Farming: the new obsession
 

It occurred to me the other day while deleting a plethora of farm-whatever app requests from my ffaceboof friends that perhaps something slightly similar might already exist on a MU somewhere..

has anyone implented a farm that grows yet? I'd be interested in hearing your responses.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

We have farming in Maiden Desmodus.

In the spring, players are able to sow seeds into fields to plant them. Right now we have hop seed, flax seed, and wheat seed. Once planted, the crops will grow over the course of the spring and summer, and can be harvested in the autumn. Harvesting your crops will give you hops, flax, or wheat from each planted field, along with seed so you can plant again come spring.

We'll probably expand farming in the future, but right now it yields the resources used in tailoring (by weaving flax into cloth used for making clothing), in brewing (using hops as an ingredient to make beer used to boost the morale of military troops and for social drinking), and wheat is used to provision troops in our mass-warfare system so you can move them throughout the game.

Related to farming, we also have over thirty different herbs that can be planted in various terrains. The plants grow over time, producing more herbs that can be picked. So long as the initial plant isn't picked to zero herbs or planted over, it'll continue growing until it reaches its maximum yield. The herbs produced range from having medical properties (anything from healing to curing a headache), as poisons, etc.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

It's been implemented on some RPIs for near to if not far more than a decade. Back when I was on the staff of SoI, agriculture was one of the areas under my administrative oversight (it had already existed however for years prior to my time on staff). While I left staff before I ever got the system to the finalized version I envisioned I understand several modifications were later made which were closer to what I'd aimed for (though I can't say for certain as I don't have a full overview of what their system is like nowadays).

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Yeah but it's not the same if you can't have a pink tractor and elephants.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Farming? That's old school. Try going on a caravan that is run by a merchant (a guild in NWA) and actually brings food into the city and can be attacked by robbers, thiefs, and (gasp) other players. First caravan I went on in New Worlds was over run by a group trying to steal the loads on the wagons. I died of course, but what an experience with 15 of us trying to defend it!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

He's asking about farming, not caravans.

And for the record, caravans are old school as well. ;)

On topic, I did a keyword search of "farming" on TMC and came up with three games. Toss on Wade's and the three more RPIs which have farming and the list looks like this:

The Southlands
Star Wars: Uprising
Daedal Macabre
Maiden Desmodus
Shadows of Isildur
Harshlands
Armageddon

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Um, he's asking about MUDs not your definition of RPIs.

Don't worry Dedwulf, this guy just likes to make comments like that and post the term RPI in about 90% of his posts which is 75% of the time off topic but promotes the RPI term. Lamely, I might add.

Back on topic. Dedwulf may not know, but NWA has farming as well as fishing, baking, grilling, planting, and so do probably 50% of the MUD's out there. I just don't think they put that in the information page.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Maybe he should change his name to RPIProph1515 :p

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Nor did I detail the definition of RPI for him. He asked, "has anyone implented a farm that grows yet? I'd be interested in hearing your responses" and I pointed out that RPIs have done so, some for more than decade. In other words, I answered his question and provided him some reference as to at least how long that it has been done.

A figure of 50% is highly unlikely. 50% of role-playing MUDs perhaps (though I suspect even that would be too high of an estimate) but not MUDs in general.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Armageddon does not have a farming system, to my knowledge. It has locations called farming villages with descriptions that imply that farming is done, but it is done virtually, and not codedly.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

There was a farm outside Allanak which produced eggs and had livestock. There was also farmland that hired workers for cotton-picking. I'm afraid I'm not sure of all the details but it was described to me as farming back when I played Arm (albeit that was 2001-2005 so it may not be so anymore).

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

The farm is a coded location, that hires *virtual* workers to produce *virtual* grain, that in turn shows up as "sack of flour" in the coded grocery shop in the city. There is no farm-boss who hires PC workers, there is no actual grain that PCs can plant, sow, water, harvest. It's all virtual, part of the game's atmosphere.

