I don't see an issue with long duration crop management cycles and ~4 week seasons.
If you sow in the spring you have a 4 week window for planting.
If you reap in the fall/autumn you have a 4 week window for harvesting.
The yield needs to be sufficient to give a good average over 16 week year and should be sizeable enough that it requires a caravan to get it from freehold to market to make a profit.
The rest of the time you can do things to enhance the crop yield, like cats (animal husbandry) to discourage rodents, soil conditioning, plant oil insecticides, etc. If you can't buy what you need then there could be additional gatherables (or crops to grow) and processing.
Those that want to farm can also manage cattle and animal husbandry, each with a range of associated gathering/processing/buying from market activities.
The game isn't a farming simulator, so maybe the time spent not farming could/should be spent doing the other MMORPG content?
I don't see an issue with long duration crop management cycles and ~4 week seasons.
If you sow in the spring you have a 4 week window for planting.
If you reap in the fall/autumn you have a 4 week window for harvesting.
The yield needs to be sufficient to give a good average over 16 week year and should be sizeable enough that it requires a caravan to get it from freehold to market to make a profit.
The rest of the time you can do things to enhance the crop yield, like cats (animal husbandry) to discourage rodents, soil conditioning, plant oil insecticides, etc. If you can't buy what you need then there could be additional gatherables (or crops to grow) and processing.
Those that want to farm can also manage cattle and animal husbandry, each with a range of associated gathering/processing/buying from market activities.
The game isn't a farming simulator, so maybe the time spent not farming could/should be spent doing the other MMORPG content?
Yeah but people who like farming enough to consider it their main craft will always be judging AoC against BDO's system. There is a lot of well thought out gameplay to consider relative to it and they manage to have many other parts of their game they work on. In otherwords the formula for good farming gameplay in an mmo is already known and AoC only needs to do two things to make it fit in and be better than it.
I agree that longer seasons are better (though longer than 4 weeks wouldn't be good.) But I can tell you that crops that take longer than a week to grow isn't good game play. Realistically those crops would be the higher skill cap ones, like orchards. I advocate for realism a lot relative to farming but 4 week long grow cycles while much more realistic is something I would suggest against.
I think the sweet spot for farming is 3 week long seasons. This makes it harder for people to double up on the two week long crops unless they live in a node where the season effects the grow period less and creates natural caravan ebb and flow at a more orderly pace while keeping locals fresh for more merc minded people.
I don't see an issue with long duration crop management cycles and ~4 week seasons.
If you sow in the spring you have a 4 week window for planting.
If you reap in the fall/autumn you have a 4 week window for harvesting.
The yield needs to be sufficient to give a good average over 16 week year and should be sizeable enough that it requires a caravan to get it from freehold to market to make a profit.
The rest of the time you can do things to enhance the crop yield, like cats (animal husbandry) to discourage rodents, soil conditioning, plant oil insecticides, etc. If you can't buy what you need then there could be additional gatherables (or crops to grow) and processing.
Those that want to farm can also manage cattle and animal husbandry, each with a range of associated gathering/processing/buying from market activities.
The game isn't a farming simulator, so maybe the time spent not farming could/should be spent doing the other MMORPG content?
To my understanding, the game essentially will feature a farm simulator.
It's my hope that the system is as wonderfully complex as SWG's harvesting/refining systems were, and yet also somehow more entertaining.
I don't see an issue with long duration crop management cycles and ~4 week seasons.
If you sow in the spring you have a 4 week window for planting.
If you reap in the fall/autumn you have a 4 week window for harvesting.
The yield needs to be sufficient to give a good average over 16 week year and should be sizeable enough that it requires a caravan to get it from freehold to market to make a profit.
The rest of the time you can do things to enhance the crop yield, like cats (animal husbandry) to discourage rodents, soil conditioning, plant oil insecticides, etc. If you can't buy what you need then there could be additional gatherables (or crops to grow) and processing.
Those that want to farm can also manage cattle and animal husbandry, each with a range of associated gathering/processing/buying from market activities.
The game isn't a farming simulator, so maybe the time spent not farming could/should be spent doing the other MMORPG content?
To my understanding, the game essentially will feature a farm simulator.
It's my hope that the system is as wonderfully complex as SWG's harvesting/refining systems were, and yet also somehow more entertaining.
I am totally co-opting this thread to ask you what would make you more entertained if you know. I've given my ideal farming system a great deal of thought but still need data from other farmers.
If they go the route I am guessing they are going, a crop won't require a full season, or several, to mature.
