Shelter vs. Farmland

It may not be happening yet. But I predict that if nothing changes, houses will simply be taking up valuable farmland, and we'll have large cities of flower beds.

This is a bit troubling as our entire game is built on housing. Here's a few ideas that I think "make sense" to avoid this catastrophe:

1. Require all crafting stations to be placed INSIDE of a house or structure. (yes, I know basements will impact this)
2. Create a need for housing by making SOME crops require shade to grow. (yes, I know basements will impact this)
3. Give an experience bonus to players that sleep with a roof over their heads. Obviously people that do not own a home would need to rent a room at an Inn or something.
4. Make homes protect players from harsh weather. Create debuffs for those that stay outside too long.
5. Make seasons that make 100% farmland less productive than they are now. To take full advantage of farmland you would have to use it all year long and go through the seasonal cycle.

 

I don't think the rule about all crafting stations being placed inside even makes sense from an immersion standpoint. It makes sense for blacksmiths & millers & tanners & cooks to work outside. We'll eventually want to see some of these trades practiced in field crafting if we ever have camping in the game. For example, I'd like to see cooking and tanning, at least, at camps in the wilderness. Some forms of alchemy could also be done (herbalism).

I would go back to some of my suggestions.
- Definitely require a lot of crops to be grown outside or need a difficult level of care to be productive. Others might need shade. Others, like mushrooms, would grow better underground, or in underground POTs.
- Require vendors to need a bed in a house to sleep in. Don't want a house? You can't place a vendor.
- For players, just have a purpose for a bed, like dealing with fatigue. I don't think there's a need to have an XP bonus to penalize camping, if camping comes in the game in future at some time.
- Don't necessarily disagree with illness for staying outside in certain conditions, but I don't think it will really influence the game the way you're talking about. People will still go outside to adventure during the rain, then either ignore the debuff or bring potions, sort of like they do with zombie plague.

 

A rent system for houses, so you could cultivate avatars =P

 

Random thoughts:

Indoor stuff is affected by basements AND underground PoTs (gives them an unfair advantage).
Rain and seasons are unaffected by basements AND underground PoTs
Underground PoTs shouldn't be able to grow any crops that require the sun (unfair to people IN those PoTs, may possibly kill some people's desire to populate those awesome scenes)
I 100% agree beds/sleeping would be nice, and it would be helpful to have a reason to get a well rested buff or something for those who like immersion
Weather debuffs could be interesting, but unless there was in game mechanic to offset it (rain coat over combat gear, umbrella, etc.) it is an unbalanced penalty against all players
Take this a different way and also include heat stroke debuffs in desert scenes (requires waterskins, parasols, etc. )
Seasons - 100% yes. I want there to be time to plant different plants. Would also be nice if they put fallow cycles in place (don't use something for a season and everything gets a growing buff for rest of year).
Vendor only affects high pledge houses

All in all, I would love to see a better thought process for farming that takes into consideration not just having entire castle lots and 5 story basements dedicated to nothing but large planting beds. Having said that, if someone with a castle wishes to hire me to water and harvest his plots, I'll only charge 15% of collected material for my sharecropping services.

 

Do you think THAT many people will prioritize large scale farming over having a house? And what's wrong with flower beds anyway? If that's how people want to use their lot.

1: As redfish points out.. makes no sense..
3: There is no sleep in multiplayer.. and offline wouldn't have an issue.
4: Plenty of public access buildings to go hide in.. and it would be very unfun.
5: Wouldn't change a thing.

 

@Moiseyev Trueden,

True that underground POTs might not be able to grow wheat well, but certain types of crops, like mushrooms, would grow in greater abundance. Also, in so far as shade vs. sun goes, in addition to rain and sun, heat would also affect plants. Shade would be necessary to protect plants from excess heat in environments where its too hot. (ie deserts)

So, for every disadvantage for every locale, there's another thing that's an advantage. I don't see these ideas as penalizing certain biomes over others.

Also, some caverns in an underground POT might have light breaking in through the cave ceiling, and that might change the dynamics, too, though.

 

Until we get flexible placement the crafting stations have to be placed where they can fit. I currently create a pavillion without the building because I don't want the building destroying my lot which is town sized and will have a stage on 1 end and crafting stations on the other.

I agree we should get a bonus for sleeping in our bed or some rented bed.

I hope greenhouses make some plants grow better/faster

I think some areas of the city look nice with gardens and plant life. It's best we don't have home owners association rules unless town owners want them.

 

Also, as far as undergound biomes go, there might also be a difference between indoor and outdoor in terms of moisture / dampness.

 

I have no problem with people using their lots however they like. My problem is the min/maxing that influences how they use the lots. Do I think THAT many people will use their land almost exclusively for farmland in the present system? Yes. Why would they do otherwise, what's the advantage to having a home exactly? Decoration? It's not going to take long for people to figure out that they can buy a hell of a lot of decorations if they have large amounts of farmland that provides a steady income.

 

I'm hoping for this too. I love my greenhouse but if it's not providing a functional advantage then it's just taking up space that I could use for planting stuff and I'll get rid of it.

