Unpopular Opinion: I Like the New Farming RNG

[PinkLed5]

I had an excellent harvest the other night and got excited about it.  Before A20, there was nothing exciting about farming.  When I had a bad harvest I thought how that reflects real life.  Farming is a gamble, that's why most farmers have crop insurance.  I like the new system.

[gurutar]

I just hope Mad Mole doesn't look at people complaining about it and decide to backtrack. Investing points in farming to get a better harvest makes perfect sense.

[Darklegend222]

I really like the new system, my only gripe is how long it can take to plant. Other than that, I planted 8 coffee seeds, and got around 15 back in seeds if I'm remembering right. It was amazing, we have over 5 stacks of every crop and we have about 700 beer, 200 crop plots all containing beer.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, gurutar said:

I just hope Mad Mole doesn't look at people complaining about it and decide to backtrack. Investing points in farming to get a better harvest makes perfect sense.

 

The problem with happy people is that they follow the rules and all respond within the one thread made to be positive. Mad people say F the rules and they all make their own separate threads even though there are already threads against. But I doubt TFP will backtrack this change. The farming outfit benefits are most likely going to be designed off of this farming. If you really think about it, what additional benefits could have been added by clothing on behalf of the old farming when you were already able to make a self-sustaining farm without even any investment into perks...?

Edited January 27, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Callum123456789]

i like the new farming system to be honest like i will admit at first i was like what the f is this? but i put some points into it and in the long term it works out well the rule is you look after your farm and make it sustainable it will sustain you lol i dont know if this is finalised but it seems pretty good where its at right now 

[Rince]

I don't mind the RNG.

 

What I do mind is the replanting. Is a boring chore.

 

And at the end, the new system is the same as the old. But with more steps every harvest.

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, Rince said:

I don't mind the RNG.

 

What I do mind is the replanting. Is a boring chore.

 

And at the end, the new system is the same as the old. But with more steps every harvest.

 

Were you here when we had hoes?  That was an extra step that was removed which many players missed alot.  Hopefully the replanting of the seed is a nice compromise back the other direction.

[Vaeliorin]

10 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Were you here when we had hoes?  That was an extra step that was removed which many players missed alot.  Hopefully the replanting of the seed is a nice compromise back the other direction.

Hoeing was a one time thing, replanting isn't.  Honestly, I'd rather the RNG be on whether we get any harvest instead of whether we get a seed.  It's not just the planting, it's the crafting of seeds that's supremely annoying.  Though I may be overly sensitive to it, since my typical farm consists of a minimum of 300 plots (325, if we count mushrooms.)

[Darthjake]

I'm not entirely happy with the new farming, yet.  Yet being the operative word here.  I think that TFP will, (hopefully), continue to refine it until it is polished, but you've or they've, got to start somewhere.  It just happens to be here.

 

Likewise, I'm still eagerly awaiting improvements to water. 

[bdubyah]

The zombie trampling still needs to come back as well. Maybe make animals attracted to them as well.

[Roland]

15 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

Hoeing was a one time thing, replanting isn't. 

When we had hoeing we ALSO had to replant just like now

[bloodmoth13]

you should try slots, its the same rush.

[BarryTGash]

I'm fine with it but I'd still like to see less of a one-size-fits-all approach and add more granularity: different crops = different growth rates, different harvest amounts and that some crops do need replanting every time and some can provide a handful of harvests before replanting. But I appreciate that just increases the balancing complexity just for a bit of flavour.

 

15 hours ago, bdubyah said:

make animals attracted to them

 

That could work - unprotected crops allow chickens to attack your corn crop for instance. You could leave unprotected corn plants deliberately to attract chickens to your base and harvest them instead.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by BarryTGash (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

16 hours ago, Roland said:

When we had hoeing we ALSO had to replant just like now

Yeah, but it was always the same number of seeds.  And we didn't have to spend weeks gathering rotten flesh to make farm plots.

 

Honestly, I didn't really mind it back then (though some seeds took a long time to craft, especially from mods) but having lived through not having to replant now, I find it annoying to constantly have to replant.

