Thread: Please repeal, or revise the farming changes

The changes made to the farming skill are somewhat useless, and very unfair to experienced pipeweed farmers.

They are somewhat useless, because the intent was to free up inventory space for farmers, but this reall only happens if farmers are randomly farming several different crops, which happen to be on the same skill tier.

And as far as pipeweed, this change has removed one of the challenges which made farming fun...management of seed stock on rare pipeweed seeds. I spent 9 months and over 7 gold to aquire the ability to grow all varieties of rare pipeweed, and maintain seed stock for all these varieties.

With these changes, I no longer have any control over my ability to grow these crops I worked so hard to aquire. The farmer can no longer manage his stock of seeds for these rare crops, he is left to the random crit while farming another stock pipeweed, which he may have had no interest in growing, but is now forced to in order to try to replenish seed stock of the rare crops they do desire.

Additionally, it used to be fun and challenging to aquire the seeds which were only available as drops, or on the AH, and now any shmuck with luck, can grow the crops we spent countless hours and at least some gold investment to learn to grow.

I can understand making the game easier for the free to player, but this is just a dis-service to the loyal paying subscribers who have supported turbine through thick and thin.

At least, remove rare pipeweeds from the farming changes and revert them to the way they were and renew the fun and challenge for ALL players to try to gain the skill of growing them, and managing the seed stock required to do so.

You have to understand, in order to increase subs and make more money, Turbine has to make the game easier for those folks. Kids these days just dont have the attention span or tolerance for much effort or difficulty.

Just imagine a kid today trying to play EQ or DAoC when those games first came out.. theyd last a couple hours and quit.

/signed

I think the pipeweed farming should remain as it was. People got into that pipeweed farming because they LIKED the challenge. They should be allowed to keep it. These changes were made to benefit other farmers, and my impression has been that pipeweed farmers are universally dismayed by it.

The problem with the supposed challenge of pipeweed farming was that, while it may have been hard to start, once you got it down you could effortlessly make any kind of pipeweed in unlimited supply. The new system helps to ensure that rare pipeweed will actually be rare because you can no longer effortlessly gather huge amounts of rare seeds from poor crops.

Well Im here to support the OP. Because she provides the ale and smoke for our Ales and Tales Event. We go through 200 to 400 of each every week and We may now lose our stock. There was actually a need to change this?

/sign

Why change what was already very easy-to-understand farming? So what if something requires a bit of work to get? This isn't WII or XBOX or whatever that has "god mode" cheats.

If you have to "dumb down" things in order to get more people(ie: KIDS)....grr. You are just going to tick off the ADULTS who are actually paying for their accounts, and have been for quite some time.

Tanais @ Arkenstone

p.s. And btw, can someone please fix the Post Icons? The tooltip for the Thumbs Down icon currently reads as "Thumbs Up", and the Thumbs Up icon's tooltip says it is "Thumbs Down"....

I would also like to add my support to the OP.

For the record, I have a lifetime account, and have been playing since the game was released. About one and a half years ago I changed profession because I was ready to try something new and farming/cooking seemed like a useful profession to explore. I love it.

I have never gotten into pipeweed farming, but it has always been on my "list" of things to do if I ever felt stuck or left without content that had more tangible benefit. I have, therefore, been collecting seeds as I come across them to build up an initial stock. I am sad to see them go, certainly, and sad to have lost my chance to learn this skill, but truthfully I'm neither here nor there about the seeds themselves at this point.

Pipeweed farming was the only craft/skill that required long hours of dedication, a sharp eye, and a dedicated effort of an incredibly significant period of time for something that was, honestly, absolutely useless except as fluff.

Wonderful fluff.

The product existed only to bring flavor to the world in general, and to make people smile. The people who spent the time crafting such things rarely earned any money on the craft to support their effort. Every pipeweed farmer I know just enjoyed the status of being able to craft something special, and loved to see their work used in the world.

Pipeweed farming was one of the few on the short list of skills that could be easily moved into a hobby. Unrecognized as it was in the way of titles, it *was* a hobby, and it was a far more challenging and successful hobby than fishing. People enjoyed having this in game. People enjoyed what the farmers brought.

As accidental as it might have been, pipeweed farming was something that was not broken, did not need to be fixed, and added something to the game that gave it depth and whimsy.

Change the other farming if you must.
Pipeweed at this level is cosmetic only. There is no reason to make this achievable to anyone who doesn't want to put in the time and resources to meet the challenge.

