Server Suggestion Farming and More Foods!

[Scoot]

Suggestion Title: Farming and More Foods!
Suggestion Description: This could easily be 2 suggestions but I think these go well together. Essentially, the amount of food options are extremely limited. All we can really do foodwise is buy food from the NPCs or fish and place the fish on a stove.

Farming:
When it comes to farming, it is more of a passive way to make money by growing your own crops and then selling your produce or using them to produce other foods.
There are 2 ways that the growing could be implemented:

1) The way these crops could be planted are similar to how you plant pumpkins and Christmas trees

OR

2) Maybe create a new tilled land prop/planter box (I'll leave an image below).

The profits for this would be lower than the more illegal routes however it should still be profitable and worth the time. This would also give a new use to the open space of farm where you could be growing a field full of crops.

The new crops could consist of potatoes, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, wheat, cabbage, parsnips, cucumbers, and more that you could think of. There could also be fruits as well like apples, bananas, cherries, oranges, pears, plums and more fruits that you can think of.

More Foods:
For more foods, you should be able to make/cook the food in one of these 2 ways.

1) Using the the crafting menu when you are close to a stove prop

OR

2) Make the stove work similar to chemical tables where you would be adding the food items or ingredients for the food you are trying to make into the stove itself.

A food recipe cookbook could be made if the second option is chosen so that players have a list of the foods they can create. This pairs well with a farming update as some of the ingredients could be grown or bought for example, eggs that can't be grown (obviously). You could even incorporate new drinks that could be made with some of the produce that at higher skill levels could be beneficial to your character with small buffs.

New Skills:
New skills could be implemented so that there is something to work towards. Here are some ideas

Gardening/Farming Skill: The time you spend growing crops, you become more adept with the skill where you start to gain more crops per harvest as your character has better knowledge of plant care.

Cooking Skill: You start out with being able to make basic recipes and as you create more food, your character becomes more adept with cooking where they can then create more complex recipes. For when you start working on the cooking skill, the crafting menu route, would have these locked behind a skill level or the interactive stove route you could have a higher chance of burning the more complex food.

Organisation Leaderboards:
You could incorporate growing crops and cooking foods into the organisation leaderboards as another thing for more passive orgs to compete in.

Why should this be added?:
+ A more passive way to make profits where you're not just shooting each other or power growing in a base
+ More passive RP opportunities especially for Roxie's Diner where you could run a restaurant.
+ Another set of items that you could sell in a shop.
+ A realistic way to make food.

If there are more positive, please add them below.

What negatives could this have?:
- I known given but development time could be lengthy.
- One for the crim mains - This wouldn't be a crim update

If there are more negatives, please add them below.

What problem would this suggestion solve?: More passive things to do

Useful Images:

https://imgur.com/A5hGYvL

https://imgur.com/paSEqSt

 

[Galle]

I like the idea of farming, it could add some passive roleplay to the 'Farm' property.

 

[Off da woodz]

As long as I can drive my tractor to a slums raid I think this is a good idea

 

[Lurker (DilanTheSkarf)]

This is a great idea and something I think would incentivize players to open more PassiveRP businesses like farming supply stores, cafes, and restaurants.
To add on though- I think if you wanted something like this to be taken seriously, existing food (burgers, hot dogs, etc) would need to be nerfed to a degree. By this I mean cheaper fast food items should regenerate your hunger less/slower than items cooked by players, this way players would actually WANT to go out of their way to look for player-created food items instead of constantly relying on the steady flow of Fredy's Bakery hamgurbers to satiate their fat little tummies.

The reason I think this would have to be done for the addition to be taken seriously by players is because this is already partly a thing with drugs; I haven't seen many players actively utilize the buffs given by taking drugs like meth and cocaine, and I feel like without having something in place that guides players away from the cheap fast foods and towards the nicer player-created foods these would suffer the same fate.

I'm not sure if you guys will remember this but years back there was the SantosRP series of RP servers and they had similar systems. I remember when I tried their server out you would have a cooking skill that you'd have to level to cook higher-tier foods, and you'd have to go to the grocery store on the map to look for ingredients you could work with and then cook at a stove in your property. While some may have thought it was tedious I think it was a great way of encouraging passive, day-to-day activities instead of having people constantly camp on their properties waiting for their drugs to grow or cook.

 

[Maia]

The profits for this would be lower than the more illegal routes however it should still be profitable and worth the time

This is where my biggest concern with these kinds of suggestions lies,

When you add a new system for making money, like farming or cooking, its almost impossible to balance it.

If the system has no real risk, the reward can’t be that good, otherwise it invalidates the risk that comes with drugs or other illegal routes. But on the other side, if you add risk, then people usually avoid it altogether because at that point, they might as well just go back to drugs, which are already more established and profitable.

What ends up happening is that most players try the new system for a week, maybe a small handful keep using it periodically, but the majority will always revert to the most profitable method, which is typically drugs.

