How to make farming fun?

[The Mighty Palm]

So I've been messing around with the idea of "un-bore-ifying" Harvest Moon, by taking everything that's tedious and making 

it into something quick, addictive, and enjoyable. The biggest hurdle? Farming. By show of hands, who enjoys the first day

of hoeing, the next ten days of watering, and trying to get the fertilizer JUST RIGHT? Because everyone I know has tried

EVERYTHING ELSE as a means to make money. Mining, fishing, animals, exploits... Even the Devs usually add ways that you can

get someone/thing to do your farming for you! And yeah to be totally honest walking around mashing A while watching my stamina

tends to not be fun the 50th time you do it. So heres what I want to know. How can farming be fun? Making the whole process into a mini-game is my would-be method, but I'm having a creative block on how to make one. 

So how would YOU make farming fun?

 

[EternalShadow]

Tap into the reward centre of the brain: make such tasks reward more quickly.

Eg: right-click to hoe and plant, right-click again to water, right-click again to fertilize (not mandatory but speeds up growth by a certain amount) leave for 24 ingame hours, pick up crops. Amount of water and fertilizer used is simplified to one unit each.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Eg: right-click to hoe and plant, right-click again to water, right-click again to fertilize (not mandatory but speeds up growth by a certain amount) leave for 24 ingame hours, pick up crops. Amount of water and fertilizer used is simplified to one unit each.

Isn't that just how the default farming system I just mentioned works? What's different?

 

[EternalShadow]

Isn't that just how the default farming system I just mentioned works? What's different?

The timing. No day of hoeing, ten day of watering, and no having to get the fertiliser right - the game does that for you too.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Well that's one way. Cut it out entirely and make the game do it. Kinda seems like a cop-out though. Like you wouldn't really be achieving anything and therefore wouldn't feel total satisfaction after you've succeeded.

 

[EternalShadow]

You woudl still have to gather water, buy fertilizer (or get it from animals), and plant each plant - so there is still a significant amount to feel accomplished about. By moving the reward focus, you can help the player feel that there is something to gain from their efforts, not just waiting around and doing the same thing 10x over.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

So you'd only do it once and be done? Is that what you're saying? Because last I checked crops don't grow overnight, and need water daily.

 

[EternalShadow]

That's the thing, though: you will lose realism. Last we checked though, trees don't grow as quickly as they do in Minecraft

But yes, once and be done. Unless you want to throw in 'farming levels' from 1-5 which requires 1 watering a day, minus the number of farming levels you have. (Eg default growing speed is 5, but farming level 2 reduces this by 2, so 3 days)

Or w/e

 

[The Mighty Palm]

It's not the realism loss that bugs me, its the balancing. Crops are a very important part of the gameplay of harvest moon, and I'm afraid that handing them out that quickly will make it too easy for the player and they'll become bored.

EI: In one day you could have started an infinite loop of seeds = crop = money = seeds

 

[EternalShadow]

Again, this is where you need to expand the gameplay beyond a single crop (assuming we're talking about one, and even if not...)

- Let's say there are 10 crops in the game.

The first tier consists of two crops - carrot and potato (chosen arbitrarily as I know nothing about farming them lol)

These two crops grow in one day.

They sell for 100 gold each.

You need 500 gold to buy a tier 2 plant seed.

The second tier consists of three different crops: sweetcorn, beetroot and onion.

These each take two days to grow, unless you can get your farming level up (which in my case would take a while, but you could farm tier 1 crops until it goes up if you want)

And so on.

Ideally, you want to strike a balance between ease and difficulty - but repeatedly performing the same action (watering) is NOT difficulty - it's tedium!

Therefore, the best balance to be found is actually within a limited size of field, and field management, so you can grow crops to sell or eat and use money to expand your field or the range of crops that you can actually grow.

There are a lot of ways to go about it - no two games are really the same.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Now that I understand it better, I like the idea. Not bad HFL.

Also side note semi-related to farming: Is anyone opposed to removing hurricanes? I feel like a gameplay mechanic that you have no power over preventing or foreseeing is not only unfair and super RNG based, but annoying as all hell when the farming system gets completely rekt by a random storm. Especially when the only purpose it serves is to artificial difficulty by messing up your hard work. it's a giant middle finger.

 

[EternalShadow]

For natural events, maybe put in something such as a minigame or an upgradeable item like a shelter to reduce damage/losses?

Or maybe just don't farm in a hurricane-prone area o_o

(Side note: this brngs up the possibility of choosing which map you'd want to farm on at the start... Hmm...)

