Filling Out the Game

[puccih hh the third]

Okay, so I went a little overboard in my farming - I've got 20,000 coins sitting in my "pouch", and I don't know what to do with them.  I began to think, "what's the point of having all these coins if I can't spend them on anything?".  The stuff you can buy with coins for the farm doesn't appeal to me that much (I don't need it - I already bought a few decorations I do like), and there's not that much stuff in the store for your viking, and nothing for your dragon.  So, the next question I had was "what's the point of farming?".  Is it to make money, or to learn about farming?  If it's to make money, it's fine.  I can make several thousand coins a day (not counting fishing).  But that leaves little to do in the game - you go in and make tons of useless coins.  So...I started to think of different things coins could be used for, or other activities.

I thought, if the farm is supposed to teach vikings how to farm, more features need to be implemented (my family has a garden and chickens so I'm familiar with this).  For example:

Weeds - you gotta rake them to water your crops.  This could be implemented as a mini-game that would take a minute or two for crops.  Maybe crops die if you don't take care of them. (If weather is implemented your crops don't need watered after it rains - also could implement floods etc.)
Bugs - they eat your plants - you have to go to the Botanist to figure out how to get rid of them, or to get supplies.
Cleaning out your sheep/chicken pens - yes, animals leave droppings that need to be cleaned up.
Fertilizer - plants need proper nutrition, so use the dropping to fertilize your plants, or sell the fertilizer.
Sick animals - This could open up a new station in SOD, a veterinarian.
Pests - animals (such as wolves or chicken hawks) try to eat your farm animals.  Maybe mice get into your chicken coops.
More animals - such as yaks and ducks.  I'll explain the ducks in a minute.
Fence building activities - you need to keep the predatory animals out of your farm - you need a fence (since your dragon is with you all the time it can't guard your farm).  This could utilize the tree-chopping feature in the wilderness to build fences.
Fence repair - for when your animals break free, or something breaks in.
Escaped animals! - round up your flighty birds and baaing sheep.  This, and many aforementioned features could be implemented as mini-games.
Giving water - animals need water too - maybe we have to build a second well!
Barns - store your crops here (not in your pack).  Keep your barn secure, and have to prepare for winter/summer storms to protect your crops.
More crops - like wheat perhaps (if vikings farmed that).  If not, corn should be able to be turned to mush to make bread with (maybe your avatar actually gets hungry, needs water/food and sleep, so you have to bake your own bread and eat your own vegetables.)
Roosters - yup...you guessed it.  Chicks, lambs and baby yaks (maybe not the lambs and baby yaks).  But having multiplying chickens would be interesting.  Maybe there's a farm market where people can sell/buy animals because the store has only a limited supply (that would be very interesting - selling your things to other players.  Maybe the store gets shipments or supplies from player that sell their things to the store.  If so, we could have looms too!)

To explain the ducks - vikings used to feed ducks iron, and then used their dung to make steel (maybe...people could make their own weapons and sell them for chopping trees, or hoeing gardens etc.).
Also, since these things could occur frequently, they could offer XP for the rider, and recurring quests that could be repeated - perhaps not just collecting things, but you have to pay for some items you need (hence the coin problem slightly improves).

For the coin problem, I think there should be dragon saddles (ooh!  Maybe your dragon gets sick too, or hurt, and you have to care for it - just extra idea), maybe larger quests that people have to pay coins to be able to do (maybe there are rewards for high levels of XP - 20 should not be max level.  There shouldn't be a max level...), but keep them busy for several days involving more quests, research and investigation.  Maybe some of these unlock member areas for short amounts of time (could tempt customers to pay member to be able to return to the areas).  Maybe housing should be added so furniture and other things could be bought from the store (they could cost larger amounts since it's furniture that might have different levels of longevity - you might need to repair your own furniture, maybe we should build our own!).  So...whad'ya think?  Just some thoughts to make the game bigger and more interesting.

[puccih hh the third]

Whoops, more ideas (I can't edit my original post).

Soil PH - some plants don't grow well if your soil ph is too high or low. You might need to lime your soil.
Plant chemistry - some plants don't grow well next to each other, or in the same plot a previous crop grew in.
Plant to Soil chemistry - some plants change the soil - like putting nitrogen in it (especially important - we might need to grow beans to keep our soil nutritious for our plants!).

Yeah, these would make farming more difficult, but it would be more informative and might make the game more fun if we actually had things to do. Plus, if people thought it was too much work, they can make their money fishing to buy food for their avatars and furniture for their homes.

[cartographer]

Amazing....

Simply amazing. That was extensive, but very thourough. I like it very much =D
The idea is very accurate, and would certainly make farming more interesting, however this is (supposedly) a game directed mostly to children and teenagers. Now, for me and some "veteran" fans, this wouldn't be much of a problem, and teenagers could figure it out too, but it may be somewhat harder for children. Then again, they would learn something about farming, instead of seeing flying crops XD

All in all, a wonderful idea. You have my full support =)

[puccih hh the third]

Well, there could be levels of farming (multiple levels of complication), that a player could advance through, or choose to stay in one level. There sort of already are those levels, since certain crops are not available until later levels (though that doesn't exactly coordinate with my ideas). So this way, the game would be kept interesting for all ages of players.

[cartographer]

Aug 23, 2013 7:35:35 GMT -8 puccih hh the third said:

Well, there could be levels of farming (multiple levels of complication), that a player could advance through, or choose to stay in one level. There sort of already are those levels, since certain crops are not available until later levels (though that doesn't exactly coordinate with my ideas). So this way, the game would be kept interesting for all ages of players.

As in choosing the difficulty level of farming? Something like Beginner, Experienced, Viking (being this the hardest)?
And there could be an option on the Settings panel to change it, provided we had already reached a certain level. For example, it would require level 10 to unlock Experienced, and level 20 for Viking, but it wouldn't be compulsory to change it.

What do you think?

[puccih hh the third]

Yeah, that sounds like what I had in mind.

Oh yeah...another thing. Black sheep and white sheep are the game, and properly give different colors of wool. Brown chickens and white chickens are in the game - and they give the same color eggs. Brown chickens lay brown eggs - not white.

[Asvald]

+1 To this thread

[moonlight1393]

The whole feeding the ducks iron to make steel is a pretty impressive thing for those ol' vikings. And I like the idea of crafting out own weapons.

I'd like to add a few of my ideas for the farm; when the animals escape you can use your dragon to round them up. Or, how the Scottish have sheep herding competitions, but instead of dogs Vikings use dragons! And we could include more traditional crops, like carrots, honey, barley wheat, and oats. Honey is was an important staple to the Vikings since they had no sugar cane. In the game we could have our own apiary, or multiple, to harvest from.

[puccih hh the third]

It would be interesting if we could grow our own herbs too. Another suggestion (mostly to bump this forum back on the board), might be that we have to keep our fishing pond stocked - maybe limits could be posted on how many fish a day you can catch from your pond...that would make things more interesting. Also, different fish have different breeding seasons, maybe certain fish are available more during certain weeks or days.