ricp
Refugee
..be prepared, this will be a fairly lengthy reply, and I can't necessarily promise quality to go along with quantity!
I take it you are not a gardener? Either way I gave a more detailed explanation in the other thread. In short, a potato *is* a potato seed. It makes no sense to say you harvested a potato and got no 'seeds'. Even if we get past that contradiction, introducing lore that influences whether you get a seed or not, but not influencing the quality of that item feels like you are trying to find reason to support the current setup, not validating it's existence.
I think you are taking this from the wrong angle. I am not demanding it removed, I am saying it's a very basic game loop, which has been made all the more basic and considerably less viable in this update and at this point it's more frustrating and not representative of "farming in computer games in general". Frustrating to the point that, certainly to this player and mentioned by many others, it's nothing but an annoyance. Something presumably recognised by TFP, in literally the first patch they release for A20, tried to balance it out (re: % of seed).
Why should TFP give this any priority? For the same reason they give anything priority, to improve the game. Same reason they spent time implementing Twitch, or updated the random gen. I'm not suggesting this takes precedence over something like zombie pathing AI, or improvements to the frame rate - things that are key and have an immediate effect on your game should be addressed before farming.
However, there has obviously been time and effort spent in this area, and trust me, I fully understand that. I am reflecting on the decision to make it like it is, not the actual work put in by whichever dev took charge of that part. With that in mind, though, why "lower the value" of that work by reducing its value to the player?
I'm going to be honest here, without wishing to sound rude, but I find the "I don't do farming sometimes" or the "if you don't like it, don't use it" as justifications for the current setup, to be quite fatuous. Simply because you choose not to do "a thing" in the game doesn't mean people shouldn't discuss the merits, or not, of "a thing".
Who is arguing? I have gone out of my way to say this isn't criticism of the game as a whole or of TFP. I am more than happy for you to counter any point I make and won't take umbrage. Either of our opinions should be able to withstand scrutiny without taking it personally.
If you want my opinion of what I would like to see, and this is obviously with the caveat that it is very unlikely to happen simply down to cost, resources, game limitations or just an unwillingness not to do so (and all those reasons are fine, btw, their game, their choice), then it would be something like this..
[*]Fertiliser, made from rotten flesh or nitrate, is reintroduced, the result is to increase growth rate (yield would be governed by LOTL)
[*]Disease added, as the plant grows between stages it has a particular chance to go "rotten"[1], in that case all you get from harvesting would be fiber (like the dead corn)
[*]Plants would have distinct stages (4 or 5), harvesting at different stages returns different things, earlier harvest gives the seed back, late harvest gives the grown item.
[*]Items when grown need to be processed, done by hand no need for a new "workbench" [2], the result will be the "flesh" of the crop and a seed. This reflects reality, you cut open, for example, a pumpkin, you get outer flesh and inner seeds.
[*]Plants should be affected by biome, growing slower in snow, faster in desert, and certain plants would prefer different biomes and their growth rate and yield would reflect that. Potatoes growing better in cold than heat, the reverse for yucca.
[*]There should be more plants, and as such more food recipes. This is my wish list so you know, that was always going to be on here.
[1] I've footnoted this as it fits in with your "lore narrative" of plants being affected by the post-apocalyptic environment
[2] I do like the idea of having a cooking bench that is like an upgrade from the campfire, that allows for quicker preparation. It could also tie in with getting the cookers working.
I feel after reading that, some people will go, "wait a minute buddy, nobody is building a farming simulator here" however that's a bit disingenuous. What I have described above is pretty much what DayZ has - albeit I've laid it out to fit into 7DtD's current system - and nobody is accusing Bohemia of developing a farming simulator.
For me farming should be integral to the game loop, as food is the one essential. Now sure, we could get stuff from killing animals, looting or buying from traders, but that's not the same game loop, in the same way you could avoid mining by buying or looting but again that's not the 'intended' game loop for that.
In fact, if I had free reign, what I'd do is tie in the amount of tinned goods you can loot to the XP, literally a reverse of how the looting progression works, so as you enter mid to late game there is next to no canned food at all, even from vending machines. This would mean the player having to rely on farming, and I would justify that through the following logic: by that stage of the game it's likely you will be making your own ammo, your own concrete your own steel, it makes sense to extend out the "sole survivor" trope to the food. It's a mechanism in the game that should be exploited.
This isn't about taking a minor element of the game and turning it into a burden, it's about complimenting the different aspects of the game to best progress the player while providing gameplay enjoyment. I would wager I am certainly not alone in the desire to see this part of the game expanded.
Bottom line, and yes this is near the end of the post, well done for anyone sticking with this to the end, I could probably mod most of what I've suggested into the game myself. Time and effort, and learning the underlying foibles of how 7DtD works in detail, are really the issue there. That's the same for TFP devs too, I'm not naive, I realise that changing something within a game that has developed in complexity over a decade or so is either going to be stupidly easy or ridiculously hard, I have maintained legacy (and sprawling) code bases before (albeit in a business software sector, not gaming - although the underlying process is still the same).