Change it back.

Although I like the changes to farming in the main, I agree that the "minigame" of pipeweed crossbreeding should have been left alone.

RE: Bolded --

Age has very little to do with overall maturity or intelligence. I have known folks much younger than me who have more maturity than folks twice my age. I also have seen teenagers who can figure out things much faster than me in various subjects.. and I certainly don't think I am "dumb".

It is never wise to automatically generalize those lacking maturity/lacking intelligence [/common sense] as being "kids" - I would be willing to bet that they are outnumbered in this community by folks over 30 who are about as immature as you could possibly imagine, and who would need a truck load of common sense to start to get a good leg up.


Carry on with the back and forth folks.

Originally Posted by Tanais-Greenleaf

/sign

Why change what was already very easy-to-understand farming? So what if something requires a bit of work to get? This isn't WII or XBOX or whatever that has "god mode" cheats.

If you have to "dumb down" things in order to get more people(ie: KIDS)....grr. You are just going to tick off the ADULTS who are actually paying for their accounts, and have been for quite some time.

Tanais @ Arkenstone

p.s. And btw, can someone please fix the Post Icons? The tooltip for the Thumbs Down icon currently reads as "Thumbs Up", and the Thumbs Up icon's tooltip says it is "Thumbs Down"....

a few weeks ago, before the patch went live, it was suggested breaking pipeweed off from farming and making it a hobby, with the old ruleset. this seems to me, to be the best approuch. especially as the farming changes DO make it easier for cooks

Strongly agree - Please reinstate pipe weed farming to the way it was.

Originally Posted by Ruschi

Each bag of pipeweed sets off a one-shot emote; does it need to be harder to obtain than it already was?

Crafting in LOTRO doesn't allow for much individuality or challenge beyond the grind for materials, and if dedicated players want to create a 'niche' trade in rare pipeweed, I think that's fantastic.

Yes, it's fantastic until suddenly Turbine adds those various smoke emotes to the store. Sadly, it will happen. Once they do, your point will be made moot.

I'm with the OP. I hate the new seeds--especially because they kill immersion. I'm not looking forward to apprentice wood, etc. which I'm sure are not far behind.

I am all for adding more hobbies to the game!

/signed

Originally Posted by Pluck

You have to understand, in order to increase subs and make more money, Turbine has to make the game easier for those folks. Kids these days just dont have the attention span or tolerance for much effort or difficulty.

Just imagine a kid today trying to play EQ or DAoC when those games first came out.. theyd last a couple hours and quit.

While I agree with the sentiment of the OP, I strongly disagree with your opinion. Having played EQ Live since shortly after beta and for many years, people were up to the challenge simply because there were few choices that differed.

As a semi responsible old folgie, I actually like the changes of a less time demanding game. Spending days hunting down Hill Giants for coin and gems followed by weeks at the KC wall may bring back some fond memories, but few that I would like to repeat.

Grinding=Grinding, not effort, no matter the game. It was not so difficult back then as it was time consuming. We still have grinds in our games, but they are far less constraining than they were back in the "Golden Era" of gaming.

Originally Posted by carlosjuero

RE: Bolded --

Age has very little to do with overall maturity or intelligence.

Actually, it has a great deal to do with maturity and knowledge. Intelligence in this regards is a red herring.

I have known folks much younger than me who have more maturity than folks twice my age.

This is known as "anecdotal evidence." Most everyone have had similar experiences. However those are the exception and not the rule.

Now that this tangent has been exhausted, back to regularly scheduled rant!

You know the worst part of it IMO? The old rare seeds are still randomly dropping in-game, despite being 100% unusable now that the recipes have been changed? Seriously, shouldn't have left that as such, guys.

Originally Posted by Pluck

You have to understand, in order to increase subs and make more money, Turbine has to make the game easier for those folks. Kids these days just dont have the attention span or tolerance for much effort or difficulty.

Just imagine a kid today trying to play EQ or DAoC when those games first came out.. theyd last a couple hours and quit.

Its like you're the MMORPG prophet.

I 100% agree with you.

I also contend that when MMORPGs were harder that you ended up with a different class of player in the population to.

Scoundrels, thieves, beggers and lazy buttocks in general tend to look for the path of least resistance or the method that requires the least amount of effort.

