So, Zygna has fixed a couple of issues that I thought worthy of mention. First off they made it so you don't get asked to publish fuel found while plowing until you stop plowing which is a big plus. They have also started to implement a "screen" or a way of shutting off all the timers and graphics when you publish so things do move a bit faster... Kudos to the team for coming up with some workable solutions to our FarmVille blues... They are still popping up a bunch of other messages about gems and stuff, that are totally being skipped by I am sure just about everyone. We still need some sort of fix there Zygna!
Now for the dark side of things... The garages are pretty messed up. Most of the problems are coming from the fact that they don't bring up the list of vehicles in any particular order when you "look inside" the garage structure. When upgrading, you may add some parts to your vehicle of choice, but the next time you add a part, you may see the garage say that the vehicle is fully upgraded when it is not. This happens most often when the vehicle you are upgrading ends up on page 2 or 3 of the list of vehicles. Once it says it is fully upgraded, you can't add more parts until you reload your farm.
I ran an experiment, and found that if you just remove all of the other vehicles down to 3 or less, then the garage is less likely to become confused and you can upgrade you vehicle as per normal. Once you are finished upgrading, you can put your vehicles back in the garage, and use them. Some of the pop-ups for finishing a vehicle are saying the wrong vehicle was upgraded, or it says the wrong number of plots you can now farm. Some of that may be due to the lag and they haven't fully streamlined how the garage mini-game works so it doesn't impact the rest of the system as much. The last "Official FarmVille PodCast" said that the maximum level you could take vehicles to is Level 4. I have not been able to test this on coin paid vehicles, but the "Hot Rod" collection can all be upgraded to Level 5, which is 4 X 4 Plots. Hopefully Zygna is already working on this stuff.
Not much else to complain about except that they seriously need to get the market stuff in order. There is still major lag and confusion while trying to tend to your spa, bakery, or winery. There is also a problem when you get the error message while trying to buy bushels/goods where it is supposed to give you back your coins. It says try again, but if you have purchased your limit, then you can't try again until the timer runs out. You need to refund the time as well as the coins guys!
Anyway, that's all I got for now... Happy Farming!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Noooo... Please Don't "Fix" that...
Zygna sent us a message about fixing something that was broken in the first place. The interruptions and pop-ups they throw at us while we are farming are crippiling most computers. Now that is is broke, we have actually been able to farm without wanting to slit our own wrists...
Here is the message... "Farmers, you may notice that when using a Vehicle to Plow, Seed or Harvest, you aren't getting any messages for Collection items, Bushels and the like. Don't fret, you're still receiving your stuff, just no notification. This will affect your ability to share with friends, unfortunately. We're working on fixin' it soon as we can. "
Zygna, for the love of all that is holy, don't fix it...
That's all I got.
Here is the message... "Farmers, you may notice that when using a Vehicle to Plow, Seed or Harvest, you aren't getting any messages for Collection items, Bushels and the like. Don't fret, you're still receiving your stuff, just no notification. This will affect your ability to share with friends, unfortunately. We're working on fixin' it soon as we can. "
Zygna, for the love of all that is holy, don't fix it...
That's all I got.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
So, How About A Preferred Friends List For Farmville?
Well, as you know, getting gifts from your real friends that play the game normally is almost impossible if that friend has a lot of neighbors. Much of that is due to all of the gift grabbers and game scrubbers, but I came up with an idea, that may or may not help out the cause of getting your gifts to the people you really want them to go to regardless of how many friends you have. This is the suggestion I sent to Zygna...
Perhaps there may be a way to limit how many people can receive gifts using "game scrubbers" by allowing us to set up 5 and 10 people "preferred friends" lists that we can use to make sure that the people we want to get prizes can get them.
Currently, you can change who gets them in the Facebook publish system, but that is fairly tedious and doesn't let us know if the next 5 or 10 people will get such an item. If there was an option to have a preferred friends list for the top 5 to 10 friends, and then allowing the overage depending on how many preferred friends you choose to be gifted to the general public. That would help greatly for people with a lot of neighbors, that don't want their true friends being left out of the loop.
