suggestion Increasing the range of giant crop detection by a tiny smidgen

[lakhnish]

I think the range for crops to detect each other in order for them to be giant crops should be raised by a tiny smidgen.

When you are not using mods and are planting 4 crops in a straight line (such as across two tiles), the plants will say they are lonely, even though it looks like they are close enough.

I think it's because the mounds were not placed on a pixel perfect position like with what you can do with a mod but not everyone can or will use a mod for such positions.

Here's an example with a till I did by hand where the crops look close enough but actually aren't:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[sawchuk519]

I oppose this change. I don't think it should be so easy to get the family bonus for all of your crops in this way. Entire rows of crops being self sufficient is uninteresting and removes a lot of decision making from the player,

If anything, I think going in the other direction makes sense. That being said, any nerf to capabilities with mods always affects unmodded players more than modded players, so I would just vouch for leaving it as it is.

[lakhnish]

11 minutes ago, sawchuk519 said:

That being said, any nerf to capabilities with mods always affects unmodded players more than modded players, so I would just vouch for leaving it as it is.

6 hours ago, lakhnish said:

I think it's because the mounds were not placed on a pixel perfect position like with what you can do with a mod but not everyone can or will use a mod for such positions.

I don't what you are trying to say?

With mods, I can easily get the family bonus for all my crops.

Without mods, its not always gonna work, as demonstrated in the spoiler. 

I'm literally advocating for something that will make it easier & benefit unmodded players (such as console players) rather than something negatively impacting them?

[SilverBisexual]

Yeah I agree. It would be nice not to need such pixel perfect placing. Obviously, the change should not be too big a radius; just a enough so that the normal 4 placement you show would be easily able to work

[Choosechee]

2 hours ago, sawchuk519 said:

I oppose this change. I don't think it should be so easy to get the family bonus for all of your crops in this way. Entire rows of crops being self sufficient is uninteresting and removes a lot of decision making from the player,

If anything, I think going in the other direction makes sense. That being said, any nerf to capabilities with mods always affects unmodded players more than modded players, so I would just vouch for leaving it as it is.

He was saying that crops that are close together sometimes won't get the family bonus, and that it's hard to get it consistently without mods. That's why they want the range to be increased.

[sawchuk]

3 hours ago, lakhnish said:

I don't what you are trying to say?

With mods, I can easily get the family bonus for all my crops.

Without mods, its not always gonna work, as demonstrated in the spoiler.

I understand your complaint. What I am trying to say is that I would rather see them not allow familial bonuses to affect the crops at the end of the row. 

The issue is that currently mods allow you to do this. I think the risk of hampering unmodded gameplay is not worth the benefit of removing the ability for mods to do this. 

We had this same issue with players being able to plant 16 crops in the same tile with mods. Then klei nerfed the tilling distance and it disproportionately affected people who play without mods. As a result of This, klei reverted the nerf and worked in a different mechanic instead. 

[lakhnish]

48 minutes ago, sawchuk said:

The issue is that currently mods allow you to do this. I think the risk of hampering unmodded gameplay is not worth the benefit of removing the ability for mods to do this. 

But that's the thing though. You can do this with mods AND without mods, but without mods, it requires pixel perfect placement.

In fact, in the clip I provided, if you look at the mounds above it, what you're gonna see is 4 giant crops in a row!

I did that by hand after many tries too cause some crop combinations required me do to them by hand instead of a mod.

48 minutes ago, sawchuk said:

We had this same issue with players being able to plant 16 crops in the same tile with mods. Then klei nerfed the tilling distance and it disproportionately affected people who play without mods. As a result of This, klei reverted the nerf and worked in a different mechanic instead. 

And as for bit about the 16 crops in a tile, Klei actually became aware of 4x4 cause a buddy of mine was doing 16 crops a tile without mods! xD

They even had their own video showing how they were doing it! (It says 15 mounds, but we were doing 16 on stream kekw).

It was also the fact that 4x4 where never their intention, but when they made the change so that only 3x3 should have been the max in a tile, it become extremely difficult to do what they intended, hence why they made the changes they did!

