Magincia Gardeners - How Old Is Your Longest Growning Plant?

[Amber Witch]

I have some that I haven't managed to kill off yet with that black thumb of mine and now are over a year old. I figured (hope!) I'm not the only nut out there that has been tending plants every day for a year. Anyone else out there?

Come on! Fess up! It's good therapy.

 

[Frarc]

On Drachenfels someone named Siward is growing lovely plants all over Magincia.​

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[Ludes]

I grow a lot of plants and I remember I was very gung ho about this when it came out..
Somehow I forgot about it so thanks for reminding me.

Gonna head to Magincia on Cats and see if I can start a few.

 

[MalagAste]

Not once have I ever placed a single seed in all of New Magincia.

 

[Ludes]

Not once have I ever placed a single seed in all of New Magincia.

Why not?

 

[old gypsy]

Not once have I ever placed a single seed in all of New Magincia.

They make great presents for friends, especially if harvested on a date special to someone... birthday, anniversary, etc.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

There's not much reason for people to really grow plants in my opinion. It doesn't do enough to just have your name on something and the age, although it makes it more worth objects that don't. There's not much reason to them. For example: Why would a community want to take care of a plant? The age would matter after time had passed but there wouldn't be anything really of importance other than that, time.

Now, if the plants grew resources or the plants were unique in some way, like if you clicked upon it, maybe you could get some kind of luck boost or strength or maybe if you squeezed a leaf, you could extract color from it or if reagants gave a bonus to damage, you might want to grow reagants. I don't just want to visit my plant every day and watch it grow old knowing that I will die long before it dies or shortly after I die, it will die.

Community gardens I think would be much more popular if the plants did anything else but get old. The nice thing about this type of garden should be that anyone can tend the plant and get resources from it. So, when you plant it, you plant it for everyone. When you take care of it, you take care of it for others. What do others get from your name being on the plant?

House plants should also age. Now this makes more sense because when people come into your house they can see that you're a gardner and by judging by the age of the plant they can tell how much you care about plants. So, it's a way of sharing with people your devotion. When people see a plant now in your house they just think about this lunatic cycle that you must be carrying out endlessly for no reason but that's just my opinion.

If I had my way, all plants in the world would age, whether they were planted by people or not. Maybe there would be some type of Lore Gump for a plant, telling you its' strength, its' resource, its' age, who planted it, when it cycles its' resources.

Then even a tree out in the woods could possibly survive on its' own because then the system would know that it had rained or that the sun was just right for it to grow. There might even be types of animals that live in this type of tree but at least for now we have the plants that we do but I think I have finished my cycling of buying pots and filling them with dirt.

 

[MalagAste]

Why not?

Because first off I have the memory span of a .... well.... less than stellar fruit fly... meaning my ability to run over to Magincia regularly to "tend" the plant is well.... almost nil... secondly.... I am not able to log in everyday to do anything since I am 100% incapable of being in game at all on Sundays. I find that oft times this has a very negative effect on plants. As well as many other things.

Because from what I recall you can't get any resources or anything off plants there.... Not entirely appealing to me. I can slap a few plants in my planter box and forget them..... come back in 4 months or so and it's all done reap the harvest and replant..... and forget.

 

[Amber Witch]

Sometimes it's not about what you get directly. It isn't about getting instant gratification other than... wow, I haven't killed it yet! Why do people plant flowers IRL? Not for resources or for the fragrance, for most. They plant to make an area look nice, to look pretty. There is much satisfaction in crafting something that looks nice. It's a way of giving to others without any expectation of benefit. Yeah, granted, It tends not to be of interest to those that want a lot of fast game action but I find it to be more of a morning cup of coffee and wake up thing to do.

One of the wonderful things that has happened is that now there are two other players that are sharing the Magincia garden with me. Every once in a while we will redesign the garden for the season or a holiday. We work together to design and grow the garden. The friendship that has developed is quite nice.

Not for everyone, I know but I think there are a lot of people who would get some sense of satisfaction from doing it.

It's a simple pleasure.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I'm glad that a few people are enjoying it but if you want more people to enjoy it and for it to have purpose for everyone and not just for you and a few friends, then it would make sense to change the design. Unless everybody is planting then it tells me that something is not right.

My plant is zero days old, exactly and I can tell you that because I never planted one. So, my suggestion is simply to try to give me a reason to plant one. I've always thought that the design of plants and trees was for resource. For example: Oxygen is a resource, wood is a resource and when a bee polinates a flower and that flower grows food, food becomes a resource. Then those seeds become resources. One grain of wheat could feed millions if you were just to plant that one seed.

Of course, it's about instant gratification. It's just that you are on a different level of gratification or you would not be happy with what you are doing. I am not putting down what you do or what anyone does. I am just trying to find a way to make my game time more gratifying and explain why it is not.

