To clear a few things up first I don’t mean monthly updates only or do this instead of the epic planned upcoming features. As it was used in Minecraft dev terms by content creep I mean when all of a sudden a lot of little bits of content are added suddenly to fill out the game.
This was recently done really successfully with @Tom asking for craftable items for the weaver and carpenter. The reason I suggest this as a monthly activity is that while the huge features such as mining and better combat and all that will be great but it was the recent addition of things to build that I believe has made it much more enjoyable to play. Also the extra content makes the game feel more fleshed out.
My thoughts if one of the team took a couple of days a month to add a new type of crop and a range of things to make it would flesh the game out in a way that means it gets better to play fast even without the huge epic features such as water mining n that. it could be as simple as making there be both raspberry and blue/blackberry bushes but that makes the world more impressive or as an example different types of fencing so you can pick from a variety rather that it always being the same.
To further this I loved the way we were asked what should be added maybe a thread could again collect ideas with a poll being created to pick the best few that make it into the content creep day list
Anyway thats my two cents whats yours?
TL:DR - Each month devs take a day or two to add random furniture or small bits to flesh out the game with players inputs
I disagree simply because what are you going to do with it? There is no means to make flour, or bread. All the crops as they are are things that they can eat as is… so items like carrots, tomatoes, etc… should be a higher priority until proper cooking is implemented.
TBH I’m not too fussed which ones get done first. Certainly the ones you can eat raw would be easiest to do (clone existing crop, switch names & models, adjust food value if necessary, repeat) and would make sense ATM, but on the other hand doing wheat would be good for other reasons - for example, getting hay + flour from it, as currently crops only produce 1 item when harvested.
More seriously, buffaloes, yaks and cows could probably all use very similar models and animations, so if you have one in the marginal cost of adding the others isn’t all that high .
I think that these small content extras could be a nice break from slaving away at big features.
And even though from food standpoint carrots wouldn’t be any different from pumpkins it does a lot for visual style of my town.
If enough crops are added they could be treated as commodity item and sold only by trader. So you would start with ability to plant 4 crops but after some time you could plant 6 or more.
Different kinds of lamps. So a 3 pronged lamp, a chandelier, a lamp post, standard torches. Different kinds of fences, picket fences for example. different types and colours of trees. It’ll flesh out the game, but i wonder if it’ll bloat the game?
Easiest way to avoid bloat IMHO is to do non-crafted content - make the world a richer place to live in, rather than adding in a dozen different kinds of curtain to scroll through, for example.
I agree with this. Although I do like tons of “stuff” so a balance needs to be made. I’m thinking that additional recipes could be in the game but not necessarily on your crafter from the get go. Maybe a special sales person can show up and only have blueprints for cosmetic, non-essential crafting items. That the game will be bloat friendly and people can choose to bloat it up as they will.
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.Hearthlings trekking across strange new lands trying to find some new trees to bring home