Buy Bulk Fruit from other Players

January 16th, 2010 by TirNua Audrey Leave a comment Share on Facebook

26 Responses to “Buy Bulk Fruit from other Players”

1. CherryBomb_2700 Says:
   January 16th, 2010 at 10:50 pm

   I’m having a little trouble with the fruit pallets. Extracting works fine, but when I try to “add pallet”, my little cartoon just shakes her pretty head. Geraniums are impossible to overwater if your well is a couple coords away, so I just queue up all my waterings at once. I think the boilers and treadmills are tuned a little high, actually. It would be a shame to waste the manufacturing and store designs by making it too easy to bypass them and buy direct from TirNua. Well, I guess manufacturing has already been bypassed, but maybe sometime later electricity sales to TirNua can be disabled.

2. Atlas Says:
   January 16th, 2010 at 11:49 pm

   Love the update!
   I’ve a feeling that I know what these geraniums will be used for… But I’ll keep my suspicions to myself, since I don’t want to jump to conclusions/look like an idiot.

   These geraniums are so damn pretty… I’m seriously in love with them! I hope that, if there are more ground-grown flowers released, they’ll be just as awesome!
   There’s just something beautiful about a bunch of flowers sprouting out of the ground… compared to the single potted flowers we’ve grown accompanied to over the past 6+ months.

   Love the new icons… Awesome! I love how you guys are always updating the little pieces of Tirnua! I for one definitely appreciate the beautifying. =’)

   Also I’m SO GLAD you’re still working on the quest system! That’s dedication right there. The quest system has so much potential, especially for helping out the newbies! lol, I can’t wait to test it out!

3. Raisin Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 1:34 am

   Agh, I’m gonna sound like the Grinch now, but it’s not my intention to sound negative. I like the update overall.
   Some comments:

   Extracting fruit:
   I think I like this option. It’s good that you can’t extract crates from other people’s fruit stands, otherwise it would lead to people scavenging from free or cheap stands, and reselling.
   But the header of this blog post does say “Buy bulk fruit from other players”. Doesn’t seem like you can do that.
   (I don’t know, maybe enabling that could be a way of getting everyone to raise their fruit prices. But I doubt everyone would, it would just become some sort of nasty PvP again…)

   It’s nice to be able to transfer fruit between your own fruit stands if you have many half full ones. Might also be nice for the new players if they want to refill their stands that they get from q’s. Not sure if I want this to evolve into “bring your own fruit to the gym” though. That would make us even less dependent on each other and make it less interesting to have a workout lot. Maybe it’s the start of orange marmalades

   Guest experience:
   I saw the new Facebookframe and it looks good!
   The guests are learning to use the equipment now too, had plenty of brand new players trying out the boiler and sorting trash. I think their experience is much better now and more are staying, or so it seems.

   I’m a bit worried about the battery payout increase though.
   For me it feels a bit like “Tirnua Easymode”.
   Now you can fill a green battery in about 35 minutes, on only 5-6 oranges. Blue in half that time on half the oranges etc. The speed has been increased from 40 energy/tick to about 81-89. And the number of fruits you need has been drastically decreased from like 26-28 oranges to 5-6, time decreased from like an hour and a half to 35 minutes…

   A guest can earn 160 tau in 35 minutes, this feels a bit too generous in my opinion. 2000-3000 tau in a day or more. Many of them work hard on the treads. The fact that they don’t get paid a lot at work doesn’t matter at all, jobs are becoming obsolete.

   They have no reason to want to become residents.

   It feels imbalanced to me.
   The goal should be that they would want to become residents at some point. Or that someone wants to buy money.

   Players really should charge a lot more for the fruit and food now.
   If they make 160 tau on eating fruit for about 15 tau… But I don’t know if there’s any point. Someone else will always undercut you anyway.

   In my opinion there should be some incentive to become a resident, but without giving residents even more money. Introduce many more things that only residents can do. Maybe only residents should be allowed to run businesses? Buy real estate? (Same as SL) Maybe limit the number of lots you can have as a guest or ..

   I’m glad of course that we’re able to make more money now
   I shouldn’t complain I guess…
   I’m just worried about the balance of the economy etc. But it could well be that I’m worrying for nothing and it’s all planned out etc. It’s hard to see the whole picture when you’re just a player.

   Bugs;
   - Geranium seeds have no “check charges” option
   - The “Skip quest” option has gone missing
   - ”Buy object from a Tirnua store” is busted

   Overall it’s a cool update though, I feel like I’m sounding way too negative. The interface is improving with every update and so is the new player experience.

