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.
That message is nothing new. It happens (as far as I can see) when you harvest or plant faster than your efforts get processed by the game server. If, as some indicate, the message is more common now, it's probably due to lots-of-lag on TS's side of things; not to TS implementing a forced harvest/plant slowdown (it could obviously be that as well, but until TS says "we changed gameplay in this fashion", it isn't that.)
That puts a different spin on things, and if it is only temporary to help things during beta, well and good, but I don't think seeing gardening as a leisure activity as a permanent solution to be a good thing.
This isn't so much of a change as fixing a bug that was temporarily allowing you to click on too many things at once and generating not-quite-right messages from the game client. So we put back in the teeny-tiny delay in between gardening actions so things work more smoothly: if you click too quick, you'll get the "leisure activity" warning.
They've changed it- previously, it only affected clearing and watering. Now, it also affects harvesting and planting. My gardening time has increased a lot, which is bad, because I usually try to do it quickly in the mornings before I leave.
@Windborn: This delay was/is different from lag. Lag used to be I'd try to plant in the same plot twice, not having to wait so long to do everything by design.
Instead of a delay continuing after the action animation, why not lengthen the animation to include it? That way it is visible, so to speak. If the animation for an action ends, I assume I can take a new action immediately. Instead, the animation ends, and I have a short but indeterminate period where I am not allowed a further action. This just makes farming feel weird.
Kal is right. My herb garden was WAY slower today. It's been NERF'd. Glitch has definitely increased the time it takes to garden and you can no longer just click through quickly. Why was this done? With an achievement of 5K in herbs and other high achievements in regular gardening, it makes no sense to slow down the already slow process of gardening. Maybe the auction has prices were too low on herbs and veggies? Baffled by this one as it doesn't seem to make the game any more enjoyable or interesting for anyone.
Yes, leisurely activities should not yield such frustrating results. Longer animations or back to the way it was (or a more elegant solution yet to be mentioned).
ETA: Honestly, has anyone at TS tried to harvest/tend/plant a 28 plot garden? If so, did you enjoy it? The number of times that I hear "whaaa whaaa" from a plot, and being told to "slow down" is pretty lame. I'd prefer some positive reinforcement (longer animation at least), than a constantly negative result.
I don't get the fuss, to be quite honest with you. It's a couple seconds more instead of just powering through it. And on trying to reach 5003 herbs... considering the growing time, you're not losing that much time by waiting.
In my opinion, the internet has made people much more impatient. We want things, and we want them two minutes ago. It's not as though there's a one minute timer before you can plant your next crop...
I'm more than bored with gardening. Feeding batterfl.ies is even more tedious. Funny thing is I like mining and don't get bored. And my husband is doing something with my computer that is messing up what I"m trying to type. Grr.
I"M SENDING IN A BUG REPORT ON THE WORLD. FOREVER.
I read this thread before I logged in, and at the time I had no idea how much this would annoy me. You really have to experience it for yourself. I think the problem I have with it is that there is no animation to show me how long I should wait in between interactions, so I have to guess how long I should pause (or learn from my mistakes and start counting Mississippi's). If I guess wrong on how long to wait, I am greeted with the very annoying "uh" sound that alerts me that I'm doing something wrong, and a rude message about how I have no understanding of the philosophy behind the activity that is gardening. I have no problem waiting the extra couple seconds, as long as the game doesn't yell at me for apparently being too quick. It makes me sad :(.
In taking a closer look at it, what they appear to have done is eliminate some type-ahead. Used to be, I could harvest and hoe by three clicks -- one to get to the plot, one to harvest, and one to clear. I could do them all rapidly. The events happened smoothly at their own pace after that, and I was fine with that. Now, though, I have to time the clicks as Shepherdmoon said -- no type-ahead. It's a UI design goof. Please fix !!!!
Adding challenge hardly makes it more leisurely ... :(
I'm with Mr. Volare and Shep and Joe.... just give me an animation that tells me when it's ready. I don't mind the wait, but I hate the "waaa" sound. I'm not a good guesser, so if we have a picture just like with water and hoe, that would be helpful for me.
I'm curious how this was a "bug" -- Blanky, can you provide an example of how the previous gardening behavior affected anything at all? Did it make browsers crash? Did it prevent respawns of any kind? Did it make things unclickable?
I never ran into any "not-quite-right messages with the game client." It just feels like this got nerf'd for no reason at all.
Hate this time delay. It makes an annoyingly repetitive activity worse.
If this time delay stays, then it's time to automate the gardening. Or let us work the plots as a whole, or in rows/columns, instead of individually (in our houses at least).
I will throw my hat in the ring for the annoyed. Its not so much the delay, its the annoying sound. Its like when I try to rearrange my bags while mining.
so this annoyed me so much that i just held down the enter key on a plot and just discovered that if you just hold down the enter key the game will accept and process all commands up to seed selection... so no more annoying messages; just hold down enter and enjoy the rapid drum sounds between actions!
