A Rant About Homesteads (some spoilers)

[Albadaran.1283]

My necro needs skeletons and skulls to decortate. Not flowers 😕

[Ashen.2907]

12 minutes ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Because you're crafting a bed cover with a specific pattern to honor the memory of someone that used to live in that homestead, to dye the bed cover you need that flower.

 

Buying a home and decorating your bed in honor of the previous owner seems a bit creepy to me. I wonder if the character will be assumed to want to craft a picture of the previous owner to post on the ceiling above the bed as well

Edited August 21 by Ashen.2907

[Dean Calaway.9718]

1 minute ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Buying a home and decorating your bed in honor of the previous owner seems a bit creepy to me.

You didn't buy anything, you were given the homestead under the condition you'd clean up, repair and maintain it in harmony with the rest of the community.

[Ashen.2907]

Just now, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

You didn't buy anything, you were given the homestead under the condition you'd clean up, repair and maintain it in harmony with the rest of the community.

Sure, but crafting your bed in memory of the previous owner? I had hoped you were joking, as I was about the poster on the ceiling.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

6 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Sure, but crafting your bed in memory of the previous owner? I had hoped you were joking, as I was about the poster on the ceiling.

The wiki doesn't have the dialog yet, so from memory and without trying to spoil much...

Spoiler

The pattern has a specific meaning, he buried the original when it no longer applied, and now you taking ownership of the homestead crafted that same pattern because it applies to you now.

Or just skip the fluf and go with game play busywork because they need to give players stuff to do to justify the money they spend, pick which ever option you can cope with best.

[Luthan.5236]

If you get the expedition contract (currently with the supply drop later standalone I guess) just gathering the stuff daily might "passively" give you some mats. Then just buy a ton of storage expanders (ArenaNet needs your money) and gather for days while playing the content normally. Might end up with enougn of resources stored up then.

[Rose.2593]

Honestly people seemed to want everything instantly.  Gathering stuff is part of playing and always has been, time gating seems unnecessary but complaining you need flowers or something on the second day and don't already have 500 is a bit ridiculous, take some time to gather them, then use them. I mean you need the materials before you make the items of course.

[misterman.1530]

17 minutes ago, Rose.2593 said:

Honestly people seemed to want everything instantly.  Gathering stuff is part of playing and always has been, time gating seems unnecessary but complaining you need flowers or something on the second day and don't already have 500 is a bit ridiculous, take some time to gather them, then use them. I mean you need the materials before you make the items of course.

Ultimately, people are tired of grind. Constant, excruciatingly dull grind. People don't want things instantly, per se. They just want to not have to grind and they don't want things time-gated.

[Sobx.1758]

8 hours ago, Logos.5603 said:

Did you read what has been posted, or just skimmed?

Unexpected, no. Bad...well it depends. If I told you that in order to craft 4 chairs you needed 100 flower (2+ hours of fetching)...I would say that excessive, and not fun. That's the point.

I did read it and as much as you start your complaint from "why do you need flowers to do x?!", you continue with what amounts to nothing more than "if I want to craft something, I might need to go gather stuff". So what point did you make that I missed? Your complaint is about having housing decoration connected to collecting materials. This was expected and it does make sense. Those materials are easy to gather, they're not rare and they're tradable so if you totally need to rush it on day 2, you can use your gold instead.

I can understand the complaint about timegates though.

11 hours ago, Logos.5603 said:

It took me about 15-20 min to pick up 15 flowers.

I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes.

Edited August 21 by Sobx.1758

[Manasa Devi.7958]

Just creating the bed was already more trouble than I want to put into playing with a doll house. I'm not an 8 year old girl. Unfortunately I had to, to progress the story.

[Mystflower.7319]

5 hours ago, Scar.1793 said:

ESO, same. There's none of that.

I do remember from playing ESO that you need a fair amount of coins though to buy things from the trading guilds?
With FF14 you have to risk of loosing it all if you don't pay your sub? I'd prefer keeping my things forever even though crafting being time gated over that xD
Plus things will only be time gated for now.. in a couple of months when everyone has been able to craft everything they desired it will no longer be an issue.

[Logos.5603]

5 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

  Hide contents

Because you're crafting a bed cover with a specific pattern to honor the memory of someone that used to live in that homestead, to dye the bed cover you need that flower.

 

Yea, yea...but it's also needed for torches...and all kinds of silly stuff.

[Logos.5603]

On 8/21/2024 at 7:46 AM, Rose.2593 said:

Honestly people seemed to want everything instantly.  Gathering stuff is part of playing and always has been, time gating seems unnecessary but complaining you need flowers or something on the second day and don't already have 500 is a bit ridiculous, take some time to gather them, then use them. I mean you need the materials before you make the items of course.

