Animal Refuse

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
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Irylia
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Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

I hadn't been able to play around with this new feature until just recently, but I was wondering if a few tweaks or implementations could be made to the system that would greatly help those of us with more than a few animals present on our farms:

1) Auto-repeat cleaning command. Most actions have an auto-repeating nature when it comes to "chores" or skills, but this one doesn't. With a full animal shed, even in just 24 hours you can accumulate a lot of refuse and need to repeat the command multiple times. Being able to auto-repeat would be very useful so that players don't have to make scripts or check every 10 seconds whether or not they finished this task.

2) Automate cleaning: To take option 1 a step further, It would be great to possibly automate the command to naturally move from one filthy building to the next. That way if you have multiple buildings to clean, you can set your character on that task and not have to worry about babysitting it. It would be a major QOL update for this feature.

3) Hire NPC stable-hand. This could act as a riln-sink. Basically, go to the farming office and hire a town kid looking to make a few extra riln to clean out your shelters for you. This could work similarly to the rent system and allow you to hire someone for up to 4 weeks in advance or on a day-to-day basis if you just don't have the time or will to do it yourself. I realize this is a slippery slope and people could start asking for this for other farm-related chores like weeding or watering or milking, but I feel like those are the kinds of things you take on as a player because you want to do them. As someone who's dealt with this particular chore a lot IRL, I think I can safely say no one wants to spend time cleaning animal excrement in their virtual farm. At least I don't. I do realize also that we have a company in-game meant to help out with things like this, but the population seems very down at present and I think having this option would be very helpful in the long-run if "refuse" remains in-game.

I also had some general questions about this feature that might inspire other suggestions or tweaks:

1) Does letting your shelter stay filthy for long periods of time affect the quality or durability of the building?

2) Does letting your shelter stay filthy prevent animals from producing whatever their byproduct happens to be?

3) Does letting your shelter stay filthy do anything at all currently or is it just cosmetic/rp-option? (I guess I could have just asked this first - oh well.)

4) Will filthy shelters attract unwanted pests in the future?

5) Will there be an option to make a refuse pile and turn it into fertilizer or use it for other purposes (like mushroom farms) rather than it just vanishing when you clean it up?
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

Oh, another thing that I just thought of... I'm not sure how it currently works for "occasionally" producing refuse, but uh... would it be possible for the refuse to all happen at the same time once a day or something so that when you clean your shelter you don't have to worry about it being instantly filthy again and can have some peace of mind until the next day? I know that's not very realistic, but it would be a nice feature.
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Rias
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Rias »

Irylia wrote: Sat Jul 11, 2020 10:42 am 1) Auto-repeat cleaning command.
To-doed!
2) Automate cleaning: To take option 1 a step further, It would be great to possibly automate the command to naturally move from one filthy building to the next.
I think this might make things a little too effortless. I don't want to make the game completely play itself. I might be convinced though.
3) Hire NPC stable-hand.
This one I'm not keen on, for a reason beyond the significant worry of opening up the idea of having NPCs to do the work of players for them. Husbandry largely consists of logging in once a day to reap rewards after the initial one-time investment, and the occasional re-stocking of food. I know some people are into husbandry for precisely this reason, but it was never my intention for this to be one of those hollow mobile phone games where you just log in once a day for a few minutes to tap all your money makers and then forget about it until tomorrow, with the dull satisfaction of virtual money eternally increasing with negligible effort. A big part of the point of the animal refuse addition was to give some kind of sense of non-rewarding effort and investment to husbandry, and I wouldn't want to immediately nullify that by letting husbanders bypass it with what will amount to a negligible riln cost. 7 of the 8 richest characters in the game are animal husbanders, including the #1 richest character.

Does letting your shelter stay filthy for long periods of time affect the quality or durability of the building?
Nope
Does letting your shelter stay filthy prevent animals from producing whatever their byproduct happens to be?
Yes
Does letting your shelter stay filthy do anything at all currently or is it just cosmetic/rp-option?
Prevents production of passive animal products that appear in the shelters (eggs, feathers, etc.) and reduces animal morale, which can in turn cause the animals to stop producing their primary goods (milk, wool, etc.)
4) Will filthy shelters attract unwanted pests in the future?
Yes, and will also cause animals to get dirty (requiring cleaning before milking/shearing/etc.) and potentially getting sick.
5) Will there be an option to make a refuse pile and turn it into fertilizer or use it for other purposes (like mushroom farms) rather than it just vanishing when you clean it up?
Possibly, but as stated above I'm of the opinion that husbanders should be required to put in some effort that isn't tied to an immediate reward of some kind.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

Thanks for all the answers. I appreciate how thorough you were. I do have some concerns about the responses to the NPC and refuse uses concepts, though I may be alone in this. I also found some potential issues with the system in general. Sorry in advance for how long this is. It's not meant to be a criticism of the dev. I am very thankful and appreciative of all the hard work that goes into this game we're all so passionate about. I'm just trying to understand this implementation's purpose and make sure it's working as intended.

