Please, undo the change to plants and dirt block behavior.

[Gyson]

Prior to the launch of Portal Knights (during its early-access period) it was possible to grow seeds on a block of dirt, and then later remove the block of dirt while leaving the grown plant intact (floating in the air, or appearing to rest on any object later placed under it).

This beloved behavior allowed for all manner of interesting setups. A few examples: A friend and I used this process in conjunction with stone blocks and wooden fences to place shrubs in "planters" on highly decorative fence posts. We also used this process in conjunction with trees to carefully surround said tree with plants like alabaster bushes, thus making a much larger and visually appealing "berry tree".

But by far the biggest project I used this process on was where we (using a combination of hundreds of alabaster bush and silk cocoons) created a gigantic Christmas tree together, complete with colored lighting in preparation for the winter holidays.

Unfortunately, towards the end of early access you released an update that (with the tiniest of changes) dramatically altered the behavior of plants. Unlike the behavior prior to that point, now whenever the dirt block below a plant is removed the entire plant reverts to a seed and falls to the ground - a shift which obviously destroys concepts like the ones I listed above.

I suspect this happened because people would occasionally report floating shrubs as a "bug", which I always thought was an odd complaint considering the fact that we have floating blocks of dirt, stone, gems, steel, etc.. so what difference did it make to also have a floating bush? If someone didn't like a floating plant they were always free to strike it down and turn it into a collectable seed. This, to me, just seemed like an unnecessary change that stole some creativity from the game.

My friend and I put a lot of time into carefully creating our home island, and logging in after that patch and finding all our plant-related work gone was a serious blow to our morale. And the huge empty space where that gigantic Christmas tree had been, and all the resources that vanished along with it - that just did us in. We have not been back to play Portal Knights since that day, which is saying something considering that we used to play it daily.

To avoid bugs we regularly make backups of our worlds, and so we still have a set of files saved prior to the patch that wiped out our home. Our hope has always been that you would release a patch that reverted this unnecessary change to plant behavior, at which point we would just load up the game with our older save files and everything would be back to what we considered "normal". And even if we wanted to start completely over, it would still be nice to have access to a feature we often enjoyed being creative with.

Won't you please change plants back to their original behavior, where they remained intact and in place even when the dirt blocks below them were removed?




Edit:

I want to make sure people aren't getting the wrong ideas here about how things used to work versus how it works now.

How it works now: A plant can only grow and exist on a dirt block. When you remove the dirt block the plant collapses into seeds and crafting resources, even if you never touched the plant.

How it worked before: A plant could only grow on a dirt block, but could remain in existence even if the dirt block was removed. To remove the plant (and get its seeds and resources) you had to hit it directly (like everything else).

This did not mean the islands spawned with floating plants everywhere. The only time you had "floating" plants was if you personally removed the dirt block beneath it and then intentionally neglected to remove the plant as well.

Why would you do that? Maybe you mis-clicked and removed the dirt block beneath the plant by mistake. In the past that was easily resolved by inserting a new dirt block. But now you have to replace the dirt block and grow a tree from scratch all over again. Obviously this applies mainly to home islands where you generally care about the results of your landscaping.

Or, maybe you wanted to replace the dirt block with something else, like a decorative wood or stone block to give the impression that you have an elevated bush sitting in a planter. You used to be able to do that. Now you can't.

Or, perhaps you weren't satisfied with the variety of tree types available to us and thought it would be interesting to have some cotton or berry trees. Plant a tree, grow it to its maximum size, surround the head of the tree with strategically placed blocks of dirt, plant cotton or berry on those blocks, allow them to grow, remove the blocks of dirt, and repeat the process of strategically placing dirt and cotton/berry seeds until you've surrounded the entire head of the tree with cotton/berry shrubs. Viola - a larger, new type of tree that can be any shape you desire - and nothing appears to be "floating" because the shrubs are all attached to the head of the tree, leaving only its trunk naturally exposed.

You used to be able to do that. Now you can't. In my opinion we have lost a valuable tool over what really was a non-issue.

