crops are broken

[Phoenyx1]

The fact that seedlings can disappear is so broken. if you made the grow time longer, that would make the crops more scarce. Or make it where you have to grow it in the ground and use fertilizer to make it grow in the area. in order to continue growing after harvest, you have to "spread" some more fertilizer on the plants. You must also water the plants, or set up irrigation [trenches or pipes] a good use for small pipes. this may make the player need to set up the farm near water and put in a pump and pipe system. This would be a great addition to the game. If the player creates a "well or pool" the water gets used up and will need to be refilled at times. Basically one glass of water per plant per day would be reasonable. This would be a very good way to slow down the proliferation of crops. It would also attract zombies if powered. so you would need to have some defense on your farm.

[Maharin]

[ElCabong]

I don't think it's broken. In A19, once you had your farm established, you are self-sufficient in food. Now that's not necessarily the case.

 

I always put one point in living off the land. That means I harvest four plants all time and one seed 50% of the time. I've just planted eight blueberries. I should get 32 blueberries and four seeds. I'll have to use 20 to make the seed I'm going to lose, leaving me with a net of 12. That's enough for two pies.

 

If they have this working right, I should be able to plant a farm big enough for me to live on, but I need to think about what I'm doing. It also made putting one more point in living off the land not a bad idea. I also can't start with one seed and build the entire farm. I'll have to wait until I have enough to get me over the statistical hump.

 

I elected to just plant eight blueberries, that may not be enough.

Edited December 16, 2021 by ElCabong (see edit history)

[Kaestey]

While I agree that it is seriously annoying having to replant and craft seeds to keep production up. I have been doing fine. Currently my farm has 18 Corn 12 potatoes and 18 Mushroom (along with a few of the others) Using Living off the Land 3 I usually have after making any necessary seeds around 50 to 60 of my main foods.  Even after doing a ton of cooking to stock up on meals so I dont have to worry about doing it for a bit I'm sitting on over 200 corn, potatoes, and mushrooms. 

 

And before anyone thinks that this farm is bigger than they are thinking im have it set up on top of the fire station POI.

[WickesGuru]

54 minutes ago, Kaestey said:

While I agree that it is seriously annoying having to replant and craft seeds to keep production up. I have been doing fine. Currently my farm has 18 Corn 12 potatoes and 18 Mushroom (along with a few of the others) Using Living off the Land 3 I usually have after making any necessary seeds around 50 to 60 of my main foods.  Even after doing a ton of cooking to stock up on meals so I dont have to worry about doing it for a bit I'm sitting on over 200 corn, potatoes, and mushrooms. 

 

And before anyone thinks that this farm is bigger than they are thinking im have it set up on top of the fire station POI.

Yea, at first i was very concerned about the farming changes but once I hit Living off the land 3 i've had no problems keeping up with seed production. Got a stock of potatoes, corn, super corn and mushrooms. It did take a bit of time to expand but it works out.

[ate0ate]

The only change I'd like is to see that 50% seed return rate go up a bit with the living off the land perks.

[pApA^LeGBa]

It´s fine, Food isn´t an endless supply anymore. Every suggestion since A20 came out exactly would do that again, same here in this topic. There needs to be a nerf to farming compared to A19. You could feed a whole town and still have enough to sell food to the trader.

 

After all this is partly a survival game. Food shouldn´t be something that is granted for sure. Especially not that early as it was in A19.

 

TFP doesn´t like it when there is a way to make easy money. They constantly nerfed things that would sell good. Like beds.

Edited December 16, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[IgnyteZero]

50 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

It´s fine, Food isn´t an endless supply anymore.

 

Except it is. More than ever. Just not vegetables.
 

Anyway, there already is a thread on this topic.

[ate0ate]

Yeah, I don't feel it effected my sense of survival in any meaningful way. It just makes farming tedious. I'm all for balancing survival more but I don't think this really did it. I haven't come close to running out of food or starving yet. I only started playing in a19 so I can't say how things hold up to prior to that but this iteration of farming is tedious and in A19 its mostly pointless so... overall good change I guess. As for easy money, as long as traders exist I don't think they can avoid that issue. Just watch how most streamers or youtubers like Kage848 live off of them.

[pApA^LeGBa]

39 minutes ago, IgnyteZero said:

Except it is. More than ever. Just not vegetables.
 

Anyway, there already is a thread on this topic.

 

Meat wasn´t a problem in A19 either. I never starved in SP during A19. Even when not using traders.

[Incarnatus]

I like this new way of farming. If there is no longer a pressure of starving then you should just remove the whole feature of nutrition because it will be just a tedious task.