I guess I'll start with the potential bug-ish things. I've been finding a few issues with the refuse affecting production over the last day or two. It seems that either there's too much being created too fast or the threshold of "filth" acceptable to an animal is too low. I clean the shelters once a day (not being able to be online much lately - that's about all I can manage). Today my chickens only laid eggs once it was fully cleaned. My goat had almost no milk, and my cow had only a bit more. Usually I can get at least 1 full bucket of milk from each per day. For those of us who can't login multiple times to clean the shelters, this poses a problem.

It used to be you could stock up on food for your animals and if you had to take a break for a few days, or at least one day, you would still have some production to login to. Now that doesn't seem to be the case. I realize as well that other classes and professions don't essentially have any kind of offline money-maker and that balance needs to be achieved somehow since farming/ranching is basically risk-free. But this one addition has pretty much nullified husbandry unless you're online enough times in the day to babysit it. And it's not like ranchers usually make so much riln in a day that it cancels out the fact that a warrior can easily make just as much or more from the same 30-60 minutes of killing mobs that drop riln and chests - or from a woodworker carving component parts or weapons to sell at market in a matter of minutes. If they do, then they probably have one of those mega-farms and are spending a lot more time harvesting resources than a simple login and logout.

One of the reasons you might be seeing 7/8 richest being ranchers/farmers is because we're also the ones who tend to login most consistently because we do have those daily things to do in order to keep up production - and it seems like a lot of the other farm-types I've met also do woodworking or another supplemental profession to "idle" with and also gain a ton of riln. Other characters don't have to worry about needing to be online every day though and can login whenever they please without risking missing out on potentially days worth of set-up work for a single pay-off that goes away if you don't attend to it, or feeling guilty about neglecting the text-critters we become unreasonably attached to.

I think the option I presented of making the refuse apply once a day rather than over time, and potentially raising the amount of filth before production stops would help alleviate this greatly. You could also possibly lower the roundtime associated so that at least the task doesn't take as long for those of us with a lot of buildings, though that would do nothing to solve the filth over time issue.

I know you said you didn't like the NPC idea because you feel it instantly negates the whole reason for adding refuse, but honestly I still think it's a really good solution. You still have the inconvenience of refuse in the game that requires cleaning before you can function at all and if people want to pay riln to get out of it and get some time and peace of mind back, then I don't see a problem with that. Especially if you really don't want to allow this addition to ever expand into being useful on the farm. Making the filth a once-a-day chore, rather than an over-time chore would make the NPC option less, to me, essential.

I also think once you implement building and handcart degradation, possibly adjust farm tool degradation (I think I've only had to repair a tool once?), or potentially raise rent rates, things will balance out a bit more as far as cost/reward if that's part of the worry with ranchers. There are definitely other ways to offer balance than 10-15 mins of cleaning excrement with no potential for allowing this effort to contribute to the game world in other ways.

By the way, the NPC idea was suggested BECAUSE of the non-rewarding nature. If you want to keep it purely non-rewarding, then please at least give us a way to not have to spend time on it constantly throughout the day in order to stay functional. And aren't you always looking for more riln-sinks? I don't see it as nullifying the implementation at all - and maybe that's because I'm still not sure I understand what the intention was in adding it in the first place. The NPC option is more of:

--Here's this thing I want ranchers to have to do in order to work. It gives you nothing and takes your time and requires multiple daily logins in order to optimize production. If you don't do it often enough, you will not be able to make any money because your animals will produce too slowly or not at all. (I've already seen a huge impact with eggs and milk. I don't even want to know how many days it's going to tack on to wool production which already takes quite a long time.) You can either do it yourself or you can spend riln (of whatever amount you deem fit - it doesn't have to be small) to not have to do it and keep your farm running smoothly while you go do other things in-game or out.--

If the NPC thing really bugs you, then maybe another alternative is if you login a certain amount of time in non-afk status it's assumed your character did the work and the filth doesn't accumulate. If you just login, do your riln-making stuff, and logout - then it accumulates normally. In this way it turns active participation in the game into a reward and those who still only login once a day will have to deal with inconvenience of the filth. Also if auto-repeat is added (and it seems it will be eventually) and the refuse has a potential to grow into other areas of farming or have some use (as suggested with fertilizer or mushroom farms), then the task of cleaning refuse becomes a feature people can look forward to rather than a chore for choosing a certain character type.

