PC Changes To Farming

In alpha 19 you could craft a seed from veggies or flowers or whatever, plant it, and the seedling would be left behind when you harvested it. This was a NICE thing. Harvesting was super quick and enjoyable!

Now, in alpha 20, you have this RNG amount you can harvest from a plant that YOU planted and the plant disappears, because we can't have nice things apparently. Oh and you get a seed back 50 percentish of the time, wow, thanks so much. I get a seed about 40% of the time and have gotten as little as ONE seed back from 12 plants of that type. So I had a very low profit from my plants even with all LoL perks. WHY RNG had to be added to this, I do not know, but it is quite frankly straight up bad. It feels bad to play, especially when it was so NICE before. 

The major problem with this is they ALSO made hunger and thirst worse, so in early game your hunger is dropping like a rock, and you don't have ANY food, and you have to just, FIND seeds apparently and plant them and have a net loss of veggies for food, so you're constantly starved trying to loot for food while fighting zombies but ALSO you have to prepare for horde night.
Why? Why make this so miserable? In the end at high levels it doesn't matter anyway as I have nearly 100 crops growing and I still have tons of food for everyone on my server. HOWEVER, even though I now have lots of food, it takes an absolutely stupid amount of time to harvest and replant. This is going to burn people out quicker. I mean to be honest I am sick of being the farming person and I used to always enjoy it. If the goal of wimping the player like this was to get more played hours out of people, this was the exact wrong way to do that. People play your game because it's fun, not because you squeeze more time out of them with crap like this. 

Wimping is negative game development practices used to reign in player power, not because they make the game better, but for some arbitrary reason that the devs think players have "too much", too much power or too many abilities or in this case apparently we had too much enjoyment so they had to squash it. This is what you are doing TFP, wimping, just stop it please. Let people enjoy the game. The changes to farming are overall a huge nerf and it wasn't necessary and it just feels bad. The ONLY positive thing is that we can find seeds more often I guess, but it isn't often enough to make up for how bad this is.

 
I am perfectly fine with farming, we are safely at well over 200 of every plant on day 10, aside from mushrooms because we haven't had a lot of use for them just yet.

All you do is take the time to get the materials for a farm plot while buffing up your living off the land park. Simply play the game and you'll get the perks in no time, for best results start crafting farm plots the moment you can and shoving your seeds into them without harvesting until you hit level 3.

Overtime your surplus will start to grow to astronomical levels. You'll reach a point where you don't have to plant that much crops anymore and you can actually take a break for a while. Spend the nights replanting instead of precious time during the day for quests or whatever else you don't want to do when zombies sprint.

I'd argue me and my group are doing way better for farming than we ever have in alpha 19. We're sitting pretty on over five of every food in the game aside from tuna fish gravy. We're doing very well for food. There is so much more seeds and POIs with crops that we can start eating directly from those before even thinking about planting.

 
I am perfectly fine with farming, we are safely at well over 200 of every plant on day 10, aside from mushrooms because we haven't had a lot of use for them just yet.

All you do is take the time to get the materials for a farm plot while buffing up your living off the land park. Simply play the game and you'll get the perks in no time, for best results start crafting farm plots the moment you can and shoving your seeds into them without harvesting until you hit level 3.

Overtime your surplus will start to grow to astronomical levels. You'll reach a point where you don't have to plant that much crops anymore and you can actually take a break for a while. Spend the nights replanting instead of precious time during the day for quests or whatever else you don't want to do when zombies sprint.

I'd argue me and my group are doing way better for farming than we ever have in alpha 19. We're sitting pretty on over five of every food in the game aside from tuna fish gravy. We're doing very well for food. There is so much more seeds and POIs with crops that we can start eating directly from those before even thinking about planting.


Astronomically? Are you sure you're playing A20 and not a previous version? :D

 
Astronomically? Are you sure you're playing A20 and not a previous version? :D
Yes. Everyone cleaned their files and I'm hosting a dedicated server. Our first world we had to delete because of poor world generation, made it to day 9 and we had a decent farm, 70ish of EVERY crop, and now we're on day 18 of which I put the results up ^^

For our second world, I refreshed windows since i finally managed to get a large USB drive, and redownloaded the server. We're pretty much doing the exact same thing as last time and we're much further along. The only reason we don't have a lot more plants is because I'm consuming them for all our meals. We've got 8 blueberry pies, 7 sham chowder, 15 chilli dogs, 18 meat stew, and a few bits and odds of food here and there.

We're on 1 hour days. With 200% loot abundance, but we don't harvest seeds from loot NEARLY as much as we rip farms apart for potatoes, corn, and blueberries. We buy every crop we can from the trader for planting and it has never failed us.