I'm currently just killing every deer or bunny i find and keeping my tummy full when scavenging.

When I find myself short i'll just eat those deer's and bunny's.

 

I prioritized in agility first and farming as 1 of my mid game / end game skills. 

[Rince]

I liked the A19 farming.It just needed some tweaks. Maybe adding the need to make irrigation, so the crops only grow near water.

 

Now farming is back to being pretty tedious. So in A20 I'm ditching it altogether, again.

 

Just eating meat (bunnies, chikin, wolves and bears, because pigs and deers are quite rare) and canned goods all the day.

[meganoth]

8 hours ago, ate0ate said:

Yeah, I don't feel it effected my sense of survival in any meaningful way. It just makes farming tedious. I'm all for balancing survival more but I don't think this really did it. I haven't come close to running out of food or starving yet. I only started playing in a19 so I can't say how things hold up to prior to that but this iteration of farming is tedious and in A19 its mostly pointless so... overall good change I guess. As for easy money, as long as traders exist I don't think they can avoid that issue. Just watch how most streamers or youtubers like Kage848 live off of them.

 

That may be in your case, but a lot of new players have been complaining about food even in A19 or A18, and A20 will be no difference. 

 

How many hours have you in the game? If it is more than 200 then I would say shame on you if you ever starve to death now. It would mean you had wasted 200 hours without learning the game. 😉

 

I don't like the added grind as well (which could easily be halved by having seeds you get from harvest stay in the ground). But the functional change that you need to replenish seeds is a much needed drain on an otherwise endless resource. It is a basic rule of any game economy that anything that has an endless source needs a drain as well.

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[ate0ate]

I like the scarcity of food in loot compared to a19 and I agree with you about the balance and resource sinks completely, but a player's time is a valuable commodity and wasting it is like the worst way to go about things. Adding mechanics like zombie's trampling crops or animals like pigs being drawn to crops and damaging them as well might be preferable. I'm no game design expert but maybe make farming require slightly more complex infrastructure, anything other than waste player time. Placing one single point in LoL essentially allows you to attain unlimited food as it is now. It doesn't mitigate the unlimited resource situation and it doesn't make anything more challenging, just takes more time. At the end of the day you just need to find some more seeds than you would in a19 until you get that first LoL perk then you're right back at infinite food and farm expansion like a19 again.

 

I'm not saying the mechanic breaks the game or anything like that, there's still fun to be had all over the place. I don't think crops are broken or anything like that either, Its just a pretty questionable decision with equally questionable effectiveness to me. An adjustment like the ability to press "e" to pick crops then automatically deducting a seed from player inventory to replant, if you have one of the same type, would be a nice little QoL change maybe. I don't know. I feel kinda bad saying anything at all really. I wasn't trying to complain. I just usually like making large farms and felt the impact of the time sink more than a resource drain or anything else. Then when this thread popped up it just made me think is all. Sorry if I came off negative there.

[Perramas]

I like the new farming. Now getting pipe guns all the ammo you will ever need for hunting and the abundance of animals in the first couple days needs to be looked at if they really want to make food a survival element. 

[ricp]

The farming is a mess, it's always been a mess, badly balanced both in production, and in affect. A20 compounds that mess.

 

Like I said in another thread, as it is just now it's an utterly pointless task. I have not played since the latest update which addresses this, so we'll see how that improves things, but the bottom line is farming desperately needs some TLC, ideally worked on from the ground up (ha! pun!). Either that or remove it completely.

 

If, as some have suggested, this is about balancing the character progression, then why choose possibly the weakest element of the game to do that. All it does now is frustrate the player. At no point should anyone ever not get a seed from a plant, it's simply counter intuitive.

 

The TFP make decisions, it's their game so they can decide what is in the game and what isn't, what is efficient and what isn't. In short, it's up to them how they set things up, and don't confuse my criticism of the farming with criticism of TFP, it's definitely not.

 

Farming is very much the "ginger step child" of A20, and while other people are attracted to guns and mobs, I would wager there is a significant proportion of the player base who would really appreciate a farming system reflective of actual farming.

 

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, ate0ate said:

I like the scarcity of food in loot compared to a19 and I agree with you about the balance and resource sinks completely, but a player's time is a valuable commodity and wasting it is like the worst way to go about things. Adding mechanics like zombie's trampling crops or animals like pigs being drawn to crops and damaging them as well might be preferable. I'm no game design expert but maybe make farming require slightly more complex infrastructure, anything other than waste player time. Placing one single point in LoL essentially allows you to attain unlimited food as it is now. It doesn't mitigate the unlimited resource situation and it doesn't make anything more challenging, just takes more time. At the end of the day you just need to find some more seeds than you would in a19 until you get that first LoL perk then you're right back at infinite food and farm expansion like a19 again.

