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Toolboxes
System
Posts: 106,969
How does it work again?.... Marowit is here, Game Designer
& from:
Hi, I'm Meela, The Numbers Guy.
Comments
Could you please explain the decrease in toolbox drops?
1) an explanation about how many drop according to how much is produced in production buildings (ex: multiple toolboxes used to drop, depending on production amount; now 1 MAY drop, or none at all, depending on production amount)
2) the reason for a marked decrease from the production buildings
3) the timing, and non-announcement, of this drastic change in toolbox drops
Thank you in advance, many of us are wondering, upset, and hoping for a reversal of this decision to limit toolbox procurement.
The overall drop rates for the silo, mill and composter were way to strong compared to the other buildings.
Basically every time we added a new level to those buildings we made them more and more powerful because we added more stacks and reduced the time it takes to make one stack
It was an oversight from us.
The machines were supposed to be a long term goal, not something that can be achieved within a week or so.
If we let them like they were everyone would get them in 2-3 weeks and then ask for more new machines, vicious circle.
I agree that the timing was bad but what we noticed is that some players managed to upgrade the new machines within a day of their release, and they got those tools from skipping not from buying them.
What you do need to understand is that sometimes bugs are not only something that are of an inconvenience to the user, sometimes they cause exploits, such as the drops for the silo, we still have to adjust them nonetheless.
What if one day you would have a button in solitaire that makes you win the game with just 1 click? Would you still bother to play the game when you know you can win with no challenge?
1. I wanted to know the condition that triggers lester because lester is not visiting to my farm from past 8months and why lester is not coming to non gold buyer even i spend 52k gold in last 45 days ? It is necessary to buy gold ( one condition to trigger lester ? )
2. Can you tell why the quantity for tools is reduced now , we got 4 new machine and we have 2 cc in a month , i am thinking we need more tools to play cc and opening new machine too .
Thnks for sharing your precious time with us
Both question were already asked and I answered just a bit above
"The overall drop rates for the silo, mill and composter were way to strong compared to the other buildings.
Basically every time we added a new level to those buildings we made them more and more powerful because we added more stacks and reduced the time it takes to make one stack
It was an oversight from us.
The machines were supposed to be a long term goal, not something that can be achieved within a week or so.
If we let them like they were everyone would get them in 2-3 weeks and then ask for more new machines, vicious circle.
I agree that the timing was bad but what we noticed is that some players managed to upgrade the new machines within a day of their release, and they got those tools from skipping not from buying them.
What you do need to understand is that sometimes bugs are not only something that are of an inconvenience to the user, sometimes they cause exploits, such as the drops for the silo, we still have to adjust them nonetheless.
What if one day you would have a button in solitaire that makes you win the game with just 1 click? Would you still bother to play the game when you know you can win with no challenge?"
"Sorry but I can't give you the exact conditions on how to trigger Lester right now, it's like asking me for my secret pasta sauce recipe
"
Is there any chance of splitting tools into two separate types of drops, with one type used to build the machines and the other type used to activate them?
You could have raised the cost (in tools) of each machine. This would accomplished the same goal while leaving the tool collection in place for tools for daily activation of the machines.
And, on the comment about adding new levels, let me point this out.........I remember when tools and the farm machines were added to the game. You have only added two levels to these buildings since then, so this argument does not make too much sense.
The drops should have been adjusted at the point we added them to those buildings, so it's a very old bug.
Which we only noticed now.
If you look at what happened in the last 2 levels, we have increased the number of stacks by 50%(from 40 to 60) and reduced the time to make one stack by around 15%.
So this is a gigantic improvement in terms of drops. Which should never have happened in the first place.
The adjustment didn't happen because we added new levels now, or because of the new farm machines from now.
It happened because we just noticed the problem now.
Yes, but take the silo for example.......It went from 5 tools for a full load to 1. By your example it should have gone to maybe 3, but not 1.
