FFXIV Gardening needs an improvement

27 APR 2015. I am writing this to SE. Hope they listen and consider it. XD

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Dear FFXIV development team,

I’d like to propose an idea about gardening system for housing in FFXIV. Please hear me out. Since my suggestion is very long, I’ll provide a list of paragraph’s content for it, so you can navigate more easily.

(1) The current gardening function
(2) An idea of how gardening can improve
(3) Rough ideas of how we can earn the ability or function
(4) User interface example

(1) The current gardening function

Right now we need to target and “talk” to each of the plant in order to fertilize or to tend. The menu will disappear and force us to target the next plant to execute next action. This is redundant, especially when I have 24 plants in my garden. Having to target a single plant 24 times in a row to apply the fertilizer about 10 times a day sure gets old and exhausting. We only have 1 kind of fertilizer, why do we need to select the fertilizer manually every time we’re applying a bag of fertilizer to the plant? Tending the plant is less troublesome, yet is still unnecessarily redundant, although I don’t mind it as much because we only need to water each plant about once or twice a day (depending on how often we fertilize it).

(2) An idea of how gardening can improve

Many of the games that have gardening in them have the “upgraded” ability or tools for gardening. Harvest Moon titles and Animal Crossing titles, for example. They allow the player to either unlock new ability or forge new tools to make gardening easier and more time-effective. In Harvest Moon games, we could hold the button longer to charge the upgraded (or tinkered) watering can, then release the button to water 9 beds of plants in one swing. In Animal Crossing games, we could equip a different watering can to make the watering action cover larger area of the land.

If FFXIV gardening would have a function to execute the same action to all 8 beds in a single gardening patch at once, life will be much easier for us adventurers. Likewise, if we get the ability to apply fertilizers to multiple beds (by selection, probably a check list, or continual sequence of menu windows) without having to do all the extra clicks, it will make gardening much more time-effective.

(3) Rough ideas of how we can earn the ability or function

The improved gardening ability doesn’t have to exist for everyone. You can make us go through a hard or long quest to unlock it. Make us earn it, through sheer dedication and effort. Make it so it is difficult to unlock, I don’t mind, it will worth every ounce of my effort.

You may want to make it so the house needs to install a specific piece of outdoor furnishing, or make it so we need to craft a whole new kind of garden patch, in order to make “mass action” possible.

This furnishing/upgraded garden patch should be hard to craft, make it 4 star recipe if you must. Make it so we need to visit every crafting guild to gather information or the blue print for the new, improved garden patch. You can even involve the engineers like Cid or Biggs & Wedge. Make them give us a quest to earn a design from them, then, only after obtaining this design blueprint, we can start crafting.

You can make it so there is a once a week repeatable quest to obtain an important material (or the key part) to use in the synthesis. And/or you can make it involve the Ehcatl Nine, so that the person needs to have max reputation with the tribe in order to do the quest to obtain this key part. The finished product can be like the current Deluxe Gardening Patch, but make the thing in the middle clickable, and that will be where we execute the “mass action” to all 8 beds in the specific patch.

As for an individual adventurer’s ability to use this “tool” or this new garden patch, you may want us to start the quest at, for example, the Botanist guild. Then the NPC can tell us to complete a series of goals in order to unlock it and earn the ability to interact with this gardening tool. Those who haven’t done the quest will have to do gardening the old way and tend/fertilize plants one at a time. Make us earn the function, don’t grant it for free. This will make it more challenging and more fun.

 

(4) User interface example

As for the menu window, you may want to explore many possibilities. What I have in mind is that the “tool” for mass gardening in the specific patch, when clicked, will show a window with a chart of its own 8 beds, no need to tell us what plants are in which beds, and let us click (check the check box, or highlight the bed’s number) before confirming to execute the wanted action (fertilize or tend) to all selected beds.

Or you can make it so that clicking on the “tool” of the specific patch will give us a series or menu prompt, probably asking us whether we want to tend or to fertilize. After selecting the action, it will ask a series of question, we can hit the button yes or no to specify if we want to take action on 1^st bed, then 2^nd bed, then 3^rd bed, and through the 8^th bed. This will make it that we don’t have to be kicked out of the interaction menu after every single action on single plant.
Please consider the possibilities and make the life of us gardening adventurers better. Thank you. :)

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End of my suggestion letter.

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4 MAY 2015.

Dear FFXIV development team,

On 27th of April 2015, I wrote and sent a suggestion regarding an idea of letting us gardeners execute an action on multiple beds of plants in the same Gardening Patch at once. I’d like to add something else to it.

This mass action function can probably help consolidate the items listed in FC Activity history. For example, instead of listing “Player tended a plant in the xx Bed, xxx patch.” for 8 times, it can list “Player tended to all plants in xxx patch.” or “Player used the Sprinkle on the xxx patch.” This will greatly reduce the flooding of activity log.

Watering (tending) the plant can be an action on all beds in the patch by default, and there is no need of check boxes for individual beds, while applying fertilizers to multiple beds should be based on manual selection.

Planting and harvesting, however, should remain individual.

Please consider mass-action function and this improvement of FC Activity log for gardening. Thank you.

 

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