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Choosing where to put your farm is a neat concept (Magical Melody did it, but it served little purpose other than size and soil level). 
I think the whole shelter idea to minimize losses wouldn't really solve the problem though, as there would still be a degree of luck

involved. Minigame wouldn't make much sense either (what are you supposed do? Fight off hurricane monsters before they reach your crops?)

Imo something like wild animals would be a more sensible obstacle, since you can kind of prevent them and they aren't totally random.

Eg: Crows come to eat the seed. You can chase them off via mini-game or build a scarecrow to keep them away. Deer eat your greens, so

you would need to put a fence around the farm to deter them. Only in certain seasons are some animals around. etc.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Okay so here was my idea: 
Farming is automatic in the sense that your character will move from tile-to-tile on his own. (think Captain Olimar plucking pikmins.) with a QTE.

Press the correct key in time and you'll work the tile, fail and you'll either A: Fail to work the tile (Hoeing/Seeds/Fertilizer) or B: Lower your crops quality (Watering/Weeding). The faster you do this, the better the results will be. The higher your skill level, the faster you'll be able to farm. Eventually what used to be

a whole game-time's day of work can be done in a few real-life seconds and for less stamina.

As for farming tools, I never saw how a Golden watering can made you any better at farming than an Iron one. So there won't be any of that nonsense.

An Iron hoe can do everything a Titanium one can. Better durability/stamina will be the reasons to upgrade.

The first day would be hoeing, which is the simplest mini-game, but it has a big impact on final result. (if you screw up really bad, you may just want to try again.)

Days would then shift between the three mini-games weeding/watering/and fending off animals which have smaller impacts that build up over time.

Farming is still a daily process in my method, but it soon becomes a game of "lets see how fast can I do all my work without mistakes"

 

[Eschaton]

 

[PabloNeirotti]

Yea. Skinner box is a supper common practice. I'd usually lobby against it though!

On my game, farming is a secondary activity. You do it but for the purpose of having something to eat, gaining Energy, and spending it in other actions (walking, picking up resources, crafting, etc...) - In some way, Energy in here is also a currency.

However if you want Plant farming to be a main gameplay mechanic, I wouldn't say go the Skinner Box model or tiered crops. Make it flat and deep instead.

In example... The first crops the player is going to harvest should be terrible. Quality F, sell for little. But only because the player doesn't knows how to get a Quality C crops, which sell for more, and therefore allow to get better investments to then get equipment to handle more crops at the time — however, not necessarily to improve quality.

The way to actually improve quality would be through various mechanics, like:

1. watering during the night so crops don't get burned by sunlight
2. learning which kind of insecticide is better, learning what kind of soil is better
3. learning if the plants need to be protected from wind or not (planting Trees could be expensive and therefore, more delicate plants should be left for later in the game, as opposed to just be a whole different tier - it's a tactical decision as opposed to a forced concept), etc...
4. and the list goes on

All ways are valid. This is the way I would go about it though . It is definitely harder than Skinner Box. It takes more time, proper planning, a lot of thinking (you may see this as a headache already). But I believe in the end makes in more meaningful.

 

[EternalShadow]

@Pablo: good idea, but the problem with that sort of thing is it can be discovered very quickly through looking at a single game guide for example, which is inevitable. However, the effect could be mitigated through some sort of "discovery" system where the player can perform those additional tasks (watering at night) via discovering it ingame somehow. 

But yeah, there are many ways to do this, all varying based on the theme of the game, if farming is central, etc.

 

[Scott_C]

A system I really liked was in Rune Factory. You could use trained monsters to could grow crops for you. I usually wound up with a few squares that I personally took care of for growing high quality crops and then had my monsters growing low quality cash crops everywhere else. This way I felt involved in my farm but it didn't dominate all my game time.

So if I were design a farming system from the ground up...

The player would have some sort of employee / forest spirit / robot that planted their fields for them.

There would also be a green house or lab where the player was allowed to carefully grow one or two plants.

The plants the player personally raised would increase the level and selection of crops the employee could automatically grow.

So you start out with a farm that can grow nothing but level one turnips. Then the player spends a few days in their greenhouse growing a level 1 potato and a level 2 turnip. Now the farm can automatically grow potatoes and level 2 turnips.

Of course, rare plants and high levels would be harder to develop and require specific rare fertilizers or watering conditions. Or maybe certain seeds have to be bought from traders or found in the woods before you can try to grow one in your greenhouse.