[Aurumai]

Can you think of any reason why the devs should revert the plants to a less realistic behavior other than that the update made your creations fall apart? I personally didn't see anything concerning plant behavior and interaction in the v1.1 update notes, but I'd say that floating plants (without roots) really does warrant a bug report unless otherwise specified by devs.

I totally sympathize with you, losing creations that took long hours to make, but I'm not sure I could pass "This cool thing I made broke" as a real reason why the game's mechanics should be reverted to a less realistic (and arguably less functional) way. And realistic or not, it really just boils down to what the devs want to do with plants in the end, and eliminating floating plants seems like a very intentional move.

[Gyson]

Originally posted by Aurumai:

Can you think of any reason why the devs should revert the plants to a less realistic behavior other than that the update made your creations fall apart?

Well, I thought I mentioned that in the original post:

1. It allowed for all manner of interesting setups.
2. We have floating blocks of dirt, stone, gems, steel, etc.. so what difference did it make to also have a floating bush.

Keep in mind that plants continuing to exist once the dirt voxel beneath them was removed was the behavior that existed for the better part of a year. It eventually changed, I believe, because it was occasionally (at least publicly) reported as bug.

Now, if we start suggesting that any and all floating voxels seems unrealistic and/or looks bugged, does that mean we should incorporate a realistic physics model into the environment and not allow "floating" objects anywhere? Or, do we simply accept this is a fantasy-based building game where stuff magically floats?

Honestly, "less realistic behavior" is a complaint that really doesn't fit into this particular genre.

The point is this: this change really added nothing positive to the game, beyond the fact that it reduced the amount of clicks required to clear a spot of terrain (since you can now remove a plant and the block beneath it just by hitting the block and ignoring the plant). And yet it's a change that removed a whole lot in the way of building and creativity - somewhat important concepts to this game.

I suppose I'm not a fan of seeing a wide range of potential creativity sacrificed in the name of reducing the number of mouse clicks a player has to do by one. That's a horrible trade-off. If someone doesn't like floating plants among their floating blocks, maybe just remove the plants the old fashion way by hitting them directly? It worked well enough for the better part of a year.

[prpl_mage]

Well I guess it was removed for a reason.
Maybe it was done when they made the hoe increase growth speed or something? A check had to be made for what block was underneath it? Maybe it had something to do with all the islands randomly having plants all over them floating in the air?

Otherwise I don't really see the point in doing this for the sake of "interestng setups", also the argument that blocks can float doesn't really work, since only the blocks can float, other objects cannot.

Maybe they could add fake plants as objects that can be placed instead that would fill your need while not screwing up the world gens.

[Aurumai]

Originally posted by Gyson:

Originally posted by Aurumai:

Can you think of any reason why the devs should revert the plants to a less realistic behavior other than that the update made your creations fall apart?

Well, I thought I mentioned that in the original post:

1. It allowed for all manner of interesting setups.

Or in other words, you can no longer create those 'interesting setups', because the update made them fall apart.

Honestly, creative uses of the game engine are going to happen no matter how they tweak the system, so long as the game remains a sandbox in principle. I don't think that removing what was possibly seen as a buggy behavior means that the game has inherently taken a step backwards in development.

You'd have no disagreement from me if you were to say that the game could use more variety in it's blocks (in texture, size and color) so that people have more freedom in their creations, but you really can't reasonably deny that floating plants as a world mechanic is iffy at best. The way I see it, Portal Knights is in it's early infancy of development, so it makes sense for them to eliminate unintended or perhaps poorly thought out mechanics that have the potential to become a liability later down the line, depending on how they intend to add or change existing object behaviors.

Originally posted by Gyson:

2. We have floating blocks of dirt, stone, gems, steel, etc.. so what difference did it make to also have a floating bush.

...

Now, if we start suggesting that any and all floating voxels seems unrealistic and/or looks bugged, does that mean we should incorporate a realistic physics model into the environment and not allow "floating" objects anywhere? Or, do we simply accept this is a fantasy-based building game where stuff magically floats?

The point is that you need to draw the line somewhere. Yes, certain things float in the world of Portal Knights, but that doesn't mean that ALL objects in the game should simply ignore gravity. What about when players break the voxels they're standing on top of? And what if ore that you mine from the ceiling of a cave just stayed in place rather than falling down to you?