4. Versace Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 2:42 am

   cherry bomb. I’ve done add crate. You have to be next to an empty fuit stand (or one that has at least 8 slots for fruit).

5. BillyBob Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 3:56 am

   Great feed back on tuning - i’ll notch it back some - say 1/2 way between where it is now and where it was. Note: two things should have happened - feedback more often and a bit easier.

   When moving from crate to fruit stand the crate has to accessible on the lot.

   Also, something not mentioned, the persona should now go to the nearest commodity (rather than some random commodity).

   Edit: Almost forgot — Biofuel ‘extract barrel’ now extracts to the person running the machine NOT the owner of the machine.

6. Atlas Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 4:00 am

   I think that if everyone’s able to bring their own fruit that it’s still an EXCELLENT option. But maybe that’s just lil’ old cheap me.
   I mean, there will still be the whole issue with having to stock your own fruit! Eventually you’ll run out of what you brought, and have to go back and get more, etc. - eventually that’ll get annoying.
   PLUS, not everyone grows their own fruit!! While, yes, there are certainly a ton that do, there’s still enough of a market for fruit maintained. If we’re able to bring our own fruit to lots in the future, it will definitely not diminish the workout lot completely. In my mind, anyway.

   And I agree with Raisin on the whole earning-too-much from batteries. It should definitely be maintained for Residents, but perhaps Guests will only be able to fill batteries that quickly for X amount of times? Or if they’re on a busy treading lot.
   So if you’re a Guest, let’s say only your first 10 batteries will fill that quickly; and then after that, you’ll have to be on a lot with at least 5 other treaders actively treading to get to that caliber of battery-filling… Or, of course, become a Resident!
   I don’t want to completely jip Guests on filing batteries, so I think this is a fair compromise; besides, once they’re on a lot with ~5 other users, they’re bound to make friendships and thus eventually become a Resident at some point.

7. CherryBomb_2700 Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 4:08 am

   “Also, something not mentioned, the persona should now go to the nearest commodity (rather than some random commodity).”

   WOOT! BillyBob, you are my hero!

   The fruit crates are working for me now. I did nothing different except log back in later.

   Slowing down the electricity should be OK for now, but you should give some thought to the whole manufacturing/stores/retail model. I can imagine a Really Bad Thing happening down the road with using the bulk purchase discount as a driver for stores.

8. Versace Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 5:47 am

   once again nothing new in the VIP store

9. Gilly Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 8:03 am

   I really, really, really love the geraniums!
   This feels much like more like gardening to me and they are wonderful to landscape with. I love that I can move them around, and all the colors. Watering them, reminded me of watering in TSO…I kept expecting to hear whistling. This is the most fun I have had with *anything* you guys have added to the game. ;D

   Lining the walkway to my front door inspired me to rebuild and decorate Gilly’s Garden a bit….just wish I had a roof and windows. =(

   I wish the tree harvesting was more like the geranium watering, instead of one fruit every 20 minutes, to be able to harvest a whole tree in a shorter time period, would make it much less tedious and boring.
   If the goal is to keep folks in the game, and killing time, perhaps you could have only one tree harvestable at a time with a 20 minute wait before the next one was ready for harvest?

   Thanks for the flowers!

10. Atlas Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 8:14 am

    I totally agree with you, Gilly!
    I’m having SO much fun with the geraniums! I attempted to make a question mark using the geraniums on my Watering Hole lot, but uh… I kind of failed. LOL, but it was fun nonetheless!
    I agree that this is definitely more like gardening! I was never a fan of raising potted plants…

    And I’m also all for being able to harvest one entire tree in one go. I never really understood why we had to harvest one fruit at a time (I’d understand it, of course, if there wasn’t a twenty-minute waiting period between each harvest…). Just seems like it’s even more of a reason for us to hole up in our own lots and spend our online time harvesting fruit… Rather than interacting with the community!

11. Cutsie Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 9:03 am

    As far as tuning is conerned, the trash recycling station feels like it is going way slower than before. Can we fix this please?

12. Nors Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 7:55 pm

    I’ve got some problem with this. When I place out the geranium seedbags the don’t show up and 2 of mine have just disappear from my inventory & my lot. Also with the garden plot. I got to go in and out to see where I had place my stuff. Pretty annoying, thought.

    But I really like the fruit thing! So good! I also saw that I got a newsletter, nice!

13. Raisin Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    Billybob;
    “Also, something not mentioned, the persona should now go to the nearest commodity (rather than some random commodity).
    Edit: Almost forgot — Biofuel ‘extract barrel’ now extracts to the person running the machine NOT the owner of the machine.”