So the average day would end up something like:

- Player spends a few minutes carefully nurturing his experimental plants

- Player spends a minute checking on his farm and maybe giving orders on what to grow next.

- Player goes off and spends the rest of the day chatting with villagers, buying items, exploring the woods for rare seeds and fertilizers and all those other fishing and cooking minigames that show up in every Harvest Moon style game.

 

[Wavelength]

The thing about Harvest Moon is that it's not about the farming.  The farm is almost there as a "gameplay excuse" to give you something solid to focus on while you play out a fairly engaging alternate life sim.  The whole thing is there to create a sense of flow, a sense of a mindless but satisfying grind.  This didn't really bother me.  After I had enough money to do most of what I wanted to, I sometimes just ignored the farming elements entirely, only handling crops/animals when I felt like it.

If I were to try and make farming into a more involved, interesting activity, I'd do the following (focusing on crops here but similar things could probably be done with farm animals too):

• Add a lot of strategic elements to it, some of which work over the long term and some which are very situational.  As an example of long-term strategy, rotating different crops to affect soil quality, or building and laying out costly irrigation systems to improve crop quality.  As an example of situational strategy, market forces cause the prices of crops to move up and down and you might have to choose, for example, whether to sell your crops immediately for their current price or pickle/preserve them into less expensive products that might be able to sold later when that crop is in demand.
• Introduce new crops over time to keep things a bit fresher.  Not just different crops each season, but more options each year.  Maybe you can cross-breed different plants to create your own original crops.
• Tie the relationship/life-sim elements of the game closer into farm life.  Honestly I don't have a good "general way" to do this outside of specific events, but I'm sure it could be done.
• Remove the "grind" elements like watering plants each day or picking the fruit off the vines one-at-a-time, and replace it with minigames that are played infrequently (and only once for a single batch of crops).  Vary the minigame's "start position" based on other things that have already happened - e.g. a poor crop of strawberries will have a few shriveled berries on the screen that crack if mishandled, whereas a great crop will have dozens of lush and resilient berries, but either way, you need to pick them!  Have the player's skill at these minigames be an important part of the crop's quantity and quality, combined of course with the different strategic decisions they've made.

I think this could make for a very fun, involved game.  Does every Harvest Moon type game need it?  Absolutely not.  But it would really appeal to certain types of gamers - I think ones like you and me.

 

[Ralpf]

The thing about Harvest Moon is that it's not about the farming.  The farm is almost there as a "gameplay excuse" to give you something solid to focus on while you play out a fairly engaging alternate life sim.  The whole thing is there to create a sense of flow, a sense of a mindless but satisfying grind.  This didn't really bother me.  After I had enough money to do most of what I wanted to, I sometimes just ignored the farming elements entirely, only handling crops/animals when I felt like it.

If I were to try and make farming into a more involved, interesting activity, I'd do the following (focusing on crops here but similar things could probably be done with farm animals too):

• Add a lot of strategic elements to it, some of which work over the long term and some which are very situational.  As an example of long-term strategy, rotating different crops to affect soil quality, or building and laying out costly irrigation systems to improve crop quality.  As an example of situational strategy, market forces cause the prices of crops to move up and down and you might have to choose, for example, whether to sell your crops immediately for their current price or pickle/preserve them into less expensive products that might be able to sold later when that crop is in demand.
• Introduce new crops over time to keep things a bit fresher.  Not just different crops each season, but more options each year.  Maybe you can cross-breed different plants to create your own original crops.
• Tie the relationship/life-sim elements of the game closer into farm life.  Honestly I don't have a good "general way" to do this outside of specific events, but I'm sure it could be done.
• Remove the "grind" elements like watering plants each day or picking the fruit off the vines one-at-a-time, and replace it with minigames that are played infrequently (and only once for a single batch of crops).  Vary the minigame's "start position" based on other things that have already happened - e.g. a poor crop of strawberries will have a few shriveled berries on the screen that crack if mishandled, whereas a great crop will have dozens of lush and resilient berries, but either way, you need to pick them!  Have the player's skill at these minigames be an important part of the crop's quantity and quality, combined of course with the different strategic decisions they've made.

I think this could make for a very fun, involved game.  Does every Harvest Moon type game need it?  Absolutely not.  But it would really appeal to certain types of gamers - I think ones like you and me.

That's exactly what I have planned. Along with competing farms so you have to take into account their activities, too.

Also plan on giving the players a couple options on what to do with the new crops when they get them.