Suggestions

Last night in Thrage's economy thread, several people pointed out how FR is heavily weighted towards who spend many hours a day on it, as opposed to casual players. I tried to think of several ideas that could be implemented that would give casual players more opportunities to obtain treasure and items, without being easy to grind. While most of my ideas were admittedly boring, I felt one merited further thought- gardening. Full of creative energy, I stayed up for several hours coming up with and refining ideas for how it would function. I feel like I came up with a system that rewards players healthily for putting effort into their garden without being too time consuming to tend to, but as I came up with these ideas in the space of a night and have never been a dev on any site, much less with a gardening system, I'd love input on how it could be made better*. [center][img]http://i1367.photobucket.com/albums/r788/Mudkipasaurus/FR_gardensystem_1small_zps46f1e849.png[/img][/center] Each user starts with six plots. They can buy more, but plots get progressively more expensive the more you get- (10000+100n)(n/2), where n is the current number of plots minus five. This means to get their first new plot, it will cost 5050 TR - easily affordable in an hour of fairgrounds- but their 50th new plot (56th total) will cost 375k TR, and their 100th, 1mil, effectively limiting how many any one person will have through prohibitive costs with limited returns, rather than a hard cap. Seeds can be found while forage or scavenging, dropped as loot from the coliseum, bought from the marketplace, or obtain through other, more limited means such as holiday events. Each method draws from a different set, so there are some seeds you can only get from one method, and some seeds you can get from a couple but not all, etc. To keep the cost of art down, there could be just base image of a seed packet, which has a square on the front where the image of the item they grow is placed. Initially, plants grown in gardening can be plants already obtainable through foraging, so a fairly full selection can be offered right off the bat; then as time goes on, gardening-specific plants can be introduced. Depending on how common a plant is, seeds are assigned a base harvest value that determines how many items it will produce once fully grown in harvested, but the actual number of items produced is influenced heavily by a number of multipliers linked to how well a user takes care of a plant. [i][b]*While, obviously, final function would be up to the devs, it seems prudent to me to lay out a full idea that could be easily worked into code, rather than just "I want thing."[/b][/i] (Please note that I tried to post this once before and it did not seem to go through, likely because of length, though the error message I got was blank. I have divided my original post into three parts, the next two of which I will post in this thread under the first post. If my original attempt shows up in the forum under a delay, I apologize for double-posting.)

