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

[hiemfire]

35 minutes ago, canadianbluebeer said:

no.  If you plant too close together, then the plant or seedplant dies and you get nada.

It takes a minute or two after planting to see that effect though, and once planted, tough luck. That seed is gone.

But, you always get the 2 seeds. 

Okay thanks.

36 minutes ago, canadianbluebeer said:

However, if you don't have good walls, something can (and will) break in, and trash your plants.

(here, zeds ignore the plants)

Makes sense and I wouldn't mind having to put up fences or walls around a farm to keep zombies out of the crops. Usually I build my farm on top of my base because I've seen zombies bash plants at random while they were just wandering around. Grass, twig bush, world gen crops, etc. didn't matter, every so often one would stop and take a swing at random breaking the plant.

40 minutes ago, canadianbluebeer said:

So if it's as bad as ppl are saying, then I'd expect tweaks.  (going to the old way, um, nope!)

Ya, the old way was too easy. I despise the rng slap in the face that 50% of not getting back a seed though. Okay, food was too easy with farms and I can live with it being toned back, but why in the hell does TFP always go with the "kick the player in the head repeatedly" approach to fixing things?

[theFlu]

meganoth's math is fine, but I'd like to point out to people an additional feature of such random events. I mentally call it "collapsing", I'm sure it has a real name too, somewhere, don't think I've heard it. Basically, as long as there's a decent chance of bad luck "taking you out", it will happen surprisingly quickly.

 

In this case, the bad luck is the seeds. Assuming 50% chance and 1.5 net plants from LotL 1.

Normal case: Ten plants. You'll get 5 seeds, 40 plants. You use 25 seeds to re-plant, get to keep 15.

Bad case: those 15 plants are your "backup." You can use those to create 3 more seeds if needed, you will need to get at least 2 seeds to keep the size of your farm.

Terrible case: You get no seeds. And now your farm only gets replanted to 8. Which will yield 4 seeds. This may then fail yet again, at least before you get back to 10.

 

How likely is that? With 10 plants, not that likely. However, if you keep farming a 10 plot garden long enough, you WILL run into it eventually. If you're not keeping spares/gathering the surplus, you run a decent risk of flatlining. It's kinda like crit streaks in games, they happen surprisingly often; it's surprising mostly because the single crits aren't even an event, but you really feel the 5% of a 5% chance, even though it happens once after every 20th crit. And crit happens...

 

With those numbers I wouldn't worry too much about a total loss, but I couldn't realistically rely on Any income from the farm.

Dropping down to 5 plots, I wouldn't even bother; a "zero seed harvest" will happen within the first 5 harvests. That's nowhere near the exact odds for it, but it isn't too far fetched. The only off-normal event you care about is the collapse, if you get extras, woo, you make an extra stew. Once you take a hit and go down, the recovery may require small miracles.

[hiemfire]

13 minutes ago, theFlu said:

I mentally call it "collapsing"

Flipping a coin and on a "heads" kicking the player in the head for poking a hole in the ground after telling them to poke the hole in the ground.

 

Repackaging food poisoning with the intent to make it remain painful to experience (the farming adjustment is meant to fill the same role, it pegs that and still bullies the player for bothering, they probably think we forgot the gut wrenching sound and the emptying of what ever supplies we had saved up, often multiple times in short sequence if we weren't trying to stave of the sudden onset of impending starvation death with canned goods).

 

Effectively predetermined failure with additional penalties for failing so that madmole doesn't have to see pics of chests full of food from playthroughs that have lasted 100+ hrs and to give us another time sink tearing us away from getting ready for 7th days as we tear through trash and poi's further and further away from base...

[ElCabong]

 

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, theFlu said:

meganoth's math is fine, but I'd like to point out to people an additional feature of such random events. I mentally call it "collapsing", I'm sure it has a real name too, somewhere, don't think I've heard it. Basically, as long as there's a decent chance of bad luck "taking you out", it will happen surprisingly quickly.

 

In this case, the bad luck is the seeds. Assuming 50% chance and 1.5 net plants from LotL 1.

Normal case: Ten plants. You'll get 5 seeds, 40 plants. You use 25 seeds to re-plant, get to keep 15.

Bad case: those 15 plants are your "backup." You can use those to create 3 more seeds if needed, you will need to get at least 2 seeds to keep the size of your farm.

Terrible case: You get no seeds. And now your farm only gets replanted to 8. Which will yield 4 seeds. This may then fail yet again, at least before you get back to 10.

