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seeing as that players [for months upon months of testing] weren't taking advantage of their ability to plant anything anywhere and communally shape the environment for the benefit of all, i can understand why the devs took away this ability.
trees will better match their environment now, allowing realms to have more character and differentiate from one another. this change does not apply to backyard tree planting, where anything goes. harvesting may also become easier, as species of trees will be grouped closer together and be easy to harvest without traversing the entire world looking for randomly placed gas plants.
generally speaking , i like the change despite it taking away one of the few tools players had for shaping their environment.
i do think that if you are a player of high enough skill and perhaps a special extra seasoning ingredient [native dirt?], you should be able to plant "exotic" plants outside of their native domains. these plants should require extra care and watering and have shorter lifespans, but i do think it is important that players are able to make creative decisions about where to plant stuff. either that or some way to upgrade a street to be able to handle exotics.
that way a gas plant grove in the middle of groddle could have significance and be something the community could gather around to keep alive, since it would be a rare, special thing not easily recreated. - I couldn't plant certain seeds in my backyard yesterday. Unless they are planning on changing that again it seems they will limit it there as well.
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"i do think that if you are a player of high enough skill and perhaps a special extra seasoning ingredient [native dirt?], you should be able to plant "exotic" plants outside of their native domains." "that way a gas plant grove in the middle of groddle could have significance and be something the community could gather around to keep alive, since it would be a rare, special thing not easily recreated."
That's an excellent idea. -
"Unless they are planning on changing that again it seems they will limit it there as well."
i believe the devs said in the chat that backyards would be exempted. -
I didn't really like this direction at all. Obviously the restriction in our backyards was a major hassle, but until there is a wider range of trees to plant, areas like Groddle Forest are going to be extremely boring to look at or pass through. Last night all those streets looked the same ie fruit tree, fruit tree, patch, patch, hole, bean tree, patch, patch, hole.
Next annoying question in help will be not "how do I make salt?" but "where do I get spice?"
Restricting gas trees to swamps and bubble trees to watery or mountainous areas, well maybe, but personally I'd prefer a restriction of numbers that can be planted rather than outright ban of the basic trees in any area. -
Well, maybe there will be a better introduction to the way the world is laid out? For example there is some obvious logic to ore only existing in mountainous and underground areas. Perhaps we feel a bit lost now because we 'grew up' with all trees being available everywhere, though there was a hint of segregation with East Spice, which was a go-to spice grove, and with egg trees only growing underground (though why not in Ilmenskie Caverns, I never quite understood).
I imagine a completely new person who will enter the world will register trees differently. They will arrive in Groddle Forest, and see the species that grow there, and only once they walk across the border will they notice different species exist. In their mind, the species will be associated with the worlds, and they will probably find this quite easy to remember and understand. When they find that they need a tree they haven't seen yet, they will easily deduce that it grows in another area.
I like the trees going native, not because I saw any issue with how and where people planted trees (and I'm not sure that was the real reason behind the change? I rather thought it was just another scheduled attempt at reorganising the world, not a result of disappointment with the players' actions. Devs only know.) but because it marks the difference between areas more clearly. Bluto says it makes places boring, I think it's better to have smaller areas that look the same instead of a whole world that looks the same. -
"I think it's better to have smaller areas that look the same instead of a whole world that looks the same. "
I agree, but Groddle Forest is not a small area. -
Groddle Forest isn't a small area now but I'm sure it eventually will be.
At first, I wasn't too fond of the changes but the longer I think about it, the more I like it. It has been mentioned before that people get lost in the Glitch world without looking at the map constantly. Having certain trees only grow in specific areas might help to make each area more distinct. Also, it will be easier to find the tree you are looking for if you know it only grows in certain places. So far only eggplants were the ones you know where to look for and I believe nobody complained about that, right? Of course, more traveling is needed now. But that isn't a bad thing in terms of exploring the world and meeting new people.
However, the backyard restriction as presented in the last test is something I do not like. We should be able to obtain skills to make any tree (maybe even eggplants!) grow in our backyards. Not everything has to be logical or as close to RL as possible. After all, it's a game of giant imagination.
I'm also in favor of striatic's idea. Being able to break that rule of tree growing and have "exotic" trees in a location might help the community spirit to grow (maybe those could only be planted in community gardens as suggested in another post). Those unusual groves would also be a great landmark to help you navigate through the world.
Wouldn't it be great if you'd find your way around by looking at the landscape instead of hitting *M* all the time? - True. But at least it's only one area in the world. I don't know about Groddle Forest, maybe it's because it was the first thing we explored but it just felt stale even before the tree change. Maybe it's too big? On the other hand, it's the place where most resources are so I usually stayed there, and went mining in Ilmenskie only when I needed to. I never visit Ix anymore, it's too annoying to roam through, and small. Shimla Mirch is cool but you have to cross over all of Groddle Meadow to get to it and that's a long way through woods that also look mostly the same.
- The main issue right now isn't where the trees grow. It's getting to the new areas without traveling through 40+ areas. There needs to be a better teleport system or some method of traveling across each area more quickly. Possibly a way to jump from one set of signposts to the next (even for a small fee like 5c or 10-20 mood). Otherwise, there could be a public transportation system that gets you to certain checkpoints from any signpost. Checkpoints being in the same likeness of train stations.
- I disappointed with the change. I loved the randomness of the trees, that just depended on which ones you could make or have with you at the time to replant. That you could decided that the street had enough of one type but needed a bubble tree. It seemed to workout that you could find what you needed when you needed it. And you had an interest in taking care of them as you passed. If I see just a just couple types of trees on streets now, I don't think I would care for (pet/water) the 3rd or 4th bean tree I see.
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I like the idea of specific kinds of tree's growing in an area. And creating community gardens or greenhouses where people can come together and grow different ones under controlled conditions. This would make them special. A prize where one would not have to walk half way across the world to find that rare plant. And a reason to come together and create community.
Perhaps if there were three or four truly different ways for each type of tree to look that would breakup some of the monotony. Though that would require more graphics. Also if two or three different types of trees were native to an area and the others exotic there. Also I think that we need more different types of trees. (I know more work and confusion. But I think that it would pay off in the end, creating a better game.) -
as the game grows (tree variety,skills variety, area variety) this will work. we already see the cluster of egg trees and that's really useful when you need eggs.
right now though, I wound up with 5 fruit trees in my large Marylpole Mount Quarter house and need a way to make that more broad (be it loosening of rules, or skills/ability). -
As someone who has only participated in a few test periods, I'm not opposed to the idea of "native" trees. I agree with many of the comments above. There should be an open aspect to backyards as long as you have some way of relating that patch to the native soil of that tree's environment. The plants being native to certain environments does encourage a natural sense of exploration. Egg plants are a good example of this. I knew immediately where to go to locate an egg plant needed for cooking from simply wondering around and noticing their unique location as well as how different they were from the surrounding plants.
I would recommend taking this idea further and promoting exploration and discovery by allowing certain aspects like bean seasoning and other related activities to be contingent on locating the materials in earlier skills or even badges before dumping these necessities on the user. This is an overall issue. There are a lot of tasks that become frustrating with the lack of information needed to create a certain item or locate a raw material. -
While I hope they loosen the restriction on what trees can be planted in one's backyard, I am OK with restriction on trees - at first I wasn't.
That was because I viewed trees as one of the ways players could form coalitions to decide what trees to plant in an area and this new structure removes some player/community choice. Yes, it is true that in the months of testing, that never arose, but that's likely because the reward for it has been too long term for players to focus on (especially in limited time testing). Barnacle scraping parties and pig farms came about because people had short term interests in finishing projects quickly or gaining more currants/XP quickly. Dirt patches became an issue for people to desire preservation of them in certain areas when a project called for a shit-load of dirt. But trees, being the ubiquitous and somewhat long-lived things that they are, were just there in the background. with testers focusing on the more rapid reward cycle. The potential for neighborhoods to now decide what to plant is removed from them, which I think is a bit of a loss, even if we never got around to doing that just yet.
At any rate - just as egg trees can only grow in a cavern - it makes some sense to limit where different trees can grow in terms of the overall story of the game. Just as now if you need peat moss, you know where to go, so will it will with bubbles or gas or whatever.
However, the inability to plant a tree acts like a bug, so messaging could be improved so that it's clear this is game-play. Like, "Silly Glitcher! Fruit trees can't grow at this altitude!" if you try to plant a fruit tree in Groddle Heights.
But I would argue to please exempt the gardens from this. Sure in the real world, if I tried to plant a fruit tree at 11,000', I'd fail, but so long as my Glitch house has a garden where I can plant a carrot, then so too should I be able to plant a fruit tree (especially since the harvest limit is 2 a day, so it's not like you can just get endless fruit from your backyard). - Pretty sure the inability to plant trees in the backyard was brought on by there being one setting for the whole area, including the homes inside of them.
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I think it's a great idea.
About the exotic trees needing their own native soil: Would you suggest that after that exotic tree dies that patch of 'exotic soil' would have been used up and would require more exotic soil to plant the exotic tree again? I think that would help discourage large scale invasive species.
I was actually discussing this and calling for it in another thread yesterday because silly me didnt realize it had already been done. (hehe, but upon reading this thread I realized 'that's why I couldnt find any gas plants in the forest')
I think exotic species are a good idea but it should require a high skill level, special fertilizer and exotic soil. And maybe have it work something like Ginseng where you can only plant an exotic in that patch once and then you have to plant a native to revive the soil (with ginseng you can only plant so many consecutive crops (maybe just one) before it sucks all the nutrients out of the dirt and wont grow any more, and for some reason planting potatoes in that dirt helps replenish the nutrients in the soil.)
PS dont quote me on my ginseng facts - it's something i can hardly remember but i heard it from someone years ago when i lived in an area with a lot of ginseng farms. -
"Would you suggest that after that exotic tree dies that patch of 'exotic soil' would have been used up and would require more exotic soil to plant the exotic tree again? I think that would help discourage large scale invasive species."
that would be the suggestion, yes. ideally if you or a group of people want to keep an exotic tree grove, you shouldn't be re-planting all the time so much as tending and staving off the death of the tree. lots of petting to let the tree know it is welcome in an exotic locale.
when it does die, re-planting it should take extra effort just like the initial planting did.
"I think exotic species are a good idea but it should require a high skill level, special fertilizer and exotic soil."
what about fertilizer that has the exotic soil as a component, applied to the patch before planting? that way you get the process of prepping the patch down to one action, applying the fertilizer, while still retaining the flavourful exotic soil component.
i don't think it could be just the exotic soil alone because shoveling up some dirt and moving it to another realm would be too easy. some crafting to increase the degree of difficulty is in order. -
so to sum up what i think might work as an exotic tree planting method:
-- fertilizer: make exotic fertilizer specific to the tree type. you'd have a different kind of fertilizer for each tree in the game. the fertilizer "base" would be the plant's native soil, at least a few shovels worth, with some high quality fertilidust added to turn it into fertilizer. you'd need an item to execute the recipe. could be a new item the devs create or could just be added onto the shovel's existing functionality.
-- skills: using the shovel or whatever new item is needed to make this special soil should require Soil Appreciation V. planting the bean should also require Soil Appreciation V.
-- care: trees planted in foreign soil should die quickly if not cared for. i don't think the existing trees have been balanced yet, but what ever their rate of care is, double it.
-- some extra stuff that might help but might not be worth the effort:
first possibly a little sign in front of each "exotic" showing the latin name of the tree species and the person who planted the tree and what realm it is normally native to. this would be so that new players would know what the heck a gas plant was doing in groddle.
secondly, exotic trees could require a little less maintenance for each neighbouring tree on the street of the same type. this would encourage grove planting instead of random gas trees in weird places. -
Pretty much everything Striatic just said :
+11 - Wait, so which trees can grow where now?
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" Wait, so which trees can grow where now? "
i forget the exact lists, but i think bean trees can still grow almost anywhere.
firebog can grow gas and spice.
groddle can grow fruit and bubble?
i don't think anyone came up with a comprehensive listing.
firebog should finally have a purpose other than barnacles, since you might have to go there to collect gas. could increase the foot traffic there. -
"but i think bean trees can still grow almost anywhere"
Oh man, and that was the one we decided was the least use. :( - +12 to Bob's +11 to striatic. It gives a more real flavour to gardening in the game.
- I was originally opposed to the idea, but I think it's grown on me. However, I don't think it makes sense to keep the tree restrictions, but let people grow whatever they want in their backyards. All or nothing.
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"Oh man, and that was the one we decided was the least use. :( "
yeah .. well they aren't of the least use *exactly*. once the gardening vendor stops selling pre-seasoned beans bean trees are actually going to become pretty important.
but then the problem is that it will probably never be important to grow them in large numbers. this is because of the finite number of patches that need to be planted. easy access to bean trees will be critical, but not access to bean trees in large numbers.
so i can see why the devs would allow them to grow almost everywhere.
first, because without a small cluster of bean trees in every realm re-planting would be extremely difficult.
and secondly, because they're mostly weeds it gives players a responsibility to avoid over-planting.
ideally each realm would have a single street full of bean trees as the central hub, and no bean trees anywhere else. that would minimize the "weed effect" while still allowing for simple bean harvesting/seasoning at the hub street for re-planting the spoke streets, make it easy for new players to find beans despite low overall numbers of bean trees and so on. - Can't remember the exact ingredients but doesn't fruit, spice and gas feature in almost every bean recipe? Along with a single bean of course. We'll need fruit and spice trees in every realm just as much as the bean trees if we want to season beans.
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"Can't remember the exact ingredients but doesn't fruit, spice and gas feature in almost every bean recipe?"
yes. here is a link to the recipes in the glitch strategy group - alpha.glitch.com/groups/RIF...
i will simplify:
Fruit Tree Bean - spice, gas
Bubble Tree Bean - spice, fruit, gas
Bean Tree Bean - spice, fruit, gas
Egg Plant Bean - spice, gas, fruit
Gas Plant Bean - spice, bubbles
Spice Plant Bean - *produce, bubbles, gas
so basically you need everything but the tree's output in order to make the bean. presumably this is so that it will always be possible to make an egg plant even if all the egg plants have died out.
"We'll need fruit and spice trees in every realm just as much as the bean trees if we want to season beans."
that's not possible right now, so some of these ingredients would have to be harvested abroad and then brought back to the hub. or hoarded. beans in the center is the best that can be done to address the situation. you could run a loop where you venture to harvest, loop around through the hub to grab a bean, season, then distribute out to the spokes.
"exotics" would help. with exotics you would probably plant a central grove with all the tree species as a kind of tree factory for the spokes. -
but if you want an alternative to "Hub and Spoke", you can go with "Shimla Mirch Bean Farm"
here is a break down of which trees are most important for forestry:
bean, needed for all trees
spice, needed for 5 trees
gas, needed for 5 trees
fruit, needed for 3 trees
bubbles, needed for 2 trees
egg, needed for none
going by this list, Shimla Mirch will be critical for forestry because you can plant Bean, Spice and Gas there .. the three most important trees for bean seasoning. add some bubble trees in neighbouring groddle heights.. pretty sure they grow there .. and you've got an almost perfect tree factory.
all that's missing is fruit, and fruit is mostly used for egg and bean trees which are needed in the lowest volume. -
ah.. so i've got it. i'm an idiot for not seeing this before.
you don't want the bean trees planted in the central hub for each realm. it is the correct philosophy but the wrong location.
the best location of the bean trees is on the streets that connect realms and nowhere else. then you use the same "hub and spoke" set up for seasoning, planting and distribution, using the "connecting streets" as the hubs. - This sounds a bit like Garden City planning. I can see where you are coming from but won't all this be impossible to implement? Unless we make bean-planting without a permit a crime?
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"I can see where you are coming from but won't all this be impossible to implement? Unless we make bean-planting without a permit a crime?"
not really all that difficult since the realms are now locked down into particular species.
the only thing that needs to be actively done is to isolate the bean trees to the realm connecting streets, which can be done pretty easily by a small number of people monitoring those connecting streets for dead trees and then replacing as needed. since you only need to monitor one or two streets per realm, it shouldn't be that difficult.
as for the rest of the realm, you don't need to police what people plant so much as flood the realm with harvestable crops so that bean tree weeds don't fill up all the patches. i mean you could gather residents together and try to flood the realm in organized ways [gas to the north, spice to the south] but i'm not sure that level of efficiency is truly necessary, though it might be fun to try.
conversely, if you wanted to make a dirt farm that might require policing. this is because you can plug the patches in the same way as with trees. at any moment an individual player could totally wreck a dirt farm with a handful of seasoned beans, whereas totally destroying a grove of trees all at once isn't really possible once it has been established. -
What you're saying is the most efficient solution for the game, definitely, but there's something that rubs me the wrong way about a system that would force the players to play as efficiently as possible.
The times I was most excited about Glitch was when I entered the game and found that player actions (and inactions) had caused an ecological crisis. Some were small-scale and easily remedied, but the whole point was people had to think about what would be best for them and the game instead of having the best pattern of action forced upon them. It was up to us players to make a choice between being responsible and planting trees evenly and with a care for the resources we would need to plant more (I purposely disregard the fact that vendors sell seasoned beans) and just strolling along, depleting resources without ever thinking about what will happen when they are all gone.
The risk, of course, is that we'll 'break' the world and render it unplayable, but I find that risk exciting, and somewhat unique for a multiplayer game. I actually like that, as you say, one player can wreck a dirt farm, because it means that those who are ecologically conscious will have to get creative about preventing it. A Glitch where our actions REALLY impact the way the world looks sounds more fun to me than a Glitch where all we can really do is follow a path laid earlier by the devs. - Yes, lets here it for freedom and randomness for the basic resource trees. Does everyone really want to go to one place to get allspice? Specialty tree can be where they are, like eggs. But to restrict the others, especially fruit/spice/bean, I would probably just buy food and not try to cook anymore.
- I prefer chaos to order any day. The reason I'm upset about the restrictions on basic tree planting (fruit and spice especially) is that they are needed for so many other tasks (cooking, blending, seasoning). I can see why a new cashew or pine tree might be restricted but not those.
- And I personally like the idea that I don't know which tree is next in line when I'm traversing a street. It adds a randomness to the game and encourages me to pause and pet and water.
- Just to be clear, I like the idea of different trees growing in different areas, and having to posess special skills in order to plant exotic trees, but I think the restrictions should stop there.
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It's too bad that the quality/potency of a tree's yield isn't determined by how well tended the tree is, that would certainly put some more interestingness into the mix, or if trees could grow anywhere, but yield better in their "native" habitats. Or does it, and I just haven't noticed...
right now, the yield is determined by the xp of the player, correct? -
Nanookie, I thought it was the skill level.