YUCK. Yuck yuck yuck. Please change it so it's FASTER not make it even MORE slow than it already is. On my laggyass connection on my slowass computer slowing it down even further makes me not even want to log on tonight. And I could really use some mass gardening time with the way I'm feeling (CRAPPY).
Blanky, I'm really glad this is being looked at because I for one am extremely annoyed with this. Gardening was tedious enough without slowing it down even more. When I'm doing repetitive activities I like to be able to rapid click and get them done quickly so I can get back to doing the things I enjoy. Things I do not enjoy? Staring at the hoe and watering can animations over and over and over.
It should be harvest, clear, plant. Bam, done. On to more fun glitchy things.
Please don't take something I considered a chore already and make it something that makes me make stabbing motions at the screen in my mind.
Yet another person who sees no point in forced delays. Adding forced delays just makes things take longer; it doesn't make them more interesting. Take the quack back out!
Ultimately Gardening, with or without delay, is a horrid click (or enter) fest and likely speeding me on my way to arthritis and carpal tunnel, if only because I'm determined to do it anyway.
Best case solution: new set of skills that enable installation of a sprinkler over each set of plots, an "international harvester" type thingy for harvesting whole "fields" at one, and a plow for clearing "fields" all at once. Maybe something to make planting simpler as well, but with the other three covered, the lifespan of my wrists will definitely be extended.
Perhaps, riffing off Rah, these skills could be called Farming and require Gardening IV or V.
Count me as a member of "the annoyed" - If the ability to harvest and plant quicky was a bug, it would have been nice to be told. I always assumed watering/hoeing was a time consuming activity and harvesting/planting was to be done quickly. Why is instant harvest/plant a problem? Does it cause lag or an issue on the game server end?
Okay, so I'm not one of the people who were "already" annoyed with gardening. I thought it was great the way it was. But this seriously annoys me. Gardening isn't a leisure activity. GoC is. Gardening is something I need to do to get awesome stew ingredients. And it now takes me ten times longer. Anyway, I'm not angry or anything; I'm just stating that this is a change I'll have to adapt to. If it doesn't revert back to the old behavior, I'll simply cease gardening (and look even more so forward to new housing so I don't have to have garden plots I don't even use).
Agree, agree. agree.
...and that very annoying sound (i think Joe Blow said it best..."whaaa whaaa") has always been annoying and for some reason it really gets under my skin. I always curse at it too lol (which i just realized i do outloud and how that looks lol)
I agree this feels terribly broken. Unless you'll allow us to employ cheap illegal immigrant labor glitches to tend our gardens for us, I'd love it back the way it was.
I see so many messages here with people in an outrage and I never find that I feel the same way at all.
For the first time, however, I find myself in complete agreement. The previous "gardening is a leisure activity" system was mildly annoying but once I got into the rhythm of it I was fine. This, though, is stunningly slow and frustrating.
Unless gardening becomes way more lucrative, I can't see myself doing it anymore unless this is backed out. Don't get me wrong, I don't currently garden to make currants, I just do it for the pleasure of the cycle and the ability to use the proceeds to make food. Now, though, I'd only do it if it was like mining, where the time put in has a significant reward (and I don't even mine anymore as I find harvesting much more interesting).
Anyway, to my fellow whiners, I'm totally with you here!
I don't love the extra forced "leisure" at all. I had just reconciled myself to gardening being as slow as it was before & I had worked out a sort of rhythm to maximize time/click efficiency and minimize my aggravation. And now ...
Well, I love you Blanky! Thank you for hearing us and looking into this. Please save us!
Ha! You've all gone off on a tangent, but I have to admit, I was mildly annoyed by the wording too when I first saw it aeons ago. I do it as part of my job and after a day of gardening, I'm bruised, scratched, filthy and almost too tired to put the kettle on. I do it to make gardens pretty, rather than to produce food, but same difference.
So yes, I sympathise with kalstept, but I know that for most people it is a leisure activity, so I wouldn't go so far as posting in a forum about it...... oops.
*puts wellies on while looking out at driving rain* *sighs*
+1 for the automated idea. I'd love some kind of tractor that used fuel cells or something to run on, that would harvest, how, water and plant each of my plots. This new slowdown is merely annoying. I can see how it would help with demand on the servers, but having to perform the actions on 28 plots consecutively isn't helping the matter either. If we could automate the process or perform the same action on multiple plots simultaneously, that would really cut down on the amount of contact needed with the server.
All it makes me do is hit the enter key faster, spamming the server more. Not in some "that will teach them" type of response, but just because the command will go through eventually. Go ahead and tell me it's supposed to be leisurely all you want, doesn't mean I have to listen!
That said, I see you've already posted a "we'll look into it" response, so thank you for taking the time. As always, TS's involvement with the community is a shining point of the game.
Only difference I've seen is with harvesting and planting seeds, there is now a brief delay when hitting the entry key, whereas before there was none. Now all gardening functions work like watering always has.
Am I as productive as before, yes. Am I concerned about the delay, no? Is this a big deal, no.
Is Glitch as much fun today as it was previously - yep!
Too much nity-picky makes for lost productivity and joy.