We're getting pretty in-depth here, but it makes perfect logical sense for the condition/behavior of a plant to depend on the voxel in which it is planted. Having slightly more creative freedom at the cost coherent game logic just isn't a better option than the devs intentionally implementing more creative freedom by way of more block variety and new features.

I totally get that you grew to love the old game mechanics, but the very nature of games in early access or fresh out of it is fundamental change. There's plenty of reason to have hope, though -- The devs borrowed "inspiration" very freely from other sandbox games, so I would think that they would continue to do so by eventually giving players more freedom to build what they want, how they want, within the confines of their rules.

[Gyson]

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying the "in the name of realism" argument. If you really insist on running with that argument, realism shouldn't involve a bush or tree suddenly converting into seeds and crafting resources simply because you dig out the dirt beneath it. And yet that is what this change allowed - the instant conversion of plant material to resources even when the plant was untouched.

To me it made more sense when we had to "mine" the plant to get the resources from it, regardless of the state of the terrain blocks around it. The extra shortcut we have now is not only unnecessary, but incredibly unrealistic.

It sounds more like you just want to keep the entire process simplified, perhaps to minimize having to do any extra "work" (clicking), even if it means removing a useful creative tool from our arsenal.

If floating plants offend you - just hit them to remove them like we remove every other asset in this game. Forcing this change upon everyone was overkill. I personally don't like seeing stray floating blocks on my home island, but you don't see me petitioning to have them removed and insisting the situation be resolved by the developers.

Instead, I use the tools we're given to make the landscape more appealing to me. That's all I want any of us to be able to do, without insisting the developers use a heavy-handed fix to force my concepts of perfection on anyone else. When it comes to building games, having more options is better than having less.

[Vindred]

Yeah, floating plants aren't realistic. I'd be more in-depth about it, but I'm in an underwater sword fight with a monkey wizard.

[Gyson]

Originally posted by Vindred:

Yeah, floating plants aren't realistic. I'd be more in-depth about it, but I'm in an underwater sword fight with a monkey wizard.

I'm assuming their was some sarcasm in that statement. :)

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I want to make sure people aren't getting the wrong ideas here about how things used to work versus how it works now.

Now: A plant can only grow and exist on a dirt block. When you remove the dirt block the plant collapses into seeds and crafting resources, even if you never touched the plant.

Before: A plant could only grow on a dirt block, but could remain in existence even if the dirt block was removed. To remove the plant (and get its seeds and resources) you had to hit it directly (like everything else).

This did not mean the islands spawned with floating plants everywhere. The only time you had "floating" plants was if you personally removed the dirt block beneath it and then intentionally neglected to remove the plant as well.

Why would you do that? Maybe you mis-clicked and removed the dirt block beneath the plant by mistake. In the past that was easily resolved by inserting a new dirt block. But now you have to replace the dirt block and grow a tree from scratch all over again. Hooray for progress?

Or, maybe you wanted to replace the dirt block with something else, like a decorative wood or stone block to give the impression that you have an elevated bush sitting in a planter. You used to be able to do that. Now you can't. Hooray for more progress?

Or, perhaps you weren't satisfied with the variety of tree types available to us and thought it would be interesting to have some cotton or berry trees. Plant a tree, grow it to its maximum size, surround the head of the tree with strategically placed blocks of dirt, plant cotton or berry on those blocks, allow them to grow, remove the blocks of dirt, and repeat the process of strategically placing dirt and cotton/berry seeds until you've surrounded the entire head of the tree with cotton/berry shrubs. Viola - a larger, new type of tree that can be any shape you desire - and nothing appears to be "floating" because the shrubs are all attached to the head of the tree, leaving only its trunk naturally exposed.

You used to be able to do that. Now you can't. Hooray for more progress?

Yes, progress. At least now someone won't accidentally create a floating plant that will terrorize their senses. I can certainly understand how under such incredible stress it might be challenging for them to remember to use the tool in their hands and strike down the offending plant to restore order to their universe. Right? :P