I've been thinking more about this and will see how the next test session plays out rather than repeat that *I* don't like the new arrangement. It may work itself out. -
yeah, so not interested in randomly running into random trees and having an increased grind time.
suzy spring seems most interested in planting trees in glitch in such a way as to force players to soullessly sit in front of their computers with twice the page loads and almost zero ability to plan a harvest run.
there's a difference between creating a game full of whimsy and serendipity, and creating a game that encourages thoughtless orbiting and clicking while rewarding the players with the most time to burn click grinding.
walk and click, walk and click, walk and click.
even as an aesthetic argument this falls flat. the way you want it, nobody ever goes to the beautiful shilmla mirch, like last test, because there is nothing at all unique to do there but collect barnacles for the occasional project. every street is a clone of the next, forestrywise, and the game world is a homogenous sprawling mass of "whatever".
spreading the tree species around the game has the practical effect of discouraging click grinding and encouraging thoughtful planning of movement. it also has the aesthetic effect of encouraging exploration to different realms and granting each realm more personality. -
"there's something that rubs me the wrong way about a system that would force the players to play as efficiently as possible."
who said "as efficiently as possible".. we are just talking about having any efficiency at all.
and heaven forbid a player be able to make a batch of 10 hot and fizzies without spending half an hour orbiting groddle looking for bubble trees. that would be wrong. - This issue will be fleeting if game mechanics don't change much.
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You weren't going for maximum efficiency with all that talk of where the best place to plant bean trees would be? Huh.
I'd rather the efficiency was a result of player actions, and if players can't plan, then there will be inefficiency. It's more exciting that way. I think restricting tree species to certain climates is enough, while forcing the layout you suggest (bean trees on the hubs only because that is the best way) is overkill. I don't want to be told 'you can't plant a bean tree here even though the climate is right because it's not a designated best bean tree spot'. I want to discover that for myself, and choose whether to adhere to the logic or go against it.
Here's a suggestion- what if trees grew and bore fruit better in an orchard arrangement, i.e. among other trees of the same type? That would encourage grouping species and discourage haphazard planting without actually taking the decision out of the players' hands. - Thank you all for the thoughtful posts here — a lot to think about, for sure.
- Thank you, stoot, for following our rambling thoughts. Yay devs!
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"You weren't going for maximum efficiency with all that talk of where the best place to plant bean trees would be? Huh."
"I don't want to be told 'you can't plant a bean tree here even though the climate is right because it's not a designated best bean tree spot'."
yeah, so i specifically said that there should be no need to police any of that and that the odd bean tree here and there really isn't a big deal even though it wouldn't be maximally efficient.
but i guess you skipped the part where i wrote that? Huh.
"maximum efficiency" would be policing planting in a region so that everything would be in north/south orchards [something i *specifically said* was not necessary] so that the ratio of bean/spice/gas was matched to the production of some mythical maximally efficient item or items.
what i suggested was that players could plant the minimum necessary number of bean trees in the most accessible location, regularly plant the other patches with other harvestable non-bean trees and then let the rest of the beans fall where they may.
why the exception for bean trees? with bean trees it is pretty easy to predict the number of trees necessary to sustain re-planting, and since they're pretty much only good for re-planting having a defined number in a specific location makes sense.
the other trees you can't really plan that way. too many recipes requiring too many ingredients and each with a fluctuating popularity/demand. expecting any kind of central planning to effectively address this is probably folly, though it would be fun to experiment with the idea in certain regions once the game world gets larger. - There is, of course, a middle path that also follows nature to a reasonable extent. You can plant anything anywhere, but plants that are more suitable to this specific environment will thrive better than plants that are not. "Exotic," in this context, might just mean, "not very well suited to this environment without a lot of effort." Plants that are less well suited might require specially-tended plots (e.g. fertilized), more water, more petting, less harvesting. And so they would, by implication, die more easily, just like real-world plants in a less hospitable environment.