Each plot looks like so: [center][img]http://i1367.photobucket.com/albums/r788/Mudkipasaurus/FR_gardensystem_2small_zps7dce1442.png[/img][/center] [b]1.[/b] Current Plant – When the plot is planted, this displays what with. When it is not, this is a “plant seeds” button. Clicking on it brings up a list of available seeds. When one is selected, a message will display showing the plot's current growing conditions (4) for those seeds as and asking the user to confirm they'd like to plant them. [b]2.[/b] Growth State – A visual measure of how close the plant is to harvest. When unplanted, shows an empty plot. When planted, goes through stages such as seeded, sprouting, etc. When the plot is empty, users may click this area to dig up the plot. This destroys the plot, removing it from their total available number, gives small number of items normally available from digging in user's flight region. This is not an option on the initial six plots, and users must confirm twice that they do indeed wish to destroy the plot. [b]3.[/b] Care State – three icons indicating weeding, watering, and pests. When they are in optimal condition, they display a green ring around them. When they need attention, that becomes a yellow ring; the yellow ring acts as a count down timer, with segments slowly going black as the time to care for the plot without penalty goes by. When the yellow is completely gone, the ring turns red, signifying that a penalty has been applied to the final harvest. [b]3a)[/b] Plots should be weeded daily. Weeding may produce a small amount of plant food items and organic materials. Failure to weed applies a stacking multiplier to your harvest of (0.75) per a day without weeding. [b]3b)[/b] Some plants, such as cacti, require watering only once per a growing cycle. Others, such as lilies, require watering as much as once every twelve hours. Failure to water applies a stacking multiplier to your harvest of (0.75). [b]3c)[/b] Once a week, plants should be cleared of pests. This will produce a small number of meat and insect food items. Plants with less than a week in their growing cycle do not need to be cleared of pests, but may be anyway once. Failure to clear plants of pest s applies a stacking multiplier to your harvest of (0.75) per a week without clearing. [b]4.[/b] Growing Conditions – These are fixed once seeds are planted, but may be changed for and empty plot. They consist of climate, growth season, and fertilizer. [b]4a)[/b] Climate - A user's flight affects how well different plants can grow, on a five point scale, where h is the base harvest of a particular plant per a plot: [LIST] [*]ideal (2*h) [*]good (1.5*h) [*]okay (1*h) [*]poor (0.8*h) [*]horrid (0.5*h) [/LIST] Users may purchase enchanted glass domes to place on plots to change the environment for that plot. Each dome affects only one plot, and removing it without breaking it destroys the plot without any “dig up” bonus items. A user may dig up a plot with a dome on it, but that will destroy the dome in the process, and the dome is generally more valuable than the items found. [b]4b)[/b] Season - each plant has a season. Whether a plant is in season or not is determined by when the seeds are planted, not when it is harvested. There are three levels of potential growth: [LIST] [*]1. Prime season (h*1.5) [*]2. In season (h*1) [*]3. Out of Season (h*0.8) [/LIST] [b]4c)[/b] Fertilizer - “Organic fertilizer” is dropped by their dragons whenever they are fed (and eat). A well fed dragon drops more fertilizer than a hungry dragon. Dragons drop a different type of fertilizer based on what they eat (plant-based, meat-based, seafood-based, or insect-based). Additionally, other fertilizers can be bought from the market place or obtained by digging. Different fertilizers affect different plants with varying degrees of effectiveness, but for all but the most common plants, dragon-produced fertilizer never exceeds “okay” in effectiveness: [LIST] [*]ideal (2*h) [*]good (1.8*h) [*]okay (1.6*h) [*] poor (1.4*h) [*]horrid (1.2*h) [/LIST] [b]5.[/b] A numerical measure of how close the plant is to harvest. Each plant has a set number of days in a growing cycle, as little as three for very common plants and as much as 90 for rare ones. Once a plant is fully grown, the user has a three day period in which to harvest it. If they do not, they begin loosing their crop at a percentage equal to days past out of standard growing cycle- a crop with a short growing cycle goes completely to rot quickly, while a crop with a long growing cycle takes much longer. All these combine with the plants base harvest to determine how much the user gets when they harvest their plot. In addition, seeds drop at a rate of as much as (total harvest)/20 for very common plants and as little as (total harvest)/100 for very rare plants. If this is not an even number, the decimal is the percent chance of an additional item. At time of harvest, there is a one percent chance of either a boon (doubled harvest) or famine (halved harvest). These are applied after seed drops are calculated, and thus do not affect them.