I firmly believe the tendancy for MMO developers to shift towards easy mode is why it isn't safe to have a random stranger to do an item/gold swap for you like it was in early DAoC.

I couldn't count the times that a random stranger did a swap for me or I for a random stranger without a single incident.

I like the consolidated seeds for food and ale crops although I think they could have named them a little more creatively.

However, I do not like the pipeweed change at all. I don't grow a lot of pipeweed and I didn't cultivate stashes of rare seeds, but I did collect them off of mobs and chests and then occasionally make a stack or two with what I had. The new pipeweed process isn't fun at all. In order to get pipeweed I want I must make tons of pipeweed I don't really want. For me, it's very tedious.

Originally Posted by Ruschi

Each bag of pipeweed sets off a one-shot emote; does it need to be harder to obtain than it already was?

It's not harder though. If you're starting from scratch, that is you have no rare pipe-weed seeds, then the new system is much easier. However if you're an old hand at it, the new system is a bit clumsy. But it's not excessively worse than the old system if there's a particular variety you want to make. You can still build up a good seed stock and maintain it, it's only that you'll get back a random seed of the same or higher tier when you harvest the field, so there's more randomness to it. Also a chance to not get a seed back, a drawback of switching to one seed per field, so the seed stocks will need more work to keep the numbers up.

The real draw back here with pipe-weed is that it's dumbed down. It's too easy to get the top tier varieties now. There's no thinking involved anymore.

The real tragedy is the "apprentice crop seed" and the like. Were new players really getting confused by all this? Where there too many things to keep track of compared to other crafting choices? I don't think so. Farming was already the simplest crafting. Even with only 3 bags as F2P you didn't use much bag space farming because you always sold the left over seed when you were done (not valuable enough to hold on).

Originally Posted by Pluck

You have to understand, in order to increase subs and make more money, Turbine has to make the game easier for those folks. Kids these days just dont have the attention span or tolerance for much effort or difficulty.

Just imagine a kid today trying to play EQ or DAoC when those games first came out.. theyd last a couple hours and quit.

As would I. Those games sucked. No offense, but I, and many others, have a real life which we enjoy. I could never spend 18 hours of my day trying to do the same boring tasks over and over, ignoring my wife and family, and eventually neglecting all aspects of my life strictly to play some game that only a VERY lonely person, with a lot of time on my hands, can play. Here's some of the wonderful social achievements of Everquest:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in525965.shtml
http://www.olganon.org/
http://www.gamerwidow.com/phpbb/

The real loss is in the interactions of the players in-game, the loss of community and the opportunities to make the community / player interactions more important than the grinding.

When I joined Landroval, I was immediately interested in pipeweed, being an avid tolkien fan for over 40 years. I got lucky, and attracted the attention of Ashenwoods while talking about pipeweed in either /regional or /advice.

Ashenwoods is the OP here, at least I assume they're the same one.

As a direct result of our engaging conversation about pipeweed and pipeweed farming, this person sent me (a 2-week newbie) 3 25seed-pipeweed stacks of hybrid seeds. And this person has remained one of my best early memories of this game and seriously helped set the standard by which I try to treat new folks (or anyone for that matter) who is interested in the Lore or finding their own way to have fun. And as late as a couple weeks ago, sent me 3 or 4 more stacks of hybrid seeds to help me get a faster start on making 900 wizard fire seeds before the update (plus stored stacks of crop).

It is people like Ashenwoods who contribute far more to this game by their presence than LOTRO stores, any amount of grinding, fancy horses, or uber-endgame gear.

So when someone like Ashenwoods is unhappy about the changes, it behooves me and you and them to stop and at least listen for a few minutes. I'm well on record as being unhappy about the farming changes, and my main is a Yeoman. But I'm not as nice as Ashenwoods is, though I try, and it is up to us less nice people to try to stand up for the nice guys.

I'm not gonna rehash the mechanics of the revapped farming, or talk about eye-rolling idiocy of "generic" seeds in this thread. But people need to know that the previous pipeweed system, at least one one server, contributed to the community in a positive way, and I don't see that happening in the same way with the new system. That is the real loss.