 

How likely is that? With 10 plants, not that likely. However, if you keep farming a 10 plot garden long enough, you WILL run into it eventually. If you're not keeping spares/gathering the surplus, you run a decent risk of flatlining. It's kinda like crit streaks in games, they happen surprisingly often; it's surprising mostly because the single crits aren't even an event, but you really feel the 5% of a 5% chance, even though it happens once after every 20th crit. And crit happens...

 

With those numbers I wouldn't worry too much about a total loss, but I couldn't realistically rely on Any income from the farm.

Dropping down to 5 plots, I wouldn't even bother; a "zero seed harvest" will happen within the first 5 harvests. That's nowhere near the exact odds for it, but it isn't too far fetched. The only off-normal event you care about is the collapse, if you get extras, woo, you make an extra stew. Once you take a hit and go down, the recovery may require small miracles.

 

Great analysis, but let me mention 2 things:

 

1) Even when a series of bad harvests drops you down from 10 to 8, 6, 4..., the likelier outcome of the next harvest is always that you will regain seeds. Eventually the bust will happen, sure (this is why the "double when you lose" strategy only works with unlimited funds). But in a typical game you have 20 seasons, the chance for a total bust is really low in such a short series. To 1 in 100 players it will actually happen, the rest will just cower needlessly in fear 😉.

Also while you are recovering you need to get your food other ways as you can't use the produce for food production. Is this a crisis? You might need to hunt a little more, buy food from the trader or use a mushroom recipe instead of the potato and steak recipe. So you need to adapt, but I don't see any serious danger here.

 

2) While your farming is working boringly normal you will probably find more seeds that you either put into farm plots 11 and 12 or just keep them in case you have a bad harvest. Now when you get that ultimate bad harvest you either go down from 12 to 10 plots or you look into your seed chest and notice those spares. 

 

[theFlu]

8 minutes ago, meganoth said:

To 1 in 100 players it will actually happen, the rest will just cower needlessly in fear 😉.

 

Can't see anything wrong with your additions, but, from game design perspective:

 

This is the dude we'll hear from, terrible press. The guy happily staying within the expected yields, he's bored, at worst. And at best .. well, bored.

If it happens to be one of us, we'll never farm again. Well, maybe we will, after crunching the numbers, but sheesh would it suck.

 

There's no "win" in it, ever. Only a small chance of a ridiculous loss. Even if you get 100% seeds, you'll spend them all instantly and won't really feel a thing.

 

Please change it for a random daily 1/100 "locusts ate all your stuff." At least that would be an instant end and not a week long downhill struggle ...

Or, have horde nights spawn a murder of zombie crows. Now you get to choose if you let them eat your crops, or destroy your farm plots with your shotty yourself...

[Cubevision]

Isn't the math a bit off though? 50% chance of getting 4 crops before running out of seeds, 25% chance of getting 8 crops before running out, 12.5% of getting 12 crops and so on (6.25% chance for 16, 3.125% chance for 20, 1.5625% chance for 24) ultimately averaging out to a yield of 8 crops w/one level of living off the land (or 3 crops + 1 replacement seed).

0 levels in the skill would mean 4 average (or a  loss of 1 crop + 1 replacement seed) and 3 levels would mean 12 average crops, or 7 + 1 replacement seed. RNG plays a huge part but I could swear that the weighted average makes it work out better than A19 on average, but with chance instead of certainty.

[theFlu]

42 minutes ago, Cubevision said:

ultimately averaging out to a yield of 8 crops w/one level of living off the land (or 3 crops + 1 replacement seed).

I'm not entirely sure what math you're comparing to, but you seem to be calculating the "total average yield from one seed." I think most of the math here has been focused on the "average yield from one round of farming." They're slightly different in this case, but do the same calc for A19 and you'll land on infinite, right?

(I haven't watched the vid in case you're referring to that.)

[Cubevision]

You're right, I confused myself by calculating total avg yield and comparing it to yield per harvest (and you're right, A19 would be infinite so I'm basically comparing apples and oranges).

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, theFlu said:

 

Can't see anything wrong with your additions, but, from game design perspective:

 

This is the dude we'll hear from, terrible press. The guy happily staying within the expected yields, he's bored, at worst. And at best .. well, bored.

If it happens to be one of us, we'll never farm again. Well, maybe we will, after crunching the numbers, but sheesh would it suck.