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

the new farming is not bad. I think if trader rekt were to carry more seeds then that would completely resolve the farming complaints. As it stands there are plenty of animals to kill for meat, so starving is not going to happen. 

[ktr]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:44 AM, PinkLed5 said:

I had an excellent harvest the other night and got excited about it.  Before A20, there was nothing exciting about farming.  When I had a bad harvest I thought how that reflects real life.  Farming is a gamble, that's why most farmers have crop insurance.  I like the new system.

Farming isn't a gamble. It's a collective of knowledge, skill, and willingness to go out in the mud and salvage what you can to prevent complete catastrophe. It's not RNG. And as you say, farming is made irrelevant by the prevalence of meat. The bonuses of the complicated foods are nice, but aren't game impacting at this point. There's no reason to invest in LoTL unless you have a big group and go all in.  Even then your returns are 'meh'.  What had a point in A19 feels tertiary or worse now.

On 1/29/2022 at 3:35 PM, Roland said:

When we had hoeing we ALSO had to replant just like now

But without the loss

[Rince]

On 1/29/2022 at 6:35 PM, Roland said:

When we had hoeing we ALSO had to replant just like now

Dark times.

But to be honest, I only really bothered with farming in A19.

[Mday]

In my opinion:

Craft seeds--replanting is just a boring loop. It does not make farming(hence getting food) any harder.

 

May be change it so that

1) Harvesting should not remove the plant.

2) Successful harvest is not guaranteed, points spend in living off the land improve the chance.

3) Remove the ability to craft seeds so every single seed you've found from looting/farming bundle is actually valuable.

 

This way if you want some potatos, you can

1) spend your skills point on living off the land for better harvest.

2) spend your skills points on combat skills so you can go though POI faster, gather more seeds. The yield is bad but you can have more farm tiles to make up the difference.

 

either way you still need to gather some seeds from outside so more POI raids.

[Ornias]

On 1/29/2022 at 12:46 AM, Vaeliorin said:

Hoeing was a one time thing

 

Yeah, that is what my ex said. 

[Paiper Zombee]

I too am among the rares in this topic who like the farming changes. I hated the idea at first and though it was pointless. But now that I've experienced it and worked with it, I like it. Investment should be required to farm efficiently, and this puts farming in line with mining where you CAN mine without talents but...it's going to be a headache. Now that the crop grow time issue has been resolved, the only thing that needs to be shored up is the randomness in seed return. If there's supposed to be a 50% chance of seed return, let it be what it says. If I plant 50 plants, I expect 25 seeds back, not 20, not 15. Don't lie and say 50% when in reality it's actually UP TO 50%. Other than that, farming change is good.  

[PinkLed5]

1 hour ago, Paiper Zombee said:

the only thing that needs to be shored up is the randomness in seed return. If there's supposed to be a 50% chance of seed return, let it be what it says. If I plant 50 plants, I expect 25 seeds back, not 20, not 15. Don't lie and say 50% when in reality it's actually UP TO 50%. Other than that, farming change is good.  

It does average 50%.  Guaranteed 50% is nixing the RNG, though, and would completely negate the point of my post.  🤷‍♂️

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, Paiper Zombee said:

If I plant 50 plants, I expect 25 seeds back, not 20, not 15. Don't lie and say 50% when in reality it's actually UP TO 50%. Other than that, farming change is good.  

 

That's not how it works, that how none of this works.

 

A 50% chance is just that, a 50% chance, just like getting tails when you flip a coin.  Each time you harvest or flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back or landing on tails.  50 harvests, or 50 coin flips, does not mean 25 seeds back every time and 25 tails every time as your probability resets to a flat 50% (not weighted towards any side).

 

You can flip a coin 10 times and get heads 10 times.  It doesn't mean that you have a 100% chance of getting heads (or 0% chance of getting tails).  It just means that your results on such a small sample size heavily leaned towards heads instead of tails.  Over a larger sample size, the ratio of heads / tails will start to get closer to 1/1 (unless the coin is deformed in such a way that it is not an even probability anymore..or you are using a trick coin).  That is how statistics and probability works.

