21 replies to this topic

[RISDMAC]

So I am leveling farming again on a lower level alt (just because  ) and it really needs an overhaul, especially given the changes made to reduce animation times on other professions.

 

Every other profession takes the duration of the animation time to gather 1-5 items per gather and you can gather 1-5 times.

 

On average this means that for each node interacted with I get about 10 items.

 

If you compare that to farming you will see where the imbalance is in relation to the amount of items gathered for the time spent:

 

1 rake plot (animation -  approx 6secs)

Plant seeds (animation -  approx 6secs)

water seeds (animation -  approx 6secs)

plants grow (variable length)

prune if necessary (animation -  approx 6secs)

water again if necessary (animation -  approx 6secs)

harvest (animation -  approx 6secs)

 

on average you need to prune at least once regardless of level so without using dust/compost scarecrow and taking jute as an example this was the time needed to harvest:

 

6 seconds plot rake

6 seconds plant 

6 seconds water

30 seconds growth time

6 seconds harvest

 

that is 54 seconds for a perfect harvest (no disease strikes) in order to gather 20 items.

If i add a scarecrow and get a perfect harvest again that is 1 min for 24 items.

For each disease that needs pruning I need to factor in another 6 seconds animation.

 

Lets compare that to prospecting copper:

3 second animation time per pick - 1-2 items per pick.

After 12 seconds I had 9 items (not on TA)

 

so if you compare the amount of time spent farming to get 24 items is 1 minute, in other professions I will get 45 items comparably (fishing/foraging animations were adjusted the same as prospecting - I am assuming that crystal cutting is the same and skinning was always variable as the dead mob can despawn after just 1 pick)

 

This to me strikes me as imbalanced - I get the whole farming animations need to take longer to reflect how the skill works in reality but I think the base amount harvested needs to be adjusted in line with other skills.

 

Jute for example would need a base gather of 40 items to bring it inline with prospecting:

if a scarecrow was then used I would be able to get 48 items for a perfect harvest

This is not too much as you must consider that you wont always get a perfect harvest.

 

Overhaul 1:

 

So the equation for determining the base amount gathered should be adjusted to incorporate how long the crop takes to grow.

 

The alternative is to ensure that bronze and other tier 2 items in other professions take 1.5 longer to gather per pick and tier 3 take 2 times longer to gather per pick - as it stand it is ridiculous that farming is the only skill that gets more difficult time wise as it progresses.

 

Overhaul 2 :Crop dust/ Compost/ Scarecrows:

 

As previously mentioned in numerous other threads, another solution would be to add higher level dust/compost/scarecrows that will allow the user to reduce the amount of disease chance, increase the growth speeds so that & increase yield %.

 

However unless a scarecrow useable at level 1 that adds 100% yield is introduced, farming is still not balanced when compared to other professions.

 

Overhaul 3: Complete nerf   :

 

The final solution would be to drop compost altogether and make each crop growth speed static at 30 seconds - this would mean that each plant only requires 1 water and would only be hit with 1-2 disease infestations. As it stands compost serves no purpose at level 1-16 as all these items only require 1 water anyway so you are wasting 6 seconds adding the compost. items 16-32 require either 2 waters or 1 compost 1 water so its indifferent whether you add it or not and is dependant only on the growth time and only really has an impact at 32+.

 

I would obviously prefer each option in the order presented as I am not in favour of just oversimpifying farming, however a generous overhaul is needed to bring it in line with the other professions and considering that animations were reduced in other professions, I doubt the alternative proposed of making higher tiers in other professions more lengthy will be popular 

 

Sorry if this came across a little ranty 

Edited by JQuan, 09 March 2015 - 12:54.

[HappyDays]

Also the higher in farming you go the more water you need. I have access to 4 crops and I have no idea with the lvl of disease and water needs, how I would farm 4 crops without it actually harming my yield. It works out worse then just sticking to two crops. Sometimes I have pruned and walked away from a crop to disease instantly returning. I meant wtf ....... you want me to double water and manage never ending disease on 3 or 4 crops. It is blatantly stupid. I too made a thread about how grindy and mechanical farming was before steam. Things like these should of been fixed before steam. But never were.

