What kind of yuppie decided to declare that our essential crop farming efforts are a 'leisure activity?' It's a livelihood. If you consider it a leisure activity, you better hope you never lose track of the way to the supermarket.
Gardening was much more joyful when it didn't take forever and you could just click-click-click and get it done.
I don't know why it needs to be slowed down... you need to wait ages for stuff to grow anyway, unles you use guano, in which case you've already had a pain in your arse from feeing the batterflies. Or at least give some speed up when you get better skills, it all seems to be tied to the animations and stuff and doesn't improve, I don't think
I like Glitch a lot. I do not want Glitch to be Farmville or really anything like Farmville. That said, I do like farming. There's something satisfying about harvesting a bunch of crops. Just like I am excited for the upcoming changes that will let me customize my house to the gills, I am pumped that I will be able to grow both herbs and crops if I want.
To those of you poo-pooing this nerf because it doesn't affect your game play: please keep in mind that there are a lot of us who like growing things, and it does affect our game play. It's obviously up to TS as to what kinds of behaviors they want to reinforce, but this "leisure" slowdown makes growing things actively un-fun to me, and that used to be something I really enjoyed (and hope to be able to enjoy again!)
The nerfing of gardening actions was what prompted me to start this thread, but my main original point was cultural. Why is gardening in Glitch called a 'leisure activity'? I found that an offensive comment even before the nerfing. What exactly isn't a 'leisure activity'? The comment strikes me as the kind of comment an urban rat would make. One that us rural rabbits might consider offensive.
I consider sitting at the computer to be a leisure activity. Real work involves making real things. That was the original point. The fact that the 'leisure activity' comment is more in-our-faces now brought it more to the forefront for me.
I used to LOVE harvesting and planting seeds because of how fast I could click. And I dreaded the watering and hoeing part. I guess now I dread the whole thing. If every step could be fast (like mining is), gardening would be the best part of the game.
I just started planting my plots again after a little over a week of negligence because it didn't feel worth it (because it isn't with the current vegetable prices). Now this is happening...might go back to not planting again till they revert this change.
this change is obscene and needs to be reversed. It would be different if the activity was "fun" - do you think I want to be stuck in my house for longer than necessary? I want to be out on the streets having fun with other people...
The change doesn't make for any improvements for the player. It just causes an annoyance. That annoying sound, no idea of when it has become safe to do the next activity on the plot.
For me the annoying thing is that I had my rhythm for gardening. Now that rhythm is broken and I don't like the new slower tempo. I will probably develop a new rhythm and it will stop being annoying. I had noticed issues with lag from the server before while gardening. I understand if they needed to fix it.
I have a 12 plot garden, and it already takes a while to harvest and plant new seeds, and this just makes it take longer. I can't imagine how bad this change is for someone with a 28 plot garden.
The change prevents a bug, so its good in that way, but the best for the players would be to resolve the underlying from the UI side. Either queue the actions up and feed them to the server on a timer or give us clear animations that let us know when the plot is unlocked.
I just wanted to chime in here and say.. I'm not a fan of the waiting period. If the devs decide it to be necessary I'll live on without complaining... however.. I don't *like* it.
But thanks for all you guys do anyway.. you're all awesome.
:( I hate doing my crops now every time i do a seed i get a qua,,,,,, this took all the fun out of doing my crops Its annoying planting like a newbie again ugh,,,,,,
Someone shared a trick with me to solve the problem of not knowing how long it takes. When you harvest a crop, you can move to the next one and hold the enter key down. It will basically keep trying to send the command until it works, at which point it will harvest and you can move on to the next one.
It doesn't work well if you move from plot to plot planting because it doesn't give you the "leisure activity" message until you choose your seed. So what I did was clear, plant and water one patch at a time (I used to clear all, plant all, and then water all). I do this to avoid two planting actions in a row. So plant one plot, then hold enter until it waters, or, if you don't need to water, move to the next plot and hold enter until it clears.
This method doesn't reduce the delay, but it takes the guesswork out of it, which greatly reduced the frustration for me.
Oops, someone hit the rewind button. I think...I think everything went back to the way it was before. (Possibly might change again soon, but if so it'll be more tolerable.)
I appreciate that it has gone back to the quicker way of gardening but if TS wants to slow us down I am okay with that too. It isn't a huge problem if it takes a few more seconds to tend each plot considering that it only adds a minute or two to my total gardening time.