 

There's no "win" in it, ever. Only a small chance of a ridiculous loss. Even if you get 100% seeds, you'll spend them all instantly and won't really feel a thing.

 

Please change it for a random daily 1/100 "locusts ate all your stuff." At least that would be an instant end and not a week long downhill struggle ...

Or, have horde nights spawn a murder of zombie crows. Now you get to choose if you let them eat your crops, or destroy your farm plots with your shotty yourself...

 

Sure, but even that guy has the events in my second point happening which will prevent the bust. Lets make a quick calc again:

 

In the worst case the guy goes from 10 to 8 to 6 (and 2 produce) to 5 (and 1 produce) to 4(1) to 3(2) to 2(4) to 2(2) to 2(0) to 1(3) to 1(2) to 1(1) to 1 to bust.

 

This means it takes 13 seasons of complete failure. 13 season is 39 days in which he does not find more seeds of this type in loot or at a trader. Who is this, Hiob?

 

And lets check if this is really 1 guy in 100. To get this astounding series takes 46 tails in series starting in any season. Lets assume the average player of 7 days to die plays the game 100 hours aka 33 seasons. That is one person in a group of 2^46/33 = roughly 2,000,000,000,000 people.

 

One in 2 trillion people would get this event if he also doesn't find a single seed in 39 days! I think we can ignore him

 

Naturally we get more people if we look at more realistic scenarios like just a loss down to 5. But even down to 5 would need 24 straight tails which means it is 1 in 16777216 seasons. Divided by 33 would be 1 in 500,000 people!

If we assume that 5 million people will play 7d2d starting with A20 then we are looking at 10 people in the history of 7D2D who will ever have their field of 10 reduced to half once. Which might make them doubt farming a little were it not for finding additional seeds in the meantime and all the other plants in their garden that meanwhile produced normally.

 

 

Another small calc: To have even that initial loss that you can't produce enought seeds to replace the lost seeds you obviously need to have a 0 or 1 seed return. There are 2^1024 possible results and 11 of them produce a loss so that you end up with a 8 or 9-sized field. This means every player will get this event once in about 100 seasons or every 300 in-game days of playing 7D2D. Less than 5 of these 100 seasons will have you just even out without any profit. And 94 of 100 seasons will see you making a profit from this 10-plot farm.

 

[IgnyteZero]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

And even in the micro perspective it doesn't matter because you can find the seeds one after another, at different times. If you keep the produce from every seed you multiply your chances to really start a farm with every new seed found. So just keep planting. It may take longer but because you find more seeds in loot that may be debatable

You know... if this was a farming simulator and farming was your sole endeavour in this game I'd give you right. But it isn't.  As it stands it is WAY too punishing on the early game and enforces a specific game style. You can fanboy argue against that how much you want, but unless you give me ingame proof of your statements they are worth nil.

Why are you so against giving feedback to TFP on the system and have discussions of how to balance it better? You're just trying to shoot down any input on the matter.

 

[Vaeliorin]

This is a particular issue with rare seeds.  I've found mushrooms and pumpkins to be pretty rare so far (cotton, goldenrod, chrysanthemum, corn, potatoes, blueberries, aloe and yucca have been plentiful from the wilds/farms/gardens, and obviously coffee is plentiful in POIs), but super corn in particular is in very limited supply, and unless something has changed, you can't find it in loot.  If you happen to stumble upon the Boar/Corn POI you can get some there, but unless you're lucky to get a quest there, it's not much and is non-renewable.

 

I'm dealing with it fine, but I specced LotL 3 long before I normally would have because of it.  Relying on luck to get your farm to a sustainable size isn't much fun, and the decent recipes all seem to use at least one of corn/mushrooms/potatoes, so if one of those is what you're having problems with, you're kind of in trouble.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, IgnyteZero said:

You know... if this was a farming simulator and farming was your sole endeavour in this game I'd give you right. But it isn't.  As it stands it is WAY too punishing on the early game and enforces a specific game style. You can fanboy argue against that how much you want, but unless you give me ingame proof of your statements they are worth nil.

Why are you so against giving feedback to TFP on the system and have discussions of how to balance it better? You're just trying to shoot down any input on the matter.

 

 

Well, if mathematics is considered a soft science now, how could I make a proof that would convince you? Wouldn't it be better for you to try it yourself? Make a test world and use seeds from creative menue to experiment with it. To prevent you having to wait 3 hours, go into the game directory and edit .../Data/Config/blocks.xml. Find a line "<block name="cropsGrowingMaster"" and below it "<property name="PlantGrowing.GrowthRate" value="63.0">". Change the value to 2 and a seed should grow into a harvestable plant in just 6 minutes.

