Farmer class?

[DeanF]

Possible stupidity from a new player:

When there are things like the Tailor and especially the Clockmaker, not having a farmer seems like an oversight.  Maybe call it a "Yeoman", since obscure class names seem to be looked well upon.  Make it a good cook, too, (plus maybe somehow a bonus to domesticate animals?) so that it basically meets the needs of "cozy players".  There seem to be a lot of players out there who like cozy games (Stardew Valley is a thing, after all) and I would imagine that multiplayer groups might seek one out to keep them provisioned.

Or maybe this has already been considered, and it was deemed too powerful?

Edited April 15 by DeanF

[Emeal]

I like the idea! I love the idea!

And its been suggested in the past: https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/16116-farmingcooking-class/

But let me play devils advocate for a moment.. because since survival = farming this class would be absolute the class to have to enable better and faster farming.
I'm not against having a class that makes the game easier in regards to farming, but it will smoothen one of the main Survival Struggles that is the core experience.

Farmer Class Trait Ideas:

• Green Fingers: +10% planted crop drop rate, +20% foraging wild crop seed drop rate.
• Henwise: +15% chance to find extra egg when looting a Henbox.
• Seasonal Energy: +10% movement and harvesting speed during Summer, opposite during Winter.

[williams_482]

It exists, but not with any special bonuses (or penalties): it's called "Commoner." 

In the era this game is set, as well as the preceding ~5,000 years and subsequent ~500 years, the overwhelming majority of all people in existence were subsistence farmers. Farmer isn't a specialization in these societies, it's a safe default assumption for all but the affluent leisure classes, a handful of specialists, and those short-lived few so desperately poor as to be without farmable land. 

[Demoncyborg]

personally i like malefactor for my farming needs! the extra foraging and wild crop drop rate is useful for a wide range, but getting extra mushrooms to add more veg to a meal is always useful, and a lower animal seeking range makes starting husbandry that much easier.

i'm pretty sure before this coming update, all berry bushes still count as wild crops, so i found it one of the better classes for cultivating a large field of those as well.

[DeanF]

3 hours ago, williams_482 said:

It exists, but not with any special bonuses (or penalties): it's called "Commoner." 

In the era this game is set, as well as the preceding ~5,000 years and subsequent ~500 years, the overwhelming majority of all people in existence were subsistence farmers. Farmer isn't a specialization in these societies, it's a safe default assumption for all but the affluent leisure classes, a handful of specialists, and those short-lived few so desperately poor as to be without farmable land. 

I'm not sure that's completely right.  I mean, I get what you are saying about medieval commoners, just not about the game mechanics.  Because then why don't all of the other classes have farming debuffs?  If they did then I would buy that argument, easily.

 

7 hours ago, Emeal said:

And its been suggested in the past: https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/16116-farmingcooking-class/

But let me play devils advocate for a moment.. because since survival = farming this class would be absolute the class to have to enable better and faster farming.
I'm not against having a class that makes the game easier in regards to farming, but it will smoothen one of the main Survival Struggles that is the core experience.

Farmer Class Trait Ideas:

• Green Fingers: +10% planted crop drop rate, +20% foraging wild crop seed drop rate.
• Henwise: +15% chance to find extra egg when looting a Henbox.
• Seasonal Energy: +10% movement and harvesting speed during Summer, opposite during Winter.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out!

As for the rest, that is sort of what I meant by "deemed too powerful."

But y'know what?  We get to choose our difficulty at worldgen, anyway; Standard versus Exploration versus Wilderness Survival, etc.  Heck, I turned Hunger down to 75% until I figured out the game mechanics.  Nonetheless, any buffs should be very small, since they might have a disproportionate effect in multiplayer.  Maybe half of those, so more like:

• Green Fingers: +5% planted crop drop rate, +10% foraging wild crop seed drop rate.  (Because this one would be huge, but some day seeds and crops will be the same for grains, anyway.)
• Henwise: +5% chance to find an extra egg when looting a Henbox.  (One in twenty seems mild.)
• Seasonal Energy: +10% movement and harvesting speed during Summer, opposite during Winter. (This one can stay at 10%, it balances itself)

I don't think that would be game-breaking?

