The Ever Sensitive Wheat & Water Debate

[RuneMunki]

Hi All,

I've been playing TSO for a few months now. Have pretty much enjoyed the game and love the progression I see when updates come out. I took a break from the game around last Tuesday (18th) and came back yesterday (Wednesday, 26th). Needless to say, things emptied/ground to a halt as I expected they would. It's taken me quite a bit of time to send out my geologists to find new deposits and replace mines and whatnot to get my settlement running in tune once more. That's not a problem - I knew that and real life does take precedence!

What bored me to tears though was replacing all of the wheat fields and wells. I don't think I've been as bored in a game for ages and I played a master crafter in Star Wars Galaxies when it first came out so don't get bored very easily. It was the sheer amount of time wasted that was the problem, place three fields and wait for two to be built, place another two, rinse and repeat.

I know that most people seem to fall into two camps with this - the hardcore "buy silos & watermills" being on one side and the "not going to pay for a browser game" on the other. I actually fall somewhere between the two, I've spent around £50 so far on gems and starter packs over the past 2 months so I'm not afraid to support the game with hard earned cash. Most of these gems have gone towards my Veteran General and extra building licenses.

This isn't a dig at anybody who has put more money than I have spare into the game and hats off to anybody who has bought silo's and watermills. I just feel that it would be nice if wheat fields and wells could be made less of a chore.

Discuss :)

[PChamps]

what do you propose?

[Morgy321]

well if you give me back my money for my 36 silos and 34 water mills then i am all up for a sjange if not i am moust deffenetly not

[Gavona]

A longer building queue would do it.... Say 25 slots. But then no one would buy silos so BB would make less money on gem sales. It won't happen, sadly.

[YPHANH2002]

Silos would still be cool even if the queue is longer, imo. If you have more slots in the queue, you still have to login everyday to rebuild the farms. Silo is made so you don't have to do so, the daily reward is not significant.

[RuneMunki]

what do you propose?

I could put up a whole list of ideas - top ups in the provision house, 10 second build time, separate queue for fields and wells, silo tops up all adjacent fields, etc.



well if you give me back my money for my 36 silos and 34 water mills then i am all up for a sjange if not i am moust deffenetly not

I'm not saying to make silo's and watermills redundant, in fact I think they should provide more benefit than they actually do - and fair play for buying over 30 of each. I generally restrict myself to only spending £15 a month on things like online games so I'm not able to do the same.



Silos would still be cool even if the queue is longer, imo. If you have more slots in the queue, you still have to login everyday to rebuild the farms. Silo is made so you don't have to do so, the daily reward is not significant.

This is my point, currently replacing fields and wells is a chore. Silo's and watermills remove this chore. This isn't right - a game shouldn't be a chore to play. Anything you spend your hard earned cash on should actually provide you a significant benefit, not to make the game less dull to play. How many people would complain if a silo halved the speed of an adjacent farm?

[Dilbe]

I would be happy if they made it less of a chore to rebuild each individual field or well. For instance if you click on an empty field or well, that that would add a new one in the queue. What would be even better is if i dont even need to look around my island every hour to find empty fields and rebuild, but if 1 field or well is empty, that a button is added below the build queue and if you click on that then one random field or well is added to the que.

[peck_ed]

Why not add a 2nd build tree for things like wells and wheat fields that allow you to queue them up without issue having a limit to that queue. Then force the building queue on everything else.

[Peajay]

I propose a redesign on depleted items, so they can be rebuilt in the same spot at a reduced cost (and maybe time too?), that way it would be more cost effective not having to send out the geologist or demolishing almost depleted items for the 25% refund. Perhaps they could remove the limit of 3 in the build queue for these too.

[Kotugo]

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/17510-remove-wheat-fields-and-wells-from-build-queue

I made the suggestion some time ago to remove wells/fields from the queue. This doesn't stop silos/watermills being useful since those slow the rate you need to rebuild (or completely stop if you have enough), they have the effect of saving you a lot of wood/stone (the level of wood/stone depends on the type of well/field you prefer to make).

The main advantage of this change is you can rebuild all your fields/wells in about 10 minutes instead of having to actively spend 2-3 hours doing it, the cost in game resources is identical since you still use all that wood/stone while rebuilding.