However, that being said I feel that it would be much more bearable if we have an indicator on how long it should take between clicks. The way it was bothered me because I had to guess about how long it would take to harvest. I think that actually receiving the crops/herbs was supposed to be that indicator, but sometimes that animation was way behind when I was actually able to move on to the next activity. So it didn't work out.
Fix that and you can slow me down without complaint.
But, I do not see a reason to need such a "fix" in the first place. The amount of crops you get per day is already limited by the time it takes to grow crops. There is no benefit to the gameplay or balance by having a delay between being able to plant. It just makes it more tedious. I have always thought the bug was the other way around, that tending and watering should be as quick as planting (that is without delay).
Edit: Though public crop/herb plots should follow different rules than private ones. Forcing people to slow down gardening in a public setting might make for more opportunities for community interaction. Gardening delays in private settings would provide no benefits to interaction (I assume most gardening in their house do so alone.)
They should still strive to make the process as quick as their server and code will allow.
If it is a server overload problem and not just about gameplay balance, then perhaps a way to enable batch planting/watering/harvesting with a timer over our heads (maybe even make some skills for it like suggested earlier) would be beneficial to everyone.
Ohhh I was gonna add my two currants worth in saying I didn't like the delay in the gardening..then continued to read.. so now I wont.. I will just run off and do my gardening .. :D ty xx
Hooray! Two victories for the people's voices being heard in two days! Faster gardening and SOPA dying. :)
I wonder if there was a way to implement gardening more similar to cooking? Click on the whole plot and watch the little hoe animation while the bar fills up. Don't have to get as much carpal tunnel...
As was said before, gardening is what I do before I can go out and play and hang with other Glitchen. It is the grinding aspect of the game and as such is already a big wearing..
I thought there was already a delay between tending plots? I saw the 'leisurely activity' message when I accidentally double-clicked earlier, but thought it was funny.
Thank you Blanky for looking out for us all and reversing this very annoying slow down with gardening. Try telling a farmer that gardening is a leisure activity! Hope we get a sprinkler system in the future to water for us!
Knowing the kind of company TS is, I'm sure the changes were because of performance issues and not due to any wish of slowing down those speedy gardeners.
But i am glad to see it reverted back to speedy mode.
I don't see it as it being that big of a deal. Yes, obviously I like it better when it is faster, but it is just gardening.
There are worse things to be annoyed with than if gardening is 2 seconds faster or slower.
@Cocomoes For those of us who garden a lot, we developed a rhythm/timing that was working -- and having that change abruptly (and getting an error message and a quack) was a detriment to gameplay, especially since it slowed the whole process down.
Totally understood WHY the fix needed to be made (I used to only get the message during laggy times), but I appreciate that you guys are also being responsive to player feedback about this.
FWIW, while I've never MINDED clicking on each plot multiple times, I'd certainly LOVE a skill tree that would allow me to farm (i.e., click once), even if the wait time were the same -- I have a disability that affects my hands, and the fewer repetitive clicks I'm forced to make, the more I can do the fun running/jumping/interacting stuff in Glitch, because I don't wear out/get sore as quickly. I'd be delighted if I could learn farming skills just like I've learned gardening ones!
Now if only the action bars could be changed back... The time I spend playing Glitch has dwindled to a few minutes a day now that it mostly involves watching giant bubble letters color fill. I can't explain why, but to me that's a huge visual annoyance. At this point I only log on to empty my pig feeders, waiting and hoping that "feature" is only temporary.
@Aviatrix: You don't like that change? o:
I guess tastes differ since I love how it looks now and even my fiance {who is very critical} said that it looks very nice~
according to stoot*, that action bar was one of kt's contributions to the game. Not likely to be going away any time soon. It really adds to the twee style of the game, which has been one of its charms since alpha.
*katlazam: what is the first thing that we will see from kt? do his ideas feature heavily in the redesign?A: He's the one behind the new progress bars and several other UI changes he proposed have either been done or are in progress. Some of his quests are in development now and more will come in the future.
Some people like it, some don't. Some find it really super annoying - maybe Innie and Casombra have changed their minds, but I still find it unpleasant. It's not a big deal. Everybody gets the love it or leave it choice, right? So I've mostly left it. Better for my overall productivity, lol. Still enjoy coming in and emptying the pig feeders. Sure am stashing up a huge pile of currants by not really playing, and maybe the design will continue to evolve back/forward/around to something I like again as the world turns.