Cotton picking is a -new- feature, that isn't even in the south where the docs say it it, and it also isn't farming. PCs can't plant cotton, sow cotton, or water cotton. They can't weed the field, there are no cotton seeds. It's just picking cotton that was virtually grown by virtual farmers and codedly available for you to pick. The virtual farmers are virtual, so they're not hiring you to pick cotton for them. You can't be employed as a farmer, in a coded sense.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

In GodWars1 there was a mogwai-like creature who would follow players around and beg for food. If you fed him, he'd turn into cocoon which would eventually hatch into a gremlin. The gremlin would then hunt and eat other mobs, laying eggs which hatched into stronger gremlins, and those gremlins would do the same again. The third and strongest generation of gremlin would lay small crystallised eggs which could be collected and eaten for bonuses (a bit like potions).

Some players would take the mogwai creature to an isolated part of the mud, seed the area with food, then come back later to "harvest" the small eggs. I guess you could consider that a form of farming.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I remember this. It was both hilarious and awesome.

---

I'm going to say that there's not really a need to bash Prof here. He may have only listed RPIs as his answer, but he still provided information on several MUDs that offer farming. There are quite a few out there, with many different kinds of systems. Some, like Old Godwars', are more imaginative than others. Some are more realistic than others.

If the poster is asking whether or not anyone has implemented a social-based farming mini-game/system that emulates the simplistic farming Facebook apps that are designed to churn advertising dollars by making you click through many pages to achieve simple tasks, then my answer would probably be ... I doubt it. The system, as it is, appeals to people's infatuation with web-surfing at their own pace and clicking on things. I'm not sure that such a system would be very successful on a MUD, because a) most MUDs don't offer click-and-point functionality that ties in with web-pages and b) part of the "fun" of those social apps are involving a large list of friends and competing with the millions of people who play them worldwide, at a leisurely pace. Since MUDs don't support this size of playerbase, I doubt that there would be much draw or excitement to implementing such a system ... although, with MXP support, you certainly -could- do it. I just doubt that it would be very popular. If the currently popular application design style were designed to be a good game instead of a means to make advertising dollars (these games are usually funded by massive investment corporations, not gaming companies), then the gameplay would be better. If anything, these applications are a very real threat to future generations of potential MUDers. :p

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

... or a boon to future generations, if we shepherd our hobby so it evolves to incorporate those concepts.

Not that we should simplify our muds into point-and-click games. But we could potentially use that as a way to draw in new markets.

Imagine a facebook app where you can grow your farm - just like the existing ones.
Now imagine if there was a button there that said "Visit your farm" and it logged you into a mud (with a webpage interface still on the facebook page) - and you can look around the farm, see the sheep bleating and the corn waving in the wind. Maybe find extra information (examine the corn and notice insects before your facebook farm would warn you about the locusts, so you can clear them out early...) - from there, it's just a small step to having a path from your farm to the village commons. And from that central area, you've got the opportunity to draw these new players into your roleplay.

Not all will like it, most will just want the brainless clicking. But get enough players trying it out, and you'll have a percentage that will enjoy the muds, and just wouldn't have known about them before. Heck, I stumbled onto muds myself by accident when looking up articles on game design. Most of the students in my postgraduate university games design course had never played a text adventure.

Our largest challenge isn't competing with the other game types. It's just making the players aware that we exist. And I think these silly farming apps and facebook games could be a great opportunity.

Now... anyone know how to code 'em up?

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I discussed the idea of a few months ago - I do think it has potential, although I think the facebook application would need to be something nice and simple. My favoured idea would be some sort of dungeon or city building application, turning those point-and-click facebook users into unwitting content writers for my mud!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

On the surface that sounds great, but with more thought...egads, you really want that content on your game?

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I agree that there are , but there also many benefits. City of Heroes certainly had teething problems when it took this route, but the fact still remains that their players had created more content than the entire development team had created during the game's five year existence.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

We've had farming and gardening for a very long time in 4d, both are slightly interactive in that the crops don't just grow, you also have to protect them against various pests. The crops can of course be sold or developed further.