Another strawman. Someone always brings up this lazy point. "Blah, blah...instant gratification...blah, blah."

I worked 7 years for PHD...no, I don't want things instantly. Griding is a terrible (and lazy) "gameplay" feature that gets in the way of engaging content (what I paid for).

Obviously I will need materials. I can understand and tolerate doing some fetching, but this is just silly. It takes about 1 hour to collect enough material to build a bed, and one more furniture. It is the number of materials that is needed that is silly. Plus the interface is just old. You can't even see what the final product will be before you craft it. The "walls," for example, are not really walls.

Edited August 26 by Logos.5603

[Logos.5603]

3 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I did read it and as much as you start your complaint from "why do you need flowers to do x?!", you continue with what amounts to nothing more than "if I want to craft something, I might need to go gather stuff". So what point did you make that I missed? Your complaint is about having housing decoration connected to collecting materials. This was expected and it does make sense. Those materials are easy to gather, they're not rare and they're tradable so if you totally need to rush it on day 2, you can use your gold instead.

I can understand the complaint about timegates though.

I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes.

"Why do you need so many flowers to do X." That's the complaint. That's the point you are missing (twice now). Otherwise you are just strawmanning.

"If I want to craft something, I might need to go gather stuff." Well, obviously. No one is denying this (hence why you are putting up a strawman). There is a difference between merely gathering a reasonable amount of resources, and grinding for 2-3 decoration items that you can't even see until you have made them.

"I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes." Read this again...slowly.

Edited August 21 by Logos.5603

[Logos.5603]

4 hours ago, misterman.1530 said:

Ultimately, people are tired of grind. Constant, excruciatingly dull grind. People don't want things instantly, per se. They just want to not have to grind and they don't want things time-gated.

Basically. Why are you keeping me from having fun with your game!

[Solomon Darkfury.3729]

45 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

"Why do you need so many flowers to do X." That's the complaint. That's the point you are missing (twice now). Otherwise you are just strawmanning.

"If I want to craft something, I might need to go gather stuff." Well, obviously. No one is denying this (hence why you are putting up a strawman). There is a difference between merely gathering a reasonable amount of resources, and grinding for 2-3 decoration items that you can't even see until you have made them.

"I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes." Read this again...slowly.

I honestly have no issue with the flowers because they are purchaseable on the TP... what I DO have issue with is the fact there is a cap on how much materials you can refine to get one of the refined materials that are required in every single decoration in other words they time gated something that is purely aesthetic... ANET is like "Oh you waited 12 years to be able to decorate a house? Guess what? WAIT SOME MORE! MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

[Logos.5603]

2 minutes ago, Solomon Darkfury.3729 said:

I honestly have no issue with the flowers because they are purchaseable on the TP... what I DO have issue with is the fact there is a cap on how much materials you can refine to get one of the refined materials that are required in every single decoration in other words they time gated something that is purely aesthetic... ANET is like "Oh you waited 12 years to be able to decorate a house? Guess what? WAIT SOME MORE! MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

Yea, this too is irksome. I mean I could buy 1000 flowers right now...but come on...I mean this is what decoration boils down to? Either spend 1 hour scavenging for materials for two decorations you cant even see (adding insult to injury), or drop 2k (ATM) for like 15 flowers. Great design! Really innovative.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Logos.5603 said:

"Why do you need so many flowers to do X." That's the complaint. That's the point you are missing (twice now). Otherwise you are just strawmanning.

No, I'm not strawmanning, because as I said in the post you just quoted, you just started with "why flowers", but continued with "I need x material to craft y items!" and further in the post you still complained about "having to go for materials to craft chairs/whatever!". That complaint would remain exactly the same if you had to go gather something other than flowers.

But since you apparently don't remember what you're complainig about, just so you can subsequently -incorrectly- keep repeating "strawmanning!", here's a quick reminder of your complaint:

17 hours ago, Logos.5603 said:

I want to build my homestead. That was a big reason why I purchased the expansion. What kind of system requires you to pick up 5-15 honey flowers or whatever before you can build a BED?

^yup, that's how you start. And as I said, this is indeed a complaint about "needing flowers for something you don't think you shouldn't need the flowers for". But then you continue:

17 hours ago, Logos.5603 said:

 It is already egregious enough the amount of raw materials it takes. The whole thing is lame and just busy work. I want to have fun, not fish for materials longer than I'm building. (BTW, many of the decorations require this item, and the new wood.) If you don't really want me to have fun, and instead go on a scavenger hunt for these things whenever I need to build something, then just say so upfront. "You can build, BUT you need to spend longer collecting these new items which are a bit rare in the map. Built the wrong thing? Oops, back to scavenging! Have fun building!"

