Farming on seafaring vessels & traveling player merchantmen

[Rin Usagi 6]

Please reconsider destroying/removing the ability to place crop plots on player boats. If anything, please consider adding the ability to use the irrigation system on boats to enhance boat farming.

A lot of the fun in a sandbox game like this comes from making your own fun. I've made my fun by making detailed house boats with gardens and farms on them that allow me to be a traveling merchant/trader that can pick fresh ingredients to cook so I don't have to kill myself or my friends every 30-45 minutes to reset vitamins/food, and allows me to trade fresh ingredients to and cook for other players that may not otherwise have them.

I don't think for a moment that the community staff who may read this are responsible for this change, but as community leaders you have the power to listen to player feedback and pass that information to the development team for consideration. I know I'm not the only person that's made a farming vessel (I've seen at least one other advertisement for another traveling merchant besides myself). A change like this causes a reduction in player agency and freedom by limiting one of the ways that traveling merchant PCs are able to do business and sustain themselves, and undermines the independence of our vessels, by forcing us to land-lock (and potentially travel across the world) to restock on food, which removes the 'traveling' aspect by severely limiting the range at which we can operate independently. This change reinforces the currently-optimal seafaring play-style of 'kill yourself to reset food/vitamins' rather than eating when sailing, which I feel is antithetical to the sort of game-play experience that should be encouraged. I feel that it would be far more healthy to the game to make design decisions that encourage eating rather than committing suicide.

This change limits one of the creative, social ways that we can play the game (my farming vessel has sparked curiosity and dialogue with various other players while I've had it, and spawned several friendships as a result of those conversations), and I feel that what it brings to the table as a game change is a net negative due to its impact on limiting player expression and play style, and wanted to make my feedback known, as it effectively removes the creative, social niche that I and other players have made for ourselves in this game.

If the developers feel as if crop plots absolutely must not be on ships, then I feel that perhaps there are other compromises that could be made. It was stated on the dev stream yesterday that player agency and the ability to creatively express oneself in designing a ship is a priority for your company. From those statements, it strikes me as strange that the next day a patch to remove player expression through ship design is immediately implemented in that claim's wake. Perhaps a better alternative would be to add dedicated trading / farming / merchant ship designs? (I know I would be amazingly hyped for a dedicated traveling merchant/fishing/farming vessel that can be self-sustaining and used as a mobile player base/shop to sell/trade with other players.)

The addition of ships, designs, and frames was briefly covered during the dev stream. If crop plots absolutely must be removed from ships, could you perhaps consider adding a dedicated trading/farming/merchant vessel which can be used for farming/trading/running player shops out of? I feel that simply removing crop plots from vessels is a poor game play design decision for the reasons stated above, and I feel that encouraging creative player experiences outside of 20-large-cannon-kiting-battle-schooners would be an extremely healthy design decision for this game.

On the contrary, I feel that supporting player mercantilism and boat-based-farming would enrich the game creatively, socially, and economically through the stimulation of dynamic game-play experiences and encouraging player interaction and economy through bartering & gold.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[Torber 0]

I agree with this post 100%.

[Aristocrates 11]

It would be nice to at least see greenhouses eventually as part of the steampunk tier, and, combining that with the ideas outlined in this post, I imagine them working like this:

-on land, they would permit the growing of crops in biomes hostile to those crops, as well as potentially providing ark-ey greenhouse buffs

-on ships, they would permit growing crops on ships (which is realistic to 19th-century technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardian_case)

[Ghar Drakbear 3]

Hit it on the head exactly. Coming off a dev stream where they stressed player agency, this was an odd arbitrary change. 

 

There are are people who want to accept the challenge of living a life entirely at sea - and you limit their capacity to do just that. 

 

 

[Nail Sageblood 0]

I am trying to figure out why not allow putting crop plots on the boat in the first place. You can bring dirt in a pot on a ship to grow herbs and stuff irl anyway, just seems like an odd limitation. Especially since you can put that on your boats in Ark. Back in ark my entire roof of the boat was covered in crops and a compost box.