The closest we've come to player generated content is mining, where the players dig their own tunnels, looking for ore and gemstones. The rooms in the mine are premade, but the players choose which direction to dig in, and the tunnels sometimes collapse behind you, (or on top of you), so the layout of the mine is never the same. For quite a while we had just about every player in the mud working hard in the tunnels, which was somewhat amusing to watch.

The problem with features like this is that they can become obsessive for a while, to an extent where the players also will try all sorts of tricks to abuse them. But sooner or later they tire of it, and return to the usual mob grinding, and the feature gets forgotten until some new player discovers it, and it gets popular again for some time.

In the long run they will always chose the task that yields the biggest reward. The only reason why they never stop mining in our Mud is, that there is an unusually good magical sword in the heart of the mountain, which is extremely difficult to get, since it also involves several steps of a hard Quest. Everybody knows about the sword, but very few have managed to get it, which is what keeps the rest of them digging tunnels long after they stopped collecting the ore.

I guess random drops is another way of keeping the interest up. The point is that unless the reward is conceived as big enough, the feature won't be used in the long run. Maybe it's different in RP extensive games, but as soon as there is competition involved, they'll spend their main time on what they think gives them the most exp or the best equipment, to ultimately reach the biggest power.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

My two reservations about farming/mining features are that: (1) it encourages hours of autobotting if the mechanics are too repetitive (plow, plow, plow, plant, plant, plant, harvest, harvest, harvest), and (2) if commodities are an important part of the gameworld, it can become burdensome to balance how many commodities are being produced (does the world really need 1 million units of grain?) and forces players to grind through the mechanics (see 1) in order to get these needed commodities.

In Lusternia, commodities are produced in villages. By performing commodity quests, you can increase production of some of these commodities. For example, you can catch chickens and take them to the chicken coop (for a gold/xp award) which also increases egg production in that village. Player organizations then compete over who controls those villages and thus the commodities that the villages produce. It works well for us!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

You could argue the same about any features that have mindless repetitive mechanics - someone could take the exact same approach with combat (north, north, north, kill, kill, kill, loot, loot, loot), awarding players with piles of treasure that nobody really needs.

But "farming", "mining", "combat", "crafting", etc, are all just thematic wrapping - it's primarily the mechanics underneath that determine how fun the activity will be. Just because some implementations are repetitive and boring doesn't mean that all implementations have to work that way.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Absolultely, implementation is the key. A boring task is only boring if it's designed to be boring and repetitive. Or if the design is lazy.

It's definitely possible to create a farming system that is engaging and entertaining, and such that the task itself is rewarding.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

The same can be said about botting, of course. There will always be some players who try to take shortcuts. If you don't want to spend all your on-line time playing Mud Police and chasing botters and multiplayers with a torch-lamp, you have to prevent it through careful design. Whether it is done by hard code or scripts, you have to set up the feature, so that it isn't possible to carry out with repetitive commands, or by just waiting out an auto-run script.

And that doesn't just apply to farming in the agricultural sense, but also to the common Mud meaning of the word 'farming' - where a player squats in a certain place with a script to kill the same mob for the loot each time it respawns, often while watching TV in real life.

It's all in the design. Because there are repetitive elements in all competitive mudding. And even the most well written feature or quest is only really interesting the first time you do it. If you want it to be repeatable, you have to spring a nasty surprise on the player every now and then. Or a fantastic opportunity, that they will miss, unless they pay attention.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

My mistake then. As I said, I only had seen what appeared to be elements of such a system and had heard from another player that they had it. It's entirely possibly that they made the same mistake as I. Thanks for the clarification!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

The important question is what % of user-created content occupies the time of the playerbase? Having a billion user-created missions that nobody is playing is helpful only insofar as it occupied the people doing the creating. The win is when that user generated content is powering a substantial portion of the userbase's playtime. I don't think Cryptic has released any stats on that, but could be wrong.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I'm not aware of any stats, but from what I've read it's clear that the player-generated content in City of Heroes is being used.

The important question for me is not what percentage of player-generated content occupies the time of the playerbase, but rather, how much time it would have taken the development team to produce the same amount of content themselves, compared with the time and effort they spent producing the content-building tools.