Let me throw this out there: Let's say a full crop cycle is 3 Real Life days at most, for the high-end crops. You sow, you need to water or have expensive automated systems on the freehold, and you maintain and weed, and then you can harvest within 3 days max. The more on top on this you are during the three days, the better the crop and yield.
How would that affect your view of the length of the seasons? The more dedicated farmers will still have much to do every day, and they can get 2 or more full crop cycles in per season, depending on the length. 2 cycles with seasons being 1 week, and 9-10 cycles if the seasons last a calendar month.
1
akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I hope if they do go instanced with housing and crops etc, that the Black Desert & New World approach (and perhaps others) will be implemented.
I particularly like NW approach where your house and the best ranked other houses are on public display with the possibility to view all properties.
Following on from what Nerror said, I agree that it's possible the crop cycles may not align perfectly with the seasons. It would be good however if they did do this in a way, as then you could make the crop system more sophisticated and "realistic" where certain crops want to be planted in certain seasons and be harvested in a certain one. I think the 2 week or 1 month I would be happy with, if certain items are going to be restricted by season then it just makes it more of an achievement to get it.
We have to remember the days where rarity of an item was like a badge of honour. Even if you have to wait 3 months for an item, the likelihood is there will be something else that can supplement there isn't urgency to attain that item exactly now. And if you miss out, then it's not the end of the world either. You might be bummed out but if you have 1 month to get it and you miss out, it's not like it isn't a generous period to try and get it.
I look at it this way. If you make a mistake in a season it could cost you a whole month, before you have another shot.
Look at this way then, if the seasons are only a week long, everyone will be in a rush to get everything done else they would have to wait for 3 weeks but with month long seasons players will have ample time to properly plan and execute whatever they want to achieve in that season. They can even do multiple attempts for the same after correcting their mistakes or making some in game progress with that goal in mind.
I also feel a short duration to facilitate 'not penalizing' a player is a poor reason. This isn't Farmville. Mechanics shouldn't be molded by a 'avoid consequences' mentality. Thats how shallow and forgettable features get made.
Exactly. I really wish people understood MMO is more a different life than a game which will give instant gratification.
That's not necessarily true. It's possible giving people a longer season might give them time to complete things they otherwise might not. It's also just as likely plausible to do the opposite. Can they do multiple attempts for the same content? That's not necessarily true either. Ratio wise, the reason why a shorter cycle is better is because all around your chance of accessing the desired content is increased, not decreased. (Not by time, but by frequency of opportunity) You may only be able to plant once a season, plant a crop once for the season, or it's just as likely it's repeatable. The fact is we don't know. What we do know is this. Shorter seasons means all content will be repeatable in a shorter time frame. There can easily be materials that are only forage able in a certain season. Let's say that item makes a legendary unique weapon. It's possible of taking that item out of rotation for 4 months because it's only creatable on the last day of winter.
In addition, having more time to plan doesn't mean most players will do so. Most players are casual...and don't plan or research that much. A months' worth of consequences isn't avoiding consequences. It's merely allowing casual players to try again next month. Obviously, since the game director is currently planning for seasons to be one week...and has spent millions of his own money to create it...it's not that MMO's are more of a different life...but that some players here want it to be. Keep in mind seasons might flood a bridge, freeze over water, and end up making regions inaccessible or inaccessible by boats...but additional access via land to their former META routes. I'm not saying you're wrong...but I think you need to spend more time thinking about how it could go wrong compared to what the developers may be implementing in the game or what the developers might need to change vs their current idea.
I still don't see why crops would be a problem with longer seasons. Just have varying crops that grow in each season. Maybe ones that take multiple seasons but produce rarer foods/ingredients. Could have crops that require planting in summer and harvest in winter. Or vice versa. Longer seasons would fit much better with the suggested patch/expansion schedule as well as fit nicely with (example) arena seasons being one in game year etc.
Nerror and Aiden are right, just like in our 'real world,' different crops take different times.
For example (assuming a 1 month season)
- tomatoes may take 1 week, grow four crops in spring, four in summer and four in fall
- corn may take 2 weeks, plant in spring to harvest in summer or plant in summer to harvest in fall
- wheat, sorghum, barley may take three seasons, plant in spring and harvest in fall
- carrots and 'taters may take two seasons, plant in spring and harvest in summer, plant in summer harvest in fall, plant in fall and harvest in winter. Cannot plant in winter
- Apples, pears, nuts, &tc. may take a year, with harvest in fall (so if you get your land in summer, you have can plant your seedlings but have to wait until next year for a harvest). Harvests increase every year.
And so on and so forth with all kinds of pumpkins, squash, kiwi, melons and so forth. Different crops need certain climates, water access, altitude and other variables. Increased farming skill always helps, as does access to animal droppings (no asparagus without horse poopers!).
Perhaps include crop rotation which the players will have to learn by experience. For example, if you keep planting corn year after year, the soil becomes depleted and yields decrease. But if you switch between corn and barley every other year, the soil becomes richer and yields increase for both crops.
Let's say you need barley to make decent beer in the brewing profession. Barley grows best in mountain foothills in northern areas, so good barley grows in an area which is part of a half dozen nodes and is exported (via caravans) to the rest of the map where taverns need it for beer. These become economically important nodes and particularly valuable caravans, tavern owners may volunteer to guard these caravans so they can brew beer and remain open! A farmer who learns to grow the best barley on the server is a rich man with a secret. But what if....of the six nodes where good barley can be grown, three are wilderness and an event spawns undead across the other three...the server must come together to defeat this event or every tavern on the server will be dry or have crap beer (which would not give the same buff as good beer).
Perhaps there will be two river deltas each with rich soil and great grazing. In one of them is a player/breeder who learns to breed magnificent cattle which produce the best beef on the server. When partnering with a tavern owner who has progressed in the cooking profession, they produce jerky which, when eaten, buffs against water magic better than anything on the server. But there is more! These magnificent cattle also produce the best cow manure which improves the growth of all kinds of crops! The farmer refuses to show other farmers how to produce this royal manure (no sh*t show...get is? *yar har*) and can sell the jerky and manure for vast wealth. OK, maybe that was a crappy example. *chuckles*
I think the faster turnaround time of 1 week per season will allow for more dramatic impact of seasons. If seasons were longer a big seasonal change could be crippling to some and would need to be much milder in nature but shorter seasons allow for more impactful/dramatic effects imo. If in winter in 1 node, frost spells do 15% more damage and fire spells do 15% less damage, that is a huge impact and if the winter lasted for 2 weeks holy crap that's crippling as a fire mage. But if it is just a week, it's not so bad and the fire mage can justify taking a vacation from that node or keep away seasonal depression due to being underpowered for only 1 week while 2 weeks or longer could be rough.
Essentially, I suspect that the longer they make each season, the more subtle and homogenized the impact of each season will have to be as any negative changes to a character's experience would feel very oppressive for a long time and any positive changes would just fade into the background. Shorter seasons allow for more dramatic changes with negative changes to a character's experience not feeling too bad for too long while players may feel more incentive to exploit any advantages that season provides. Just my 2 cents.
Well, think in terms of crop rotation; If we're raising crops, it can't take forever.
1 week/season at least doesn't seem too slow. If it were to change? No longer than 3 weeks/season. Any longer and crop-raising shouldn't be dependent upon it, any longer.
My assumption with crops is that they will take a number of hours to grow from seed to harvest. Any longer than this and it isn't worthwhile content from a player engagement perspective.
Seasons are likely to mean you can't plant or harvest in winter, rather than dictating the entire growing period of the crop.
We really don't know the farming platform yet. What can or can't be grown and the value of the items. We also don't know the yield or when items can be harvested. For example, let's say that tobacco can be grown in the summer season, while perhaps grapes can be grown in the spring, summer, and fall season for wine. The community will figure it out once the game comes out and will assign value to each item. The economy balanced itself out in Eve Online which was a player driven system. There the ore respawned at different intervals and some rare ore had less ore nodes. What would be interesting is if the game introduced the possibility of draught and crop failure.
We don't know for example if you can plant your crop each morning and then harvest it each evening. You are assuming that the crop will be harvested on day 7. Also, with your 3-month example what I destroyed your freehold on day 88 and you lost your entire crop? With a weekly crop harvest, at least you are guaranteed to get your product harvested and less subject to lose from war. If an item is valuable, then more people will produce it within the confines on the land and whatever soil limits the freehold possesses. Of course, with more people going after the flavor of the month that will increase the supply and lower the price of the item. I don't think the issue will be the season cycle. I think the real concern is can you obtain the valuable land you want to grow the item you wish to produce.
However, since the game with the biggest impression on Ashes is Archeage, it is perfectly valid to assume the farming system will be somewhat similar to that game - at least until we hear differently.