I understand the concern of where the use of mods are gonna negatively affecting those not using it, but this case is a little different from that I'd say! xD

[Zeklo]

I stand by my same stance regarding the initial unintended 4x4 behavior:
The solution isn't to make non-modded be able to do the same as modded, but to fix the unintended behavior that mods brings.

In this case, the goal shouldn't be allowing non-modded clients to achieve an easy family bonus via line, rather to put in place a hard restriction that prevents client-side mods from subverting the [presumably] intended behavior.

Naturally this hinges on the idea that this is, in fact, the intended behavior. Which I, a non-dev, can't confirm with certainty.

[lakhnish]

11 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

I stand by my same stance regarding the initial unintended 4x4 behavior:
The solution isn't to make non-modded be able to do the same as modded, but to fix the unintended behavior that mods brings.

In this case, the goal shouldn't be allowing non-modded clients to achieve an easy family bonus via line, rather to put in place a hard restriction that prevents client-side mods from subverting the [presumably] intended behavior.

Naturally this hinges on the idea that this is, in fact, the intended behavior. Which I, a non-dev, can't confirm with certainty.

1 hour ago, sawchuk said:

I understand your complaint. What I am trying to say is that I would rather see them not allow familial bonuses to affect the crops at the end of the row.

Ah, I understand it better now once zeklo said it. 

Thanks!

[Cuikui]

2 hours ago, Zeklo said:

to achieve an easy family bonus via line

I have an open question, why is the family bonus via the line considered simple? To me it seems to be as legitimate as making a square or something else.

[Bird Up]

If a line of 4 family crops is unintended (we are talking about placing 4 carrots say, in a straight line to get family bonus?), i would like it to be intended lol. it creates a lot of unique crop combination options that otherwise would not exist. removing the 4 family line would just make a lot less possibilities. when the crop nutrients were temporarily changed, a big issue i felt was there was a lot less combinations. removing several combos makes farming a bit more dull, so I love where it's at now.

It's also not really possible to know what's intended and what isn't. klei hasn't released a guide, demonstration, video presentation or anything about how these mechanics should work. they did however say 4x4s in one tile shouldn't work. I do wonder why tho, even if it's not intended, a better question is - was it too good? and it really wasn't cuz it ate up nutrients and water really fast. they could make 4x4s possible nonmodded if they wanted to.

lastly, why doesn't klei just make snapping tills a part of the game - like how walls are snapped onto a grid. it's way less frustrating when you're not digging up your own holes on accident, and trying to make the perfect shape. I saw someone dropping twigs to use as a tilling blocker just to till a perfect shape. It would put everyone on the same playfield, people who use mods/no mods, controller/keyboard and mouse...

[Dechou]

33 minutes ago, Bird Up said:

If a line of 4 family crops is unintended (we are talking about placing 4 carrots say, in a straight line to get family bonus?), i would like it to be intended lol. it creates a lot of unique crop combination options that otherwise would not exist. removing the 4 family line would just make a lot less possibilities. when the crop nutrients were temporarily changed, a big issue i felt was there was a lot less combinations. removing several combos makes farming a bit more dull, so I love where it's at now.

It's also not really possible to know what's intended and what isn't. klei hasn't released a guide, demonstration, video presentation or anything about how these mechanics should work. they did however say 4x4s in one tile shouldn't work. I do wonder why tho, even if it's not intended, a better question is - was it too good? and it really wasn't cuz it ate up nutrients and water really fast. they could make 4x4s possible nonmodded if they wanted to.

lastly, why doesn't klei just make snapping tills a part of the game - like how walls are snapped onto a grid. it's way less frustrating when you're not digging up your own holes on accident, and trying to make the perfect shape. I saw someone dropping twigs to use as a tilling blocker just to till a perfect shape. It would put everyone on the same playfield, people who use mods/no mods, controller/keyboard and mouse...

Scotthansen liked both comments talking about 4 aligned crops getting the familiy bonus probably not being intended, I'm afraid that means it's in fact unintended =/.

[lakhnish]

6 hours ago, Cuikui said:

I have an open question, why is the family bonus via the line considered simple? To me it seems to be as legitimate as making a square or something else.

I'll be honest, I had the same idea when making this post.