 

Also, no disrespect @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos, meaning I don't want to hijack your thread to plug some of my ideas... but I think this might be a relevant part of the discussion. I've talked about hunger a lot, and for nutrition I think its necessary to have both a carrot and stick -- the stick being hunger. When that's come up, I've also suggested doing some fatigue mechanic that would work like hunger. So for example, see the thread I put up on camp scenes.

IMO, the good aspect of that would be that you would rest around the same time you ate, and that would bring the two activities together at places like camps and inns. It would also naturally happen at night, as you might want to stop and wait through the night when everything is dark, or when there are more monsters out.

Sleeping at a bed in a home would have the same type of purpose, but without the chance of a random encounter. Camping in the wilderness would always be prone to random encounters. So there would always be an advantage to sleeping in a town versus sleeping in the wilderness, if you aren't ready to fight.

Again, I don't disagree with you about illness from staying out in the rain, but I don't think that would change much how people would play the game. They'd just use potions to cure their illness.

 

You're making a lot of assumptions about in-game home owner's play styles, willingness to work on crops and future game balance (value of those crops). If the motivation of using an entire lot for crops is buying a lot of décor.. what house are they going to put it in? I rather suspect a majority of home owners will prefer going out and adventuring or engaging in other trades than turning their one precious piece of property into a farming sim.

Are YOU going to turn any of your property into a giant farm?

This isn't something you want to regulate through gamey mechanics.. but do so through market value. There's a ton of cotton everywhere? Ok cotton is near worthless. Nobody wants to grow cotton..

 

I have a lot of land I could do that with. At the moment I'm exploring what would make the smallest house imprint and still give me plenty of farmland. What's the downside? When you consider that I could put a large basement on the land, I can still decorate and have crafting tables (if not turning the basement into additional farmland for maximum profit).

Because I like to roleplay, I'll likely have my wizard tower, some walls, and a lot of crops on my Duke Keep lot. I think you'll be surprised at how many people just spam crops on every ounce of land they own. I think it's going to be more and more noticeable as this game goes on.

Yes, some of this could be influenced with economic incentives, but I assume we want cotton (for example) to be worth something. The idea I was trying to push was that housing would be worth something too, right now I don't think it's worth enough in comparison. There are people that will grow tired of decorating and socializing but not making money off crops. I think those people are very likely to turn all their land into farms. Again, what's the downside?

 

In addition to greenhouses, growlamps for underground farming,



Or simply, you'd use a greenhouse, and the greenhouse would be able to contain certain magic spells. So, casting a rain spell in a greenhouse would make everything damper, wetter for a while. Casting a cold spell in a greenhouse would make everything colder for a while, and a heat spell, everything hotter for a while. Casting a light spell in a greenhouse might make the light last for a while, same way.

 

You're still assuming a level of profit that will make it worth while to you. If things were to get as "bad" as you suggest.. it would be a clear sign that the economy isn't balanced. Crops should not be so valuable.. particularly if anyone can grow them.

What we're seeing is only the first iteration and no work has even really been done on any kind of economy.

 

I like BDF's suggestion of having an ingame reason for housing. Not sure how I'd balance it, but it would be nice to have it be more than a doll house. Having said that, I plan to use my housing for that reason and probably only do minimal farming. If you flood the market and there isn't a reason to farm... more harm than good as Bowen said. However, using it for reagents (I plan to be a primary caster) would be VERY helpful in short and long run as reagents will always be useful to me.

 

Consider this... what about all those people who don't own a home and can't own a home? Is not giving a mechanic reason to own a home in addition to what there already is.. as you yourself implied earlier.. an unfair advantage? Not that some people don't complain that owning a home in the first place is an unfair advantage by why justify that argument by actually making it true?

 

@Bowen Bloodgood, well he suggested inns. Not sure if the devs want to do that; it would fit the bill, though.

I think making a vendor require a bed in a house is a good way to address the issue without even addressing people without homes. My thing is that I think vendors should have schedules just like any other NPC, and a bed to sleep in would be a condition of their employment. They'd then go on a schedule between the bed and their sales counter.

Don't know whether the devs are chomping at the bit to implement that, either, but I think it would be the ideal. Even a casual game like Terraria has you do something to have a NPC live with you; you have to provide him with a table and a chair.

 

To me you have to make House worth having so :-

1) dont allow any storage items eg chests etc to be placed outside if no house on lot (no house . nowhere to store anything) .
2) have drenched ,cold effect your movement health etc (forcing you inside)
3) as suggested above if you dont rest you start to get fatigued (charge rent for sleeping in inns)
4) make all basements have to be inside a house.

just as a side note maybe have fertiliser needed for growing kept inside and tools used to plant going rusty eventually not working if not inside which can only be dropped in a house,greenhouse,shed etc.


Bash Away

 

Simple fix is to make agriculture not particularly valuable, so it doesn't pay all that well to farm in mass quantities.

Food should be a small and fun, not big and annoying, detail of the game. You shouldn't have to eat to play. Maybe give a buff for certain foods, fine.

I don't want to have to think about my DIET when I'm playing a game.

I do like the new crop-growing system. Will be fun to grow some regs and elderberry seeds or whatever. Just don't foist food on to gameplay.

Unless we can be shrubbers. I would roleplay the crap out of building a vast empire of shrubberies.