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.
. 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.