I take it you are not a gardener? Either way I gave a more detailed explanation in the other thread. In short, a potato *is* a potato seed. It makes no sense to say you harvested a potato and got no 'seeds'. Even if we get past that contradiction, introducing lore that influences whether you get a seed or not, but not influencing the quality of that item feels like you are trying to find reason to support the current setup, not validating it's existence.
I think you are taking this from the wrong angle. I am not demanding it removed, I am saying it's a very basic game loop, which has been made all the more basic and considerably less viable in this update and at this point it's more frustrating and not representative of "farming in computer games in general". Frustrating to the point that, certainly to this player and mentioned by many others, it's nothing but an annoyance. Something presumably recognised by TFP, in literally the first patch they release for A20, tried to balance it out (re: % of seed).
Why should TFP give this any priority? For the same reason they give anything priority, to improve the game. Same reason they spent time implementing Twitch, or updated the random gen. I'm not suggesting this takes precedence over something like zombie pathing AI, or improvements to the frame rate - things that are key and have an immediate effect on your game should be addressed before farming.
However, there has obviously been time and effort spent in this area, and trust me, I fully understand that. I am reflecting on the decision to make it like it is, not the actual work put in by whichever dev took charge of that part. With that in mind, though, why "lower the value" of that work by reducing its value to the player?
I'm going to be honest here, without wishing to sound rude, but I find the "I don't do farming sometimes" or the "if you don't like it, don't use it" as justifications for the current setup, to be quite fatuous. Simply because you choose not to do "a thing" in the game doesn't mean people shouldn't discuss the merits, or not, of "a thing".
Who is arguing? I have gone out of my way to say this isn't criticism of the game as a whole or of TFP. I am more than happy for you to counter any point I make and won't take umbrage. Either of our opinions should be able to withstand scrutiny without taking it personally.
If you want my opinion of what I would like to see, and this is obviously with the caveat that it is very unlikely to happen simply down to cost, resources, game limitations or just an unwillingness not to do so (and all those reasons are fine, btw, their game, their choice), then it would be something like this..
- All cultivated plants need some form of water
this water could either be in close proximity or perhaps environmental, such as rain.
[*]Fertiliser, made from rotten flesh or nitrate, is reintroduced, the result is to increase growth rate (yield would be governed by LOTL)
[*]Disease added, as the plant grows between stages it has a particular chance to go "rotten"[1], in that case all you get from harvesting would be fiber (like the dead corn)
it would be nice to extend this so that crops placed next to a rotten crop has an increased chance of becoming rotten too.
[*]Plants would have distinct stages (4 or 5), harvesting at different stages returns different things, earlier harvest gives the seed back, late harvest gives the grown item.
[*]Items when grown need to be processed, done by hand no need for a new "workbench" [2], the result will be the "flesh" of the crop and a seed. This reflects reality, you cut open, for example, a pumpkin, you get outer flesh and inner seeds.
the LOTL perk would determine how much flesh/seed you get from the plant (ideally you'd only get one seed purely for balance)
[*]Plants should be affected by biome, growing slower in snow, faster in desert, and certain plants would prefer different biomes and their growth rate and yield would reflect that. Potatoes growing better in cold than heat, the reverse for yucca.
disease, if introduced, could also be rolled into this increasing greatly the chance of disease in the wasteland biome.
[*]There should be more plants, and as such more food recipes. This is my wish list so you know, that was always going to be on here.
[1] I've footnoted this as it fits in with your "lore narrative" of plants being affected by the post-apocalyptic environment
[2] I do like the idea of having a cooking bench that is like an upgrade from the campfire, that allows for quicker preparation. It could also tie in with getting the cookers working.
I feel after reading that, some people will go, "wait a minute buddy, nobody is building a farming simulator here" however that's a bit disingenuous. What I have described above is pretty much what DayZ has - albeit I've laid it out to fit into 7DtD's current system - and nobody is accusing Bohemia of developing a farming simulator.
For me farming should be integral to the game loop, as food is the one essential. Now sure, we could get stuff from killing animals, looting or buying from traders, but that's not the same game loop, in the same way you could avoid mining by buying or looting but again that's not the 'intended' game loop for that.
In fact, if I had free reign, what I'd do is tie in the amount of tinned goods you can loot to the XP, literally a reverse of how the looting progression works, so as you enter mid to late game there is next to no canned food at all, even from vending machines. This would mean the player having to rely on farming, and I would justify that through the following logic: by that stage of the game it's likely you will be making your own ammo, your own concrete your own steel, it makes sense to extend out the "sole survivor" trope to the food. It's a mechanism in the game that should be exploited.
This isn't about taking a minor element of the game and turning it into a burden, it's about complimenting the different aspects of the game to best progress the player while providing gameplay enjoyment. I would wager I am certainly not alone in the desire to see this part of the game expanded.
Bottom line, and yes this is near the end of the post, well done for anyone sticking with this to the end, I could probably mod most of what I've suggested into the game myself. Time and effort, and learning the underlying foibles of how 7DtD works in detail, are really the issue there. That's the same for TFP devs too, I'm not naive, I realise that changing something within a game that has developed in complexity over a decade or so is either going to be stupidly easy or ridiculously hard, I have maintained legacy (and sprawling) code bases before (albeit in a business software sector, not gaming - although the underlying process is still the same).
Last edited by a moderator:
