Why new content will feel underwhelming untill Klei does something about the farms

[Moonatik]

I better understand. But what about fishes ? And how to make it a good source of food ? 

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Well-met said:

handicaps are once again not the answer. most people leave worldgen default because it represents the core game. Every viable strategy is thus built around the core game.

Do you know that over on Xbox there STILL isn’t any Klei Official or Dedicated Servers? In fact I’m almost certain they’ve never existed at all.. and hell Maybe Klei is saving money by not having them running on Xbox, But every single server you join (On Xbox) is hosted by a Player- And while I can defiantly not speak for other people’s worlds, I CAN Speak for mine.

If you join any of my worlds here is what you can expect-

You May find yourself in a Lightsout server one day.

You May find yourself thrown into a server where you only have 6 days between each season. Which also means lots of Deerclops & Bearger attacking often.

You may find yourself in a world where it’s Winter 24/7 non-stop.

You may find yourself thrown into a server where you get the shortest autumn ever... and the longest possible Summer but- I won’t even make THAT easy on you, I may choose to turn ice off completely, there may be little to no gears at all.. so no your not just chilling out at base with Ice-Flingo doing nothing.. and escape From the summer heat into a cave is an option: But I will have cave worm attacks happen down there most frequently & earthquakes happen as often as possible.

So I’ll cut right to my point- Sticking to the “Default Settings” and sticking to the Meta is the most boring thing anyone can ever do.. maybe I don’t go engage in Boss fights because I choose to make my world itself plenty challenging enough not to need to engage totally optional bosses for fun? 
 

I wish Klei would see that, understand what I am doing and then release an update that gave me more control over my world gen options for even MORE Unique gameplay options.

for example: Maybe I want a cave-only server that has no lightbulb or skittersquid or even Molerat!!- Which would mean you have to rely entirely on building torches and campfires, Willows Lighter, Winona’s Spotlight Or Abigail as a light source.

If Klei gave me this type of control over my worlds without needing to buy a PC & use mods, Who knows I may even start streaming gameplay of me playing with crazy settings toggled on or off so people can truly see how much fun it is to NOT PLAY BY META.

Ahem- Thank You my rant is now over  

 

[QuartzBeam]

50 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

So I’ll cut right to my point

He said, five paragraphs in.

[Well-met]

2 minutes ago, QuartzBeam said:

He said, five paragraphs in.

I read it all and I have no clue what it was about.

even I tend to play very modded games, yet I fully understand it has nothing to do with the core game and won't discuss around it.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Moonatik said:

I better understand. But what about fishes ? And how to make it a good source of food ? 

Deep Bass spawns are a great source of food.  You probably catch fish about as fast as farming out a tier 2-3 spider den.  Its not auto-farm, but its not time consuming.  The only danger is the Deep Bass spawns are where Malbatross might come and visit.  These are the ones marked on the map.  These fish bite quick and if you lure them closer to your boat before they bite they'll barely fight once.

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

I don’t know if I personally think bunnymen are crazy op, but I wouldn’t mind the removal of the hit/fake hit one and all the others gang up on him simply because it feels like it shouldn’t make sense. I think only the befriended ones should help out, same thing being applied to other mobs. (Although this would further nullify poor Webber so I hope he gets his refresh soon). Werepigs breaking fences I feel wouldn’t change much except for having to prepare more bait for them. I don’t see an effective solution of “nerfing” them if they even deserve it. I’m more of the opinion that farms and stone fruit are a major outlier in two directions and could use some help. Specifically just giving seed returns from birds to a guaranteed two crop seeds with a percent chance of a third generic seed. And a simple growth rate reduction for stone fruit wouldn’t hurt. 

[GenomeSquirrel]

54 minutes ago, Kelloggs Dogfry said:

Specifically just giving seed returns from birds to a guaranteed two crop seeds with a percent chance of a third generic seed.

This ignores the two biggest reasons people don’t bother with crops, Winter where they can’t grow and Summer where they wither.

[Sinister_Fang]

50 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Summer where they wither

Flingomatics solve this. Flingomatics really should be covering everything you build (unless in the caves or antlion desert), so crops withering in the summer really shouldn't be an issue unless you're unprepared for summer to begin with.

[axxel]

5 hours ago, Toros said:

A ton of people have been suggesting people just self-impose challenges but we will never see systemic behavior change that way.