Not sure what all the hate for farming is, we're never gonna run out of food. I'm not the dedicated farmer, but he says it's a much better system and that we've never done better. So I can vouch for him liking it. I'd even go as far as to post the world file on Google Drive along with coords for the base if it's requested.

Edit: by refresh windows 10, I mean I threw the media creation tool H2H1 I believe on the USB, then entered the setup and completely formatted the drive windows was on and deleted all its partitions then reinstalled it to the same drive.

 
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This game isn´t designed for massive multiplayer (8 players is the max supported number). Also it was never intended that one person feeds a whole server. I would tell your players to get their @%$# together and care for their own food.

Astronomically? Are you sure you're playing A20 and not a previous version? :D


Yeah, in A20 on day 28, single player, i had tons of cooked meals. Enough to sell half of them to the traders and i would still have had enough to feed 2 more people.

 
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Wimping is balance changes I don't like. negative game development practices used to reign in player power, not because they make the game better, but for some arbitrary reason that the devs think players have "too much", too much power or too many abilities or in this case apparently we had too much enjoyment so they had to squash it.


Fixed.

in early game your hunger is dropping like a rock, and you don't have ANY food, and you have to just, FIND seeds apparently and plant them and have a net loss of veggies for food, so you're constantly starved trying to loot for food while fighting zombies but ALSO you have to prepare for horde night.


Sounds pretty hard. The sort of thing that might require a group of people to cooperate to help the entire community survive. The more mouths there are to feed, the more people should be involved in keeping them fed. A perfectly cromulent game mechanic, and certainly better than "find one seed, be fed for life!"

But if it is too hard for your group, it is pretty trivial to turn on Super Easy Mode for harvesting. Just add the seeds back into the harvest (blocks.xml). They're only commented out in the code, so you don't even have to figure out where to make the changes. Just uncomment the seed harvest and *boom*, Super Easy Mode. I bet there's already a modlet out there for it. It'll be easier than A19 even since you get the A20 harvest boosts plus an extra guaranteed seed. Don't keep playing if it's too hard for your group, just make it easier.

 
 In the end at high levels it doesn't matter anyway as I have nearly 100 crops growing and I still have tons of food for everyone on my server.


See? You answered your own question. In the end you progress and overcome. That's what games like this are all about. You start out and it is a struggle and you are vulnerable but over time and with experience it becomes easy and you are virtually invulnerable. This is how you know when you are about done with that playthrough. You won.

Farming used to be easy and nice from the get go with no need for putting any points into LotL. It was essentially as easy to do on Day 1 as it was on Day 100. Where is the progression in that? Where is the struggle at first to make you appreciate the ease later? Chopping down trees with my chainsaw or steel axe later is EASY and NICE but not so much with my stone axe in the beginning. Why not change things up to make it alwyays EASY and NICE from the beginning. Just give everyone Steel axes and plenty of stamina to handle them from the very beginning? Because it would wreck the feeling of progression. Farming in A19 was out of sync with the rest of the game. Your own description of it being easy and nice at the very beginning confirms it. This game isn't about getting easy and nice for free from the start. The way you describe A20 farming as a struggle and always vulnerable of failure at first but then slowly reaching that end state where you have 100 crops growing and you aren't worried any long seems to be perfectly in line with the rest of the game. It is literally the over-arching theme of the game's design.

HOWEVER, even though I now have lots of food, it takes an absolutely stupid amount of time to harvest and replant. This is going to burn people out quicker. I mean to be honest I am sick of being the farming person


Yeah, it's probably time to change having one "farming person" in the group. That ship has sailed. You know what else I don't do solo when I play with my group? Quests. We do them together. We also get together to mine and we get together to fight the blood moon horde. The game doesn't force us to do it but we just choose to do things together. Why not farming? Do it cooperatively so that no one feels like they are stuck doing the boring role. 

Come to think of it, the one task that the game forces you to do on your own is shop with the trader and take jobs from the trader. But we even do those things as a team through our conversations. We ask each other which reward we should take in case someone really wants one of the things being offered, we announce what we are going to sell just in case someone wants it instead, we ask about which quests everyone wants to do before selecting one. Even those parts of the game that are designed to be individually done can still be done as a team. Farming can be too.

People play your game because it's fun, not because you squeeze more time out of them with crap like this. 


I think people play our game because they enjoy the journey of going from weak to strong. When you are used to starting out strong in an area and then it gets changed to allow you the opportunity to grow into your strength, that can be a tough change to swallow but people starting in A20 aren't going to have feelings of how easy it used to be compared to now. They are just going to get another enjoyable journey if their sense of fun comes from making that journey. Not everyone's does as you demonstrate. But that doesn't mean everyone thinks that having it hard in the beginning and then developing into being able to do things easily is crap. It's fun and rewarding.

