Farming not very viable even with living off the land 3.

[meganoth]

On 4/8/2022 at 1:46 AM, Kiernan531 said:

You can talk about how the mechanics are set up and the math all you want, but what matters is what actually happens during play.  I am currently on day 26 in my game and have LofL2.  I have never once seen any seeds for sale at any of the three traders I have visited.  I find lots of some seeds that I have no interest in growing, like hops, coffee and cotton, a few seeds of some crops I want, like corn, blueberries and mushrooms, and I have as of yet only found a single pumpkin seed and maybe 3 potato seeds.  In terms of farming, my return on average has been one or two seeds for every 4 corn I harvest, 1 mushroom spore or blueberry seed for each 3 plants harvested.  I had no return on the pumpkin or potatoes.  As such, almost all of the crop foods I have are found in looting.  When I started playing 7DtD in A17 through A19, farming was something I enjoyed.  I was always eager to find rotting flesh and nitrate powder so I could build farm plots and get growing.  But since A20 I don't really care about farming at all.  I can find enough cornmeal, cans of chili, and cans of salmon to make fish tacos and chili dogs, go north to find wild blueberry bushes to make blueberry pies, and plenty of eggs and hunted meat for bacon and eggs that farming isn't even necessary to keep my food supply stocked.  Making farming more grindy didn't slow down my advancement, it just took away an enjoyable part of the game.

 

You may have missed that potato plants can be found in farms POI's just like corn plants, they are just much less visible. Both corn and potatoes are relatively easy to collect at the outskirts of bigger cities as they are practically surrounded by farms.

 

There are places where you can find mushrooms as well (in caves mostly). And there are some POIs with food racks that have random seeds.

 

EDIT: Furthermore, try to find Trader Rect. He is the trader that specializes in food and I don't remember exactly if he has seeds for sale but he definitely has all sorts of produce. Since it usually comes in stacks of 5 this is the equivalent of a seed

 

16 hours ago, Roland said:

An "arm chair quarterback" is someone who second guesses the choices the real professional quarterback makes.

An "arm chair developer" is someone who second guesses the choices the real professional developers make.

 

In both cases the person thinks they could do just as well or better and yet all they do is sit in their recliner getting nothing done.

 

What the heck is an "arm chair mathematician"?

 

I must confess: I am an arm chair mathematician. I didn't run 4x400 meters on a round course or lifted weights to get at my results, I actually sat in an arm chair and let my brain work to calculate the returns and only lifted a finger to move a pen over a piece of paper.

 

I can only apologize for the laziness I and fellow mathematicans are displaying here. 😁

 

[Urban Blackbear]

3 hours ago, Boidster said:

Maybe he meant "shade tree mathematicians"? What if you have an arm chair under the shade tree, though?

 

Clearly you'd need to add a campfire, a cooler, and some music.

[Maharin]

11 minutes ago, Urban Blackbear said:

 

Clearly you'd need to add a campfire, a cooler, and some music.

 

This the beverage in the cooler?

 

[Boidster]

46 minutes ago, meganoth said:

And there are some POIs with food racks that have random seeds.

 

Seriously. The Shamway stores' produce section is a cornucopia of seeds. Or a potatocopia. Whatever.

[Maharin]

THIS GAME NEEDS CHEESE!  And cheese seeds.  I'd plant them... if I'd get more cheese.

 

The lactose intolerance of this apocalypse is very disappointing.  Large death tolls I can handle, but no cheese?  COME ON!

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Urban Blackbear]

4 minutes ago, Boidster said:

 

Seriously. The Shamway stores' produce section is a cornucopia of seeds. Or a potatocopia. Whatever.

 

So are the produce stands around the farms. It takes like one run to a small farming town to get a farm going.  Just watch out for pigs.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

You may have missed that potato plants can be found in farms POI's just like corn plants, they are just much less visible. Both corn and potatoes are relatively easy to collect at the outskirts of bigger cities as they are practically surrounded by farms.

 

There are places where you can find mushrooms as well (in caves mostly). And there are some POIs with food racks that have random seeds.

 

 

 

I must confess: I am an arm chair mathematician. I didn't run 4x400 meters on a round course or lifted weights to get at my results, I actually sat in an arm chair and let my brain work to calculate the returns and only lifted a finger to move a pen over a piece of paper.

 

I can only apologize for the laziness I and fellow mathematicans are displaying here. 😁

 

Thats my point. Where is the differentiation like there is with quarterbacks and developers?  Arm chair mathematicians are just…..any mathematician….

[SURVIVE]

so the realistic aspect is pretty dead on here. If you ever planted a crop, not a garden, then it takes a about 5 to 8 seeds and even then sometimes the seeds are bad so you get nothing out of one of your plots. it happens more often then not.

 

the realistic part thats missing is the taking care of the crops themselves. Irrigation, greenhouses and randomness of the crops themselves never producing an exact amount each time, weather affecting crops such as freezing, burnt by the sun and over/under watering. However i'm under the suspicion that they have no intention of touching this.

 

I'm guessing this is the departure from realism altogether as they try for release in 2023. Sad.

On 4/8/2022 at 6:48 PM, Maharin said:

THIS GAME NEEDS CHEESE!  And cheese seeds.  I'd plant them... if I'd get more cheese.

 

The lactose intolerance of this apocalypse is very disappointing.  Large death tolls I can handle, but no cheese?  COME ON!

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

That would be nice. add some cows to milk. that would force them to expand the cooking system. But from what I understand, that doesn't look like it will come by 2023 unless they add expansions. 

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, SURVIVE said:

so the realistic aspect is pretty dead on here. If you ever planted a crop, not a garden, then it takes a about 5 to 8 seeds and even then sometimes the seeds are bad so you get nothing out of one of your plots. it happens more often then not.