 

I'm not saying the mechanic breaks the game or anything like that, there's still fun to be had all over the place. I don't think crops are broken or anything like that either, Its just a pretty questionable decision with equally questionable effectiveness to me. An adjustment like the ability to press "e" to pick crops then automatically deducting a seed from player inventory to replant, if you have one of the same type, would be a nice little QoL change maybe. I don't know. I feel kinda bad saying anything at all really. I wasn't trying to complain. I just usually like making large farms and felt the impact of the time sink more than a resource drain or anything else. Then when this thread popped up it just made me think is all. Sorry if I came off negative there.

 

No worry, I largely agree. I just wanted to comment that you are not the typical player targeted with vanilla. I sometimes make the same mistake when judging the games features.

 

6 minutes ago, ricp said:

The farming is a mess, it's always been a mess, badly balanced both in production, and in affect. A20 compounds that mess.

 

Like I said in another thread, as it is just now it's an utterly pointless task. I have not played since the latest update which addresses this, so we'll see how that improves things, but the bottom line is farming desperately needs some TLC, ideally worked on from the ground up (ha! pun!). Either that or remove it completely.

 

If, as some have suggested, this is about balancing the character progression, then why choose possibly the weakest element of the game to do that. All it does now is frustrate the player. At no point should anyone ever not get a seed from a plant, it's simply counter intuitive.

 

The TFP make decisions, it's their game so they can decide what is in the game and what isn't, what is efficient and what isn't. In short, it's up to them how they set things up, and don't confuse my criticism of the farming with criticism of TFP, it's definitely not.

 

Farming is very much the "ginger step child" of A20, and while other people are attracted to guns and mobs, I would wager there is a significant proportion of the player base who would really appreciate a farming system reflective of actual farming.

 

 

I don't see anything counter intuitive about that. I'm not a farmer though, in real life I probably would get no seeds at all from most produce.

 

[ricp]

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I don't see anything counter intuitive about that. I'm not a farmer though, in real life I probably would get no seeds at all from most produce.

 

It depends on the crop, for example you don't have potato seeds you just use the potato you harvested. So the idea you could harvest two potatoes yet "no seeds" makes no sense what so ever, those potatoes _are_ the seeds. Pumpkins, however, have seeds inside them. Ideally what should happen with them is you harvest a pumpkin whole, process it somehow then you are given both flesh and seeds, the seeds you plant, the flesh you eat. (Although technically you should be able to eat pumpkins seeds in game but I don't think you can).

 

Let's face it, the farming implementation is very basic. No requirement for watering (or having a water source nearby), no worries about disease or weather buffs/nerfs (you can grow crops in the cold as quick as in the heat, that makes no sense), the raw ingredients you harvest has a fairly limited set of food you can make.

 

All in all, and I appreciate the work needed, for it to be an effective element of the game rather than what seems like a "grindy side quest" it needs to be reworked from the ground up. Either that, or just remove it altogether and rely on traders and killing animals.

 

To what level TFP agrees with that analysis, and whether it's worth it in terms of effort put in, remains to be seen.

Edited December 16, 2021 by ricp (see edit history)

[meganoth]

28 minutes ago, ricp said:

 

It depends on the crop, for example you don't have potato seeds you just use the potato you harvested. So the idea you could harvest two potatoes yet "no seeds" makes no sense what so ever, those potatoes _are_ the seeds. Pumpkins, however, have seeds inside them. Ideally what should happen with them is you harvest a pumpkin whole, process it somehow then you are given both flesh and seeds, the seeds you plant, the flesh you eat. (Although technically you should be able to eat pumpkins seeds in game but I don't think you can).

 

Let's face it, the farming implementation is very basic. No requirement for watering (or having a water source nearby), no worries about disease or weather buffs/nerfs (you can grow crops in the cold as quick as in the heat, that makes no sense), the raw ingredients you harvest has a fairly limited set of food you can make.

 

All in all, and I appreciate the work needed, for it to be an effective element of the game rather than what seems like a "grindy side quest" it needs to be reworked from the ground up. Either that, or just remove it altogether and rely on traders and killing animals.

 

To what level TFP agrees with that analysis, and whether it's worth it in terms of effort put in, remains to be seen.

 

I think they already stated that this is not a farming simulator. And this probably means there won't be complicated mechanisms that mirror reality. There aren't either for mining (where is the air pump?), lockpicking or cooking.

 

And I don't see a reason for removing it. Ignore it if you want, that is the equivalent of removal.

 

Edited December 16, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Urban Blackbear]

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I think they already stated that this is not a farming simulator. And this probably means there won't be complicated mechanisms that mirror reality. There aren't either for mining (where is the air pump?), lockpicking or cooking.

 

And I don't see a reason for removing it. Ignore it if you want, that is the equivalent of removal.

 

 

Let's carry the logic of "it's not realistic" out to conclusion taking mining. If a person were to just take an auger and go to town on a hillside or a pit in the real world they'd quickly find out that they're getting more volume of material than they are cutting out. This is referred to "swell". If you aren't carting off the excess you're basically burying yourself.

[outhous]

20 minutes ago, ricp said:

rather than what seems like a "grindy side quest"

Farming is way better than the mindlessness of mining or chopping trees, but no one is here calling that a grindy side quest. Like mining and chopping trees, farming is one of those task that have to be done to survive/progress. This is much like a job in real life, no one really looks forward getting up Monday morning & heading to work, not every part of the game is pure joy some of it just has to be done to further yourself in the game.

 

I am playing with a buddy & the 1st couple of weeks we were having a hard time getting enough food, by end of the 3rd week I have LotL 3 and are now swimming in food. I don't find farming all that tedious, used to try and figure out how many of each crop I need to keep enough food, but finally gave up bothering since the surplus is so great. Like a job it's just something you have to do. I do sorta miss the fertilizer aspect, felt like getting a tier 2 or 3 weapon, it just had more feeling of progression.

[ricp]

46 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I think they already stated that this is not a farming simulator.

 

 

Remove it then, if they don't want to put in the effort to make it viable. Don't leave it the crippled nonsense it is just now. As I say, I get that it involves work, and that does reflect what will or won't be implemented, but that can't be a factor when discussing what could be possible.

 

 

36 minutes ago, outhous said:

Farming is way better than the mindlessness of mining or chopping trees

 

39 minutes ago, Urban Blackbear said:

Let's carry the logic of "it's not realistic" out to conclusion taking mining.

 

I'm going to address both of these at the same point as they are both making the farming/mining comparison. The reason I feel this comparison is not well founded is that food is a requirement, you cannot survive without it. You could, albeit it would make for a dull game, never mine a single ore or rock and survive fine.

 

I am not arguing that mining is not "unrealistic" (hell.. if I had my way I'd like to see the inventory done by weight thus removing the daft reality that in terms of inventory "weight" a single feather is the same as 6000 rocks, but that's a conversation for a different time). My point is about the farming in isolation.

 

To me the system wasn't great in A19 but you just got on with it, A20 changes (and it's an easy thing for them to balance in later patches) feels unbalanced, and ultimately frustrating.

 

--

 

Just wanted to add, my frustration is as much from the possibilities as it is regarding the current state.

 

I feel that I won't be the only person to feel this way, so perhaps one of the overhaul mods, or even modlets, could offer what I'm looking for.

Edited December 16, 2021 by ricp (see edit history)

[Urban Blackbear]

I can go without crops and survive just fine too. My experience with the new farming just isn't that frustrating to me. Every time changes come around I adapt. I prefer that method to any others.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, ricp said:

 

Remove it then, if they don't want to put in the effort to make it viable. Don't leave it the crippled nonsense it is just now. As I say, I get that it involves work, and that does reflect what will or won't be implemented, but that can't be a factor when discussing what could be possible.

 

 

 

 

I'm going to address both of these at the same point as they are both making the farming/mining comparison. The reason I feel this comparison is not well founded is that food is a requirement, you cannot survive without it. You could, albeit it would make for a dull game, never mine a single ore or rock and survive fine.

 

I am not arguing that mining is not "unrealistic" (hell.. if I had my way I'd like to see the inventory done by weight thus removing the daft reality that in terms of inventory "weight" a single feather is the same as 6000 rocks, but that's a conversation for a different time). My point is about the farming in isolation.

 

To me the system wasn't great in A19 but you just got on with it, A20 changes (and it's an easy thing for them to balance in later patches) feels unbalanced, and ultimately frustrating.

 

--

 

Just wanted to add, my frustration is as much from the possibilities as it is regarding the current state.

 

I feel that I won't be the only person to feel this way, so perhaps one of the overhaul mods, or even modlets, could offer what I'm looking for.

You might want to check out Undead Legacy for a more realistic weight system.

 

And Darkness Falls has water irrigation.

 

There once was a mod that even had locusts, but it was abandoned years ago.

 

Edited December 17, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[pahbi]

Its one thing to lose crops and have things be difficult in the beginning, but by the end game, the player should reach a point where farming is mastered and crops no longer require much effort to maintain.