 

After the experiment change the value back to 63.0 (or simply let steam validate the game again).

 

By the way, I don't like at all that you have to replant the seeds you get from harvesting. I was one of the first to complain about it. But I like the random loss of seeds as a mechanic because it makes finding seeds valuable the whole game through.

 

What is your feedback? You are arguing against it without having actually playtested it on facts you seem to have felt or imagined instead of calculated (please tell me if I'm wrong, you may have just forgot to mention it or I didn't see you mentioning it). Nearly calling me a fanboy and that I shoot down input that consists of "I haven't tested it yet but it sound harsh". I have already 18 days in the game and my small in-game garden didn't destroy all seeds yet. And the math of it looks sound. Just that damn replanting, I'm full on your side with that.

 

EDIT: Seems this post from a streamer is worth mentioning here, finally some real play-test results from more than a few hours: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/22366-alpha-20-dev-diary/?do=findComment&comment=453716

 

[meganoth]

54 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

This is a particular issue with rare seeds.  I've found mushrooms and pumpkins to be pretty rare so far (cotton, goldenrod, chrysanthemum, corn, potatoes, blueberries, aloe and yucca have been plentiful from the wilds/farms/gardens, and obviously coffee is plentiful in POIs), but super corn in particular is in very limited supply, and unless something has changed, you can't find it in loot.  If you happen to stumble upon the Boar/Corn POI you can get some there, but unless you're lucky to get a quest there, it's not much and is non-renewable.

 

I'm dealing with it fine, but I specced LotL 3 long before I normally would have because of it.  Relying on luck to get your farm to a sustainable size isn't much fun, and the decent recipes all seem to use at least one of corn/mushrooms/potatoes, so if one of those is what you're having problems with, you're kind of in trouble.

 

Yes, super corn without bobs boar IS impossible, I couldn't find it in loot.xml in A20, and I don't remember it ever dropping in loot in A19. So if you don't have Bobs Boars on the map you don't get super corn anyway. And if you get it, you can loot it once and everytime you get it as a quest. It may take a while but if you really want it there is a way.

 

Yesterday I started a new game with my group of friends. At the start of the second day we stumbled on a small garden with corn and a small garden with potatoes. I put a point into LotL and got >10 of each. I'm pretty confident I can start a farm with that, but we will see.

 

[theFlu]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

Who is this, Hiob?

Eh, it's Cain... would sound pretty canon

 

It Is going to be extremely rare - thanks for the numbers, they paint somewhat of a picture. Although, you're only counting the odds for a straight up failure - it's going to be pretty damn frustrating if you get just enough to replant for a while as well. EDIT: Oh, me blind, you actually gave some numbers on the "simply losing a little" side as well - so about 6% chance of a "temporary loss".. That "will" happen, and when it does, it's a 1:16 for it to repeat the next round .. that's the actual bit where it gets annoying...

 

MisutoM's experience is hopefully the norm. And indeed, continued looting will produce extra seeds for each round, so while your farm may be struggling for a few cycles in a row, it's pretty much impossible that you actually lose it. And you can always throw a few extra skill points at it if it gets really annoying. Fort 3 + Glasses + Soup = 3 in lotl for 5 points (assuming the soup still gives fort?) .

[IgnyteZero]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Well, if mathematics is considered a soft science now, how could I make a proof that would convince you? Wouldn't it be better for you to try it yourself? Make a test world and use seeds from creative menue to experiment with it. To prevent you having to wait 3 hours, go into the game directory and edit .../Data/Config/blocks.xml. Find a line "<block name="cropsGrowingMaster"" and below it "<property name="PlantGrowing.GrowthRate" value="63.0">". Change the value to 2 and a seed should grow into a harvestable plant in just 6 minutes.

 

After the experiment change the value back to 63.0 (or simply let steam validate the game again).

 

By the way, I don't like at all that you have to replant the seeds you get from harvesting. I was one of the first to complain about it. But I like the random loss of seeds as a mechanic because it makes finding seeds valuable the whole game through.