 

the realistic part thats missing is the taking care of the crops themselves. Irrigation, greenhouses and randomness of the crops themselves never producing an exact amount each time, weather affecting crops such as freezing, burnt by the sun and over/under watering. However i'm under the suspicion that they have no intention of touching this.

 

I'm guessing this is the departure from realism altogether as they try for release in 2023. Sad.

 

 

Don't think so.

 

Madmole has been saying that they don't want to expand farming beyond the current state, they seem to go for "survival light". And realism has always taken a backseat behind fun gameplay (which is in the eye of the beholder). 

 

[Oliwhere]

I think I might have an explanation why a few people are having quite mixed results with the new farming mechanics:

 

In my current playthrough I realized after a couple of harvests that I was getting the exact same amount of seed drops every time when harvesting directly at the beginning of a play session: From the 3*8 farm plots is was getting a total of 8 seeds (4 pumkin seeds, 1 hop seed, 3 corn seeds) repeatedly. The seed drops even occurred in the same order, e.g. the 7th hop plant was the one to drop the seed.

This also means that if I stuck to my schedule of harvesting my farm I would only ever get 33% instead of the 50% seeds back - since there is no random variation to statistically even out. 

The fixed starting value seems to be based of the seed of the world, so for a different world players might get overly lucky or unlucky with their harvests , when they have a tendency to do the farming as one of the first actions in their play sessions. Given the growth time of 2 hours might correlate quite often with a typical time for a play session, this can happen 'by accident' to quite a few people.

 

I guess what that means , is that the random number generators is seeded with the same starting value every time you load into your current world.

I'm not sure if this RNG initialization is done by accident or intentionally (could be for debugging / testing purposes), but I think this should at least be changed to something that actually varies over the playtime within a world.

 

[The-Walking-Dad]

I'm pretty lucky if that's the case, I'm getting one seed for every crop harvested without fail. 

[Oliwhere]

30 minutes ago, The-Walking-Dad said:

I'm pretty lucky if that's the case, I'm getting one seed for every crop harvested without fail. 

 

How many farm plots does your farm consist of? If it's reasonably sized that would indeed be really lucky. Or could it be that you are using mods?

 

With the 24 farm plots I did my tests on, the probability to get a seed back every time would only be 1 in 16 million generated worlds - so I wouldn' hold my breath for that 😉

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Oliwhere said:

I think I might have an explanation why a few people are having quite mixed results with the new farming mechanics:

 

In my current playthrough I realized after a couple of harvests that I was getting the exact same amount of seed drops every time when harvesting directly at the beginning of a play session: From the 3*8 farm plots is was getting a total of 8 seeds (4 pumkin seeds, 1 hop seed, 3 corn seeds) repeatedly. The seed drops even occurred in the same order, e.g. the 7th hop plant was the one to drop the seed.

This also means that if I stuck to my schedule of harvesting my farm I would only ever get 33% instead of the 50% seeds back - since there is no random variation to statistically even out. 

The fixed starting value seems to be based of the seed of the world, so for a different world players might get overly lucky or unlucky with their harvests , when they have a tendency to do the farming as one of the first actions in their play sessions. Given the growth time of 2 hours might correlate quite often with a typical time for a play session, this can happen 'by accident' to quite a few people.

 

I guess what that means , is that the random number generators is seeded with the same starting value every time you load into your current world.

I'm not sure if this RNG initialization is done by accident or intentionally (could be for debugging / testing purposes), but I think this should at least be changed to something that actually varies over the playtime within a world.

 

I would suggest making a bug report. And mention that you found out about it because you did often harvest directly after starting the game.

 

Just now, Oliwhere said:

 

How many farm plots does your farm consist of? If it's reasonably sized that would indeed be really lucky. Or could it be that you are using mods?

 

With the 24 farm plots I did my tests on, the probability to get a seed back every time would only be 1 in 16 million generated worlds - so I wouldn' hold my breath for that 😉

 

Either a mod or he is playing on an earlier alpha

 

[The-Walking-Dad]

It's a game I started in 20.3, which may explain it, though i believe i was getting 1:1 ever since i put the first plot down. About 40 plots. No mods.

 

No doubt I'll have to start a new game soon. If farming is as bad as people say it is THEN I'll be modding it. 

[meganoth]

34 minutes ago, The-Walking-Dad said:

It's a game I started in 20.3, which may explain it, though i believe i was getting 1:1 ever since i put the first plot down. About 40 plots. No mods.

 

No doubt I'll have to start a new game soon. If farming is as bad as people say it is THEN I'll be modding it. 

 

It is random since 20.0.

 

If it somehow can get stuck it would also explain why a few people had no success at all with farming.

 

[Oliwhere]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

I would suggest making a bug report. And mention that you found out about it because you did often harvest directly after starting the game.

 

 

 

I made a bug report about this issue, as you suggested:

 

 

[Oliwhere]

2 hours ago, The-Walking-Dad said:

It's a game I started in 20.3, which may explain it, though i believe i was getting 1:1 ever since i put the first plot down. About 40 plots. No mods.

 

No doubt I'll have to start a new game soon. If farming is as bad as people say it is THEN I'll be modding it. 

 

With 40 plots it should be almost impossible to happen by chance alone (1: 1 trillion probability) - so there might be something strange going on besides the issue that I had experienced.

 

Personally I don' mind the changes to farming that much and found LOTL 2 and 3 quite viable for me - just had to punch some grass/flowes or cut some trees before harvesting, so that I would get 'further ahead' in the not so random sequence of the RNG 😄