Also, I have pointed out in other posts, that many mid-sized farms do not have the dung or leaves to run full loads, and they are often getting zero, so you effectively made the silo and composter zero for many, many farmers. Had you simply raised the price (in number of tools) the machines....this would not have happened. For example, go back to the old drop system and raise the cost of the Hovercraft to 300 or 400. You would get your result, with a more logical tool distribution.
And you keep forgetting that tools are needed for daily activation. By introducing two more machines that require such tools, you cut the effective spending power (in tools) by 50 percent, just by adding the machines.
And you forget that these activations effect market orders and other things, so you have also effected the CC, market orders and the HW event. Did you intend to do that?
we have 2 cc in a month . hardly we get 5 tools now in a day , so in a month 150 tools max
A cc is of 4 days , if we start powerhouse thrice in a day of 50% then it takes 12 tools daily , so in 2 cc 96 tools were used , so in a month we will get 54 tools as a saved amount
it takes more than 1 yr to open all new machine , if it is going like this
I do hope you and your colleagues at GGS will be able to interact and help design a fairer game
So far I must say I find these threads (yours and that of Pinchu) totally useless. Players ask such disparate questions, the discussion is completely out of focus and in a matter of 1 or 2 weeks max this will have become a very long discussion without a precise topic, and trying to read it will be a huge waste of time
-------------------
RE: re-balancing of tool box drop rates
The re-balancing of the drop rate of tool boxes as you explained it makes no sense at all. The math is wrong. Levels have no direct connection with the enormous decrease you have operated
We used to have silos which could be upgraded to level 5. Now to level 7. These level 7 silos produce 600 fertilizer and used to drop 5 or 6 tool boxes.
After the last change they drop 1 tool box only, 1 fifth / 1 sixth of previous rate. If the silo's capacity had to be adjusted accordingly, we would have a silo level 3 producing 100-125 fertilizer units
Composters were also re-balanced to drop 1 tool box instead of 2-3. The adjustment to the silo is twice as high, yet both composter and silo have seen the addition of two levels of upgrades
As far as buildings other than silo and composter. it could take days before a single tool box is dropped
So it is even too obvious that the this so called re-balancing has the sole purpose of improving GGS sales, and has got nothing to do with the game mechanics
Marowit, Thank you for taking the time to explain the reasoning behind the reduction in the tool drop rates. It seems the tool drop rates are a settled matter, so let's redirect and expand the "tool drop" dialogue to a focused and specific remedy for the players' day to day farm production concerns as a result of the reduced tool drops.
In a continued effort to help you understand the players' experience, I'll start with an idea: Perhaps GGS could increase the Farm Lab's productivity of premium humus?
Tool drop rate was balanced around a lvl 5 silo (as opposed to the lvl 7 that we have today).
# of tools dropped is proportional to the amount of fertilizer produced.
Fully balanced would mean getting the same amount of tools per day today as we get got when tools were first released.
Under the old tool drop rate, we were getting 5 tools per 600 fertilizer produced, or 1 tool per 120 fertilizer.
A lvl 5 silo takes 19 minutes to produce 10 fertilizer, so 120 fertilizer would be 228 minutes, or 3 hrs, 48 minutes.
That means if were to run a lvl 5 silo for a total of 16 hours, we would get 4.21 tools.
Therefore, in order to rebalance the tool amount to conform to the initial drop rates, a 16 hr batch of a lvl 7 silo should yield ~4 tools.
Hi Meela, good to have you here.
Formalities aside, let's get down to it.
As I've mentioned to Pinchu, I wonder about the gold speed up cost for horse training. It seems to be about 10 times more than other speed ups of the same duration. Is it a mistake, an oversight, or deliberate?