 

What is your feedback? You are arguing against it without having actually playtested it on facts you seem to have felt or imagined instead of calculated (please tell me if I'm wrong, you may have just forgot to mention it or I didn't see you mentioning it). Nearly calling me a fanboy and that I shoot down input that consists of "I haven't tested it yet but it sound harsh". I have already 18 days in the game and my small in-game garden didn't destroy all seeds yet. And the math of it looks sound. Just that damn replanting, I'm full on your side with that.

 

EDIT: Seems this post from a streamer is worth mentioning here, finally some real play-test results from more than a few hours: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/22366-alpha-20-dev-diary/?do=findComment&comment=453716

 

Ah. A post I made yesterday in this thread seems to have not been published. The forums were very slow for me yesterday so I guess it just didn't get through. My fault, should have checked it was there. It consisted of a number of arguments, but for short this is what I wrote in it.

In it I pointed out that for game design statistics is a necessary but blunt tool. You cannot just go on average value, because  you need to calculate for and consider the most extreme values. You want as little width between these, because an average game will most likely not fall in line with the average value. They will be somewhere between the average value and the extremes in a completely RNG based mechanic. Since you claim to understand statistics, you should understand this. As such you want to have a reasonable "width" between the extremes as well as a good average value. For a real life compariosn, consider a nation with a decent GDP but where class differences and wealth differences are on the extremes. There the statistics lies and fool you, as they tell you a story that doesn't exist, as the majority of a population won't enjoy the benefits of that lands GDP. As such, you can never rely on average values.

Now as I pointed out, and my math was not wrong, in the early game the extreme value for farming output leans heavily on a negative. As such you agreed on, even if you denied it's importance or effect on the game experience. This makes farming a time waste until you have LotL 3, especially since meat is in extreme abundance. However as soon as you get LotL 3, your production will instead skyrocket with time, only limited by the amount of farmplots you can put out.

Also, without even a single skill point in The Huntsman there is no lack of meat, as prey as abundant. Chickens, rabbits and wolves and even bears are everywhere it seems in Alpha20. As such, even with farming nerfed, food itself is still never really a problem. Why nerf vegetables but not meat if the point is to make food gathering less of a trivial and novel thing to do? The balance here seems off for that reason alone.

And then there's the scaling with cooking and cooking recipes. In the early game, since farm resources are now so rare in the beginning (as you need to save them to make seeds, because of the negative output with low seed count on anything less than LotL3) you will not use the simpler meals like Baked Potatoes, Corn on the cob or Corn bread etc. Because they give too little for something you'll need more of. It's a bad effort/reward curve, and as such those recipes are now in practice useless. And that's also an important aspect to consider.

So the way I see it a rebalance is definitely in need. It's not that TFP aims to make food gathering less trivial and harder that's an issue. I agree on having a more fun and challenging progression in the game. But this system rather makes it follow the following formula: HARD, HARD, HARD, HARD, SUPEREASY

And that's the gist of the post that got lost.

As for indirectly impliying you being a fanboy, I apologise.

And as for testing, well as I pointed out before me and my wife has played a server for, well at this time 25 ingame days, which is 25 hours. We started focusing on farming immediately to try out the new changes. So all my impressions comes from that. It is not just "a few hours". You're clearly ignoring what I previously wrote.

But yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the replanting is getting quite tedious. I wouldn't mind it if it weren't for the fact that you need to recalculate how many seeds you have each time, as to make new seeds to fill up the slots you lost ro RNG.

I'll look into that link.


 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, IgnyteZero said:

Ah. A post I made yesterday in this thread seems to have not been published. The forums were very slow for me yesterday so I guess it just didn't get through. My fault, should have checked it was there. It consisted of a number of arguments, but for short this is what I wrote in it.

In it I pointed out that for game design statistics is a necessary but blunt tool. You cannot just go on average value, because  you need to calculate for and consider the most extreme values. You want as little width between these, because an average game will most likely not fall in line with the average value. They will be somewhere between the average value and the extremes in a completely RNG based mechanic. Since you claim to understand statistics, you should understand this. As such you want to have a reasonable "width" between the extremes as well as a good average value. For a real life compariosn, consider a nation with a decent GDP but where class differences and wealth differences are on the extremes. There the statistics lies and fool you, as they tell you a story that doesn't exist, as the majority of a population won't enjoy the benefits of that lands GDP. As such, you can never rely on average values.

Now as I pointed out, and my math was not wrong, in the early game the extreme value for farming output leans heavily on a negative. As such you agreed on, even if you denied it's importance or effect on the game experience. This makes farming a time waste until you have LotL 3, especially since meat is in extreme abundance. However as soon as you get LotL 3, your production will instead skyrocket with time, only limited by the amount of farmplots you can put out.