Edited by HappyDays, 09 March 2015 - 13:50.

[Falbal]

I think the disease thing comes way too often. I have tried farming on two plots, but I get less crops in the same amount of time, because I am stuck in some animation on the other plot, and cannot prune the first one. I see no advantage of having more than one plot.

[RISDMAC]

I think the animations times need a good ole reduction to begin with - every time I have tried timing them on my phone I get about 6 seconds. Considering the amount of animations involved in farming, they should take 2-3 seconds max.

 

Also I think how disease affects the crops could be changed.

Disease should stop the crops growth and the the disease bar should act purely as a timer:

Tend your crops in time and they continue to grow as normal with no yield impact.

Fail to tend them in time and you lose the entire crop.

 

There are loads of ways farming could get reviewed so just keep the ideas coming until the cows see one they like 

[Babyjinx]

I agree that the need for compost/crop dust should decrease the disease and increase the yield. In reality, when you use compost you increase your chances at having a larger plant with a greater yield than one using just dirt. Crop dusting is to prevent/treat disease, so logic would prove that if you use crop dust, you would have no disease. 

 

The timing is very bothersome. I agree that the yield should greatly increase for the time spent on the node. 

 

As for tending more than one crop. I have this down to a science. I will prep a node (compost, crop dust, scarecrow, then seeds) and not water it. I will then go to a second node and do the same sans watering as well. Return to the first crop, water, prune for disease, rewater, prune again, and then harvest. I will then prep that node again, turn around and water/prune/water/prune/harvest the other node. I keep this rotation going until I have the desired amount of crops or reached my goal.  True, that is a LOT, but it allows me to manage more than one crop at a time and still get the best chance at a perfect crop.

 

However, I still can not tend to more than two crops at a time without risking losing one crop completely due to the timer.

 

It would make farming more fun to either decrease the animation time greatly OR increase the yield greatly.

Edited by Babyjinx, 09 March 2015 - 17:39.

[ShadowBane]

Farming doesn't need changing.

 

Its therapeutic to farm all day.

 

Once you get into a rhythm of doing a couple of plots, you rarely get disease loss.

[RISDMAC]

Farming doesn't need changing.

 

Its therapeutic to farm all day.

 

Once you get into a rhythm of doing a couple of plots, you rarely get disease loss.

Booo! that is all 

 

The yield needs tweaking and you cant say you wouldn't like better yield 

[Spirit]

From what I understand - doesn't disease and growth work in a cycle? It seems for cotton - there is a certain growth percentage where it may become diseased. And I usually wait for that percentage before watering the second plot to try minimize disease.

Some animations could be shorter - especially getting the rake out. As for yield, yeah I don't see why we can't have different compost... kind of like with fishing bait. Although there are scarecrows but I don't generally use them as it's like a +4 difference...

I'm ok with disease/watering part to be honest, it' be nice if we can interrupt animations though and have more yield from compost or scarecrows.

And when two plots disease at same time, then that's the worst you can get during farming lol. But I'm not sure if the trick is to know the crop's growth/disease cycle or it's something that HCS needs to adjust for disease... hard to say.

And those for 3/4 plots, they aren't worth it and someone pointed out in another thread that there is "group farming" which I believe is why we have more than two plots. If it is worth it, I don't know. You can do 2 plots solo just fine.

[Falbal]

The problem with doing two plots is that you don't save much time, and a disease can ruin it all. After having watered the first plot, I can rake another one and just about put up a scarecrow, then the first one is ready for harvest. If I get disease on the first plot while raking or fiddeling with scarecrow on the second plot, I cannot get out of the animation and prune my crop, and as a result I typically lose more to disease than I gain from having two plots. The time I save is not worth it compared to the extra crop I lose.