For example, let's say that tobacco can be grown in the summer season, while perhaps grapes can be grown in the spring, summer, and fall season for wine. The community will figure it out once the game comes out and will assign value to each item. The economy balanced itself out in Eve Online which was a player driven system.
I like where you’re going here. It would be cool if there was a forcing function that constrained the number of types of crops you could plant in a given season. Then it becomes a mini-game of maximizing crop yield of a certain type, or types that are useful to downstream processors & crafters. Those farmers who work out the math will reap the benefit of their diligence. You could expand this min/maxing with other dimensions like soil composition, water table, and soil lifespan (I.e. requiring fallowing a field). Tons of variables to keep the farming interesting (but hopefully not overwhelming).
Comments
If you sow in the spring you have a 4 week window for planting.
If you reap in the fall/autumn you have a 4 week window for harvesting.
The yield needs to be sufficient to give a good average over 16 week year and should be sizeable enough that it requires a caravan to get it from freehold to market to make a profit.
The rest of the time you can do things to enhance the crop yield, like cats (animal husbandry) to discourage rodents, soil conditioning, plant oil insecticides, etc. If you can't buy what you need then there could be additional gatherables (or crops to grow) and processing.
Those that want to farm can also manage cattle and animal husbandry, each with a range of associated gathering/processing/buying from market activities.
The game isn't a farming simulator, so maybe the time spent not farming could/should be spent doing the other MMORPG content?
Yeah but people who like farming enough to consider it their main craft will always be judging AoC against BDO's system. There is a lot of well thought out gameplay to consider relative to it and they manage to have many other parts of their game they work on. In otherwords the formula for good farming gameplay in an mmo is already known and AoC only needs to do two things to make it fit in and be better than it.
I agree that longer seasons are better (though longer than 4 weeks wouldn't be good.) But I can tell you that crops that take longer than a week to grow isn't good game play. Realistically those crops would be the higher skill cap ones, like orchards. I advocate for realism a lot relative to farming but 4 week long grow cycles while much more realistic is something I would suggest against.
I think the sweet spot for farming is 3 week long seasons. This makes it harder for people to double up on the two week long crops unless they live in a node where the season effects the grow period less and creates natural caravan ebb and flow at a more orderly pace while keeping locals fresh for more merc minded people.
To my understanding, the game essentially will feature a farm simulator.
It's my hope that the system is as wonderfully complex as SWG's harvesting/refining systems were, and yet also somehow more entertaining.
I am totally co-opting this thread to ask you what would make you more entertained if you know. I've given my ideal farming system a great deal of thought but still need data from other farmers.
Let me throw this out there: Let's say a full crop cycle is 3 Real Life days at most, for the high-end crops. You sow, you need to water or have expensive automated systems on the freehold, and you maintain and weed, and then you can harvest within 3 days max. The more on top on this you are during the three days, the better the crop and yield.
How would that affect your view of the length of the seasons? The more dedicated farmers will still have much to do every day, and they can get 2 or more full crop cycles in per season, depending on the length. 2 cycles with seasons being 1 week, and 9-10 cycles if the seasons last a calendar month.
I particularly like NW approach where your house and the best ranked other houses are on public display with the possibility to view all properties.
We have to remember the days where rarity of an item was like a badge of honour. Even if you have to wait 3 months for an item, the likelihood is there will be something else that can supplement there isn't urgency to attain that item exactly now. And if you miss out, then it's not the end of the world either. You might be bummed out but if you have 1 month to get it and you miss out, it's not like it isn't a generous period to try and get it.
That's not necessarily true. It's possible giving people a longer season might give them time to complete things they otherwise might not. It's also just as likely plausible to do the opposite. Can they do multiple attempts for the same content? That's not necessarily true either. Ratio wise, the reason why a shorter cycle is better is because all around your chance of accessing the desired content is increased, not decreased. (Not by time, but by frequency of opportunity) You may only be able to plant once a season, plant a crop once for the season, or it's just as likely it's repeatable. The fact is we don't know. What we do know is this. Shorter seasons means all content will be repeatable in a shorter time frame. There can easily be materials that are only forage able in a certain season. Let's say that item makes a legendary unique weapon. It's possible of taking that item out of rotation for 4 months because it's only creatable on the last day of winter.