If I thought this was all that there would ever be, then I would be happy with it but I know that there is plenty of room for improvement. It's kind of like that morning cup. What happens if there's not enough sugar? What happens if you don't have tea? That's kind of the situation i'm in. I think I spent about 3 years growing plants and then came back to it again for another year for the plant dyes. So, I spent about 4 years growing plants. So, I have about 10,000 thorns, 50,000 orange petals, 30,000 red leaves, all kinds of seeds. I've done the ant quests a zillion times. So, I understand instant gratification and I have never found any.

What I really think is that it comes down to these greedy game designers who want to manipulate the markets and try to keep the resources low so they can capatilze on them so the player has to work for weeks to simply achieve what they can achieve in one second. This whole economy thing is just BS and all it does is poison your mind into thinking there is some kind of easy button or instant gratification, when really it is just bad game design.

So, here we are suffering without resources because it might unbalance EA's Market. Well that's what fertilizes your flowers in Maginicia and the next time you enjoy growing a plant, remember there are others who are not and maybe some day people won't care so much about who has what or who gets what but they will simply be able to admire the beauty of what it produces. You can cut the trees and take the wood and you can build a beautiful house to live in and you can have a garden and grow beautiful vegetables but when they start to charge you for the wood and you go homeless and when they poison your water and you go hungry remember it was all about greed and control. It had nothing to do with the natural design of what Mother Nature intended and these type of designs only take away the unity of what we were meant to be.

 

[Shelra]

Not for everyone, I know but I think there are a lot of people who would get some sense of satisfaction from doing it.
It's a simple pleasure.

Doing anything just for the satisfaction and simple pleasure is worth doing.
Thank you Amber, for the reminder.

 

[old gypsy]

Hmmm... Zyon, I honestly don't believe "greedy game designers" are trying to do underhanded things to UO players or prevent them from having and enjoying resources. However, regarding the original subject, I think the ability to grow plants, whether in pots or in Magincia, is just one among many lovely aspects of UO. Not everyone enjoys plant growing, of course, and it is perfectly fine if they don't. But what may seem pointless to one player may be a favorite activity for another... something the game designers seem to understand very well.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I agree old gypsy but haven't you ever thought about the fact that resources aren't fun to get? That it could be more of a grind. I always exagerate certain points. I'm just expressing a feeling. I mean if it's not greedy game designers then it's greedy game players. I know it sounds like i'm trolling but I love the planting systems but why is it always the design is never natural. I mean who decides how many thorns are going to be on a plant and how many days it's going to take to get those thorns and why are the numbers always so low? It's like it's PvP or something and they're trying to balance it. If the game designers really know what they're doing then what are the exact numbers?

They should know how many people are planting plants. How many people go through the cycle before they stop planting plants. What are the averages? It should be an exact science. Now, if they remove some of the grind where you didn't have to replant every week but could keep taking care of the plant, it would make it better. I used to replant 80 or 90 plants, I think it was even well over 100. I highly doubt the designers could even find the time to test that but I think I would still have plants if I didn't have to replant. I didn't mind tending them as much or growing them and 8 or 9 resources was pretty good.

What if it was only 1 thorn for 4 weeks. How many people would grow plants then? What if there were zero thorns? So, it makes you feel like the designers are greedy. Like they're slave drivers making you work and do the same thing over and over and for what? 8 thorns? So, you have to ask yourself what the statistics are. I would say the average player, that grows plants could tell you. Like, you could ask people what their resource numbers are. Like how many green thorns they've ever grown or how many orange petals. You could even get an average of how many people are growing plants right now and what they like about it.

I'm just saying, I don't like to replant. If plants had an age on them from the time they created this system, I would have plants that would probably be close to 10 years old but instead i've just stopped.

 

[old gypsy]

Well, Zyon, I guess I'm an odd duck since I often enjoy resource gathering. I also garden a bit in RL. I can't predict how many veggies I'll harvest from the plants I start each spring (some years they don't produce well at all... or the insects get them before I do), but at least in UO I can be sure how many thorns or petals to expect, and I don't have to wait till the following spring to start new plants. It's not a bad system, all things considered, but for those who don't enjoy it, there are plenty of other things to do.

 

[Amber Witch]

I think some things aren't meant to be reduced to mathematics. When one looks at the game from that perspective, regardless of how the numbers are skewed, they can never be fully satisfied with the outcome. We always want.. just one more.

But this isn't about resources. For the heck of it I took a walk around a few shards and was pleasantly surprised to see a few other loonies out there.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

I apologize if I offended anyone.

I don't really think it's about resource. Maybe in the beginning but it's been 6 years and I still have a life time supply of green thorns and whatever seeds. I think the beauty of the system is the compassion, the feeling you get when you're tending the plant and watching it grow. That's the part that gives you the high that keeps you working.

I wonder if you could grow a coconut tree. I think I might plant one of those.