My thought process was, you need 4 of the same crops in order for it to be considered family. The first idea that came to mind was that 4 crops in a straight line would therefore count as a family. It was just intuitive to me and it not being intended wasn't even a consideration cause of how straightforward the thought process was and what play sessions were showing.

It was only till Zeklo's post spelled it out for me that I finally understood that maybe its not what they wanted, which even now I think is weird.

Reason being is that it'll be like what @Bird Up said, its removal would be like the change they did to the nutrients that made crop combos very uninteresting to do.

But now I only fear that they'll decrease the range, like what sawchuck was warning about.

[sawchuk519]

The idea is a crop has to be reasonably close to a bunch of its peers to get pollenated properly. When I look at 4 crops in a line, that end crop doesn't look close to a bunch of its peers, it looks close to 1 or 2.

Also, preventing straight rows from being able to do this easily makes people think more about patterns to plant crops in so they can prevent the ends of rows missing the family bonus. I like that as a game mechanic. I don't think the most obvious and simple idea should be the best.

[Bird Up]

straight lines of 4 are used in some of the most complicated designs i could show as well. simple or not, I don't see how it matters either way. removing 4 crop line would honestly make me have to think less about combos because there would just be less combos to work with.

31 minutes ago, sawchuk519 said:

When I look at 4 crops in a line, that end crop doesn't look close to a bunch of its peers, it looks close to 1 or 2.

if the end crop were only close enough to 1 for family bonus then that would kind of destroy all crop combinations and make the whole of farming really stale. every family bonus would have to be a rectangle shape. it just severely limits the options u have available. 

[Sapientis]

[fimmatek]

11 hours ago, Zeklo said:

In this case, the goal shouldn't be allowing non-modded clients to achieve an easy family bonus via line, rather to put in place a hard restriction that prevents client-side mods from subverting the [presumably] intended behavior.

I couldn't be as active lately as I would have preferred, so I almost certainly missed some news, but what does this part refer to? Did Klei implement something that makes it harder to achieve something (in this case planting a family of crops) if the client has no mods? I'm a bit confused.

[lakhnish]

6 minutes ago, fimmatek said:

I couldn't be as active lately as I would have preferred, so I almost certainly missed some news, but what does this part refer to? Did Klei implement something that makes it harder to achieve something (in this case planting a family of crops) if the client has no mods? I'm a bit confused.

No, nothing like that. 

I just noticed that if you planted 4 crops in a straight line by hand, sometimes you get the family bonus for giant crops, other times you don't depending on how pixel perfect you were placing your mounds (mods just made it easier to do, but there were ways to do it by hand).

So I just made the suggestion above cause I was under the impression that 4 crops in a line was supposed to give a family bonus but was a little hard to do at times.

Turns out 4 in a line might actually not be intentional (I never considered it till now) and idk what's gonna next (either no change to system or they might remove 4 crops in a straight line being family as being a valid thing).

[zarklord_klei]

I want to clarify, that while it's definitely easier to plant 4 in a row with mods(that triggers the family bonus), its certain not impossible to do it without mods, the family bonus has a range of 4, and planting 4 crops in a line as close as perfectly as possible would put the 4th crop 3.75 units away, basically, you have 0.25(which isn't huge, 1/16th of a tile) units of room to mess up, and still get the bonus in a line, which certainly isn't pixel perfect.

[sawchuk519]

4 hours ago, zarklord_klei said:

I want to clarify, that while it's definitely easier to plant 4 in a row with mods(that triggers the family bonus), its certain not impossible to do it without mods, the family bonus has a range of 4, and planting 4 crops in a line as close as perfectly as possible would put the 4th crop 3.75 units away, basically, you have 0.25(which isn't huge, 1/16th of a tile) units of room to mess up, and still get the bonus in a line, which certainly isn't pixel perfect.

That 0.25 error margin is split across 3 gaps, so you need to average an error of less than 1/48th of a tile. Combine this with the fact that going too small punishes the player. This is the same problem we had when the tilling radius was nerfed.

This is an unreasonable expectation of your players. If you want it to be reasonable to do as an unmodded player I think this needs to be changed. For example, go attempt this with a controller. You are pushing these numbers to console versions of the game.