Topic

Of Piggy Feed, Plops and Seeds

This post is to illustrate how the current seed gathering system works, how it should be changed, and more importantly, why. 

Currently you can either harvest your own seeds from crops, or visit the Gardening Goods vendor to purchase them with hard earned currants. I'm not sure it has been specifically stated that the seed vendor will eventually be removed, but I don't think it's a bad idea, and would fit the focus of the game and your development.

To harvest your own seeds, you must feed 3 of the same crop to a piggy, and they will drop a piggy plop containing 1 seed of that type. Unfortunately, players are forced to use(abuse?) tricks in the mechanics to do this conveniently, i.e. floating pig. Otherwise you end up with a mess of piggy plops all over the ground(gross >.>...). You then pick them up and examine them one at a time in your inventory. It's rather tedious, and makes it less than viable as your main source of seeds.

Now I won't get into whether the seed or the 3 crops are more valuable, but I do think that each crop should be weighted differently. Considering you receive more potatoes than onions when harvesting at the same skill level, it should require more potatoes than onions to receive a seed back.

To iterate on the mechanic, and hopefully make it more worthwile/enjoyable would be to scale it with skill levels. Make it rely on animal kinship and gardening. The former would decrease the amount of food required to get a seed, while the latter increases the seeds gained(maybe 3 at max gardening?).

The issue I see now, and the same can be said for guano harvesting, is that it is a very tedious task, with little way to improve your efforts. If seeds were ever removed from vendors with the current system in place, I believe the prices would increase more than desired since players would loathe to harvest for themselves.

Plus my piggies would love the extra attention!

Posted 11 months ago by Xanax Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Very clear cut and useful idea. Vendors will go anyways
    Posted 11 months ago by Rook Subscriber! | Permalink