    Yay! on both (and the tuning too).
    It always used to try and take the commodity that was farthest in the corner… lol. And now I can get people to use the biofuel again.
    Just a shame that the biofuel tank can’t be connected to the boiler at the same time as the chipper, so they can’t burn the fuel without help switching them.

    CB;
    “WOOT! BillyBob, you are my hero!”

    You’re way behind me, he’s been my hero for a long time already.

    Atlas;
    “If we’re able to bring our own fruit to lots in the future, it will definitely not diminish the workout lot completely.”

    I used to really, really want to be able to bring our own fruit to workout lots. So I understand what you mean. You might be right, but if that’s introduced right now + you can also scavenge the baskets of fruit from the fruit stands at a cheap workout lot, it spells disaster. People won’t work out where there are other people, they’ll go to some empty lot somewhere, where the risk of someone disconnecting you and placing their battery in your tread etc is minimized.
    But if it’s introduced together with “needing to work out together” for some other reason, I think it could work, the gyms would stay in business and wouldn’t necessarily need to stay alive on fruit alone. So if it was introduced after there’s some other reason to get together, it could actually promote people gathering (instead of the other way around).

    Also about the tree harvesting;
    It’s hard work to harvest trees now. You have to log in several times every day. Sometimes you don’t have time for that and some fruit goes to waste.
    If we could harvest the trees in one go:
    - It would be less work to grow fruit
    - You wouldn’t need to log in several times a day
    - With the new fruit pallets you would get a large amount of fruit at once
    - People would generally get a lot more fruit even if they play casually
    - They would start looking for a way to get rid of it = cheap fruit in stores
    - Others maybe wouldn’t bother growing trees, but buy the cheap fruit instead
    - Would it promote specialization/retailers etc or make people just play less, and flood the market? Or am I just thinking too much?

    Don’t know if I have an opinion about it. I’m not sure what I think.

    I have another such issue that (really doesn’t belong here) but would make life a lot easier; if flowers we put for sale didn’t need watering.

    Both things would be great, but I can’t really wrap my mind around what effect it could have “game-wise”.

14. Nors Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 8:27 pm

    Well my geraniums just stay in they’re grow process. One stayed in 17% all others in 0% This just freaks me out.

15. Atlas Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 12:23 am

    That’s weird, Nors. o_O

    @Raisin: Ooh, well are we able to extract crates of fruit from other users’ for sale stands?
    I didn’t know that! I thought we could buy crates of fruit, but I didn’t know we could extract them ourselves.
    That DOES seem like it could get a little abused… Of course, if the trees’ harvests get increased and there’s less time between each harvest, perhaps that’ll help fix this situation a little.
    And I definitely think that, if the trees’ harvests are all fixed out, it’ll DEFINITELY promote specialization… hopefully, anyway. I mean, you never know. I for one am trying my best to specialize in something, but it’s so hard to without having to do other things in the process!

    I’m thinking of opening my own custom floor tile store… hopefully that’ll be the kick I need towards specializing. There’s a severe lack of custom floor tiles!! Plus, I’ve been meaning to make floors ever since the kiln was introduced… lol.

16. CherryBomb_2700 Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 1:20 am

    No, Atlas, we cannot extract crates of fruit from someone else’s stand. At least *I* can’t. And if fruit production is greased, specialization will not increase. It will decrease by making it easier for one player to maximize everything solo. Besides, it is not like there is some global shortage of fruit because of difficulty of harvest. One idea I had for floor tiles was to make some with signs like “Do Not Enter” or “Welcome.”

    For some people, the goal of playing a game is to burn through content as fast as possible, so faster is always better. I admit I am on the other extreme, and like a game with lots of bottlenecks and restrictions so I can watch how people interact to overcome barriers. Like say, some lunatic who runs boilers all day like me would not be able to harvest fruit at all because of the design. I’m afraid any game I designed would prolly drive Atlas crazy. I know what space this game is in, so I know I won’t get what I want, but I will usually be the spoiler wanting things to be harder.

17. Assy_53399418_7060 Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 1:35 am

    About Geraniums: Trouble,
    1; Started watering, 3 dead and 1 alive;
    2; 3 dead put into my inventory;
    3; 1 alive on my lot;

    ONCE THE UPDATE WAS DONE OF TirNua;

    4; 3 dead want to put on my lot again for recycle CAN NOT DO THAT ANYMORE IT STAYS INTO MY INVENTORY, lot ground stays red instead of green; i try everyplace on my lot to add them into; turns back to my inventory;
    5; 1 alive is on my lot; 1 alive put into my inventory; showed up in my inventory; try to put it back on my lot again; i turned up red as well as the 3 dead; CAN NOT DO THAT ANYMORE IT STAYS INTO MY INVENTORY; CAN NOT ADD MY 1 ALIVE TO MY LOT AGAIN;