I doubt Klei will balance out most old things. I don't know from which gamestyle you view this problem. If it's public Klei server, maybe it's not ok if, for example, someone takes many pig resources just to fight bosses and leave. If it's your own pw-protected world, you can do whatever you want without strangers interfering with it. It's about sharing or keeping. Some people are happy they can build some new pig houses for themself. And this is actually part of the problem: multiplying the source of items. If you nerf bunnyfarms (Idk if you mean the productivity) you can build some more to substitute. The other part is these can sources last forever and they don't need more resources to be functional. Because you talk about the improved farm:

• it need seeds
• it need fertilizer after some harvests
• it needs warmth

If these things are applied to a bunny house  it would be like this:

• new(born) bunnies are infants
• they need food to raise
• carrot houses decays after a certain number of inhabitants died

And oh boy, these chores will be disliked by many people. But it would be on a same level like a "farm". Then people will switch to a new meta.

 

 

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Sinister_Fang said:

Flingomatics solve this. Flingomatics really should be covering everything you build (unless in the caves or antlion desert), so crops withering in the summer really shouldn't be an issue unless you're unprepared for summer to begin with.

While ideal, that’s not the natural state, and sometimes someone finds a few sticks rocks and hay and ruins your ideal setup the second you’re distracted. Other farms still function in summer, you can baby sit bee boxes and still turn out ok, and since hammering releases bees and hives it’s still salvageable if everything burns. Seed farms on the other hand outright don’t function without the flingo, and will likely need a dedicated flingo due to their large size.

 

[Rafi.]

10 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

snip snap

 

Personally I play Warly very often, so I know how a chore it can be to use improved farms, but about that summer problem, just put them into the caves, you'll have no problem during summer ~ (even if yes, Winter will still bother you) 

[Lukmendes]

4 hours ago, Kelloggs Dogfry said:

Specifically just giving seed returns from birds to a guaranteed two crop seeds with a percent chance of a third generic seed. And a simple growth rate reduction for stone fruit wouldn’t hurt. 

I think that could be done with the vegetables themselves instead, that way while farming would still be more on the boring side, it'd be an investment over time with you getting more and more fruits if you keep doing it, since the number of that fruit would be guaranteed to increase no matter what.

As for other content, the problem we have with ocean stuff is that it overall only supports the ocean itself, the reason why caves and ruins are so good is because they make everything else better.

One thing I've been thinking that could help out with that is making the Celestial Orb be used for a player to be able to create stuff from the Celestial Altar outside the island, with the condition that the player already created the items themselves by using the Celestial Altar, at least that way you could make the items later instead of only being able to do it on the island, although more Celestial Orbs could be around, for more than one player to have access to that, instead of making the Celestial Orb only be useful for character switch.

[Toros]

2 hours ago, axxel said:

I doubt Klei will balance out most old things. I don't know from which gamestyle you view this problem. If it's public Klei server, maybe it's not ok if, for example, someone takes many pig resources just to fight bosses and leave. If it's your own pw-protected world, you can do whatever you want without strangers interfering with it. It's about sharing or keeping. Some people are happy they can build some new pig houses for themself. And this is actually part of the problem: multiplying the source of items. If you nerf bunnyfarms (Idk if you mean the productivity) you can build some more to substitute. The other part is these can sources last forever and they don't need more resources to be functional. Because you talk about the improved farm:

• it need seeds
• it need fertilizer after some harvests
• it needs warmth

If these things are applied to a bunny house  it would be like this:

• new(born) bunnies are infants
• they need food to raise
• carrot houses decays after a certain number of inhabitants died

And oh boy, these chores will be disliked by many people. But it would be on a same level like a "farm". Then people will switch to a new meta.

 

 

My perspective is that the ideal state is having several effective ways to approach a problem.  Advanced farms (and their worse cousin, regular farms) are not an effective way to solve hunger problems.  Bunnyman farms are too effective of a way to solve hunger problems.  Actions taken to reduce the effectiveness of optimal strategies and enhance the effectiveness of weak strategies like farming for food would push both of them in a more interesting direction.

I don't think mobs in general should be willing to turn on their own species for a single piece of food, because we have issues with civil wars in bunnyman, spider, and merm farming.

Right now, the best way for Wurt to feed herself is to cause regular civil war and harvest the merm loot.  That's not a particularly immersive mechanic and basically gets stronger the more you use it as the results generate more raw materials for more houses.

[Sinister_Fang]

8 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

While ideal, that’s not the natural state, and sometimes someone finds a few sticks rocks and hay and ruins your ideal setup the second you’re distracted. Other farms still function in summer, you can baby sit bee boxes and still turn out ok, and since hammering releases bees and hives it’s still salvageable if everything burns. Seed farms on the other hand outright don’t function without the flingo, and will likely need a dedicated flingo due to their large size.