Originally Posted by HumphreyMilkweed

As would I. Those games sucked. No offense, but I, and many others, have a real life which we enjoy. I could never spend 18 hours of my day trying to do the same boring tasks over and over, ignoring my wife and family, and eventually neglecting all aspects of my life strictly to play some game that only a VERY lonely person, with a lot of time on my hands, can play. Here's some of the wonderful social achievements of Everquest:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in525965.shtml
http://www.olganon.org/
http://www.gamerwidow.com/phpbb/

Well guess what. No one asked you to stay 18 hours to farm pipe weed . This was a HOBBY for some people and was never a necessity. Turbine instead of upgrading farming to be more fun they make it to be more simple. Good job! What next? They will add super nice emotes pipe weed store only?As a farmer myself I'm not happy with the changes because this simply makes the skill pointless.Next we will see cooking having 1 ingredient. Oh and saying only a very lonely person with a lot of time on his hands will play is just stupid. I'm in college and I don't have time to play a lot but that doesn't mean I didn't used to come from time to time to farm.Was it boring?No because I was chatting with the kin and having fun while doing it.

Originally Posted by erethizon

The problem with the supposed challenge of pipeweed farming was that, while it may have been hard to start, once you got it down you could effortlessly make any kind of pipeweed in unlimited supply. The new system helps to ensure that rare pipeweed will actually be rare because you can no longer effortlessly gather huge amounts of rare seeds from poor crops.

I do not think the rarity of the pipeweed was effected , There are very few farmers who went through the time and trouble to gain these skills.

And furthermore, how does allowing any and all farmers to grow these rare weeds maintain thier rarity ? as opposed to having a handfull of farmers controlling the stocks of these rare weeds you will now have thousands of farmers growing these crops. Granted in smaller quantities, but the crop will become more abundant, with this change.

I agree with the OP. Let the farmers who desire to do so have this mini-game, it is still available to all players, it is just not handed to them. They must accept the challenge, and work for it.

Why do we assume that all new players want no challenges, and want everything handed to them. If there is no challenge you soon become bored with the game and leave.

I must agree with the OP.

Why take the fun aspects out of the game.

Remove all the challenges from the game and you will lose your player base to boredom.

Aw. I liked the clunky, old, no-one-ever-really-explains-what-to-do system and the clique of mighty farmers that guarded the ever sacred Law of Seeds.

Originally Posted by HumphreyMilkweed

As would I. Those games sucked. No offense, but I, and many others, have a real life which we enjoy. I could never spend 18 hours of my day trying to do the same boring tasks over and over, ignoring my wife and family, and eventually neglecting all aspects of my life strictly to play some game that only a VERY lonely person, with a lot of time on my hands, can play. Here's some of the wonderful social achievements of Everquest:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in525965.shtml
http://www.olganon.org/
http://www.gamerwidow.com/phpbb/

You can blame online shooters, you can blame mmos, you can blame the boy that pushed him in the hallway last week, you can blame everyone except the person these days.

Gotta agree with the OP on this one. There isn't a reason why every profession has to be equally simple, nor should they all be need some kind of "parity" of internal complexity. Turbine implicitly acknowledged that farming had a different model than other professions from the very start, when they chose to not include leveling quests for farming.

Pipeweed is particularly susceptible to this "dumbing down" because it gave a nod to Mendelian genetics and things like hybrid vigor, in its structural paradigm. Those "difficult concepts" are the very basis of farming to any extent beyond subsistence agriculture.

While Turbine is clearly determined to dramatically increase the accessibiilty of every profession, to those with less time or depth of interest, and/or to decrease the game-time needed to progress through professional levels, that doesn't mean that EVERY path through each profession should be equally simple and structurally superficial.

I choose not to raise significant amount and/or varieties of pipeweed because I'm not willing to invest the time and intellectual resources necessary to doing it. I never thought the in-game model needed to be leavened until it was as facile a challenge as any other profession.

Please revise the changes.

Originally Posted by thekane14

Well guess what. No one asked you to stay 18 hours to farm pipe weed . This was a HOBBY for some people and was never a necessity. Turbine instead of upgrading farming to be more fun they make it to be more simple. Good job! What next? They will add super nice emotes pipe weed store only?As a farmer myself I'm not happy with the changes because this simply makes the skill pointless.Next we will see cooking having 1 ingredient. Oh and saying only a very lonely person with a lot of time on his hands will play is just stupid. I'm in college and I don't have time to play a lot but that doesn't mean I didn't used to come from time to time to farm.Was it boring?No because I was chatting with the kin and having fun while doing it.

