[MUD-Dev] Do players enjoy farming? (was MUD-Dev Digest, Vol 7, Issue9)

[Freeman]

>From John Buehler:

> Barrier alert.

> You get an interesting result, but only for the monster
> killers. The farmers and miners receive the hassle that you didn't
> want for yourself.

Well, now we're talking about two different things.  This is
confusing slang.  The terms "farming" or "camping" do not mean, in
slang terms, that you own a farm or make smores and sing songs.

I'm not talking about actual *farming*.  I'm talking about the
slang-term "farming" - obtaining xp and items by killing the same
creature over and over.

> I think that you're mixing different types of entertainment for
> the farmers and miners.  They want to farm and mine.  They don't
> want to have things that oppose their very ability to farm and
> mine.

You could implementing mundane farms and mines that produce mundane
things (like food and iron), and magic bean-farms and mystical mines
that are attacked by monsters all the time for no good reason.

You don't have to stomp on the people who are actually farming
(i.e. growing crops) or really mining (digging ore out of the
ground) in order to fictionally wrap "farming items" (i.e. the slang
usage of the word) as an actual sort of farm or mine.

> Similarly, I don't believe that farmers want to spend time hiring
> people to defend their fields or to constructive defensive
> fortifications to protect them.

Probably not.  But you could have NPC-controlled farms and mines
which are aggressed by creatures for the monster bashers to kill
repeatedly (for items, but not items from the creatures - rather,
items from the NPC farmers and miners that the players are
"protecting") *and* still have player-controlled farms and mines
which produce food and ore and are *not* aggressed by monsters.

I don't think you necessarily have to do either one or the other,
but especially disagree that if you fictionally cloak "farming
creatures for items" as "defend the dwarven mines from orcs" you
must therefore remove the mundane mining profession from your game.
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