In addition, having more time to plan doesn't mean most players will do so. Most players are casual...and don't plan or research that much. A months' worth of consequences isn't avoiding consequences. It's merely allowing casual players to try again next month. Obviously, since the game director is currently planning for seasons to be one week...and has spent millions of his own money to create it...it's not that MMO's are more of a different life...but that some players here want it to be. Keep in mind seasons might flood a bridge, freeze over water, and end up making regions inaccessible or inaccessible by boats...but additional access via land to their former META routes. I'm not saying you're wrong...but I think you need to spend more time thinking about how it could go wrong compared to what the developers may be implementing in the game or what the developers might need to change vs their current idea.
For example (assuming a 1 month season)
- tomatoes may take 1 week, grow four crops in spring, four in summer and four in fall
- corn may take 2 weeks, plant in spring to harvest in summer or plant in summer to harvest in fall
- wheat, sorghum, barley may take three seasons, plant in spring and harvest in fall
- carrots and 'taters may take two seasons, plant in spring and harvest in summer, plant in summer harvest in fall, plant in fall and harvest in winter. Cannot plant in winter
- Apples, pears, nuts, &tc. may take a year, with harvest in fall (so if you get your land in summer, you have can plant your seedlings but have to wait until next year for a harvest). Harvests increase every year.
And so on and so forth with all kinds of pumpkins, squash, kiwi, melons and so forth. Different crops need certain climates, water access, altitude and other variables. Increased farming skill always helps, as does access to animal droppings (no asparagus without horse poopers!).
Perhaps include crop rotation which the players will have to learn by experience. For example, if you keep planting corn year after year, the soil becomes depleted and yields decrease. But if you switch between corn and barley every other year, the soil becomes richer and yields increase for both crops.
Let's say you need barley to make decent beer in the brewing profession. Barley grows best in mountain foothills in northern areas, so good barley grows in an area which is part of a half dozen nodes and is exported (via caravans) to the rest of the map where taverns need it for beer. These become economically important nodes and particularly valuable caravans, tavern owners may volunteer to guard these caravans so they can brew beer and remain open! A farmer who learns to grow the best barley on the server is a rich man with a secret. But what if....of the six nodes where good barley can be grown, three are wilderness and an event spawns undead across the other three...the server must come together to defeat this event or every tavern on the server will be dry or have crap beer (which would not give the same buff as good beer).
Perhaps there will be two river deltas each with rich soil and great grazing. In one of them is a player/breeder who learns to breed magnificent cattle which produce the best beef on the server. When partnering with a tavern owner who has progressed in the cooking profession, they produce jerky which, when eaten, buffs against water magic better than anything on the server. But there is more! These magnificent cattle also produce the best cow manure which improves the growth of all kinds of crops! The farmer refuses to show other farmers how to produce this royal manure (no sh*t show...get is? *yar har*) and can sell the jerky and manure for vast wealth. OK, maybe that was a crappy example. *chuckles*
But yeah, I like longer seasons.
Essentially, I suspect that the longer they make each season, the more subtle and homogenized the impact of each season will have to be as any negative changes to a character's experience would feel very oppressive for a long time and any positive changes would just fade into the background. Shorter seasons allow for more dramatic changes with negative changes to a character's experience not feeling too bad for too long while players may feel more incentive to exploit any advantages that season provides. Just my 2 cents.
My assumption with crops is that they will take a number of hours to grow from seed to harvest. Any longer than this and it isn't worthwhile content from a player engagement perspective.
Seasons are likely to mean you can't plant or harvest in winter, rather than dictating the entire growing period of the crop.
We don't know for example if you can plant your crop each morning and then harvest it each evening. You are assuming that the crop will be harvested on day 7. Also, with your 3-month example what I destroyed your freehold on day 88 and you lost your entire crop? With a weekly crop harvest, at least you are guaranteed to get your product harvested and less subject to lose from war. If an item is valuable, then more people will produce it within the confines on the land and whatever soil limits the freehold possesses. Of course, with more people going after the flavor of the month that will increase the supply and lower the price of the item. I don't think the issue will be the season cycle. I think the real concern is can you obtain the valuable land you want to grow the item you wish to produce.
However, since the game with the biggest impression on Ashes is Archeage, it is perfectly valid to assume the farming system will be somewhat similar to that game - at least until we hear differently.
I like where you’re going here. It would be cool if there was a forcing function that constrained the number of types of crops you could plant in a given season. Then it becomes a mini-game of maximizing crop yield of a certain type, or types that are useful to downstream processors & crafters. Those farmers who work out the math will reap the benefit of their diligence. You could expand this min/maxing with other dimensions like soil composition, water table, and soil lifespan (I.e. requiring fallowing a field). Tons of variables to keep the farming interesting (but hopefully not overwhelming).