Gardening

Ghend

Hello!

Quite some time ago now, planters and pots were made available in Arget Massai (with, if I recall, very little fanfare; whoops!). The system has not seen much use, and while we have some suspicions as to why, I would love to get some feedback and thoughts on improvements for a second pass on the gardening system.

Thank you in advance!

Moirean

Few reasons from my experience:

- fairly unforgiving. I had to tend to it all religiously or the plants died on me. I couldn't harvest at my convenience either as they died on me as well.

- more expensive thsn just buying the mats. Why buy pots and seeds abd stuff if I can just buy a potato for 5 gold?

- not all of the results could be incached 

- I didn't really need the stuff very much. If there was something more I could do with the items like a quest or vendor or whatever it'd be more motivating to do.

- pots and planters decayed super fast. I tried keeping them in my shop stockroom to stop that but flooding in there (to get water) caused unwrapped errors so I kinda stopped.

I think I posted more feedback on the original release thread a while back. On phone so can't really search for it.

Kendri

Ghend said:

Hello!

Quite some time ago now, planters and pots were made available in Arget Massai (with, if I recall, very little fanfare; whoops!). The system has not seen much use, and while we have some suspicions as to why, I would love to get some feedback and thoughts on improvements for a second pass on the gardening system.

Thank you in advance!

I had no idea this even existed! So I'm going to go check it out but a few thoughts for what I think would be neat.

I loved doing the Ultima Online gardening, so I think cross pollinating plants together to get mixes and unique plants.

Unique flowers you can only get in this way, flowers that are a different colours in the room description, or rare plants that you can sell back to a vendor, use in quests, or brew together to create unique concoction effects.

New gardening talent to let you make more unique things? Being able to submit a design for a flower/plant in that when you pollinate (basic plant A) with (basic plant everyone has a chance to create (Neato plant C) that you designed. This helps alleviate all of the design pressure being on admin, in that they can just go through and approve and keep new ones coming in. (Also usable for creating different unique concoctions.)

Also being able to like.. fuse a special plant with the annoying comms to get, sidewinder skin, venom sacs, stags horn, feathers, etc. They're normally free(which this could create a small goldsink) items but if you're trying to get a lot of them it can be ridiculously annoying.

(If it's just plants for cooking supplies, that's kind of eh.. We're heros and magic users of the realm, sprinkle some of that on down to gardening hobbies.)

Moirean

Being able to grow stuff like snake skin, inks, diamond dust, tobacco leaf, etc would be nifty. Also harvesting stuff should give seeds or a chance of seeds. Basically let us use gardening as a bit of a background timesink way to get stuff versus directly active methods.

Kendri

Also, there is no... Help Gardening. That seems like it would be useful. As a reference, in case I forget what the guy says.

Also when I ask this question I get the wrong response even though it is one of the scripted questions..

You say, in a feral tongue, "How often do I need to water the plants?"

Scratching his nose, a wizened Grecht gardener says, "Well, flatlander, I have some seeds for sale here. Only a few varieties grow well in our soil."

Also confused, is there a difference in using a pot rather then a planter?

Moirean

Planter holds more I think. 

Kendri

Okay well, checking this out. But I can see why it was rather lackluster. Initially looking at just raw numbers:

Pot:1000 gold for 60 rl days. 16.6 gold per rl day.
Rose Packet: 300 gold. (Not sure how long to grow or how many roses produced, will update with more numbers later.)

Basically looking at a merchants perspective, does it pay to grow it yourself and sell (or use in floristry/cooking) as opposed to buying it? Is it worth your time?

When I planted the rose packet, it produced a red rose plant, is it always red, or can it be any of the rose colours? Would be more interesting if it can be any.

Phoenecia

I actually really liked gardening when it came out, and tried to spread word about it when I could at the time, but there were some things that made it either really tedious, or were things that I felt could be expanded.

* I can't remember what the depletion rate of water was, but I recall having to top it off multiple times within a day or else the plant would wither and die. Having to water it once per RL day is fine, but it would be nice if the water depletion was a bit more forgiving.

* Also going to echo @Moirean‌'s gripe about not being able to cache some of the stuff you harvested.

* More variety. I'd have loved it if there were an option to grow things like berries (the ones you'd normally have to harvest, like blueberries) or or grape vines, or shrubs. You can grow an orange tree in your planter, but not a little topiary?

* Gardening as part of quests. There could be an event revolving around food shortage, or maybe smaller events for showing off prized crops like an agricultural fair. Or maybe have quests where you need to grow stuff for research.

Aishia

WHAT YOU CAN GROW FRUIT!?
edit: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????

Kendri

So, my rose(s) is up to this point:

(redrose1): Velvety red roses bloom all across a large bush in an elegant display.

So one, it looks to me like that is fully grown, but I can't seem to harvest anything from the pot, or otherwise? Is it not full grown, do I need to wait for something else to happen, am I just not getting the command right? (I am confused.)

And two, why is this pretty green text not displaying in the room, instead of 'A small clay pot stands here.'? You only get to see it if you probe it, would be nicer for decoration if it was the other way.

Aryanne

I got a few pots and planters way back when this initially came out, and I didn't keep up with it for the same complaints echoed here, primarily:

Too easy to kill plants by not watering fast enough
Yield not worth it relative to availability of items to buy
no HELP GARDENING
Fast decay of the supplies

To be honest, I had forgotten we had this until I noticed the post >.>

Kendri

@Ghend So, with the feedback you received here, is there any plans to improve on Gardening?

Ghend

It isn't very high on the list of priorities, but it will eventually be looked at. The precise changes depend on discussion with the other staff, but the feedback in this thread will be the primary impetus!

Aishia

I would like to be able to plant plants in the ground not just lame old pots!!

Moirean

Wtb gardening prog for house mobs. I want to have plants grow on ql and stuff but be able to send jeeves off to gather them for me and deliver me baskets of fruit and flowers. Because when I rp I wanna be riiiich.

Xenia

I recall watching someone attempt to keep plants and the pots-- their game play attendance, however, was not daily, but instead 2-3 times a week and as a result, their efforts never came to full effect.

Ghend

Gentle bump! I am going to be looking at adjusting Gardening if possible over the next little while so if anyone has input other than what has already been discussed, now would be a good time to post it.

Lim

Cost aside, the key for me would be the ability to find a patch of land and grow stuff in it. Gives a nicer sense of ownership/this is my garden, than just pots and planters.

Lim

Harvesting a full plant sometimes destroys the plant (don't see any reason why, judging by the message you get). Unless I'm doing it wrong.

Lim

Planters are too high maintenance. Instead, I've taken to using pots.

Aishia

Can we get a help file like HELP GARDENING that tells u how to do stuff I literally don't know how to do anything.

Aishia

Plus I think you can't harvest pots which are on the ground / not in your inventory maybe? IDK but I can't live this life: