[Kodai]

Well, okay. So people have been discussing how we might be able to put more KS into the economy and one of the ideas was to bring back Sekudui as a farming area again. The problem is, the farm didn't really work very well before. Sure, people made money, but you didn't have to put much thought into it to do so. You could just post your pets that would give you the highest return for the season and not even bother with leveling.

What I want to know is how you think the farm idea could be made into something better. I'd still like to do something with different levels of quality for the items, to encourage roleplaying with your pets, but how do you think it should be done? (Please post any ideas you had before in this thread, so they can all be in one place.)

[jackie125]

Like you said about quality, you could do that for each level, you gain a few more KS. Or something like that.

[ToxicShadow]

What I was thinking, is that you have a posting limit to have your pets even qualify for getting the items. Say, if it went by a month's time, for a Roosken to even lay an egg (however that worked in the first place xD;) you have to post, like, ten posts in your farm that include it within that month. And it would be the same for most pets, so you have to pick and choose which ones to write about, and you actually have to roleplay.

Another option would be that they actually have to post seven days in a row (a week straight) before they offer a product. Which would be more difficult than just posting so many times. You could post ten times in a day easy, but having to post every day puts a challenge on it, and some planning. Say, you have a month and each pet can only produce one item each month, so you have to basically go, "No, I have a vacation this weekend, so I have to start my week after that." And, even if one week gets broken by an accident, you have the rest of the month to keep trying.

Honestly, I like the second option to that better, since it increases the challenge and thought. The posting, of course, stands basically like having to take care of your pet. You actually have to care for it regularly before it giving anything back to you.

Levels, then, of course, could effect the "quality," of the product, by increasing the amount of ks you get for selling that one product. (Though the increase isn't MAJOR, a small increase is still helpful.)

[Freezair]

My idea for improving the farms was, instead of making them tied to certain pets and levels, it'd be tied to items like crops. You would buy the seeds from the farm store for some certain price. Then, in your "Farm RP post" (kind of like the ones Sekudui used to have), you would use them. Basically, you'd post the item you were using, to "plant" the seeds.

Basically, every day, you'd have to make an RP post in that topic. (What should determine "every day?" I'm thinking either Evelon time, or the time people post the seeds... not sure.) You would RP taking care of them. Each type of seed would have a "Days of Growth" attached to it, so you'd have to RP for so many days in order to take care of it. If not, it withers. However, after the days are up, you can harvest them! Once they've been harvested, you can sell them back to the store.

However, I think it'd be good if the different crops had effects, too, so you could use them instead of selling them and it might be worth it to use them instead. Like, maybe using a Carrot on one of your pets ups their Precision by 2. (Because carrots are good for your eyes... cwutididthar? Of course you did, because you eat your carrots!) Or maybe there's a Love Fruit, which is what Lovey-Love Potions are made from... the seeds are cheaper than the potion, but you have to take care of them to get the fruit!

It would add some new fun effects and things to do, I think.

[Thunder]

Like you said about quality, you could do that for each level, you gain a few more KS. Or something like that.

That was what we did before. The higher level your pet, the higher level the stuff it gave would be, and the more KS you got. Except people were getting so much KS that there was too much KS.

I like Freezy's crop idea, especially the alternate uses other than selling. Not too sure about the stat raising stuff because that's more of a trust thing with stats, but brewing potions sounds interesting.

[Firetra]

I like the idea of the crops. It would put more in depth of the "Farming" type style, instead of ranching. But also an idea is that RE2 could appear durring one of your crops harvest, and instead of just getting one crop per seed, a special dust is sprinkled over the item to make it so it produces 2 items instead of one. Or something of that value.

Also with the items that you get, you can keep them and combine them into items. And the items would go at a high price, but it might take longer. Like you can make a sword (just an idea) from scales, and the next battle that you go into you get a bonus attack for one round as you pull out your weapon. Or any other item that could go into play. It would give jumps in battles, but for tournements, only some items are able to be use. So then it adds to 1) farms 2) economic items 3)battles and 4) random events/site events that revovle around a battle system.

[ToxicShadow]

The one problem I see with having crops is that they don't revolve around pets and, like Kodai said, she still wanted to have quality levels of items. I do, however, like I idea of the items being used for other things than just selling, which opens up quite a few different doors for things that can be done. o3o

[jackie125]

What I meant was: More posts = more KS, not levels

[Kodai]

@Time-based posting: From what I can tell, Freezy, your idea of RPing so many days to get a product at the end is very similar to Toxie's idea. o 3o I do like the general idea, though, and it fits well with the original concept of leveling your pets to get better items and thus a higher pay-off.

@Crops: Personally, I think I'd rather keep the farms connected to pets, for a few reasons. First off, the pets are the main focus of the site. Having an activity that doesn't have much (if anything) to do with them seems a bit odd, to me, and I think that if we keep the farms connected to the pets, it would give people another option for doing something with their pets (aside from normal RPs and battles). Second, I think that keeping it pet-related gives people a better connection with the activity. That's not to say that it wouldn't be a nice chance to RP a farmer character, but I'm sure that some people would have more of an interest in posting every day if they were playing with their Yingshees or Hollowhearts and training them instead of just watering their carrots or tomatoes for a week. The third reason... well, we already have all the pretty pet-related item images. I don't want them to go to waste. o ^o; It'stotallyavalidreasonshhh.
Not to say that maybe we couldn't do other items like carrots or corn in the future, if other people were interested, but I think that at least for starting the farm up again, I'd rather keep it pet-related. o ^o

@Item uses: I had actually wanted to do this with the old farm, but it never came to fruition (for instance, if you collected enough feathers, you could then 'make' a plush toy, or using scales to create a shield). Using the items for stat bonuses could actually be interesting (I know there's been talk of making books to do that, but maybe this could either replace/supplement that idea?). As for potion brewing... I'm not sure about doing that to create breeding-related potions. I'd wait to see what Draiz/Shrewdie/possibly even Baal thinks about that.
But yes, if we can figure out what items could be made with/bonuses could be given from farm items, that'd be good~

@More posts = more KS: I'm... not entirely sure what you mean by that, Jackie. o ^o Technically, if you write enough posts to get to the next 'level' of item, you'd be getting more KS. ...Not to mention that you'd still be getting your 3KS per post, so the more posts you write, the more KS you get anyway.

...As an aside. I still have records of what items people owned as of May 17th, 2010, so you could get all those items back. P=

[jackie125]

What I was trying to say was: Each month would count for itself. Say you post 10 in your farm one month, you get points for 10 posts. Say the next month you post 25, you get points for 25 posts.

What I mean is to base it off number of posts per month.

Also, is it possible to turn off 3KS per post in certain places? If it was you could get paid say, at the end of the farming season instead of 3KS per post. But, you would get more then 3KS.

[Freezair]

The point of suggesting crops, instead of something more directly pet-related, was twofold. The first, uh, fold was to have start-up fees. You can't just get seeds, you have to buy them. That prevents people from just spamming freebie pets from the main site and making money without any counterbalance. It means the amount of money coming in is more balanced, and that there's a penalty for failure: You lose the money you invested. That helps keep people interested and dedicated, I think, if there's money on the line.

Secondly, it was to provide more flexibility in the number of pets that people can RP. Sure, people have fun with their dragon-y pets, but I don't see too many people rushing out to RP as Tuskows or Yingshee. Trying to RP as a pet you don't have a lot of motivation for can be kind of a chore, and while I do want people to be diligent and work to get stuff done on these farms, I want them to be fun, too. And I think people will have more fun if they can choose from a wider range of pets to play with, or use pets who already have established characters.

[ToxicShadow]

Perhaps to prevent the over use of freebie pets that you can just spam, then why not make it so that people have a limited amount of pets to "register," to their farm, that they can get items from? And, if we really want to put money on the line, then there could be a fee to "register," each pet or even go so far as to have a fee for "unregistering," a pet, to free up a spot to put a new pet.

Limitation on how many pets you can put it, along with fees to add them or remove them, would also leave room to gain an additional slot here or there through either fees or earning it somehow as a reward for being loyal to your farm.

[Kodai]

@Start-up fee: I'm not... entirely convinced we should have one (or right now, anyway, when people are trying to think of ideas to put money into the economy rather than take it out), but... we could still have a start-up fee without needing to have crops. We could have a fee for starting a farm, and then have people pay 'rent' on it every week/each time they try to produce items. o ^o

@Using different pets: Well, you could still use other pets in addition to the pet you're trying to get an item from. o 3o For instance, maybe you have a Lucain that raises Roosken. Or maybe your Kuhnas find a Tuskow and figure out they can turn it into a 'cash cow' by raising it. You wouldn't be limited to using only the species that give items in your RPs.

@Registering pets: Well, we did have the three-pet limit before, so at least that limits it a little. o 3o But I like the idea of registering. That fits nicely into a 'fee' concept, too.

Also, some more ideas:
'Basic' items wouldn't have the same strict restrictions on posting times as 'special' items. For instance, if you wanted eggs, you could just feed them three times in one week and still have a chance at getting items. But if you wanted something like scales, you'd need to take care of your pets at least twice a day for a week.

And Shrewdie likes the idea of being able to get items like potions this way.

[Freezair]

The point of requiring a start-up fee isn't to be a KS sink (or to make people pay just because), it's to be a motivator. It means that there is an incentive not to fail, because it introduces punishment for failure: You lose your investment. Part of the problem with the original farms was that they were zero-effort. You could just plop down any old freebie pets and walk away with 150KS or so for a single post. There were rewards for leveling up pets, but they were not evenly matched. Items would go up by about 20 KS per level, but in order to get a pet to even have a chance of giving out Level 2 items, they needed to be around Level 50--just leveling up a pet you cared about to Level 50 would bring you in more KS than taking in some throwaway Roosken once a week, even if they did produce Level 2--and it wasn't even a guarantee that you'd get those high-level items. This encouraged people to just toss random free pets out there and get hand-out KS.

If there is a reason not to fail, it will encourage people to try not to fail. It provides a spur to keep them RPing. The point is to make sure that the rewards are worth the risk of failure, otherwise people won't want to do it at all or will be willing to take the loss repeatedly. The point is to reward dedication.

[Kodai]

@Fees: Well, okay then. I still don't think it should be too much at the moment, though, since... yeah. Lots of poor people right now.

Anyway, another idea from someone that would mix the crops with pets and still put an emphasis on the pets:
There'd be a main shop where you could buy farm equipment. Stuff like fruit and vegetable seeds would be cheap; you could post your RP to grow it with any pet you'd like, and you'd get a small profit for selling it. Then there'd be special items like (for instance) egg formula for Rooskens. You'd need to use a Roosken in the RP, but you'd make a bit more money than you would by growing crops. Then there'd be items for the 'special' pets, where you could only use that sort of pet in the RP, but you'd get the largest profit of all.