For example, say a user plants Highland Dryleaf, and it has a base harvest of 50, a three day growing cycle, and must be watered once in its cycle. Their flight is earth, which is ideal for the plant, and it is out of season. They fertilize it with seafood-based organic fertilizer, which is horrid for it. They water it, weed it, and clear it of pests one day, obtaining two Cliff Lions and a land snail. They fail to weed it for two days, then harvest it on time. [center](50)(2)(1.2)(0.8)(0.75)(0.75) (Base Harvest)(Climate)(Fertilizer)(Season)(First Weeding Penalty)(Second Weeding Penalty) Total Harvest: 54 Highland Dryleaf, at least 2 seeds with a 70% chance of 3[/center] Another user plants a rare plant called Tigerapple whose seeds are sold in the marketplace. When a dragon eats a tigerapple, they have a 20% of gaining the tiger primary gene and/or the stripes secondary gene. Because of this, tigerapple has a base harvest of five and a seed drop rate of (total harvest)/100. It must be watered daily and has a 14 day growing cycle. The user does not live in nature flight, tigerapple's ideal climate, but they buy a nature enchanted dome and place it on the plot before they plant the seeds. They buy tigerapple's ideal fertilizer from the marketplace and use it, weed and water the plot daily, and clear out pests once a week. During this time, they obtain from their care of the plant 17 clover, eight cliff lions, and three thistles, as well as two garden snails and a sun flecked field mouse. They plant it in prime season and harvest it on time. [center](5)(2)(2)(1.5) (Base Harvest)(Climate)(Fertilizer)(Season) Total Harvest: 30 Tigerapples, with a 30% of a single seed dropping[/center] Other Ideas: [quote name="darkwater" date="2013-06-28 15:32:33" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=1&id=193460#196489"]Love the idea you have my support Possible add on to your idea: maybe for gems you could have an option to rent out some species that eats weeds? You would not have to worry about that aspect when your on a trip or something and the only penalty at that point is the fact that you don't get any access food from the weeds ^^;.. of course you would still have to water unless once again you could get some sort of "sprinkling system" that does it automatically? Only suggest this because people camp and things occur in RL, and it would be a shame of all that hard work going to waste. On another whole note for some reason this kind of makes me want to bring up farming because then you could farm certain bugs that could help the soil and fertilize it. There is obviously so much that introducing gardening could do and so many different doors that it could open bringing this whole site to a whole new level of awesomeness.[/quote] And expanded upon, to prevent abuse of auto-water/weed systems: [quote name="darkwater" date="2013-06-28 19:55:09" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=1&id=193460#198952"]@Mudkpasaurus for your worries heres some ideas to quell it: what the rented or bought creatures would do: +eat your weeds helping the life of your garden -eat some of the plants that are meant for harvest every time its used -you don't get to feed the weeds to your dragons these would be somethings to create a minus for trying to rely on the creatures to do your work. Sure your still going to get something out of it, but not without having to lose something out of it. for the sprinkler idea: +would water your crops automatically -over using it could be bad, maybe it could drown some of the plants or burn them? my aunt told me that if a plant is watered when the sun is out then it can get burned which is bad for the plant.. -maybe have a chance for it to break down >:D as for the worms if those are used there really is no down side maybe they could help the plants stay healthy for a bit longer since they help oxygen move through the dirt/provide nutrients? there could probably be more negatives, but you also don't want to over do it because there has to be some sort of profit as well ;)[/quote] From Lector, ideas on obtaining seeds, and possibly plant breeding: [quote name="Lector" date="2013-06-28 20:15:19" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=1&id=193460#199190"]Oh, I like this! Maybe there could be a mechanism for saving seed? In RL, to save seed, you have to sacrifice the chance to eat the produce in a lot of cases, because optimal edible condition is earlier in the growth cycle than seed production. You could have the option to let a plot 'go to seed' to harvest and save seed. And maybe there could be a plant breeding element as well? The site already has a breeding mechanism, so applying it to plants wouldn't be quite as much work as creating one from scratch. /garden nerd[/quote] Intentionally sacrificing crop for pests: [quote name="Lightning" date="2013-06-30 10:09:05" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=2&id=193460#216848"]I like this idea! I'd suggest that there might be an option for increasing pests, so that lairs with mostly insect or meat eaters would "garden" for those and harvest them instead of plants. The plant crop might be ruined by rabbits or aphids, but the fae and mirrors would be happy![/quote] Different pets for different plants: [quote name="DragonSage" date="2013-07-03 09:33:23" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=2&id=193460#272161"]To grow seafood using this you could grow water based plants like the Jungle Lily [img]http://flightrising.com/images/cms/food/167.png[/img] and the pests could be insects and seafood (rather than meat) [/quote] [quote name="roseangel2" date="2013-07-04 12:45:50" url="main.php?p=mb&board=sug&page=2&id=193460#292742"]Maybe another idea for how to incorporate seafood would be that you could have an option to 'flood' your garden and grow water based plants and have the pests be seafood(And maybe rarely like an otter or some sort of water bug) for the dragons that eat these? It would also allow for a lot of water based plants/animals/insects to come about. Love the idea! [/quote]

@Mudkipasaurus
As a huge fan of gardening games I absolutely love this idea. I don't really have anything to contribute but it looks like you've worked this all out amazingly well.

So much support! I love this! :D This is an amazing idea. I'm sorry I don't have anything extra to add, but you've worked out such a cool system :)

I love the idea that you gain a little bit of common plant/meat/insect material from tending the garden as well, it's a nice way to boost your food stores a little bit :D (I can already see mine becoming a problem with my moderate clan, when there are more dragons I'm not sure how I'll keep them all fed! Lol.)

Edit: Maybe instead of gaining items from tending the garden it could just put a small amount of food directly into your stores? This could help prevent certain items flooding the market too much?

First, I wanted to say kudos on the extremely well thought out and described idea. Rather impressive, yes.

Second, I really, really, really like this idea.

Support. Definitely Support.

Thank you all for your support!
@InkyPetrel I thought about that, but I wanted to have a way to introduce items obtainable only through gardening, and since I've found plants to be much more difficult to obtain than insects, and don't know much about the ease of obtaining other food sources, I figured it wouldn't be too bad, though it could certainly be adjusted to a smaller output, or perhaps sometimes give items and sometimes food dependant on the plant. Also, food on FR seems to be going for much more than it does on other pet sites I've played, though this may be intentional on the devs' part.

@Harkness You can take care of the plot without taking the dome off; I just wanted people to have to weigh their option before they decided to use a dome.