EVERY single sentence here complains about having to scavenge, needing materials and so on, including striaght up complaining about "needing new wood". Your post is literally what I said it is: it starts with a complaint about the "flower", but in releaty the vast majority of it -and the main point of it- is about you disliking gathering materials to craft housing items. It's not me "strawmanning", it's you forgetting what the majority of your complaint actually was. And it really clear what it is. "why flower" is an attempt to claim they just want you to gather something you think doesn't make sense. But what you dislike isn't that it's a flower, you literally keep complaining about "scavenging".

tldr: no, I'm not strawmanning, go remind yourself what you wrote in your OP.

 

1 hour ago, Logos.5603 said:

"If I want to craft something, I might need to go gather stuff." Well, obviously. No one is denying this (hence why you are putting up a strawman). There is a difference between merely gathering a reasonable amount of resources, and grinding for 2-3 decoration items that you can't even see until you have made them.

The amount of resources isn't unreasonable, if you -as you wrote- neeed 15-20 minutes to pick up 15 flowers, you're clearly doing something wrong there.

1 hour ago, Logos.5603 said:

"I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes." Read this again...slowly.

I don't see the point you're attempting to make, explain.

Edited August 21 by Sobx.1758

[Dean Calaway.9718]

2 hours ago, Logos.5603 said:

Yea, yea...but it's also needed for torches...and all kinds of silly stuff.

You gonna go out, and you gonna pick the new mats, and look at the scenery, and you're gonna like it!

[Quench.7091]

Something that might cause trouble is we have switched to a mini expansion development cycle. I do hope that things we need in mass don't require heavy amounts of expansion specific currencies and materials. Side decorations, such as beds, are fine. It is the structural and environmental decorations that we need to keep an eye on. We don't want to be in Janthir for all eternity after the next expansion launches.

I haven't made it deep into homesteading yet, since I want to get the additional event rewards bonus first.

I also haven't played much of the WvW reward track for Janthir yet. I will need to see how much that will impact my homestead progression.

[Logos.5603]

2 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

No, I'm not strawmanning, because as I said in the post you just quoted, you just started with "why flowers", but continued with "I need x material to craft y items!" and further in the post you still complained about "having to go for materials to craft chairs/whatever!". That complaint would remain exactly the same if you had to go gather something other than flowers.

But since you apparently don't remember what you're complainig about, just so you can subsequently -incorrectly- keep repeating "strawmanning!", here's a quick reminder of your complaint:

^yup, that's how you start. And as I said, this is indeed a complaint about "needing flowers for something you don't think you shouldn't need the flowers for". But then you continue:

EVERY single sentence here complains about having to scavenge, needing materials and so on, including striaght up complaining about "needing new wood". Your post is literally what I said it is: it starts with a complaint about the "flower", but in releaty the vast majority of it -and the main point of it- is about you disliking gathering materials to craft housing items. It's not me "strawmanning", it's you forgetting what the majority of your complaint actually was. And it really clear what it is. "why flower" is an attempt to claim they just want you to gather something you think doesn't make sense. But what you dislike isn't that it's a flower, you literally keep complaining about "scavenging".

tldr: no, I'm not strawmanning, go remind yourself what you wrote in your OP.

 

The amount of resources isn't unreasonable, if you -as you wrote- neeed 15-20 minutes to pick up 15 flowers, you're clearly doing something wrong there.

I don't see the point you're attempting to make, explain.

A few points:

Any argument I made needs to be inferred from the complaint (the OP). Such inference carries the risk of being misinterpreted (e.g., being made into strawman). Hence, charity is required in drawing the interpretation. After all, if you are arguing in good faith, you would want to interpret the argument in its strongest form.

Steps for identifying an argument:

1) What is the main issue in the complaint?  The game requires us to spend a lot of time doing tedious activities collecting materials before we can engage in the fun part of building and decorating your homestead (what we also paid for).

2) What are the premises of the argument?

Premise 1: You have to pick up 5-15 flowers to build many of the decorations available early on. (Inferred from the fact that I talk about having to pick up 5-15 flower to build a bed, and the fact that this is an initial impressions post about the homestead.)