Now I have to put my two bits in with the lowering of the tool drop count which many have discussed with Marowit. I just harvested 24 humus on my farm and got ZERO tools, then 500 fertilizer and got just a measly ONE. I'm not trying to be rude but this has just about broken the farm machine mechanism. I know you want to slow down upgrades for the new machines but this makes it nearly impossible to run the machines we already have on a regular basis anymore. What's the point of having 2 or 3 hour cool down if we don't have the tools to run them that often, and on top of that how are we going to have enough to run the new machines? Perhaps there needs to be another way to generate tools or new sources. Have you considered bringing in other buildings such as the windmill, and buildings on other farms to also have a tool drop? Could the stables on the gourmet farm (donkeys, goats, and ducks) have a tool drop rate similar to the stables on the main farm? Less from humus and fertilizer but bring other sources into the mix? Even, rather ironically, how about a new farm machine that permanently increases tool drops like others that increase certificate, rep and fishing XP percentages?
I 100% agree with everything @Rusty Farmer (AU1) said. All the above suggestions sound great to me.
I also 100% completely agree with @gavinfarms (US1). Who stated the below in the
How does it work again?.... Marowit is here, Game Designer
thread Please can you have a look into this, @Meela.AND
Thankyou. Kind Regards,
Andrew56
I wish I had a different topic to ask you about, but I am afraid it is another 2 questions about toolboxes lol
The droprate as it was, just about allowed me to run the 4 machines that we had, not 24/7, but fairly often, so clearly now, with the new rate, it is not going to be possible to run 6 machines.
1. Since upgrading the machines reduces the cooldown period, what is the point of upgrading them when you cannot use them that quickly anyway?
I can only assume, that reducing the price of buying toolboxes, was an indication that if we wish to use our machines as often as the cooldown allows, we should buy the toolboxes so my 2nd question is...
2. If we have to spend gold to buy toolboxes, to run the machines, to gain some benefit, why do we not just spend the gold to just buy the benefit in the first place?
For example: Farm Flash Machine:
Option 3 - requires 3 toolboxes & adds +25 to my bakery recipe. If I was making fruitcakes it would cost me 3 x 390 = 1170 gold for 25 cakes (+10 certificates) but, if I just speeded up my bakery it would cost me 320 gold for 410 cakes (+0 certificates). I am sure I could also buy all the ingredients & get change out of the +19,000 gold that I would be saving to gain 410 cakes.
Option 4 - requires 2 toolboxes + 150 gold for +50 cakes, which would now be 930 gold for 50 cakes.... This is a better deal than option 3 with 1170 gold for 25 cakes, but the speedup still trumps them both.
Am I missing something? ... Oops that was a 3rd question hehe
I agree with all the posters above who expressed their dissent regarding this change operated to the tool box drop rate. I have already posted my calculations in the discussion "how does it work..." in the hope to get Marowit's attention (none so far ........)
I would like to add that for low level players it was already very difficult to build the level 1 of each of their machines, and now, after the latest changes, it will be near impossible. For these players using any of the toolboxes to activate an existing machine is prohibitive
Why have all these machines if you cant activate them ?
The tools were already insufficient as far as my farms are concerned, even tho I play long hours. Never used tool boxes to activate the farm flash of the humus pro. Now I am also not using tool boxes to activate the special press anymore
I am a level 300+ player who spends long hours at the farm. If I find that using tool boxes to activate the farm machines is near impossible, I cant begin to imagine what amount of trouble lower level players find themselves in
The problem was that the silo and composer were too overpowered even with just 5 levels, so this was something that should have been changed from day 1.
The tool drops for all buildings per cycle stay the same as you upgrade them.
However, technically the tools drop per stack, silo and composer have more stacks and the time per stack goes down as you upgrade the building, which is something we neglected until now.
So the adjustment makes sure the tools drop more closely to the actual time it takes to make one stack.
Drops are based on the time it takes to finish production, what comes out has no impact on the amount of drops, also rarity of the elements required to start the production is taken into account, that is why sunflowers drop more than wheat.