Also, without even a single skill point in The Huntsman there is no lack of meat, as prey as abundant. Chickens, rabbits and wolves and even bears are everywhere it seems in Alpha20. As such, even with farming nerfed, food itself is still never really a problem. Why nerf vegetables but not meat if the point is to make food gathering less of a trivial and novel thing to do? The balance here seems off for that reason alone.

And then there's the scaling with cooking and cooking recipes. In the early game, since farm resources are now so rare in the beginning (as you need to save them to make seeds, because of the negative output with low seed count on anything less than LotL3) you will not use the simpler meals like Baked Potatoes, Corn on the cob or Corn bread etc. Because they give too little for something you'll need more of. It's a bad effort/reward curve, and as such those recipes are now in practice useless. And that's also an important aspect to consider.

So the way I see it a rebalance is definitely in need. It's not that TFP aims to make food gathering less trivial and harder that's an issue. I agree on having a more fun and challenging progression in the game. But this system rather makes it follow the following formula: HARD, HARD, HARD, HARD, SUPEREASY

And that's the gist of the post that got lost.

As for indirectly impliying you being a fanboy, I apologise.

And as for testing, well as I pointed out before me and my wife has played a server for, well at this time 25 ingame days, which is 25 hours. We started focusing on farming immediately to try out the new changes. So all my impressions comes from that. It is not just "a few hours". You're clearly ignoring what I previously wrote.

But yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the replanting is getting quite tedious. I wouldn't mind it if it weren't for the fact that you need to recalculate how many seeds you have each time, as to make new seeds to fill up the slots you lost ro RNG.

I'll look into that link.


 

 

Ah yes, I take back my comment about not giving real feedback, I found that post where you talked about your current game. Though let me add that you are on day 15 and seem to get positive on 3 food types and have problems with the 4th. This doesn't seem to be much different from A19 where one also needed some time to start a farm going.

 

I agree on the reasonable width for the middle. Lets check farming under that aspect: If you look at multiple coin-throws and sum the results, then you get a bell curve. So in the case of a 10 seed farm you will see a lot of 4-6 seed returns (maximum of the bell curve) and the extremes, i.e. 0 or 10 seed return are extremly seldom with 1 in 1024 respectively.

 

Now 10 is already an established farm, but I already saw the traders selling stacks of 15 fruits and the most important ingredients (potatoes and corn) can be found in rural town gardens and corn can be found in toilets! Lets assume anyone can find enough corn in almost every game to get 5 seeds together by day 12. Again the extremes are very seldom, i.e. there is again a bell curve and 0 out of 5 seeds regained is a chance of 1 in 32. And that case doesn't mean your farm failed, in almost all cases it means just delay. If you only get 1 seed back (chance 5 out of 32) and LotL1 you are exactly where you started, i.e. you lost 3 days, ALL other results let your farm grow. And with LotL3 even 1 seed returning already lets you grow your farm, so 31 out of 32 cases improve your situation

 

I agree that huntsman gets to good in relation, but it has drawbacks. You need to invest a perk point too if you want rabbits and chickens in acceptable time. At least I don't see them behind the new grass and desperately need the icons to tracks them, your mileage may vary. Killing bears in the beginning gets a lot of food but also costs a lot of ammunition and can get dangerous. But yes, there are just too many big animals around to hunt and that needs a rebalance, either in their number or in the amount of meat you get from them. But hunting can be fixed and is not necessarily a reason to change farming **if** farming principally works well.

 

With Baked Potatoes we have to agree to disagree. I don't see a change there when compared to A19. In A19 I would never make a baked potato except if I really had potatos growing out of my ears 😉. I hoarded every single potato to convert to seeds until I had at least 4-5 of them (in SP). And at that time I definitely had better recipes to cook than a baked potato. So that recipe was a dish for emergencies in A19 and will still be one in A20. If at all you need to change the cooking recipes, not farming, to correct this.

 

 

 

[Rince]

Awww... I really liked the farming in A19. Particularly the no need of manually replanting the seeds.

Was the first time were I actually did farming instead of living of meat or in recent alphas living from the traders vending machines.

[hiemfire]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

I don't remember it ever dropping in loot in A19.

Super corn seeds did drop from loot in A19. Just rarely.