Premise 2: Constantly having to collect many resources for one or two decorations is too much tedious (unfun) work. (This is the general complaint implied in the post. It is also captured in the langue of "busy work." This clarified further when you see that I mentioned that it was "egregious enough the amount of raw materials it takes." Then there is also them emphasis on the time it takes to collect all these ingredients. I wrote: "You can build, BUT you need to spend longer collecting these new items which are a bit rare in the map." The problem is not that you have to pick up the flowers on its own...its that you have to pick too many to make many of the early decorations.)

Sub-conclusion and premise 3: Having to pick up 5-15 honey flowers is too tedious work for the reward. (Implied by 1 and 2.)

OK, so what would the OP think follows from this?

It could follow that we shouldn't pick any. For example, "Conclusion: Therefore, we shouldn't have to pick any flowers (or materials) for decorations."

But there's that pesky premise 2 which seems to suggests that they aren't really thinking about eliminating scavenging for materials. Plus, this seems like an extreme position for anyone to take. A reasonable person would understand that a game such a this would require some tedious activities.

It could also follow that the OP (me!) is complaining about the amount of materials needed to complete a single decoration. Trying to conclude that "the current resource-gathering and crafting system for the homestead should require us to use less flowers (or materials in general) for decorations."

Which one you think is more reasonable to infer once you apply the principle of charity? Also, when in doubt about the argument, ask! That way you don't strawman.

---------------------------

"The amount of resources isn't unreasonable, if you -as you wrote- neeed 15-20 minutes to pick up 15 flowers, you're clearly doing something wrong there."

I don't know. I've been playing for 11 years. I have all the mounts and know how to use them pretty well, and I know where to find most flowers in the map by memory. I timed myself 4 times now...its anywhere between 45sec-1min per flower on avg on the first map. This also assuming that you get caught in a fight or two because sometimes they are near a group of enemies.

Lastly, the point I was making is that if you aren't focusing on the time, how do you know that you took 2 min. Plus you have to factor the resource spawn time. You can't collect more than 25ish per map.

Edited August 21 by Logos.5603

[Sobx.1758]

54 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

Premise 1: You have to pick up 5-15 flowers to build many of the decorations available early on. (Inferred from the fact that I talk about having to pick up 5-15 flower to build a bed, and the fact that this is an initial impressions post about the homestead.)

Premise 2: Constantly having to collect many resources for one or two decorations is too much tedious (unfun) work. (This is the general complaint implied in the post. It is also captured in the langue of "busy work." This clarified further when you see that I mentioned that it was "egregious enough the amount of raw materials it takes." Then there is also them emphasis on the time it takes to collect all these ingredients. I wrote: "You can build, BUT you need to spend longer collecting these new items which are a bit rare in the map." The problem is not that you have to pick up the flowers on its own...its that you have to pick too many to make many of the early decorations.)

Yup, so these are the exact premises I outlined in my posts and followed up with explanation, including the time it took me to gather "those 15 flowers". Hopefully you can understand how attempting to label what I said as "strawman" is not just inaccurate, but striaght up false. I mean, you just outlined above the exact premises I was responding to, so I'm not sure why you'd think I'm "strawmanning" or skimming through your posts instead of reading them. I'm still not sure what you think I missed in my answers and until now I'm convinced I responded exactly to what you complained about (and exactly what you're now repeating in the quote above).

54 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

Sub-conclusion and premise 3: Having to pick up 5-15 honey flowers is too tedious work for the reward. (Implied by 1 and 2.)

OK, so what would the OP think follows from this?

It could follow that we shouldn't pick any. For example, "Conclusion: Therefore, we shouldn't have to pick any flowers (or materials) for decorations."

But there's that pesky premise 2 which seems to suggests that they aren't really thinking about eliminating scavenging for materials. Plus, this seems like an extreme position for anyone to take. A reasonable person would understand that a game such a this would require some tedious activities.

I could also follow that the OP (me!) is complaining about the amount of materials needed to complete a single decoration. Trying to conclude that "the current resource-gathering and crafting system for the homestead should require us to use less flowers (or materials in general) for decorations."

Which one you think is more reasonable to infer once you apply the principle of charity? Also, when in doubt about the argument, ask! That way you don't strawman.

Yes, after which you wrote it takes you 15-20 minutes to gather 15 flowers, to which I informed you that gathering 10 flowers took me literally 2 minutes. If we want to be more accurate, with repeated gathering, it took me consistently about 3 minutes for 15-17 flowers (and occasional 3 "new wood" materials, but I wasn't targetting those). I think my response was accurate to what I was responding to?