 
(...)  it is pretty trivial to turn on Super Easy Mode for harvesting. Just add the seeds back into the harvest (blocks.xml). They're only commented out in the code, so you don't even have to figure out where to make the changes. Just uncomment the seed harvest and *boom*, Super Easy Mode. I bet there's already a modlet out there for it. It'll be easier than A19 even since you get the A20 harvest boosts plus an extra guaranteed seed. Don't keep playing if it's too hard for your group, just make it easier.
Thanks for showing me this. I'm still new to making mods, your post helped me a lot, I'll research more and delve into the subject, to make my own mods

@Boidster and @Roland

I think the same. I could write anything, but it would just be a wall of useless text. Thanks

 
im actually changing my mind on the new food/harvesting its a lot better now, ok seeds dont get left behind, but the returns are alot better when you plant at least 16 1st, then it just doesnt stop producing stuff

 
im actually changing my mind on the new food/harvesting its a lot better now, ok seeds dont get left behind, but the returns are alot better when you plant at least 16 1st, then it just doesnt stop producing stuff


I didn't really change My mind so much as simply not condemning the new farming,   just as it does take longer to get a sustainable farm.   I'm now on Day 58 and the last 4 harvests using LoTL3 have all given positive yield,  just that "getting" to LoTL3 takes quite a bit of investment in leveling up stats and skills,  and the A20 version is a bit more demanding,  so the tendency is to be placing those stat and skill points toward increasing damage,  increasing miner69'er, increasing lucky looter,  etc.  in past versions of 7D2D,  I was able to have a successful sustaining farm by Day 12-15,  this time in A20 it took until Day 38 or so until My farm was really producing dependable results to make food items and until Day 44-ish before I had enough coming in to feed more than one person without using canned food at all.

I still think there should be one added tweak to the Farming system as its currently setout.  Upon reaching LoTL3,  its listing that the player is now... a bona fide FARMER,  and I think the % chance to get back a seed should reflect that.   At LoTL2 the seed chance is 50%, but I feel it would seem more an accomplishment and represent that the player has learned enough  to have the chance to get back a seed,   tweaked,  and be a 60% chance.

 
I've been running 6 rows of 12 each now, and it still seems to me that I'm getting more corn seeds back then the other plants.  *Individually that is, not in total.

Corn

Yucca

Hops

Pumpkin

Potato

Mushrooms

Every so now and then I'll rotate Hops to Coffee and Pumpkin to Blueberry, but corn seeds are still out in front as far as return.

 
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I've been running 6 rows of 12 each now, and it still seems to me that I'm getting more corn seeds back then the other plants.  *Individually that is, not in total.

Corn

Yucca

Hops

Pumpkin

Potato

Mushrooms

Every so now and then I'll rotate Hops to Coffee and Pumpkin to Blueberry, but corn seeds are still out in front as far as return.
Just curious,  I've been wondering what POI's that players use for their base when they can plant such large amounts of Farm Plots.   I know that in many cases I tend to build a "battle base"  and My farming space is limited,  but even in My larger bases I don't think I've ever had more than 50 farm plots. 

 
I've been wondering what POI's that players use for their base when they can plant such large amounts of Farm Plots. 
Hmm.. depending a little on your settings, most POIs have between 36k and 100k 36M and 100M viable farming block positions around them. If that's not enough, you can always make underground extensions with suitable light shafts, easily 4-10 layers of plants before bedrock. After that, you're going to have to start building upwards.

EDIT: numptied the units

 
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Hmm.. depending a little on your settings, most POIs have between 36k and 100k viable farming block positions around them. If that's not enough, you can always make underground extensions with suitable light shafts, easily 4-10 layers of plants before bedrock. After that, you're going to have to start building upwards.


Well,  I suppose that now I do feel like a little country farmer with a "gentlemans farm"  *smile*   That whole arrangement sounds like some fancy digging and construction happening to get such a grand enterprise rolling.    Now I do feel a bit more like My places must wind up having that "living on the edge" of survival feeling since I do tend to plant things with an aesthetic point of view also.   I might post a pic of My place after I get back home in a few hours.

 
just look at these shrooms!!

got 628 shrooms and 34 seeds, ill be planting tits next....wait...tats....pootatoos, probably will have same result



 
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That whole arrangement sounds like some fancy digging and construction happening to get such a grand enterprise rolling.
Umm, yeah, a bit, although I made a little mistake in my units there.. 36k was supposed to be 36M, which would've been an entire 6k x 6k map. Cheeky way of saying, "I don't really think of the POI as my farm, the plots will do absolutely fine wherever :)

just look at these shrooms!!


I don't know which triggers me more, the flowerpot aesthetic forced by the farm plots or the fact you didn't just plant those shrooms on a wall somewhere. A nice haul nonetheless :)

 
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