I mean... if people want to login and "tap all their money makers" and logout then that's their playstyle and there's not much you can do about that, but as someone who doesn't like to play that way and actually wants to participate in the world, I'd rather be productive on my farm and still able to do other things or play my alt in the game rather than needing to constantly worry about if my farm has too much animal waste accumulating and my poor virtual animals are losing morale or suffering while wallowing in large piles of poo.
"I'm of the opinion that husbanders should be required to put in some effort that isn't tied to an immediate reward of some kind."

I understand where you're going with this, but I don't agree. I think husbanders do put in effort and there isn't an immediate reward at all. At most there is a daily reward as by-products accumulate in restricted quantities. Sure the effort for us is usually just - make sure the animals are fed - which depending on the animal can definitely mean it's very low-effort. But as is the case with rabbits, and I'm sure future animals as well, there is not always food just readily available. You have to either farm it yourself or pay someone to farm it for you. Both of which can take considerable time and effort for the "payoff" to occur and in the meantime those animals produce nothing. Also there is time associated with the actual gathering and processing of the by-products in many cases so even then it's not instant unless you're referring to chickens and you just grab the eggs.

To be clear, I don't mind the idea of having to clean up after the animals on my farm if there's a reason for it or if there's something that can come from it. I'm also not opposed to adding more steps to husbandry-related chores. What I don't like is making those additions debilitating to the functionality of the profession. And I think refuse could be re-worked to be a lot more user-friendly in general (obviously). I was trying to find ways to at least make it seem worthwhile to players to have to do this extra thing and spend this extra time they could be using for RP or getting back to real life. But it seems that completely opposes the non-rewarding aspect you seem to want and which I don't understand the implementation of.

Maybe when it's automated to some degree (repeat-command or fully) then it will turn out it takes less time than I'm thinking. Or if any of the other changes are added it may become less production-halting. But currently with the having to constantly re-up the command and not always catching it right at 10 seconds, it took me quite a long time this morning to clear the buildings of refuse and then some were immediately soiled again. And then for my efforts, my animals barely produced any by-product. This didn't give me any sense of satisfaction or make me feel good about my farm. In-fact, it actually made me re-think my character and if I wanted to really spend that much time every day cleaning poop. For now I'm going to wait and see if any of these changes get applied, or even considered, and see how this shapes up. But as it is currently, without understanding more of the reasoning behind this change in its current incarnation, it's pretty disappointing. If some of the issues I described are unintended side-effects then that's another matter and I hope that is the case.
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Rias
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Rias »

I appreciate the feedback and will look at tweaking the rates of refuse buildup. However, the primary goal of this change was specifically aimed at preventing the "log in once a day to reap the rewards of things that have passively progressed while the player was offline/AFK" aspect of Husbandry. This is why the NPC option isn't something I'm really considering (but not saying never).

Again, I know that the more passive and less online-time-required nature of Husbadry is what some people specifically enjoy about it, but I don't feel it was in a good place as far as a general sense of game balance or design intent. A warrior can indeed make a lot of money, but they have to be logged in, paying attention, and actively doing things, and they have risk of death and their equipment repairs to worry about on top of that. The woodworker at least has to be online and carving, incurring roundtime and spending their energy. Once they stop actively doing things, they stop earning potential money/resources. That's the kind of thing I'm keeping in mind when I consider how to properly balance the more passive nature of Husbandry (and Farming, though it already has weeding and watering as maintenance requirements and is thus a step ahead of Husbandry in this regard).

I'm happy to hear and consider additional thoughts on the matter.
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Agelity
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Agelity »

Been experimenting a bit with it myself and was thinking that perhaps there could be a more obvious indicator as to how much refuse has built up. Different message/color for a little bit of refuse (dirty, but can probably wait till later in the day when time allows but before it gets TOO bad), compared to "I just abandoned my farm for a week and now I've come back to OHGODWHATISTHIS" level of refuse.

A rancher will need to clean regardless, but could be a good way to determine whether they need to start panic scooping or maybe attend to other things before needing to worry about cleaning out their farm structures.
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

Thanks for the additional feedback. I agree that some kind of indicator would definitely be helpful. After I wrote that post my shelters were full of poop again and not just one or two cleanings worth, but a lot. It would be nice to know if a single round of refuse application is enough to stop production or if it takes several, if it's based on shelter size and capacity, or potentially occupancy etc.
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Rias
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Rias »

Larger animals now produce filth at a somewhat lower rate, and animal shelters now show a rough indicator of just how filthy they are (slightly, somewhat, extremely, etc). Hopefully that helps!
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

Thanks for the updates. There's already a great improvement from what I can tell. Looking forward to the auto-repeating command ;)
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Irylia
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Re: Animal Refuse

Post by Irylia »

This might be a minor thing, but would it be possible to color code the filth levels so we can more clearly see if a certain level will halt production - similar to nutrition or energy levels? Or does production gradually slow down regardless of filth level anyway? Alternatively, can we get more insight or a wiki post about what the various levels mean as far as animal happiness and production?
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