Harvest Time

Importance in Game Design

• The delay between a player telling their ERM to harvest a resource from a section of land, and the resource becoming available, makes it clear that players will need to manage several tasks simultaneously. While resources are automatically stored they do expire, forcing a player to regularly compare their stocks to their accepted Chief Offers.
• The remaining Harvest Time is clearly displayed on the ERM, and the Harvest Time of each section of land is shown to a player when they select it. The challenge to the players is not in how to interpret obfuscated information, but how to manage so much information simultaneously. This reflects modern business challenges, and gives players a chance to discuss information management without discussing real world employers or projects.

Relevance to Evivve’s Ecosystem

• The amount of time it takes to harvest the land depends on the skill level of a particular player. At skill level 1 it takes 5 weeks to harvest, At skill level 5 it takes 1 week to harvest. This signifies a player using more efficient tools as they become more skilled through practice. 
• Evivve is carefully designed to have complexity within some areas while being very simple to understand in others. The inability to buy all but a few sections of land as single purchases prevents players from specializing in a single type of land, forcing communication between them. However all land of a particular type produces the same resources at the same rate - a very simple mechanism for each player to engage with as they discuss what they are harvesting compared to the orders they are seeing.

Best Practices for Facilitators

• Ensure players understand the need for Cronos to harvesting, so they don’t spend too much too early on Land Purchase. Not having enough Cronos can hamper their efforts to such an extent that they will struggle to gain momentum in the early stages. Because players start at a low skill level the Harvest Time at the beginning of the game is the longest, meaning that any player without sufficient Cronos is going to have to wait many weeks in-game because a team mate has enough spare Cronos to jump-start their harvesting.
• Explain to players that the ERM is clear about the remaining Harvest Time, and quickly scrolling through their land enables players to see if they have time to discuss changes to strategy. Alternatively see if new players, unfamiliar with the ERM, discuss this aspect of Harvest Time - sharing information between themselves and raising the gameplay of the entire team.

Benefits and Challenges

• A benefit of the harvest time mechanic is that a player can carry out many actions simultaneously. With success in the game requiring communication between players, managing multiple tasks is a key skill to learn.
• A benefit of this delayed harvesting is that it forces players to speculate on harvesting resources, in the hope that a Chief Offer for that resource will become available before the resource expires. If this speculation is spread out over the players the impact of any wasted resources, and therefore Cronos, is lessened. This requires strong communication between the team, but also rewards that collective action.
• The number of areas being harvested simultaneously can quickly exceed a player’s ability to track or memorize them. The player’s choice from here, whether to slow down harvesting, or to rapidly move around the ERM interface hoping to match abundant resources with Chief Offers, or another choice - is something that can be analyzed and discussed during the reflection phase.
• The main challenge that harvest time causes is that there is little time during the game to analyze this process, especially for newer players. But a correct analysis could benefit a player or the entire team for the rest of the game. A facilitator can choose to highlight the impact of Skill Level if that’s been missed by players, or highlight it as something to be mindful of during subsequent playthroughs.