Unfortunately, the extra queue slots (both perm and temp) are likely aimed at people who are sick of the short queue for wells/fields, what else actually needs a longer queue? It's probably unlikely that more than a handful of players have paid for the perm slots, but they would become worthless if anything was adjusted on well/field replacing (unless they add something else costing gems to fix it...)

I guess only copper mines are the other thing which require daily work to keep going and we have already seen the price on the fix for that :(

[Morgy321]

sadly i still do copper mines evry day uh

[Snorf]

Sure its nasty rebuilding but its part of the game,changes will be very very unfair for those who been rebuilding even more fields and wells over more gametime.
Either invest cash on a more luxery game or play for free and play the game BB provides.

Sure id like my coppermines to never run out we all do, I dont wanna pay for it so ill rebuild my mines almost dailly, My 15 silo's made rebuilding fields bit more easy but neva provide enough fields for 60ish farms so iam really happy BB makes me able get 3!!! for free!!! Waterwheels from easter and starterpacks in combi with wells made i got only 12k water to little each 24h,offcourse i need too rebuildt the wells asap or end up buying/tradeing more then dailly 12k min, and i play like this for months.

my point if you dislike rebuilding either go on spending frenzy or just be humble like 99% players and put in the effort of rebuilding to enable you to gain levels and play without great costs.

You are offered free transport but really gotta pay for a Rolls with driver

[Sauronamon]

I think the fairest thing would be a separate build queue for these two items. Well it gets my vote :)

[TotoMok]

I always thought it was supposed to be a bit of a chore to rebuild, as the 'idea' behind using gems is to remove the 'chore' in the game (rather than give any real huge competitive advantage).

If the 'chore' is gone, so is the incentive to buy gems, and therefore a revenue stream.
If the 'chore' is still there, then there is an incentive to buy gems, but the advantage is only convenience rather than any real strong in-game advantage.

That being said, it would be great if when a water deposit is depleted I had a way to find... where! (I sometimes notice after the message is gone). A means of cycling through all depeleted water/farm resources would be nice.

[RuneMunki]

Been away (again) for a few days so not kept up with the thread as much as I would have liked.

I appreciate this is a slightly sensitive subject - more so because some people have spent money to try and remove some of the bind that we all face. Hopefully somebody at BB will recognise that the currently set up doesn't add any flavour to the game, it's the equivalent of putting fuel into a vehicle - a necessary and costly evil.

Looking at the various comments, Wheat fields seem to be a bigger issue than Wells to the point that people are generally satisfied with how wells work (they hold 5 times the quantity which I think is the reason). I believe that the general consensus is:

Implement a 2nd queue for fields & wells - OR - reduce the build time to 10 second (my preference)

The silo mechanic would still work for the above, however I feel that they need to receive a boost that actually makes them worth while. One example would be providing a yield boost to all adjacent fields - a level 2 silo would add +2 to any farm using an adjacent field. This would actually make a huge difference - you can fit 6 fields round a silo so that would benefit 6 farms!

[recruit020]

You can also look on it another way: if you didn't have to look after depleted mines and fields and wells, there is precious little else to do once you've cleared the homeland and done of few of the adventures that are just 'more of the same'. I've also been here a few months now and yes, I've spent a tenner or so in real coins on gems - bought my friend a watermill since I couldn't give him what I had intended to give: the recycler that I took and am happy with. But boy oh boy is my interest in SOL waning or what... Shame really. I played RS for many years and had hoped to find here a new home. The replacement of stuff at least gives me the inclination to come in the game and have a look. Not sure how long that will keep me going :-). The suggestions are all very solid but I'd rather have more land - not just a holiday isle to swipe. More land to explore, build and maintain. More of SettlersI. More campaigns. More diversion. Anyway, I can hear my geologist calling... work to be done.

[Cully]

I just do something else while I'm waiting for them to build.

[recruit020]

Well, sorry to have to say this but I've moved on. It just became too boring and the Haloween thing didn't help having experienced it at length on the testserver. Shame really. I used to love pc settlers I.

[Merxe]

http://static2.cdn.ubi.com/F2P/TSO_UK_CM/Images/dev_diary_07_2012/newswindow.jpg
Source:
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/18944-Dev-Diary-July-August-2012
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CqYk364NaZM#t=360s