 

In addition, we tend to forget things.  We remember when we got 20 seeds back, but forget the time we got 30 seeds back (or vice versa).  Or we only remember extremes - we remember when we only to 10 seeds back out of 50, but forget the previous four attempts we got 27 or 30 seeds back each time.

 

They are not lying when they say you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back, it is baked into the actual code (p=0.5).

 

Since I know you can get more than 50% seeds back (have seen it in game), your comment UP TO 50% is not correct.  That either means you haven't had the luck to get more than 50% yet or forgotten the times you got more than 50%.

 

At most you might have an error in the RNG that leans heavily to one side, but I don't think anyone yet has done a large sample size to verify or validate the probability chances. 

[DaChibii]

3 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

That's not how it works, that how none of this works.

 

A 50% chance is just that, a 50% chance, just like getting tails when you flip a coin.  Each time you harvest or flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back or landing on tails.  50 harvests, or 50 coin flips, does not mean 25 seeds back every time and 25 tails every time as your probability resets to a flat 50% (not weighted towards any side).

Soooo.... while that is how randomness in traditional games work, the more recent trend is weighted randomness for guaranteed success after of number of tries.

 

I mean even casinos realized this a long time go, which is why instead of fudging the numbers they 'sponsor' players so that games don't look too fixed (I mean all the games are weighted to casino in the first place). And mobile games, which right now is the probably the best place to learn RNG and monetization do guaranteed successes because it keeps players around long term. Sooo... suggestion towards that isn't that bad.

 

Buuuuttt.... It also might not be the best 'fix' for farming. I'm still in the camp that they should just removing seed crafting, tweak the hunger/stamina economy, so that 7dtd is less the traditional 'survival' game (focusing on food/water and shelter from the elements) and just have those systems as supporting challenges. The game does have a lot of RNG so there is plenty of ways for it to screw over the player. And sure RNG is great for replayability, but after awhile the progen systems can be reliably predicted and thus lose that special feeling. (See all the common tropes: house always wins, all MC worlds feel the same: aka seed hunting, can't find 'x' schematic just search 'x' POI, etc.) Which is why sometimes it's actually better to have non-RNG systems to help replayability, this generally true in any narrative system or overly complex worlds.

[Roland]

I'm pretty sure there is a "hate farming" thread or seven around here where you guys can post how to "fix" farming. Not sure why you are posting in a thread thats premise is that it doesn't need fixing because we like it the way it is....

 

Back to topic:

 

The new farming is great! It requires some investment and isn't just a free eternal food loop for people who haven't put any points into it. Happy farming!!!

[Paiper Zombee]

22 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

That's not how it works, that how none of this works.

 

A 50% chance is just that, a 50% chance, just like getting tails when you flip a coin.  Each time you harvest or flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back or landing on tails.  50 harvests, or 50 coin flips, does not mean 25 seeds back every time and 25 tails every time as your probability resets to a flat 50% (not weighted towards any side).

 

You can flip a coin 10 times and get heads 10 times.  It doesn't mean that you have a 100% chance of getting heads (or 0% chance of getting tails).  It just means that your results on such a small sample size heavily leaned towards heads instead of tails.  Over a larger sample size, the ratio of heads / tails will start to get closer to 1/1 (unless the coin is deformed in such a way that it is not an even probability anymore..or you are using a trick coin).  That is how statistics and probability works.

 

In addition, we tend to forget things.  We remember when we got 20 seeds back, but forget the time we got 30 seeds back (or vice versa).  Or we only remember extremes - we remember when we only to 10 seeds back out of 50, but forget the previous four attempts we got 27 or 30 seeds back each time.

 

They are not lying when they say you have a 50% chance of getting a seed back, it is baked into the actual code (p=0.5).

 

Since I know you can get more than 50% seeds back (have seen it in game), your comment UP TO 50% is not correct.  That either means you haven't had the luck to get more than 50% yet or forgotten the times you got more than 50%.

 

At most you might have an error in the RNG that leans heavily to one side, but I don't think anyone yet has done a large sample size to verify or validate the probability chances. 

You know I suspected this was the way it worked, but I thought I was thinking too deeply. The 50% chance applies to each plant harvested and not the overall number of the plants in the harvest itself. Got it. Thank you!