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Ah, ok, I see the misunderstanding- if you meant PLAYERS would be proactive and doing the policing, then I misunderstood it as you saying the GAME itself should restrict planting trees to most efficient locations. I didn't skip over anything but must have read that wrong, sorry. I don't want the game to restrict it, I'm happy with people figuring it out and banding together to get it working best. Which is exactly what I said above. ;)
So I guess after all, we agree? If I understand correctly that you're just proposing a strategy for players to take, not a restriction for the gamelayers to make. -
the game doesn't police. it makes planting certain things in certain locations completely impossible.
in my first post i said that i would prefer if players had a totally blank canvas to work together and collaboratively organize.
but i'm not sure that as a player base we are capable of doing that, as much as i wish we were, and so i understand why the devs have created some baseline restrictions that will add some inevitable organization and aesthetic cohesion.
there's still a fair amount of room for flexibility and planning within that framework and so i like the idea as a workable compromise between freedom, organization and game aesthetics. but even then, i still suggested "exotics" as a way for giving players a bit more freedom and communities a way to reshape the glitch ecology if we ever do get our act together on that.
re. plurp's idea for exotics, yes, that would work too. the upside is that new players just wanting to plant a one-off tree could do so without frustration. then it would die without having much of an ecological impact. would also make a great source of planks. the downside is that "exotics" wouldn't work in a brutally obvious way as the difference between natives and exotics would be less absolute and people might not clue in. pros and cons but either way would have the intended effect. - I completely agree with striatic. "Plant anywhere, but only the strong survive" is harder to understand than "You can't plant that here." More flexible, but harder to understand, and that's the trade-off.
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"the game doesn't police. it makes planting certain things in certain locations completely impossible." That can be kind of the same thing, but I can see how you'd make a distinction. I also completely agree with your idea for exotics, I love that and said so earlier! I just didn't like the idea that within a climate suitable for planting, for example, three types of trees, one type would still be restricted to the hubs because that's the best place for it. If a region climate allows bean, fruit, and bubble, they should be plantable everywhere in that region, I think.
"but i'm not sure that as a player base we are capable of doing that"
Me neither, but I'd love to find out. If we're not, what's the worst thing that can happen? The devs will have to step in and find a plot device that excuses a 'repair' of the world and new restrictions to guide the players. Quite possibly, that will happen, but I'd love to try it the free for all way first.
[ "Plant anywhere, but only the strong survive" is harder to understand than "You can't plant that here." ]
Yes! Provided that it's 'You can't plant that here, because...' and because can be wrong climate, wrong soil, wrong altitude, anything, but it should make sense within the Glitch ecology. I don't mind if it takes a bit of figuring out to understand that an exotic tree will not grow very well out of its native soil, and I assume the Encyclopaedia will offer good hints as to why this is. I'm the first to admit I play first and think later, but when I really can't get the hang of something I do try reading the manual. I think everyone is capable of that. -
"I just didn't like the idea that within a climate suitable for planting, for example, three types of trees, one type would still be restricted to the hubs because that's the best place for it."
i think it depends on what you mean by restrict.
for example, if only the necessary number of bean trees were planted - and I do think there's an upper limit on necessary bean trees, unlike other trees - then it could be disadvantageous to have them spread all around a realm. they'd be spread all around in small numbers and easy for new players to miss and difficult for foresters to harvest.
so I think it makes sense for any effort to intentionally plant bean trees to "restrict efforts" to the connecting streets between realms, for reasons articulated earlier.
but this doesn't mean that other people shouldn't be able to plant bean trees elsewhere in a realm, like if they're engaged in some kind of project or quest that requires beans or bean trees. or for other reasons, i can think if a few.
if the bean tree planting goes overboard to the point where the volume starts impeding harvesting, or where the location of the "necessary grove" is on difficult to find side streets, yes that could prove problematic. but I think the way for players to address that is through strategic re-planting, not by telling individual players where to plant. - And I agree absolutely with that. Players working out a system, making the effort- totally for that, that's the experiment with 'free will' I want to see. When I said restrict, I meant whatever the game itself wouldn't allow :) And I thought that was also your meaning earlier but clearly I was wrong! :)