    What can i do about this matter, pleace help me out, Pleace sent a message or check out my lot and inventory and try it to do there as i told above 5 line and see for youself CAN NOT ADD ANYMORE MY 1 ALIVE AND 3 DEAD(RECYCLE)

    AsSy TheRoCKinGHoRSeGiRL

18. Atlas Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 1:41 am

    I don’t mind a challenge, as long as there’s a reason for it.
    I mean, you can’t necessarily claim that harvesting one fruit per 20 minute interval is a challenge. It’s a barrier, yes, but it’s the sort of barrier that delays actual gameplay. Sitting and harvesting fruit isn’t an active role in the community workings, as well as the game mechanics. There’s more to it!

    I do agree that difficulty can be quite fun in and of itself; I’m not necessarily the type that likes to “burn through content as fast as possible,” so long as I’m having a good old time. If there was some way to make the community more dependent on one another, yet still make each person’s role fun and interesting by itself, I’d be fine. But as it is at the moment, treading gets old, as does gardening. What’s the incentive for specifically focusing on one activity? Why would I bother NOT producing my own fruit, since buying it from others’ lots can be quite a money drain… especially since I’m trying to *make* money while I burn off the fruit treading! There’s just a lack of co-dependence… The question is, how do we fix that, yet maintain the game’s focal point?

    Realistically, an extremely difficult game isn’t where Tirnua is headed… But I do agree, challenges and restrictions can be very fun, especially since there’s always more than one way to overcome said challenges/restrictions.
    Bleh, I don’t know. There’s just too much to consider. We need a way to make it possible to be independent if desired, but not ENTIRELY; there still has to be that community interaction, somewhere.

19. Gilly Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 2:07 am

    In response to Raisin”s:
    “If we could harvest the trees in one go:” scenario.

    I wanted to clarify my suggestion, because I was not really suggesting that we be able to harvest *all* of our trees at once.

    Right now we can harvest one fruit ‘per tree’, every 20 minutes, which translates into 2 hours to fully harvest a single tree, if we keep on a tight schedule, but we can harvest as many trees as are in fruit on that day. The number and types of trees that are in harvest mode, is different each day, for me, although it probably depends on how big an orchard someone has. I am not sure of the exact time, but it takes several days before a harvested tree is back in fruit, so I have days when no trees are in fruit.

    I find the 20 min. schedule disruptive, because keeping on time, means not starting anything distracting, for fear of overshooting my optimum harvesting schedule and prolonging the harvest, so I end up just marking time. I have tried logging off and back to keep the schedule….but I get just as distracted out of the game as in.

    What I am suggesting, is being able to harvest the complete production of *one* tree at a time, then another tree, 20 (or whatever amount) minutes later. Having whole trees come into fruit in sequence, rather than the fruit doing so, seems easier to cope with, and more logical, too. It would also add to the play and drama, if the trees, that went unharvested, produced fewer fruit on the next round….giving us a reason to try to harvest them all or not, if maximum production is not a goal.

    I grow my own vegetables in real life. In my garden, I tend to have plants hit their peak production at different times, and I will harvest a lot of bell peppers one week on some plants but not necessarily all of my bell pepper plants, and the same on the tomatoes, which tends to result in continuous, if uneven, supply of veggies. Some weeks I have to scramble to find friends to take the overflow, and some weeks I do not have enough.

    I think that having our fruit trees follow natural, ebb and flow of production, would make the game more interesting. Some days we might get 6 fruit per tree….on other days, different amounts, but we get the entire harvest of a single tree, whatever is available on that day, at once. I do not know how it works for bigger orchards, but my trees vary from one tree in fruit to half a dozen. I almost never harvest the whole production and I doubt that I would do so, even with my suggestion. It would just be nice to know that I had managed to clean out some of my trees….if not all of them…and be able to chose a particular fruit to focus on, as needed.

    I know in an earlier blog entry, they were talking about a life cycle for trees….perhaps this would be a more natural one….unharvested trees slowly stop producing, until they stop all together and die. If someone was on vacation, and came back to low producing trees, they could ‘rescue’ them with extra attention in the form of watering and fertilizer for a few days, with gradually increasing production. By the same token, maximize harvesting for ‘x’ number of cycles could wear out a tree, and it would die or also need extra attention.

    Those are my thoughts…what do you guys think?

20. Cutsie Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 6:12 am

    Something else about the tuning… how about you can charge a battery faster when using a rare treadmill? this would give more use for these rares other than just pretty colors. It would also get more people to use the printers, and also help store owners to sell more rares. Same for the salad bars, like it should give you more fill or something.