Now back to the time based drops :
1st tools drop in pieces, every production drops some tool pieces, how ever you will only see it drop, and be able to use it once you gathered 100 tool pieces, let’s call this TP(bad acronym I know
Now with a level 1 silo it takes you 3360 seconds to drop 7TP(this is one stack) you can make 3 stack so you get 21TP after the whole cycle.
3360*3/21= 480 seconds per TP
With a max level it takes you 960 to get 3 TP, you can do 60 stacks in total so you get a total of 120 TP.
960*60/120= 480 seconds per TP
The result is the same amount of TP per second, just as all the other buildings.
Edit:
The adjustment of the prices happened because the tools were severely overpriced. And buying them was more expensive than just to skip the production.
This is still the case but only for the last 2 levels of the silo
Thank you for that detailed insight into Toolbox Drops. Just the fact that (now) knowing they're time-based rather than drop-chance-percentage based gives us valuable information and also confirms several theories I had based upon my own observations as I noticed that drops from my stables appeared to be in a pattern, almost always coinciding with a certain "number" of harvests. Now I know why, because the "Xth" harvest is when "TP" (Hey, don't look at me, it's your acronym
If I could ask one question in regards to the Silo, Composter & Stables - do they all share the same "TP" Pool? IE., if I reach 99 "TP" on the Silo, then harvest a pigsty which (for instance) generates 1TP, would a toolbox drop, or would I need to wait until the next Silo harvest to break the 100 "TP" barrier? (I have a feeling based on my observations that it's all one pool, but I'd like to confirm if possible.)
(This would explain why some people see 0 toolbox drops even after harvesting 24 Fertilizers 3x in a row in the Composter).
Again, thanks for this insight; it's greatly appreciated!
Because otherwise, a full production CowShed (25,200 seconds) would guarantee a drop with every 2 full productions, and that's certainly NOT the case.
As always, any insight greatly appreciated.
1) The drop mechanic is one of the clunkiest we have in Big Farm. It is hard to work with and hard to understand for new players because of the random element and no easy overview of all the things that drop from a certain building.
It is even worse for toolboxes, because while they seem to drop in integer amounts (1,2,3...), each toolbox is actually composed of 100 subpieces. And your buildings are dropping these subpieces, not the whole toolboxes like with other drops. You can imagine it as the game having a personal counter for your tools - your chicken coop drops 10 tool pieces each production (not a real number) but you can only see your tool drop when that counter reaches 100. That's why it seems like 9/10 times, harvesting your chickencoop gives no tools at all, whereas it actually always gives you some tool pieces, it just goes 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90 - and only at 100 you as a player actually see something happening.
So, do not totally disregard the stables when it comes to tools, they contribute in their own way bit by bit, unlike the flashy way of a fully stacked silo.
2) I'll look into the numbers again, especially for new places in the game where tools could be given out. So no going back to silo and composter being so much better than the other buildings, more akin to some suggestions in this thread, like a lab recipe, buildings on other farms etc. While making the silo and composter worse was justified, not offering a new alternative wasn't, so I'll try to fix that.
Thank you for the explanation @Meela
Please do not limit the possibilities to the laboratory because if that was the case, once again all the low level players would be in trouble, it would take a very long time before any of them were able to produce any tool boxes in a laboratory which costs a fortune to upgrade
Actually, to keep the focus on the low level players, the best places that should drop more toolbox sub-pieces should be all the production buildings in main farm.
Every low level player starts from main farm, upgrades and expands it first, so that is where the focus should be. Windmill is built since very low levels, so are fields, and animal sheds.
You have increased the number of machines in the game, and also the number of machines which need to be activated.
The number of toolboxes needs to be increased accordingly, and people have to be able to start collecting adequate numbers of toolboxes since very low levels, unless GGS expects us to simply buy tool boxes instead.
In the end it makes little difference to the players whether the increased drop rate of tool boxes is due to an increased number of parts/cycle or an increased number of building which drops them or a combination of the two, as far as we get more tool boxes than we used to, rather than less as its happening now