 

This also means that there is no point at all in having 3 or 4 plots, because with two plots you are occupied all the time. More plots just mean that others are waiting to be harvested.

 

I think that the overall time it takes to grow crops should be raised, more that doubled actually, so that we can have 4 plots going at a time, and have number 4 watered before we must harvest number one. Then the risk of disease should be reduced down to at leat 1/4 of what it is now. It should more be the rule than the exception that we can have 4 plots going without any of them being diseased. A nice touch would be if we got access to better and better crop dust as we level up, and get access to more plots, so that total disease for all plots is kept at the same level with 4 plots as it is with 1 plot.

 

Also, if it took longer time for the crops to grow (and they had much lower risk of diseasing), we could go and do something else, instead of just standing there and waiting. Collecting wool for example, or buying more supplies from a farmer. As it is now, I do not dare take one step away from a plot, because it will get diseased the second I do, and I will only have about 10 seconds to do something else anyway before it is time to harvest. I don't know if this is deliberate, so that we need to tend 100% to farming, like we do to other skills, but then there is really no reason to have more than one plot. More plots sort of indicate that there should be time left to do more, but there really isn't. Not even 2, and certainly not 3 or 4.

Edited by Falbal, 17 March 2015 - 12:27.

[Irradiated]

First off, I hate farming.  Not for the reasons stated above, it's the only gathering profession where I need to pay attention rather then read/watch movie/email/etc (outside of TA, of course).

 

That said, it's really no slower then any other gather if you're farming cloth.  Here's some hints.

 

* The big XP gain is making the cloth, not farming it.  So if you can at least buy the wool you'll save lots of time.

* If you're farming for cooking, only farm the minimum necessary.  Otherwise level farming with cloth, trading or selling the results.

*  Only do the dailies that involve cloth.  In terms of XP, the food dailies are really not worth the time compared to just farming more cloth.

* Using more then 2 plots is mostly for group farming (I haven't tried this in a very long time, but assume it still works).  Working together you can water and prune each others crops.  Must be grouped.

* As someone else pointed out, there are patterns to the disease.  Here is how I handle two crops farming cotton (lower level crops use a different pattern):

  1) prepare plot one

  2) Water plot one, wait for disease

  3)  After disease, rake/compost plot 2

  4) Water plot 1, wait for disease

  5)  After disease, scarecrow/seed plot 2

  6)  Harvest plot 1

  7)  Water plot 2, wait for disease.

Adjust as necessary when disease doesn't happen on schedule.  There is still some time spent standing around especially if a disease doesn't happen.  But it works pretty well and gives full yield.  (I also have a 3 plot pattern.  Does involve some loss but less wasted time.  Not sure which is better in the end.)

 

EDIT:  Looking at my own post, I wonder if farming was meant to be a group activity.  Working together and having others to talk to certainly alleviates the tedium.

Edited by Irradiated, 16 March 2015 - 13:07.

[KeS]

First off, I hate farming.

+1

 

But seriously, good ideas: If some is in your group: they can help you gather, water, and prune crops but if they gather, they get the exp so If you have more than 1 field, that maynot be a bad thing....

[RISDMAC]

 

That said, it's really no slower then any other gather if you're farming cloth.  Here's some hints.

 

But you get the same xp from crafting bars/ingots/stones/timbers as you do from making cloth so the time required to get x amount of a particular cloth is considerably longer than the same tier item in another proffession

[Falbal]

But you get the same xp from crafting bars/ingots/stones/timbers as you do from making cloth so the time required to get x amount of a particular cloth is considerably longer than the same tier item in another proffession

 

Is it now? I feel that gathering items from farming is just as fast, if not faster, than from many other professions. I typically get 24 jute from one harvest. Compare that to mining 24 ores, getting 24 logs or catching 24 fish (which I believe is the slowest).

 

The only downside I can see with the speed of farming, is that we don't have the option of doing it on Trapper's Atoll, and the same goes for skinning. Those two professions are bound to be more time consuming because of that, but compared to other professions outside of TA, I actually think that farming is pretty fast.