And I have no idea how to add a cooking buff, since simply increasing meal yield might be too much, and there really is no time involved to be reduced.  All I can come up with is stuff that might be too powerful, like:

• Gourmand: +5% satiety in prepared meals and pies with three or more ingredients
• Nutritionist: +5% nutrition for calculating maximum Health in prepared meals and pies with three or more ingredients.

  And what would other debuffs be?  Commoners served in the levies in wartime, so initially I had thought no combat debuffs.  But they I recalled that this highly targets cozy gamers, and they might not be terribly interested in combat, anyway.  And probably underground stuff, like the hunter.  So how about:

• Nervous: -15% melee damage.  (But no debuff for ranged combat, farmers tend to be archers.)
• Claustrophobic: -15% ore drop rate, -10% mining speed.

Edited April 15 by DeanF

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, williams_482 said:

It exists, but not with any special bonuses (or penalties): it's called "Commoner." 

In the era this game is set, as well as the preceding ~5,000 years and subsequent ~500 years, the overwhelming majority of all people in existence were subsistence farmers. Farmer isn't a specialization in these societies, it's a safe default assumption for all but the affluent leisure classes, a handful of specialists, and those short-lived few so desperately poor as to be without farmable land. 

This, plus:

16 hours ago, Emeal said:

since survival = farming this class would be absolute the class to have to enable better and faster farming.

The Commoner class covers most of the standard professions that common people would have had in the medieval period, and many common people were farmers. Likewise, farming is exceptionally valuable in Vintage Story, so having a class that would just be outright better at harvesting cultivated crops(including cultivated bushes and fruit trees) as well as growing them faster, and potentially getting a boost to livestock yields as well...that's pretty much easy mode in singleplayer, and difficult to balance in multiplayer. A farmer class could, in theory, suffer some significant combat penalties I suppose, but that doesn't really make sense either given that...well, farmers are strong, and often decent at fighting since they get used as basic soldiers by the nobility when its wartime. 

I think the other issue is that assuming a Farmer class was added, then what does that make Commoner? Why does the game not have Blacksmith or Millwright or Tanner or Baker or any of the other professions typical of the medieval period?

Personally, I'd rather see Sailor than Farmer. Not sure what the benefits and drawbacks would be for such a class, but seafaring requires some specialized skills, and having a class that favors nautical content would probably make for an interesting pick for more water based maps(though that requires more nautical content to be added first).

[ArgentLuna]

There is prob a mod that adds one but i dont think the base game needs it.

[DeanF]

20 hours ago, ArgentLuna said:

There is prob a mod that adds one but i dont think the base game needs it.

As fate would have it, I just found the many mods that add new classes or modify the stock ones.  A lot of them are...well... over the top, with huge bonuses, more like a mainstream game's class system.  I sort of prefer Vintage Story's independent-dev labor-of-love to something like Overwatch.

I still disagree with the argument about the Commoner, though.  As I said earlier, if they were meant to be farming specialists then every other class would have farming debuffs.  Instead, Commoners seem meant to be generalists, without any buffs or debuffs.  That doesn't sound like a specialist farmer.  I suspect that others are getting wound up about medieval terminology too much.     And we don't even know if the fallen civilization was medieval- they certainly had high technology.  "Commoner" might mean "the guy working at McDonalds" rather than "farmer".

But as I said, I acknowledge that farming is an especially prominent part of the game, so buffs need to be small.  On the other hand, some of the other classes get some quite large buffs.  Malefactor gets +20% wild crop drop rate.  Blackguard gets +30% melee damage.  Hunter gets +30% accuracy.  So I really doubt that mild 5%-ish agricultural buffs would break the game.