I understand you're upset that they changed the mechanics of pipeweed farming. I don't understand how it was fun to you, but that's not for me to decide. What matters here is that they changed it. And more than likely the changed it because they feel a majority of people did not enjoy the massive amount of time it takes to do it. And that's just how it goes. If they can attract more people to the game, or attract more people to try out farming because it's simpler, than that's what they're going to do. I personally have a high level farmer, but stayed away from pipeweed because I felt it a massive waste of time. I like the changes.

On a side note...I don't agree with your assessment that someone who has the time to play a video game 18 hours a day, at the neglect of everything else in his/her life, is not lonely.

I have been here for years from the beta days and remember when the game went live. They wiped our toons, we made new toons and were making a killing off of farming pipeweed (made tons of money selling it to vendors) when we were level capped to level 15. They then nerfed the farming for a while to where anything you grew would loose you money. Over the years it has gotten easier, and I have a full collection of all the rare pipeweed seeds. I will miss the rare farming of pipeweed, but it is a game and I will just roll with the changes as I have every time. Turbine runs the game and I am just a player.

It would have been nice if pipeweed did not go to generic seeds like the others. I like the one seed to plant, and dropping poor bushels, even the generic seeds for the others. Since the others had uses and people wanted the results, pipeweed is purely cosmetic and had no reason to change.

Please revert pipeweed back to requiring specific seeds and bring back crossbreeding. Even expand it some, make some infertile crossbreeds, ie. you only get plants not possible seeds for some rare smokes.

Luckily I preplanned and have 100+ seeds of every pipeweed stored so I can get some special smokes for gifts and events, but they supply is limited now. No longer can you have a good seed bank to make sure you can provide on demand any kind of pipeweed. Wizards Fire is going to be a very rare smoke soon.

In case anyone on the Turbine side reads these things:

I'm going to add my voice to the notion that pipeweed farming should go back to what it was.

As it stands now, I can't think of any reason at all that I would farm pipeweed. More productive for my farmers to grow crops and dye mats. Bring back the challenge, please.

Originally Posted by BrianDavion

a few weeks ago, before the patch went live, it was suggested breaking pipeweed off from farming and making it a hobby, with the old ruleset. this seems to me, to be the best approuch. especially as the farming changes DO make it easier for cooks

This would be best. The old way was not exactly thrilling, although the new way isn't an improvement of any sort. More patterns & a much more expanded crossbreeding minigame, in hobby form, would be fantastic.

I have a bunch of farmers, but none of them have ever been motivated to farm pipeweed the old way - most of them look the same, so what's the point? :/

(As a biologist however, the removal of the crossbreeding makes me sad on principal, even if it was pretty simple the old way as well.)

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I will in the morning. I just want to add my voice to those who support the OP. I just had a frustrating night as I found out about this. I spoke to a GM who told me to vendor my stacks of poor pipe-weed plants for every rare and cross in the game, 50+ each, and "begin again." Not helpful.

Turbine, pipe-weed has no game value! You designed it that way! The fun was in the farming! Are the drops out now too? I checked some back-packs in Frogmorton and Bree where seeds used to be, and found none. No world drops just random stuff from farming? Are you kidding me?

I realize this is just a game and one day it all goes poof, but as a gamer discovering the roots of this sort of thing in pen and paper, you're making that type of gaming look much more appealing. At least in my group I have a good GM who doesn't change the way the world works for no substantive reason.

I wonder if we all go on strike and stop selling our wares on the AH or providing to even our kinmates we might get some attention on this issue. If we don't farm, there goes food, dyes, and, well that's it. But it's stuff people want and need. I'm sort of joking, but sort of serious.

My pipe-weed farmers are Starthelion, Stuffingrin, and Stretto of Meneldor. Until this is changed I will not be putting any farming mats on the AH.

Yours in fellowship,
Trotter

P.S. This is the first change in the game that has made me even think about walking away. I'm a founder/lifer, though, so it won't happen. So, Turbine, everyone makes mistakes. It's what they do after that which shows who they are.

Originally Posted by hex2323

Aw. I liked the clunky, old, no-one-ever-really-explains-what-to-do system and the clique of mighty farmers that guarded the ever sacred Law of Seeds.

That's an odd thing to say given others have argued for this because it fosters community. Sorry you had such a lousy experience. As for me, I was given seeds and have given more than I could count if i counted my own good deeds. Maybe you should change servers.

