yet there were lots being used as "farmland". Unless we have some kind of UO-style rule where players could only own ONE lot (this would be fair), you know there's selfish players who would tie up multiple lots, place their house(s), and leave the rest empty for "farming"... Maybe farms could be inside of designated instances, with "special" lots that are only good for agriculture/grazing- not in the middle of (NPC) towns? Farms should be too large to fit inside of a typical housing lot (unless its castle-sized). Of course, for POTs this should be a different story; the distribution of farml lots would be solely up to the POT owner/governor.

 

Ahhh.... you beat me to it. I agree!

 

On a different but relative related note on food having more weight - envisions future pvp battle

IRON AVATAR FRENCH vs IRON AVATAR GERMAN!! (sub countries/PoTs at will)

How will they score them though?

1) On how many judges they manage to kill with their poisoned cooking?
or
2) On how many judges they manage to elevate with their gastronomical delights?

 

This is one reason I bought the 5 level mine basement early on so I'd have a place for all my tables... I was thinking of just having a hatch in the middle of my field, we'll see... BTW, nice article...

 

Shouldn't crafting tables be mostly inside, while farming outside? Is that a problem?

As for space for crafting tables, first, of all, I'm hoping the skill system will encourage specialization, so a player won't have every single crafting table in his house. He could, if he wanted to, of course. But, maybe it would be more efficient to go to another player for those items.

Or, if he wanted to do those extra crafts, go to a public crafting area in the same town. I'm sure there'll be plenty of public crafting areas. People with no houses will need them. Seems a way to solve the space problem.

 

No that's an improvement. The idea that people will finally get their crafting tables off of their lawns is a welcome change. But it doesn't help that lawns will likely be a basement door (as SmokerKGB explains above) and a bunch of farm land. That's cool when you see it once, not so cool when you see it 3 out of 4 house lots. And really uncool if you realize that having a house is actually costing you money because you're not using your farm land competitively.

Yes, I believe this is the plan and will happen over time if we assume the devs can balance this appropriately.

Yes, or public farms. Players inherently want everything though. So there are always going to be people that try to min/max space and don't care how it looks or impacts roleplaying immerssion.

 

You mostly seem to agree with me, though; that the space limits, specialization, etc., could be a way to encourage immersion, socialization, and economic participation. IMO the idea that a row lot should have space for every single crafting station, plus extra room for other things, to me sounds a little bit greedy.

But I'm hoping too that they can help address some of the concerns raised, like a player owning 20 lots in the same NPC city just for farming, or farmland w/ basements.

 

Most of the row lots I've visited that are decorated have all the crafting stations packed into them.

I think one problem with the crafting system that encourages this is the fact that it's very easy to use the crafting stations for simple tasks, and since pledge owners have these stations they're going to use them. I do the same thing I just put them in a basement. So it's a practice that is blessed by the game design, and that's a mistake in my opinion.

What I think would help a lot is if characters simply couldn't walk up to any crafting station and just use it effectively to repair something. I think it would be a lot better if you had to find someone that specialized in that skill (either an NPC or PC, it doesn't matter). Effectively we'd be taking away some of the demand and that would reduce the supply (of crafting stations), or at least spread it out more between peoples alts.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos,

Btw, I would love to see vendors require a bed inside a house, and maybe even a sales counter, which they'd go to on schedule, and that would give a reason for people to actually put homes in their lots. Because w/o a home with a bed, they couldn't have a vendor.

Thinking of Terraria, where you have to place a table and a chair to have an NPC live with you.

 

That's a good idea. RG confirmed a few months ago that beds would eventually be functional and have purpose (but didn't detail what that purpose was). He casually brought up something about bedrolls in UO (I don't know anything about that). But yes, I think giving a reason like this to have a house is a good idea to making turning your lot into 95% farm land would become a balancing act. It wouldn't prevent someone from making their lot 85% farm land however. So it's not a perfect solution.

 

There would then be need to be a solution later on if POTs ever wanted to have a public market square. But, then, it would be functionally the same as market squares in NPC towns; the vendors would need at least some lot to go to with a bed. They'd have to walk the streets to get there.

It would be more complicated to implement.. but then I think that's lower priority, and would be ok for them to postpone such functionality.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos,

Btw, the way camping skills worked in UO was that they let you log out safely. IMO that was a bit gimmicky and would be a bad model to follow.