Harvesting on Community Lots

Simalleyaile · July 2021

EDIT: Changed the title of thread for better clarification.
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Right now it is coded that harvestable plants will not come into bloom unless a sim is being actively played on a lot. The plants become harvestable at 5 am. This poses no problem for plants on residential lots as the sim being played is usually snug as a bug in their bed, asleep.

However, this decision has rendered other gardening gameplay on non-residential lots virtually obsolete. Specifically:

Scientist Career: A part of scientists day is to grow a garden, and the harestables are used in the serums they can make. There is no way a played scientist can be on the lot before 5 am, therefore they can never harvest their plants for their serums.

Eco Living Community Gardens: The sim has to be on the lot before 5 am, otherwise all the plants that are being planted will never bloom. I have woken my sim very early and travelled to the lot around 4 am, and have also camped overnight just to be there for bloom time, and it's not something I want to continue having to do.

Public Areas not attached to the active player's residence. When a sim travels to another neighbourhood, the plants won't be ready for harvesting unless the sim is there before 5 am. Watch DR Gluon's frustration as he tries to harvest the new plants coming in Cottage Living, at around 4:30 mins.

https://youtu.be/jKIQ61D6PKQ

This is the second time he has travelled to the lot to try and get the berries as it's a part of a challenge. Though he does seem to be able to harvest some berries that are available. ???

Any community lot you have a harvesting garden won't go into bloom unless your sim is active on the lot at this specific time.

It's not fun folks. It's inconvenient, and as you can see through your own Game Changer's eyes, frustrating. Please change the bloom time to something more convenient, when Scientists can be at the Science Lot to attend their garden, and when most sims will be awake.

83bienchen · July 2021

This is how gardening has worked since the release of the game and when the game came out, some gurus even gave insight in that this is part of the Challenge to get all plants that are available in the game. A game changer should know about a game mechanic that has been in game so long. If he does not, I don't see why EA is to blame for it.
Btw, EA already changed the bloom time once. They picked 5 a.m. as it is the time most players will be at their home lot, thus ensure their own gardens will produce harvestables regularly. I don't see another time that would be more convenient.

Anyhow, for the Scientist Career it acutally IS an issue and growing times should have been changed for the science venue long ago, but they were not.

Simalleyaile · July 2021

83bienchen wrote: »

This is how gardening has worked since the release of the game and when the game came out, some gurus even gave insight in that this is part of the Challenge to get all plants that are available in the game. A game changer should know about a game mechanic that has been in game so long. If he does not, I don't see why EA is to blame for it.
Btw, EA already changed the bloom time once. They picked 5 a.m. as it is the time most players will be at their home lot, thus ensure their own gardens will produce harvestables regularly. I don't see another time that would be more convenient.

Anyhow, for the Scientist Career it acutally IS an issue and growing times should have been changed for the science venue long ago, but they were not.

Hello @83bienchen - thanks for your input, but I'm confused by some of it. First you say:

This is how gardening has worked since the release of the game and when the game came out

then you say:

Btw, EA already changed the bloom time once.

These are conflicting statements.

Anyway, I've been playing this game since the beginning - over 7800 hours, avid gardener, and as you say, the times of bloom used to be different, and it was much better for COMMUNITY gardens - which is what this feedback is about. I used to have lots of gardens on community lots - still, do, but now they don't function like they used to. Some in parks, some on retail lots, even on rental lots - all over the place really, and of course now the above mentioned new Garden Community Lot that came with Eco living - I've enjoyed building the new venue lot type, but the gameplay is frustrating because of the bloom times. As I already said, no issue for residential lots. It's community play that I want to leave this feedback for.

But this is baffling:

I don't see another time that would be more convenient.

10am, 11am, 12 noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm?
I know there is a mod that adjusts the bloom time to 11 am, which I'm going to try for now and see how how it works out for both community and residential bloom times. (But I really wish I didn't have to use a mod for this - I think this is something that should be supported through the game).

some gurus even gave insight in that this is part of the Challenge to get all plants that are available in the game

At the beginning of the game, it definitely was a challenge to find all the plants. But they bloomed at a more convenient time - that's how I managed to gather all my gardens together all over the world, no cheating, just hard work, lots of harvesting and planting. I definitely didn't get up at 4 am to travel . But the game changes, so do challenges. With Cottage Living my understanding is, we'll be getting a system that simply allows you to order ANY PLANT you like over the phone, and boom! No challenge except paying for it. So as the game changes, so should their support for gameplay they've introduced through various pack, namely Get to Work (Scientist) and Community Garden Lot (Eco Living) and now the "Errands" coming with Cottagle Living.