 

I'm not really sure I understand what you're trying to get at here. If bee boxes burn down, then they stop producing food in the same way farms would stop functioning. So either way, without a flingo, you're out of a food source. I was just stating that they do work in summer, you just need to protect them in the same way you would protect everything else from wildfires.

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Sinister_Fang said:

I'm not really sure I understand what you're trying to get at here. If bee boxes burn down, then they stop producing food in the same way farms would stop functioning. So either way, without a flingo, you're out of a food source. I was just stating that they do work in summer, you just need to protect them in the same way you would protect everything else from wildfires.

I'm saying that many farms produce food without the flingo until they burn. IF they happen to burn down, most things don't constantly smolder everyday, i've seen unprotected structures last multiple summers outside of caves/oasis, then you can still hammer and replace with a half sized, but still functional farm. Seed farms on the other hand will wither because withering is more common than smoldering, compare the number of wild tress turned to charcoal vs wild withered grass, you can hammer the farm or plant another seed, but it's quickly going to wither again. 

 

Also, some random person with enough enough knowledge and resources to make the cheap hammer and torch is a greater fire hazard than summer, so you can't assume already building a flingo makes this irrelevant.

[Sinister_Fang]

45 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

I'm saying that many farms produce food without the flingo until they burn. IF they happen to burn down, most things don't constantly smolder everyday, i've seen unprotected structures last multiple summers outside of caves/oasis, then you can still hammer and replace with a half sized, but still functional farm. Seed farms on the other hand will wither because withering is more common than smoldering, compare the number of wild tress turned to charcoal vs wild withered grass, you can hammer the farm or plant another seed, but it's quickly going to wither again. 

I hardly see that as a big deal. I find improved farms inefficient for other reasons. *shrugs*

52 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Also, some random person with enough enough knowledge and resources to make the cheap hammer and torch is a greater fire hazard than summer, so you can't assume already building a flingo makes this irrelevant.

What does griefing have to do with anything? Literally any farm would be vulnerable to this.

[Szczuku]

22 minutes ago, Sinister_Fang said:

What does griefing have to do with anything? Literally any farm would be vulnerable to this

Gotta support your argument somehow.

Btw this is not a thread to discuss weather or not improved farms are bad or the worst so take it somewhere else

[Yuuko]

48 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Btw this is not a thread to discuss weather or not improved farms are bad or the worst so take it somewhere else

idk why not - this thread is about OP farms and how they need to be nerfed in order to allow new content, which has naturally evolved into a discussion of what farms are OP, what aren't, and whether nerfs or buffs are needed since "old things must be nerfed for new things to be added" hasn't held up.  There are old things which need buffs, and new things which have stood out as fantastic additions without any nerfs defying the premise of the OP.

[00petar00]

There are countless items in the game that are never used and they will never be able to be used. Lets say pigman farming is nerfed, people may not use football helmet if there's something easier to obtain.

There will always be this issue because once you nerf football helmets or pig skin, people will not use them anymore. There will always be this cycle, you could take MOBA games for example that are in constant change and item balance is changed regularly which doesn't really make the game better, just rotates the items and heroes.

I also don't think that there'll be such big changes just for cookie cutter helmets for example, if there was something on land to replace the football helmets, it could be fine. But i see no reason to nerf current objects to force people into the water and boats, it may be just me but playing solo i find it much harder to pilot it and i can barely get to moon island, i've died more on water then fighting all the bosses in dst. 

I am sure that there's quite a few people that don't want to deal with water and boats as much.

Also i don't think that football helmet is easily accessible, at least in the early game and depending on how you play, i usually don't focus on making big farm, firstly to make a big farm you need to farm pig skins and taking down houses at ping king may actually be a bad idea as usually it is better to farm pig skins first.

Touch stone seems much better pig skin source early on, if for example you want it nerfed, you could just nerf that. Only time when pig skin is a viable resource to make farm for is for megabase world, i often end up making farms for everything else and ignore football helmets, i have almost unlimited thulecite and use the crowns and log suits instead, big tree farms are used for living logs, so i am usually stocked up on so much wood that i don't know what to do with it.

[GenomeSquirrel]

4 hours ago, Szczuku said:

 

Btw this is not a thread to discuss weather or not improved farms are bad or the worst so take it somewhere else

The reason this thread keeps jumping all over the place is because you never defined meta for us to talk about meta, you gave me an emote when I asked.