[IgnyteZero]

44 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Ah yes, I take back my comment about not giving real feedback, I found that post where you talked about your current game. Though let me add that you are on day 15 and seem to get positive on 3 food types and have problems with the 4th. This doesn't seem to be much different from A19 where one also needed some time to start a farm going.

 

I agree on the reasonable width for the middle. Lets check farming under that aspect: If you look at multiple coin-throws and sum the results, then you get a bell curve. So in the case of a 10 seed farm you will see a lot of 4-6 seed returns (maximum of the bell curve) and the extremes, i.e. 0 or 10 seed return are extremly seldom with 1 in 1024 respectively.

 

Now 10 is already an established farm, but I already saw the traders selling stacks of 15 fruits and the most important ingredients (potatoes and corn) can be found in rural town gardens and corn can be found in toilets! Lets assume anyone can find enough corn in almost every game to get 5 seeds together by day 12. Again the extremes are very seldom, i.e. there is again a bell curve and 0 out of 5 seeds regained is a chance of 1 in 32. And that case doesn't mean your farm failed, in almost all cases it means just delay. If you only get 1 seed back (chance 5 out of 32) and LotL1 you are exactly where you started, i.e. you lost 3 days, ALL other results let your farm grow. And with LotL3 even 1 seed returning already lets you grow your farm, so 31 out of 32 cases improve your situation

 

I agree that huntsman gets to good in relation, but it has drawbacks. You need to invest a perk point too if you want rabbits and chickens in acceptable time. At least I don't see them behind the new grass and desperately need the icons to tracks them, your mileage may vary. Killing bears in the beginning gets a lot of food but also costs a lot of ammunition and can get dangerous. But yes, there are just too many big animals around to hunt and that needs a rebalance, either in their number or in the amount of meat you get from them. But hunting can be fixed and is not necessarily a reason to change farming **if** farming principally works well.

 

With Baked Potatoes we have to agree to disagree. I don't see a change there when compared to A19. In A19 I would never make a baked potato except if I really had potatos growing out of my ears 😉. I hoarded every single potato to convert to seeds until I had at least 4-5 of them (in SP). And at that time I definitely had better recipes to cook than a baked potato. So that recipe was a dish for emergencies in A19 and will still be one in A20. If at all you need to change the cooking recipes, not farming, to correct this.

 

 

 

As for A19 vs A20, well that is on LotL 3 after all. I'm arguing that Lotl 1/2 is too weak comparatively. What I'm against is the guaranteed negative return on few seeds.

I can't see you getting a bell curve on toin cosses, as that's only 2 variables that will spread evenly along. This is also correct for 1-100 and 1-1000 and so on. Do you play rpgs? I'm taking an example from D&D here. In D&D 5th edition some larger weapons deal 1d12 damage. They get an even spread. Some players however think that they can substitute that d12 for 2d6 instead. However, with two dice you will start to get results leaning towards the middle, and bell curve like results.
So I cannot see how a bell curve applies to the planting, as to me it's very linear. But I'm no math pro, so maybe I'm missing some perspective here even though it should be pretty base math on the player side.

Well... baked potatoes ofc was already quite a useless food type as you point out. But this doesn't make it better. And I think it all comes back to skill gating. It seems to me that TFP should consider moving around recipes and cooking, and look into foods again. (I'd actually prefer if some foods were streamlined more, some toned down a little and maybe some new seeds added for more advanced food types. Say Cucumbers or Tomatoes to make things more interesting. But that's a completely different topic.)

Seems we see fairly eye to eye on most other things though.

[meganoth]

17 minutes ago, IgnyteZero said:

As for A19 vs A20, well that is on LotL 3 after all. I'm arguing that Lotl 1/2 is too weak comparatively. What I'm against is the guaranteed negative return on few seeds.

I can't see you getting a bell curve on toin cosses, as that's only 2 variables that will spread evenly along. This is also correct for 1-100 and 1-1000 and so on. Do you play rpgs? I'm taking an example from D&D here. In D&D 5th edition some larger weapons deal 1d12 damage. They get an even spread. Some players however think that they can substitute that d12 for 2d6 instead. However, with two dice you will start to get results leaning towards the middle, and bell curve like results.
So I cannot see how a bell curve applies to the planting, as to me it's very linear. But I'm no math pro, so maybe I'm missing some perspective here even though it should be pretty base math on the player side.