A game changer should know about a game mechanic that has been in game so long. If he does not, I don't see why EA is to blame for it.

Who's throwing around the word blame? He certainly isn't, and either am I. I'm simply providing some feedback about non-residential garden play, and used his video as an example of the frustration he experienced. It highlights that not every player is aware of the blooming time, and that they have to actively be in the area at that time. I read the comments he received on that video, and only two players told him what the problem was - except they told him 6 am. I've read other examples of players who get frustrated with the same thing, and think it's a bug. Personally I think it's a bit unfair to expect players to know everything about the mechanics of the game - especially one that has changed over time. As far as I'm aware there's nothing in the game that tells the player that 1. A sim has to be active on the lot, and 2. blooming won't happen till 5 am. I only know through observation (though, I've recently read that players think it's 6 am. So now I'll have to go check again, is it 5 or 6 - either way, there is confusion and frustration).

Anyhow, for the Scientist Career it acutally IS an issue and growing times should have been changed for the science venue long ago, but they were not.

Maybe leaving feedback about the issue will bring some focus to it and they can think of a way to resolve it? Which is what I'm trying to do.

And also the Community Garden Lot that came with Eco Living- I was very excited to get an "official" Lot Type for the game - one especially coded to function as a place sims can go to plant, tend and harvest their fruits and veggies - and was baffled why the plants never came into bloom, until I remembered how early in the morning bloom time was, and a "happy" feature turned into an "Oh flippin' heck, I have to wake up my sims, drag em out of bed before the crack of dawn for these lots to be fully functional?" Yeah, that's not gonna happy too often, and I'm frustrated because I LOVE the builds I've made and wanted to use them, but at a time when sims eyes are open.

Anyway, thought it was enough of an issue to make a feedback thread for it, but if it's not a problem for you 83bienchen, accepted. Not everyone is concerned about the same things. Maybe there's other people besides me who are experiencing some frustrations with harvest times (in non-residential areas) so at the very least this feedback might spread the word about what you have to do to get these public area plants blooming. There 's going to be a whole heap of players trying to "forage" for those chocoberries!

83bienchen · July 2021

What meant that it was always the case that plants will only grow harvest at a certain time of the day and the only tiny change that was made later on was the actual time that happens (also see below in the spoiler). It was somewhat later in the morning initially if I remember correctly, but that way, plants would never grow harvest for players working in one of the active careers (or playing with go to school mod). It would also not be growing harvest if your Sim happend to be away from their home lot at that time for whatever reason. So it obviously seemed more convenient to change it to 5 a.m.; I personally cannot think of a better time during the day and I remember that I was often unable to get harvest from my plants before they changed the time shedule.
And yes, if I visit my public gardens to harvest, I wake up my Sims early in the morning for that purpose. At least for me, that is far more convenient than constantly having to stay on my home lot during the day so that the plants on my home lot will grow harvest properly. But that might be only me (or might not, as there must have been some reason for the change back then).

That beeing said, if would be totally possible to add some test so that the harvest time on community lots will be set to a different time than the harvest time on your home lot. They would simply have to change the tests in the object tuning of all plants for that and I wonder why they haven't done it yet.

That's the tuning I'm talking about (you can also see that they only changed a tiny bit of that coding when they went for 5 a.m. instead of the hour it was before, that is where my "This is how gardening has worked since the release of the game" statement was coming from):
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Simalleyaile · July 2021

Thank you @83bienchen for explaining what you meant, and for talking about this with me. Yes, I agree that finding a suitable time for both residential and community lot plants to go into bloom isn't going to be convenient all the time for every sim's situation. I would still like to see them come up with some kind of solution, as they keep adding gardening gameplay to places that aren't on the sim's residence.

Maybe the solution is not about time at all, but about using the loading screen as the sim's travel to make sure all the plants that are in season (if Seasons is installed) will be in bloom. This could address the Science Venue lot issue and the Eco Community Garden issue and any public area the sim loads into for foraging purposes, such as the hidden lots, the creature keeper's lot etc, anywhere in the world there's plants. They've managed to do it for the City Festivals. Both the Romance and the Spice Festival have their plants ready for harvesting. So a separate system seems possible if they think it's enough of an issue.

Who knows, maybe they've already addressed this issue with the new pack coming - as they've highlighted "foraging" as a feature. Yay if they have. Boo if they haven't. I just want to have my gardening fun back on all my community lots. And If I can't have that, how 'bout a working alarm clock?

MissSweetViolet · July 2021

I agree with this, I do not currently have the EL pack, but reading this, it seems like the simple solution would just be to adjust bloom times for the non residential lots that rely on a garden to function.

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Harvesting on Community Lots

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