    I am a resident and love resident perks, but i don’t think treading speed should depend on if you are a resident or not. If you give residents too many perks, the only serious players will be residents. Skill locks for example i believe should also be available to non-residents, though perhaps at a slower rate. i think things like the ability to create cc are a good thing to attract people to become residents, and it should kind of be limited to that. i dont mind other perks, but you cant make it so hard for guests.

    Also, can we add a pause feature to the boilers? switching batteries cause us to lose fuel. sometimes you can switch without having it go off, but not always.

21. Atlas Says:
    January 19th, 2010 at 12:41 pm

    By the way, I’m thinking the Recycle Mode and the Set for Sale mode should be, uh… Purged. If that’s the term I’m looking for.

    It just doesn’t make sense that they’re under the same mode to begin with, to be honest.
    PLUS, it’s just going to lead to a load of confusion in the future.
    …Maybe you could even just change the name of the mode to accommodate for both? … I don’t know, it just doesn’t sit well with me.

22. Raisin Says:
    January 20th, 2010 at 2:28 am

    Assy;
    I noticed that if you place a new Plot to sow plants on your lot, you can drag the geraniums there. They seem to lose the soil when you put them in inventory. But you can drag them back to the lot if there is an empty plot there.

    CB/Atlas:
    “No, Atlas, we cannot extract crates of fruit from someone else’s stand. At least *I* can’t.”

    True, I meant that IF we were supposed to be able to do that - I first thought they had failed in making the fruit buyable that way, but I kind of misunderstood it. They meant that we can extract it ourselves and put it for sale in stores. Which is a relief

    Gilly;
    (without quoting the whole post) I think it’s a great idea to make the trees less “linear” in their production of fruit. If we could do something to increase or decrease the amount of fruit on them that would make it much less mechanical. Or increase/decrease their life span. So I’m all for that, if it can be done. They could also be affected by the environment to give more or less fruit or their life span could be affected.
    (I’m growing trees on snow lots now…)

    Making it so you can harvest 1-2 trees fully and then come back for the other trees would give people with many trees more work. Otherwise it’s just 6 times a day no matter how many. Any way is fine with me I think.

    Cutsie;
    “If you give residents too many perks, the only serious players will be residents.”

    Yeah but if someone pays for playing I think they should be rewarded more than the free players. It should be really worth our while to pay for the game.
    Otherwise you will see residents reverting back to guests and we might lose the game altogether if they don’t have the economy to keep it running. Imo if you don’t pay you should get a bare minimum. I’ve learned my lesson, never give everything to people who aren’t willing to give anything back and don’t take your efforts seriously.

    I really agree about the pause feature on boilers and the set for sale mode getting its own button.

23. CherryBomb_2700 Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 6:32 am

    One more fruit idea: Maybe you could get the speedy fruit harvest if you maintained a beehive on the lot. Is this green or what!? Lotsa cool ideas about beehive design.

24. Atlas Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 7:11 am

    Oooh, I remember talking to Groovy months ago and saying we should get beehives and become beekeepers…
    I’m not sure if I ever mentioned it to the Devs… I probably didn’t.

    But I agree - beehives would be AMAZING. I’d love to beekeep!
    Plus, it’s a great introduction to “livestock,” since, well… they’re insects! It’s livestock without the anatomical difficulty!

    Plus, the addition of beehives would be realistic in regards to speeding up fruit harvest, since, well… Bees pollinate flowers! So the trees would surely produce more, healthier fruit, as well as keep us holed up on our lots picking fruit for hours!

    I love the idea, Cherry… Really!

    Plus, how cool would it be to have a honey-jarring table, and being able to use those bellows things on our hives to sedate the bees, harvest the honey… I can’t even TELL you how awesome that’d be, in my opinion!

    …Of course, I’d hate to have to wear the bee-keeping suit. Anything but that, please!

25. Atlas Says:
    January 21st, 2010 at 7:19 am

    Ooh, one more thing! Before I forget. lol
    It would be LOVELY if recycled materials/orange crates would say how many units were in them while in our inventory/in the Player Stores section of the Shopping Catalog.
    This way we:
    a) Won’t be deceived by other players (ex: in-game trading)
    b) Will know what we’re paying for/what we’re putting on the lot/on the ‘place to drop’ tiles.

    Just thought I’d suggest this, since uh… Yeah. It’s getting annoying to keep taking out empty/not-completely-full bins! Lol.

26. FUGLY Says:
    January 23rd, 2010 at 12:31 am

    2 WORDS. MULTIPLAYER OBJECTS.

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