So I think that with careful planning a reasonable and non-overpowered Farmer of some sort could be devised.  But I will stop arguing on the issue now.  Obviously this has been argued before, and I'm new.

Really, we could probably think of a class to specialize in every major activity in the game.  Forester?  With increased wood block and stick drop rates, walking speed buffs on Forest Floor blocks, and the ability to climb trees as if they had ladders?  Miner?  Miner probably has the same problem as the Farmer- it would need careful designing to not be overpowered.  Call it a "Kobold".  Etc.

Edited April 16 by DeanF

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, DeanF said:

And we don't even know if the fallen civilization was medieval- they certainly had high technology.

From the trailer itself: 

Plus I believe the devs themselves have stated that the main focus is on the medieval period, with a few steampunk elements thrown in. Likewise, if you look at the roadmap, the cutoff for the tech tree is early steam power, which is on-brand for a setting that's predominantly the Middle Ages but with some earlier industrial advancement.

Also, if you read through the game lore(tapestries, lore books, flavor text on items), there are several references to things relevant to the late Middle Ages, specifically somewhere between the 1200s and 1400s. The reason I list that time frame specifically is due to the Hanseatic League and Byzantine Empire both being mentioned. The Old World setting can't be earlier than the 1200s, or the Hanseatic League wouldn't exist, and can't be later than the 1400s or the Byzantine Empire would no longer exist either.

26 minutes ago, DeanF said:

But as I said, I acknowledge that farming is an especially prominent part of the game, so buffs need to be small.  On the other hand, some of the other classes get some quite large buffs.  Malefactor gets +20% wild crop drop rate.  Blackguard gets +30% melee damage.  Hunter gets +30% accuracy.  So I really doubt that mild 5%-ish agricultural buffs would break the game.

They wouldn't break the game, but they would be too underwhelming to make the class worth picking either. Those 15-30% buffs/debuffs for the other classes really only translate to getting or losing an extra resource occasionally, or needing one more/one less hit to kill a target. Basically, something that's nice to have and a clear benefit/drawback, but not enough to stop the player from playing the class comfortably in singleplayer, or make specific classes outclass the other picks in multiplayer.

The problem with Farmer though is that buffing cultivated crops by 20-30%, or probably even 15%, gives such a class a huge advantage when it comes to food and industrial production, if not an advantage to livestock products as well. It also still leaves the question of what, exactly, is the Commoner then if they aren't farmers, and why aren't there other classes for specific professions like Blacksmith and Lumberjack?

37 minutes ago, DeanF said:

As I said earlier, if they were meant to be farming specialists then every other class would have farming debuffs.  Instead, Commoners seem meant to be generalists, without any buffs or debuffs.  That doesn't sound like a specialist farmer. 

Sure, but again, farming was a really common profession in the medieval period. If a specialist class is made just for a general profession, then like I said before, that kind of decision is going to leave the door open for why other common professions don't have their own class despite clearly having gameplay loops that could support it. I think it's also worth noting too that each class has specific lore and NPC interactions to go with it; the more classes that exist, the more balancing the devs will have to do to keep every class on an even playing field, and the more lore and interactions they're going to need to write in order to keep things fair.

In any case, Commoner is the generalist "everyman"; there's nothing particularly special about them and they could come from pretty much any walk of life appropriate for a peasant in the late Middle Ages. I suppose one could still argue "but that just means they weren't GREAT farmers", and I suppose that would be true, but personally I would still lump farming into the Commoner category due to reasons listed above, plus wanting to see something more unique for a new class. Like an Herbalist or a Noble, the former covering a medical role(which currently no class covers, and no class offers a proper support role), and the latter being similar to the Tailor in that nobles would be a "fish out of water" and have some more interesting lore behind them given the history of the world. Farmer just does not cut it in terms of being a unique class or bringing anything interesting to the table.

[Emeal]

Cant we just have a Farmer class anyway, just for meee?