You also can't claim the below, talk in context of cookie cutters and ocean fishes, and not have people realize they barely compete with potential day 1 log suits and frog legs let alone the best of the best food/armor sources. You strawmaned yourself, begged a ton of questions, and made everything from RoT sea fishing (worst of the worst)  to meta content (best of the best) relevant.

The only way new content can beat existing farms is only if it's even more broken than these farms. 

[Szczuku]

4 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

The reason this thread keeps jumping all over the place is because you never defined meta for us to talk about meta, you gave me an emote when I asked.

Alright, then let me bring up that question:

"By meta do you mean the mega base meta of pig houses and berries for miles or the pub meta of this world isn’t lasting until tomorrow, so mine some ice move a few spiders over and we’re set?"

This is basically the question of "Do we balance around the gameplay or do we balance around the griefers/unpredictability of pubs?". You don't balance around griefers. Neither around random servers full of random people. If Klei balanced around random pubs then all of new content would be accesable within 2 seasons (of an average player's gameplay). Meanwhile stuff like AF, Crab King or oasis exist.

4 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

and made everything from RoT sea fishing (worst of the worst)  to meta content (best of the best) relevant

Actually in the op I only taked about existing farms and future content. Stuff like how to fix basic/improved farms is a topic for its own thread.

Please don't discuss whether certain items/structures are good or bad. Discuss if you think that existing farms (like pigman/bunnyman farms) need to be nerfed for the sake of future content.

[GenomeSquirrel]

55 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

Alright, then let me bring up that question:

"By meta do you mean the mega base meta of pig houses and berries for miles or the pub meta of this world isn’t lasting until tomorrow, so mine some ice move a few spiders over and we’re set?"

This is basically the question of "Do we balance around the gameplay or do we balance around the griefers/unpredictability of pubs?". You don't balance around griefers. Neither around random servers full of random people. If Klei balanced around random pubs then all of new content would be accesable within 2 seasons (of an average player's gameplay). Meanwhile stuff like AF, Crab King or oasis exist.

Actually in the op I only taked about existing farms and future content. Stuff like how to fix basic/improved farms is a topic for its own thread.

Please don't discuss whether certain items/structures are good or bad. Discuss if you think that existing farms (like pigman/bunnyman farms) need to be nerfed for the sake of future content.

so by farms, you you mean almost exclusively pig and rabbit houses, and not something like spider dens and ice

a continuing theme of new content is that it can’t be relocated or expanded, like wobsters. talking about pig and rabbit farms exclusively misses that there are still much better alternative farms; more convenience, more food, and more potential to expand. 

[Szczuku]

17 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

so by farms, you you mean almost exclusively pig and rabbit houses, and not something like spider dens and ice

Well you can't really 'farm' ice. And as far as I know there are barely any items simmilar to the ones you make with spiders' loot. There are no substitues for items like bug net, bird trap, sewing kit, tent, masts, bee hat etc. 

And if you meant ice and spider farm as a food source. Then I don't see anything wrong with them. The best you can do is meatballs for days which are only good for hunger. Unlike bunnyman farms which covers all of your needs (with drying racks and birdcage ofc)

17 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

a continuing theme of new content is that it can’t be relocated or expanded, like wobsters

Which is why I think those won't be used often. After all players will always choose the option that's easier to aquire. Wobster are an exception since it's not hard to base near their spawner.

[QuartzBeam]

My issue with these discussions about the inefficiency of ocean resources is that they rely on an unspoken assumption regarding the intended purpose of said resources. Namely, that Klei has implemented them into the game to serve as an incentive for players to go sailing. If this assumption is correct, then I'd have to agree that they've not hit the mark by a pretty long shot.

However, if I may be not-so-cautiously optimistic for a moment, the ocean still has a long way to go and I believe that these things only look like supposed incentives because the ocean is still mostly empty (but daily growing). That is, maybe you're not supposed to go sailing just to get cookie cutter shells or fish, but to acquire other, more valuable resources and shells/fish are there to improve your quality of life in the ocean itself.

I mean, if you wanna sail around, Cookie Cutter Caps and Ocean Fishing are likely to be your only renewable sources of armor and food respectively. The Cookie Cutter Caps, in particular, seem designed specifically for ocean combat: their durability offsets their relative rarity (which isn't much if you sail around a lot), and trading a bit of damage absorption for more wetness protection isn't half bad an idea given how boat damage and waves are much more common and dangerous than player damage in the ocean.