Or, maybe it's you. Just exploring all the possibilities. Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

I've never started cross-breeding pipeweed farming but it was something I was going to try in the future. I guess I'll never be able to do it now. I support making pipeweed farming a hobby since we only have one hobby in the game and it does take a lot of dedication to build up seed stocks for the different varieties of rare pipeweed.

I'll miss the immersion with the old farming model, but I really don't mind not having to process poor crops anymore and except for cross-breeding pipeweed, it wasn't necessary except as a way of saving a few coppers.

One other thing, if the pipe-weed seeds are not truly rare or plentiful for all, what of it? Turbine, we had one way to affect the online world. If we wanted to welcome every new player with a stock of seeds needed to cross up the tree, what of it? It had no affect on the world as played. But we could decide whether or not players and, in a role-playing way, whether or not pipe-weed was bountiful in the Shire and the rest of Eriador. Now pipe-weed is just like the wolves in the Shire, which after being killed on request of an NPC are right back to their previous population level.

And how exactly am I a Supreme Master Farmer if I can't even pick seeds from poor plants? Or fair for that matter? If you think about it, those should really have more. Then you wouldn't even need poor plants.

And, help me understand, how exactly were free players hurt by the way it was? There are charts around the web explaining how to cross the plants, and seed were in chests and drops. The quest outside the Prancing Pony comes free since it's starting zone. So, why the change?

I'm not looking forward to "Artisan Soilent Green" from the expert cooks, or "Superior Metal Nodes" out in the fields, or "Piles of Expert Lumber" in the middle of nowhere, but I guess that's where we're headed.

Originally Posted by Galrondthir

I've never started cross-breeding pipeweed farming but it was something I was going to try in the future. I guess I'll never be able to do it now.

That was me. I was actually collecting the seeds over time and was going to finish it up later. Until I saw these changes and rushed out and actually finished it. The problem earlier was that I didn't want to just buy some seeds from the auction house or be handed some, I wanted to collect my own and some are pretty rare, and I forgot to keep mailing off those I found to my pipe-weed farming alt, and I had some bad rolls where my seed stock dwindled. So this change encouraged me to go out and finish it all before the patch hit.

I had fun doing this on one of my farmer's and was about half way with another and was going to start another farmer, just so I could do the crossbreeding. It was fun to do it and share the pipeweed with friends. Now, all the fun is over, gone *poof*. Not everyone wants to rush to the top and win the game only to move on to something else. Many of us enjoy the process of crafting.

I agree with many others. Please bring back the pipeweed crossbreeding. Let it be a hobby or just part of farming, but please just bring it back. I would much more enjoy farming some pipeweed than the useless bore of fishing. Everyone is different and wants something different out of the game. We enjoyed this part.

/Signed.

As a new player just starting, the last thing I need is all the "hobby" and immersion type elements taken out of the game before I can even get to try them, or think about trying them. I started as a f2p, liked the game, as it reminded me of EQ, without the time consuming and repetative parts being forced on you. So I bought MoM, and a subscription that I intend to continue, provided they don't dumb this completely into a tp button push. I even bought tp for my shared banking space, so I am contributing there as well.
No one forces a pipeweed farmer to start the hobby. It's a "fun" choice, that adds to the game experience, even if you never farm one single pipeweed. I have farmed, before the patch, and there wasn't any "confusion" in anything I was doing. The generic seed idea is sort of appalling to me, but I actually grow real plants, so maybe it seems fine to others.
There are plenty of boring easy games to play when your half awake, please don't destroy this one trying to make it match on every level. This game has already been made very easy, as it is, from everything I have read. Please stop, and either change back the farming, or at least make the pipeweed farming into a full blown hobby with titles. Thanks.

I remember spending an afternoon or two zooming through the ranks on my first and second farmer by exploiting the pipeweed system. All I had to do was buy a stack of store bought and get ten "rare" seeds (not the impossible task people are making it out to be).

After that I didn't have to buy anything but water and fertilizer as I zoomed all the way to master farming. The 3 seeds/1 poor crop was that out of control.

As for the current system I am a bit confused. Is it easier or harder? I mean Wizard Fire and Golden Fire can no longer be bought so it's going to be hard to produce those in any sizeable quantity. That's a substantial change that makes rare items rare. The other thing is that you can make low tier pipeweeds with generic seeds which doesn't really make it easier it just makes it more streamlined. I don't get the complaint.

All that said, I am disappointed they removed cross breeding, but I understand if they are trying to streamline things.