It's like you think I'm just blindly commenting with some vague "no, it's not too much!" without giving your complaints any "charitable interpretation" nor fact-checking what is being said here. But that's not what I'm doing -I did read your OP, as well as your subsequent posts where you listed how long it takes you to gather a specific amount of resources, which I think is fair to then take as exactly what you base your "that's too much!" opinion. Then I checked how long it actually takes for me to gather that -or similar- amount of the same resource (no beetle) and concluded that it easly doesn't look like the amount needed is "too much". And considering the falling tp price, I'm not the only one aware how easy they are to gather.

54 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

Also, when in doubt about the argument, ask! That way you don't strawman.

Evidently I'm asking whenever something's unclear for me, just like I did at the end of my previous post where I told you I don't understand what point you were trying to make there. Nothing I wrote was a "strawman", it was commenting exactly on what you wrote and as far as I'm aware you just confirmed it by explaining exactly what I already commented on.

 

54 minutes ago, Logos.5603 said:

Lastly, the point I was making is that if you aren't focusing on the time, how do you know that you took 2 min. Plus you have to factor the resource spawn time. You can't collect more than 25ish per map.

Oh, I see where my wording was unclear. When I wrote "I couldn't comment on that because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes.", it was supposed to be understood as  "I couldn't comment on that before because I wasn't focusing on timing flower gathering, but I just gathered 10 in literally 2 minutes.". At the moment of me making that comment, I did already check how long it took me.

Edited August 21 by Sobx.1758

[wolonggong.3469]

I just want to know how they managed to hire someone from Sims 4 to make this system and then still do it without a kitten "Pick up placed item" button. I got so kitten bored with these quests taking so kitten long with all the talking and menial boring tasks  that when I made the bed I just wanted OUT of my homestead to get back to actually doing something so placed it right out in the open only to then see the "put it only upstairs" crap (so much for free building how you like) and then only to find out you can only "move" an object and not just pick it up into the inventory.

So, after stumbling around trying to actually figure out the HORRIBLE design system, selected the bed to "move it"...far. take 10 steps, it goes under the ground, stumbled around to figure out how to get it back up and after 2 more minutes of getting it towards the dang house, go up the stairs for it to...DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY. Click "undo"....bed still gone. Placed somewhere that cannot be seen with no way at all to get it back into my inventory and a rather CRAPTASTIC limit based on a really bad special material that has to be purchased with large quantities of old world items that obviously are on a limited amount per week.

I instantly logged out. That was 4 hours ago and I am still disgusted. Unintuitive and generic and worst of all, story is now locked until I make another bed.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

13 minutes ago, wolonggong.3469 said:

I just want to know how they managed to hire someone from Sims 4 to make this system and then still do it without a kitten "Pick up placed item" button. I got so kitten bored with these quests taking so kitten long with all the talking and menial boring tasks  that when I made the bed I just wanted OUT of my homestead to get back to actually doing something so placed it right out in the open only to then see the "put it only upstairs" crap (so much for free building how you like) and then only to find out you can only "move" an object and not just pick it up into the inventory.

So, after stumbling around trying to actually figure out the HORRIBLE design system, selected the bed to "move it"...far. take 10 steps, it goes under the ground, stumbled around to figure out how to get it back up and after 2 more minutes of getting it towards the dang house, go up the stairs for it to...DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY. Click "undo"....bed still gone. Placed somewhere that cannot be seen with no way at all to get it back into my inventory and a rather CRAPTASTIC limit based on a really bad special material that has to be purchased with large quantities of old world items that obviously are on a limited amount per week.

I instantly logged out. That was 4 hours ago and I am still disgusted. Unintuitive and generic and worst of all, story is now locked until I make another bed.

I also placed the bed right next to the crafting station because I wanted to go on with the story. It was easy to remove the bed and put it right back into the decoration storage window where it originally came from. Highlighted a few buttons and found the right one in mere seconds.

[Scar.1793]

6 hours ago, Mystflower.7319 said:

I do remember from playing ESO that you need a fair amount of coins though to buy things from the trading guilds?
With FF14 you have to risk of loosing it all if you don't pay your sub? I'd prefer keeping my things forever even though crafting being time gated over that xD
Plus things will only be time gated for now.. in a couple of months when everyone has been able to craft everything they desired it will no longer be an issue.

if you don't play regularly, the amount of coin seems a lot in ESO, for furniture. You do get a lot just by doing quests.

For FFXIV, we're talking about the decoration system not the housing acquisition, which is indeed crap.The decoration system isn't timegated either here. You either craft, buy or obtain furnitures through quests/instanced content.

How come in GW2 we are limited to the amount of resources, on a weekly basis, to decorate a home ? They hyped the hell out of this feature only to slap us with this.