I don't see why you should lose mood for clearing a tree. It's completely different from poisoning a tree. If you're getting frustrated that you can't find a wood tree to harvest, do like I (and many others did) and plant one in your house, or ask someone if you can harvest theirs.
I can find plenty of wood trees. Fact of the matter is you're killing a tree by clearing it. You're overharvesting it to the point that it won't grow back. The mood loss for poisoning a tree is intended to simulate guilt for killing a tree. The assumption's already there that we'd be guilty for killing a tree, but... Wood trees are okay? They are less of a tree? Why the double standard? You have to consider mood loss for killing any tree in the game, except wood trees. I think that should change. It's not an insurmountable moodloss, either. I don't even have a problem with people killing any kind of trees they want. It's just silly that people feel guilty for using poison and not a hatchet.
"Clearing" and "killing" are two very different actions. Poisoning is clearly killing, but clearing is not. You have to "clear" a dead tree to plant a new one. By your definition, that would incur a mood loss as well. Or are you saying the only clearing action that should incur a mood loss is that of clearing a wood tree, specifically. Isn't that a double standard? I would be more comfortable with eliminating the option of clearing a healthy wood tree before I'd be comfortable with a mood loss for doing so.
I do think you're being pedantic about semantics. Why would anyone feel guilty about clearing a dead tree? A wood tree that can be cleared is not a dead tree. More often than not, they've just been petted, watered, and harvested too recently for you to be able to pet and water them so they bear planks. My suggestion is on the assumption the devs intended for wood trees to be able to be cleared without poison; my judgment of their intentions. Wood trees /are/ different in mechanics than the others. You can clear live ones, for example.
I think what it comes down to is you're more comfortable with eliminating the option to clear healthy wood trees, I'm more comfortable with a mood loss for clearing them. The latter makes more sense to me as far as keeping wood trees as quirky as they are now.
Not being pedantic. It really is two different things. You're just set in your way of viewing the issue and not open to the other side of the argument. You want to punish those that harvest/clear a wood tree. I'm saying, that's unnecessary and the more logical thing to do is to eliminate the option to harvest & clear a healthy wood tree. Make it so all trees must be poisoned (killed) before they're able to be cleared. Poison is a clear and blatant "evil" deed. I don't think the same can be said about harvest & clear. Are loggers evil people for chopping down trees? No, the logs serve a purpose. They're not just indiscriminately killing off trees for the sake of killing. There's the rub.
This is an interesting discussion. I thought I'd side with Cross' idea of penalizing the killer of the wood tree by decreasing mood, since Joojoo's idea (or so I thought) of making chopping the stump of the wood tree down impossible would make it too easy to block other trees from flourishing in the long run.
But with the clarification of "Make it so all trees must be poisoned (killed) before they're able to be cleared," I think I back Joojoo's idea. This would probably enable wood trees to stay around even longer :) Make it so a wood tree can be only harvested down to the stump, at which point it will have to be poisoned to clear the dirt patch. (And the tree is, of course, poisonable at any time after the sprout-stage, like other trees.)
Are loggers evil people for chopping down trees? Sure, the logs serve a purpose. Though some would certainly argue that when loggers indiscriminately chop down trees in an area to the point that the forest isn't able to properly recover, we have this thing called deforestation. Nobody cares if people chop down some trees, but when you're chopping down so many so fast that the trees can't grow back, some people consider it an 'evil' deed.
I think this is clearly simulated in the wood tree itself. Keep it healthy and it will grow to its full health and give you many more planks than it will if you harvest it every chance you get. Harvest it and clear it for short term gain rather than thinking of the future and it won't grow back at all, giving you zero long term gain.
I think this theme is lost if you eliminate the harvest and clear option. I like that option. The question in my mind, is should a glitch feel guilty for completely eliminating a resource such as a wood tree from existence to the point where it won't grow back without planting another seed. The same thing poison does. Even rocks 'grow' back in this world, so certainly we can't draw direct comparisons to real life.
I think the mood loss would help for people to consider the significance of their actions and maybe the streets won't be littered with notes and garden gnomes begging people not to harvest and clear their precious wood trees, because it will foster an understanding of the act. If you still want to clear them, by all means, do so. Your solution is a means to the same end, yes.
It's not that I'm not open to your argument at all. And yes, the punishment may be unnecessary; I'm not trying to argue or judge the necessity of it one way or another. I think your proposed solution is just as logical as mine, however I think that my solution retains the special differences of the wood tree as well as the underlying theme, whereas yours does not.
This is simply an /idea/, regardless of my use of the word 'should' to represent that idea, I'm not trying to say that ultimately, this is the way things /should/ be. I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, I am just putting this up for discussion. I'm always open to the other side of arguments, I just don't think mine is without merit.
And just to add, wood trees give a pretty large value in their harvest even at the lowest levels comparable to other trees. I would think from a game design standpoint that these trees are meant to be a bit more scarce than the others and the mechanic to enforce that is to make them easily eliminated through harvest and clear. The wood tree was added after the other trees and clearly the developers decided to do 'something different' with these trees. I certainly don't mean to speak for the developers, but this would make me assume that making them act like all the other trees in that they can't be simply cleared without botany and poison isn't a viable suggestion for implementation.
Cross, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying your suggestion is without merit. I was just providing a counter-argument. But you bring up a new twist in the argument with your last post: "The question in my mind, is should a glitch feel guilty for completely eliminating a resource such as a wood tree from existence to the point where it won't grow back without planting another seed." So what would happen if you harvest the planks and clear the plot but then re-seed it? Would the argument for a mood loss still apply? Or does one action cancel the other?
@Joojoo: It would make sense to me that if you're replanting a wood tree in its place that would negate the mood loss and actually be economical in the world of Glitch. Maybe a 'Harvest, Clear and Replant' option if you have a hoe and a wood tree seed with you. But then the argument could be raised that if you want to kill off other trees and replant them with something else, you still sustain a mood loss. Should the loss be negated only if you replant with a wood tree instead of another type? Maybe the loss should be recovered if you kill off a fruit tree and decide you have remorse and replant another fruit tree? Should people be sustaining a mood loss for killing trees at all if their intention was simply to plant another tree of another type? These are questions I'm not entirely prepared to answer other than by saying they're already answered with the way things work as is. Are they within the scope of this idea? Maybe. I'll yield to someone with more insight on those points.