Upon Botany Submissions

[squakhawk 7888]

 

Hello, Squak from Story Management here, just bringing a short announcement from our Botany and Alchemy focus group.

    When the Alchemy and Botany reworks came to fruition, we had a very careful and beautiful thing created. A revitalization to Alchemy, uses in Botany, and the spread and use of it to the general playerbase. We had few goals in mind regarding failsafes of old, as we found it difficult to get to the stagnancy we faced before.

 

Once more, we’re at a metaphorical death’s door. 

Inarguably, Alchemy and Botany are in fantastic places at the current time. Widely used, widely available. However, we have run into an issue regarding bloat.

    Before the Flora Announcements, there were hundreds of flora pieces. Most of which, contributed minimal to the story of the server, and only about a dozen ever ended ever being used in commonplace, while the rest fell to a headache of the ST as most of these pieces, had minimal, contradicting, or no lore whatsoever. We’ve very quickly run into a new problem. As it stands, we have roughly fifty accepted herbs, which is insane from the ten or so we started with. Right now, Thirty-five are implemented into the plugin, which has provided an incredible, ineffable stress onto ST regarding tickets and usage.

 

 

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Why are there so many?

    Simply put, player additions. Despite the seemingly low-amount of pieces, much of them absolutely choked the focus group with grand amounts of herbs being added. One piece in particular, past changes, has added twenty-five herbs.

Why stop them? What is the problem of adding them?

    Simply put, they add little. As it stands, the current Botany pieces fit nearly every niche, with a wide range of signs and symbols evenly balanced. Adding more contributes to bloat, redundancy, and the same issues we faced before. If anything, we should be looking to begin cutting down herbs- many of the herbs added, have, and do, add little but provide an alternative forms of signs and symbols which already exist.  Alchemy pieces are scrutinized rather heavily, and cover much more unique and interesting grounds - but, botany alone, is beginning to form many problems ST side, and playerside. 

 

So what’s the verdict?
Botany will have all submissions put forth until further notice denied automatically. Alchemy pieces are acceptable and still being reviewed, but currently we will be reviewing the list of Botany and Alchemy pieces remaining until it is over - further then deciding if more Botany pieces will be necessary.