When did UO become SIMS Online? I think this would be a tad extreme. I mean, I can understand that decorating a house is PART of the game, but we have people talking like they should be able to get these seeds without actually playing the game at all. Killing things is part of the game. Killing harder things is part of the game. Picking seeds to grow into pretty hedges is part of SIMS Online
I have a feeling that you have never played a full time gardener? It is a lot of work when you're supporting vendors full of plants, including making all your own potion kegs (or for those of us that choose, buying them). It's not like SIMS were you just snap your fingers and they are there, and it plays an integral part in UO that even the most battle-hardened players look for, and that's something to make their houses look a bit nicer. UO has been that way for 10 years, or else no one would have ever come up with stacking shades of blue cloth together to make it look like you have an aquarium, and how many millions of those have you seen in homes over the years? As long as there has been housing, nearly every person that's ever owned one wanted to make it look nicer in some way. Gardening is just a big-time supporter of that.
UO is hands above a lot of other MMO's out there (like WoW for example) in the different playstyles you can have. A person can go their entire UO lives without ever having to kill anything. Some people actually like that, and we have that diversity here. Don't wish for us to be like every other cookie-cutter MMO out there where you have to go to monster A to get this, monster B to get that, wave your magic wand, and have an item, without any of the joy and fun at having made and created it yourself even if monster bashing isn't your thing.
So you like the idea of a 5th Generation, consisting of 16 new plants, over the idea of using the same 4 Generation plant system with 17 new plants? I don't really have a preference to either, as long as it is one of them.
Anything really as long as it is something more than 'find a seed and grow it'.
I think having a separate 4 Generation plant system wouldn't be too much work as long as they used templates as opposed to some kind of hard coding. I don't, however, have much experience with C++, nor access to the code that the plant system uses. (I work with an older top down language)
I can only hope that Jeremy or someone with a voice over there at least gives either cross pollination idea a chance!
A 5th generation would be heaven to gardeners and something they have been begging the developers for for years now (ever since Auger said that one was on the burner back before AOS, only to be set aside when they ran short on time). It's just like...the holy grail of gardening *laughs*. To actually get something to work towards again would make a huge chunk of us happy.
In that same vein, your idea of a new 4 generation set would also be incredibly fun. I will never forget those first few months after gardening originally came out and we were all growing like mad to get all 4 generations grown to see what we were actually getting. I terrorized boglings for seeds! hehe - and at that time owned a villa that I overran with plant bowls and plants, even to the point of kicking the vendors out! hehehe It was a great time in UO, and could be so again.
I'm afraid that the plant system must be too complicated for a developer to justify taking the time to sit down and code out a 5th gen (or new set of 4 gen) plants, which is really sad, because it's been one of the best systems in game and provided a lot for everyone (even down to that guy that has just one lillies stuck in the corner of his house cause he thought it made it look nicer). Perhaps the code is too hard-cored into the game to get much change out of it, but one can wish can't they?
Oh Ni, here's an idea I was tossing around with my friend the other night of a way to introduce new plants to the world without having to monster bash and make gardeners happy too...
Take the existing plants we have and make 15 of them suddenly start producing resources. Those resources, when planted in fertile dirt would create the new plant. Say for example you have a new kind of cactus. Suddenly red tribarrel cactus are producting a resource that when you pull it off the plant is named "a long cactus spike" and when clicked on says "try planting me in rich dirt". When you plant it and grow it, it comes out into the new cactus. Doesn't even have to be a crossable or seed producing plant because you now have a way to grow to get more of the unique seeds. Think of the possibilities! Bright green water plants could produce "a leaf seedling" which grows into a water lily, Orange ponytail palms could produce a "small cocoa bean" that grows into a cocoa tree, Plain pampas grass could produce "a small thicket of branches" that grow into a hedge section, etc etc. There is a huge unused area of gardening there (221 seperate plants of which only a minute few produce resources) that has a way of introducing a lot of things to our little world.
Anyhoo, I'm done rambling here hehe...