The majority of player-generated content is awful, but some of it can be very good. Even if you only cherry-picked the best stuff, I believe it could still save a lot of time.

Marketing the content-building tools as a Facebook application would expose them to a large userbase, and could also be used as a way to draw in new mudders ("Your dungeon is complete! Why not explore it yourself? Click here to connect to DungeonMud!").

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

In my experience people will do a better job if the chance of player interaction increases, so having more builders than players will be a total disaster.

Next you can apply the theory of general intelligence to assume that more intelligent players will create better content. People tend to pick leaders with IQs one to two standard deviations above the average (115 to 130) as people with too high IQs are a little too different to socially connect with the masses. If you use a clan system and let only the leaders build and the average IQ on your MUD is around 105, that should give you some 120 to 130 IQ builders, and research has shown that a 130 IQ person is capable of handling anything you could throw at them, while a 120 IQ builder is easily trainable. Another advantage of using clans is that it enforces a healthy builder vs player ratio, and clan members might check out the content just to be nice - increasing player interaction.

Another trick is giving building a steep learning curve, which would discourage dummies. Adding a scripting language with a low level interface to the MUD might give better results than an easier high level interface.

The only downside of very high IQ (according to the latest theories) is that while it increases creative output, it comes at the cost of latent creativity. This theory will likely gain popularity in a couple of years when the true implications become clear to the mainstream. The current estimate is that creativity peaks (on average) at 120 IQs.

So for the best creative and original work I would advice finding 120 IQ builders, with a 130 IQ head builder (who more often than not is the main coder), and a builder to player ratio of at least 1 to 10, though I think you can work with lower values if content generation is slow so the player base remains excited about new additions, so you'd want to find some way to slow down the building process considerably - scripting and extra descriptions are good ways that I know of.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

This all seems rather speculative... do you give IQ tests to your builders? I never thought of doing so!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I have to agree that IQ testing or analysis misses the point, which is to have good content. Having a high IQ doesn't make someone a good builder, and nor does having target marks for IQ mean you are going to have a good building team - there are plenty of brilliant people who aren't creative writers. I'm not sure why you would ever judge for IQ instead of creative or descriptive writing skill (i.e., the principal skill that is actually relevant).

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

If you have 10000 people applying for a building position, like KaVir envisions, some kind of automated IQ test would indeed be the best way to go about it. This would leave you with 1600 people with a 115+ IQ, of who 225 have a 130+ IQ, of who 13 have a 145+ IQ.

Most writers who have consistently written best selling books have IQs in the 145 range, so while not everyone with a high IQ will be a great builder, every great builder will have a high IQ, especially if you require both writing and programming skills.

It's interesting how people can deny that intelligence is a critical component of someone being a good builder, I belief the political climate is to blame for that.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Personally, it wouldn't surprise me if your theory is generally correct (good builders have high IQ's), but it's the type of information that is only useful in an academic sense rather than as a practical matter. You screen builders by their proposals and writing, and if they're good, they'll rise up in whatever hierarchy you have. It's only incidental if they have high IQ's or not--it's not something I think many would test for as a means of choosing who to use or not because there isn't necessarily a causal relationship.

I have always said that it's harder to find a good builder than a good coder, which comment has often made coders splutter in disbelief!

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

I didn't specify numbers, but my proposal was that anyone could build - you wouldn't need to apply for some sort of building position. IMO, "player-generated content" means exactly that - content generated by the players.

And in my case at least, they wouldn't write descriptions - those would all be generated by the mud.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

All intellectual achievements, but the human mind is infamous for its subjectivity.

Getting a coder to code what you want is probably easier than getting a builder to build what you want. The trait you might be looking for is agreeableness in combination with high IQ, thinking about it all my top builders were agreeable persons, but that might say more about me than builders in general. :P

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

Same logic still goes, if you open all content to your player base most players will have poor experiences as most content will be poor. So you'll still need some way to discriminate to change the odds in your favor.

Re: Farming: the new obsession
 

One of the games I used to play had heavy player content. It was quality when the players took it seriously and enjoyable. It got bad after some time though and the controllers disabled the feature.