Hi everyone,
I want to take today’s (late) post as well as tomorrow’s (on time) post to talk about the plans I have for materials and farming in 0.9.
As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, one of my goals for PtP’s economy and progression has been to make the path the player takes dependent on what they find in the world. For 0.8, this took the form of having the player progress from wood to stone to metal tiers as they expand across the island, but this is a very linear progression, and I am aiming to add more “branches” to that.
In order to do that, of course, there will need to be more materials and plants for farming available in the game, and the whether a player has access to them needs to be fairly randomised. As a result, I am not only planning on adding the mentioned additional material, but I am also planning on removing the current form of the seed market, which is mostly a remnant from the game being balanced for competitive play.
Considering this will mean that players won’t get access to agricultural seeds through the market anymore, seeds will have to be created by turning a certain quantity of the corresponding product into seeds - e.g. 500 flax into a flax seed. With this in place, there will be more naturally occurring plant groupings that will work similarly to the banana groves now - players will be able to find them throughout the island, and they will be harvestable through the gatherer’s hut. They will, of course, also be spawned randomly at the game start, meaning players may find a large grouping of them early on, or will need to expand to a different location to find them.
Overall, this change should mean that finding a good quantity of something close-by should make players consider going into the direction of growing more of that - or that expanding into a certain area over another will help the player specialise in a way they prefer at the time. I will give you a bit more information about the changes you can expect in part 2.
Until tomorrow!