Also, for what it's worth: Fishing does, at the very least, provide a year-round source of Corn, for all your Powdercake needs, as well as Scorching Sunfish, which can render every other type of winter equipment obsolete, particularly when combined with an Insulated Pack (or Wurt). And the Cookie Cutter Cap might actually be sort of a joke item, what with "cookie cutter" being synonymous with "unimpressive/unoriginal".

 

That said, I think it is quite unfair to dismiss complaints about the ocean content as being "unaccepting of different playstyles" or whatever.

I've spent plenty of time sailing and fishing and I've enjoyed the heck out of it, but at the end of the day it is little more than a diversion. A fun diversion, to be sure, but a diversion nonetheless. Only about 5% of the game takes place in the ocean (anyone got a good "drop in the ocean" pun?) and that content has barely any interaction with the other 95% of the game.

There so many things on land that could use improvement: base building, beefalo taming, farm plots, summer wildfires (cough dripple pipes cough), disease (only one way to improve that...), etc. Yet the last 3 updates, which, I should note, have been spread out across 8 months, have been almost exclusively focused on developing content that is parallel to the rest of the game.

Sooner or later, we're gonna need to get something substantial out of the ocean. Something besides an opportunity to avoid playing the other 95% of the game. And given how scarce the updates have been, it is only natural for people to be skeptical about the direction RoT is heading into. Even if every update after this is a game changer, 8 months is still an awfully long time to spend just on setting things up.

 

 

[Toros]

1 hour ago, QuartzBeam said:

My issue with these discussions about the inefficiency of ocean resources is that they rely on an unspoken assumption regarding the intended purpose of said resources. Namely, that Klei has implemented them into the game to serve as an incentive for players to go sailing. If this assumption is correct, then I'd have to agree that they've not hit the mark by a pretty long shot.

However, if I may be not-so-cautiously optimistic for a moment, the ocean still has a long way to go and I believe that these things only look like supposed incentives because the ocean is still mostly empty (but daily growing). That is, maybe you're not supposed to go sailing just to get cookie cutter shells or fish, but to acquire other, more valuable resources and shells/fish are there to improve your quality of life in the ocean itself.

I mean, if you wanna sail around, Cookie Cutter Caps and Ocean Fishing are likely to be your only renewable sources of armor and food respectively. The Cookie Cutter Caps, in particular, seem designed specifically for ocean combat: their durability offsets their relative rarity (which isn't much if you sail around a lot), and trading a bit of damage absorption for more wetness protection isn't half bad an idea given how boat damage and waves are much more common and dangerous than player damage in the ocean.

Also, for what it's worth: Fishing does, at the very least, provide a year-round source of Corn, for all your Powdercake needs, as well as Scorching Sunfish, which can render every other type of winter equipment obsolete, particularly when combined with an Insulated Pack (or Wurt). And the Cookie Cutter Cap might actually be sort of a joke item, what with "cookie cutter" being synonymous with "unimpressive/unoriginal".

 

That said, I think it is quite unfair to dismiss complaints about the ocean content as being "unaccepting of different playstyles" or whatever.

I've spent plenty of time sailing and fishing and I've enjoyed the heck out of it, but at the end of the day it is little more than a diversion. A fun diversion, to be sure, but a diversion nonetheless. Only about 5% of the game takes place in the ocean (anyone got a good "drop in the ocean" pun?) and that content has barely any interaction with the other 95% of the game.

There so many things on land that could use improvement: base building, beefalo taming, farm plots, summer wildfires (cough dripple pipes cough), disease (only one way to improve that...), etc. Yet the last 3 updates, which, I should note, have been spread out across 8 months, have been almost exclusively focused on developing content that is parallel to the rest of the game.

Sooner or later, we're gonna need to get something substantial out of the ocean. Something besides an opportunity to avoid playing the other 95% of the game. And given how scarce the updates have been, it is only natural for people to be skeptical about the direction RoT is heading into. Even if every update after this is a game changer, 8 months is still an awfully long time to spend just on setting things up.

 

 

I really like this take, reckless optimism and all.

My counter argument is that stonefruits were added as a clear incentive to go to the lunar island, as well as bull kelp stalks which can be translocated back for highly effective farms.  Stonefruits from what I’ve heard rival bunnyfarms in effectiveness, which I’d argue means another problem was created.

cookie cutter caps require 16 killed cutters each on average which is a lot but supposing someone was looking for monster meat I guess it could be a reasonable side benefit.  I don’t think the math favors the extra wetness protection though, and I don’t see any sea-nario where buffing the cookie caps would make them too good relative to other options.