That's why, while I see the appeal of passive and legal systems like this, I think you need to be realistic about what the actual long-term player engagement will be.

So my question is, what would make this system worth it, alongside drugs?

 

[Mallard]

If the system has no real risk, the reward can’t be that good,

Fishing, when done at the beach, is a relatively low-risk activity. Getting money out of fishing, however, is quite time-consuming, as one has to find a storage location that is close to an NPC to sell the fish to. So getting $100k worth of fish is easy, but getting $100k from fishing takes about 3 times as long.

Farming could be simular to this, instead of risk, time is the negative factor to it.

 

[Maia]

Fishing, when done at the beach, is a relatively low-risk activity. Getting money out of fishing, however, is quite time-consuming, as one has to find a storage location that is close to an NPC to sell the fish to. So getting $100k worth of fish is easy, but getting $100k from fishing takes about 3 times as long.

Farming could be simular to this, instead of risk, time is the negative factor to it.

I understand the trade-off, and I like the idea of this kind of system. But we’ve seen this pattern before. Not a lot of people fish, and it's for the exact same reason: the effort isn’t worth the return or rather there's better, more profitable ways.

Developing a full farming system would take a significant amount of dev time and resources. If it ends up in the same spot as fishing, where only a handful of players engage with it occasionally, would it justify the investment?

I’d genuinely like to see something like this become a reality, but I just don’t see a sustainable way to make it worth the resources, that's what I would like to hear your thoughts on

 

[exrobite]

I understand the trade-off, and I like the idea of this kind of system. But we’ve seen this pattern before. Not a lot of people fish, and it's for the exact same reason: the effort isn’t worth the return or rather there's better, more profitable ways.

Developing a full farming system would take a significant amount of dev time and resources. If it ends up in the same spot as fishing, where only a handful of players engage with it occasionally, would it justify the investment?

I’d genuinely like to see something like this become a reality, but I just don’t see a sustainable way to make it worth the resources, that's what I would like to hear your thoughts on

Make food useful to players, have it given them buffs like str int or whatever for a set time after consumption.

Also maybe a daily ish quest where you donate your food to the food bank (different recipes each day perhaps)

 

[alden]

I think it would be realistic if you made it so that the plants you grow aren't as worth as drugs but are more worth than fish, but that the quality of your plants highly depends on your treatment of them, for example whether or not you apply fertilizer, how often you water them, what type of soil you bought, how big the planter is and etc etc... Basically to make it balanced and not OP switch out the risk factor for your time and focus.

 

[iiTzWasParsnip]

This is where my biggest concern with these kinds of suggestions lies,

When you add a new system for making money, like farming or cooking, its almost impossible to balance it.

If the system has no real risk, the reward can’t be that good, otherwise it invalidates the risk that comes with drugs or other illegal routes. But on the other side, if you add risk, then people usually avoid it altogether because at that point, they might as well just go back to drugs, which are already more established and profitable.

What ends up happening is that most players try the new system for a week, maybe a small handful keep using it periodically, but the majority will always revert to the most profitable method, which is typically drugs.

That's why, while I see the appeal of passive and legal systems like this, I think you need to be realistic about what the actual long-term player engagement will be.

So my question is, what would make this system worth it, alongside drugs?

Make obtainable food sources and drinks (Outside shops) way better than what the shops offer. Maybe a Food and thirst rework to accompany this? So it would make more sense for people to go to somewhere like Roxies dinner for the more expensive but way more efficient/longer lasting food/drink items created by real players. Personally, I find it tedious going to the gas station to buy 10 cans of beans and 3 milk, 2 power aid and 5 water, when the food items hardly achieve much unless it's a watermelon or 4 burgers. Id rather head down to roxies where a farmer is setup and buy watermelons for 2K each than head into the gas station to buy a bunch of beans.

Convenience has a hefty price on it.

 

[Scoot]

For the risk factor, what could be done is that certain locations may have better quality soil and this can be tied to muggable zones and, if they produce inside a building itself, they would need to use fertiliser to keep the quality up. The profit would come in the players' interest, mainly as the crops themselves wouldn't sell for high amounts, but creating food that can't be bought elsewhere would cause it to be profitable. It wouldn't work like the drugs as it wouldn't be like you could stack a large amount then have one trip to an NPC (the dealer) to sell them for a large profit. The profits would be more overtime rather than being able to sell in bulk. If there are concerns over drugs becoming obsolete, then maybe buff the drugs up a little bit? Realistically, farmers aren't actually paid a hell of a lot when it comes to selling their produce, but if they use their produce and make items that require skill, people would buy them for higher prices.

This would also give more usage to more redundant items like salt and fertiliser that have little or no use. Furthermore, like I said, another passive way to make an income isn't just joining a job, opening up for more flexibility. I'm not a baser, so I don't have any interest for power growing drugs or raiding. However, this would give people who are like me an opportunity to do something different which isn't going to result in a gunfight