Well... baked potatoes ofc was already quite a useless food type as you point out. But this doesn't make it better. And I think it all comes back to skill gating. It seems to me that TFP should consider moving around recipes and cooking, and look into foods again. (I'd actually prefer if some foods were streamlined more, some toned down a little and maybe some new seeds added for more advanced food types. Say Cucumbers or Tomatoes to make things more interesting. But that's a completely different topic.)

Seems we see fairly eye to eye on most other things though.

 

Yes.

 

If you know RPG lingo then I think I can explain the bell curve thingy, you are almost there with 1d12 versus 2d6. In the case of farming you have a 1d2 roll for every seed. So when you have multiple seeds, for example 10, it becomes a 10d2 roll, with a widening of the middle results, like with 2d6. 

[Gamida]

On 12/8/2021 at 1:14 PM, Gamida said:

I saw mention of eggs in some posts. Do anyone think they might nerf eggs in an upcoming patch? To me, I seem to be finding an abundance of eggs. Meat is more of a problem than eggs.

lol @outhous, can I ask what you found confusing about my post.

 

On 12/8/2021 at 1:15 PM, Stroichik said:

Nerf how? U get barelly 1 egg at most from a nest. Not every time too.

I am playing on a server and they may have loot up to 150-200 but right now as it is I am swimming in eggs. I think I have around 40 right now, and that is not including ones I have used making bacon and eggs and boiled eggs already.

[IgnyteZero]

31 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Yes.

 

If you know RPG lingo then I think I can explain the bell curve thingy, you are almost there with 1d12 versus 2d6. In the case of farming you have a 1d2 roll for every seed. So when you have multiple seeds, for example 10, it becomes a 10d2 roll, with a widening of the middle results, like with 2d6. 

Ah, that's how you meant.

[dragonmaster0283]

Bit of your math is way off.  1 Point while gives SLIGHTLY less then A19, still give profit.

Base Line - 10 Plants

LotL = 0

A19 - 10 Crops

A20 - 20 Crops (but 25 need to be used for 5 seeds)

A20 Has a Net Loss of 5 Crops if replanting

A19: 10  > A20: -5

 

LotL = 1

A19 - 20 Crops

A20 - 40 Crops (but 25 need to be used for 5 seeds)

A20 Has a Net Profit of 15 Crops if replanting

A19: 20 > A20: 15

 

LotL = 3

A19 - 30 Crops

A20 - 60 Crops (but 25 need to be used for 5 seeds)

A20 Has a Net Profit of 35 Crops of replanting

A19: 30 < A20: 35

 

Not to mention, Seeds were given MORE places to be found AND made more common OFFSETTING the seed loss on farming.

How many times have you been out scavenging and you find seeds and either collect them to be stored in a box for eternity or just trash them.  Now with the change, you actually can make use of them thereby increasing your total crops since you dont need to use 5 to make a new seed.

[Roland]

47 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

Yes.

 

If you know RPG lingo then I think I can explain the bell curve thingy, you are almost there with 1d12 versus 2d6. In the case of farming you have a 1d2 roll for every seed. So when you have multiple seeds, for example 10, it becomes a 10d2 roll, with a widening of the middle results, like with 2d6. 

 

 2d6 results in a frequency chart that looks like a bell curve because there are 6 ways to roll a 7, 5 ways to roll a 6 and an 8, 4 ways to roll 5 and an 9 and so on.

10d2 is just 10 trials of 1d2 which we would expect a result of 1 50% of the time or 2 50% of the time.

 

The bell curve you are talking about forms in looking at successfully hitting the percentage you expect and not from the theoretical probability of the results themselves. In the example of a 12-sided die,  each individual face has an equal 1/12 chance and making a frequency chart of results would look like a brick and not a bell as we proceeded towards infinity. But instead of looking at the theoretical probability of each possible result stacked next to each other, we are looking at how often we hit the expected result and that is where variation will occur. Most people over time will in fact end up rolling a 12 8% of the time and they form the height of the bell. People who only roll a 12 6% of the time or 10% of the time are going to be more rare and tails will form.

 

Of course this only exists up to a point because if everyone kept rolling forever then everyone would eventually get sucked into 8% and the deviations would disappear.

 

But for the finite amount of time people play this game and harvest crops and lose seeds, if we were to keep track we would see most people hitting 50% with rarer occurrences of deviations from that the stronger the deviation.

 

It is the difference between theoretical probability and experimental probability. The bell curve comes from how closely experimental probability ends up matching theoretical probability.