[RISDMAC]

Is it now? I feel that gathering items from farming is just as fast, if not faster, than from many other professions. I typically get 24 jute from one harvest. Compare that to mining 24 ores, getting 24 logs or catching 24 fish (which I believe is the slowest).

 

The only downside I can see with the speed of farming, is that we don't have the option of doing it on Trapper's Atoll, and the same goes for skinning. Those two professions are bound to be more time consuming because of that, but compared to other professions outside of TA, I actually think that farming is pretty fast.

I would again disagree here because of the time it took to grow 24 jute being 1 minute compared to being able to gather approx 45 copper in the same space of time.

 

Gathering wool/coal will work out at approximately the same depending on the random amounts gathered per pick and the creation of cloth/bars/ingots will be identical. So just looking at the amount of mats I can gather in 1 minute of farming versus 1 minute of any other gathering profession, farming seems at a disadvantage.

 

Either that or I am doing something horribly wrong somewhere 

[Falbal]

Either that or I am doing something horribly wrong somewhere 

 

You are probably right. I never timed it, but it just seems fast to me. Perhaps because I find it less boring than hacking away on some ore.

[Ood]

Making 2, 3, and 4 usable plots a more viable option is a better fix in my opinion.

 

Unfortunately disease is necessary to prevent script kiddies from leveling 1-45 in a night.

 

2 plots is doable as Irradiated points out above, basically prep one plot, while that one is growing, prep the other. The yield given with such a method is debateable ( I find you still miss diseases somewhat frequently ), but the xp gain IS faster.

 

How then to make 3 and 4 plots a viable option? I really don't know. Having better dust would help. Better compost would eliminate the need for extra plots. 

 

Solution: Team farm! (kidding)

[Irradiated]

Can't believe I'm defending farming.  I feel like a vegetarian defending hamburgers.  But I realized you're talking about the number of items gathered, not XP.

 

All gathering should not be equal.  Compared to mining, fishing and foraging have higher yields per time as they do not require secondary processing.  For the same reason they have lower XP for time spent.

 

On the topic of mining vs. farming yield (not XP).  Using the method I outlined above I get zero loss.  As the raking/compost/scarecrow/seed are all done during the other plots growth they are free (minus a few times disease doesn't cooperate, but then I'm saving time by not pruning).  So the farming time for cotton is growth + 2 disease + 2 water + harvest to get 24.  I don't believe that takes a full minute.

 

But you might be right, I never timed farming.  The second half is mining.  Again I never timed it, but gathering outside TA I can guarantee it takes more then 11 minutes to get my 500 iron for dailies.  And if you do your own secondary gather, closely packed with fast re-spawn sheep are easier then coal (although might really be a wash as I always gather coal in TA).

 

So I'll agree that mining does give a higher yield, but the discrepancy is within reason and not so severe as stated.

Edited by Irradiated, 18 March 2015 - 16:30.

[KeS]

Can't believe I'm defending farming.

Gahahahahahaha

[DonutTyrant]

I have said this before but... HCS needs to remove disease altogether. If they removed disease, players can actually use multiple plots effectively and this will bring the profession much closer to other professions while making it less of a pain to level. Right now, I cannot actually use 3-4 plots to farm effectively without losing a large % of yield to disease.

[Falbal]

They also need to do something about the speed,

 

I have said this before but... HCS needs to remove disease altogether. If they removed disease, players can actually use multiple plots effectively and this will bring the profession much closer to other professions while making it less of a pain to level. Right now, I cannot actually use 3-4 plots to farm effectively without losing a large % of yield to disease.

 

They also need to do something about the speed, because if there were no disease, your first plot would be ready for harvest before you have watered the second one. There is no point at all in having 3 or 4 plots, because you will never have two plots growing at the same time (unless you wait with watering until they are both ready, but that would be pointless with no disease).