Hey, I just woke up and it sounded good to me...
In other news, Farmville must be doing more updates. We have had our usual one or two days of normal farming, and now all hell is breaking loose again. The biggest issue for me to do is receiving my mystery gifts which presents a blank screen when I try to collect them from Facebook.
I almost feel bad about bitching about how crappy updates were on World Of Warcraft. At least we would get a break once in awhile. Maybe even get to play 2 weeks before they decided to wreck everything for a few days. I dunno, I think Zygna is having some serious growing pains, but since they keep making the game harder to play and too complicated for the average farmer, those numbers should come down here fairly soon.
That's all I got...
Perhaps there may be a way to limit how many people can receive gifts using "game scrubbers" by allowing us to set up 5 and 10 people "preferred friends" lists that we can use to make sure that the people we want to get prizes can get them.
Currently, you can change who gets them in the Facebook publish system, but that is fairly tedious and doesn't let us know if the next 5 or 10 people will get such an item. If there was an option to have a preferred friends list for the top 5 to 10 friends, and then allowing the overage depending on how many preferred friends you choose to be gifted to the general public. That would help greatly for people with a lot of neighbors, that don't want their true friends being left out of the loop.
Hey, I just woke up and it sounded good to me...
In other news, Farmville must be doing more updates. We have had our usual one or two days of normal farming, and now all hell is breaking loose again. The biggest issue for me to do is receiving my mystery gifts which presents a blank screen when I try to collect them from Facebook.
I almost feel bad about bitching about how crappy updates were on World Of Warcraft. At least we would get a break once in awhile. Maybe even get to play 2 weeks before they decided to wreck everything for a few days. I dunno, I think Zygna is having some serious growing pains, but since they keep making the game harder to play and too complicated for the average farmer, those numbers should come down here fairly soon.
That's all I got...
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Scrub Farmers Must Die...
Farmville is my game of choice lately and it is not free from unattended macroing. In Farmville's case it comes in the form of people running programs that constantly scan for posts about Farmville, and then automatically accepts gifts that people put on line for the general public or all of their friends.
The problem I have with this is that when I go through and see that my friend has posted a link to an egg or some other item I can not get them even if I click on it within 15 seconds of seeing the post. There are a limited number of people that can collect certian items from other people, and since I choose not to run these programs, I often miss out on stuff that I would like to have on my farm.
I don't breed animals, and I don't really care for the new crafting system. I do like to have a few rares on my farm, and I do like to decorate. I don't mind farming, but it costs me some cash since I don't want to manually click on over 400 plots of ground. I don't take stuff I don't need just to sell for coins and I don't collect things I won't ever put on my farm. Point is that when I want something, I actually want to use it and not just to take up space or collect some coin. The scrub farmers make it almost impossible to get anything.
I really don't mind if they use a bonus checker, because you actually have to interact and choose what you want from the list of all available gifts you can receive. The scrubers can be set up to accept "all" gifts as they come up and that's the part that irritates me.
Farmville is progressing with new stuff rather quickly, and that is good except for the fact they are getting to the point things won't run on older computers anymore. You have no choice to opt out of certian checks and you have no way to slow down or stop the flow of crap they are throwing at you. I understand why they may want to ask you to add a friend or tell you that you have found something, but when it stops you from playing the game then I have a problem with it. Zygna needs to go back and take out some of the suck while playing. There is no reason to have so many checks and so much going on all the time that even my 4gig laptop cringes every time they want to stop me from plowing my ground.
The new Lightning round stuff is just about the biggest pain in the ass I have ever had to deal with. Some of the gems require that you send them to a select list except for the rare items, which get picked off by the scrub farmers. I was lucky enough to have some friends that don't have scrubbers as neighbors so I could complete my gems collection. I don't really see much of the point in what they are doing with this. It is mostly just irritating.
The bee-hives are a joke. I have had one crop fertilized out of about 20, and I don't see why I want to take up the space for something we really didn't need. There are some rules to the bee-hive that aren't consistent with the rest of the game, like losing bees for not being there and harvesting every two days, plus there is supposedly something about having either bunches of flowers or flowers planted to keep all of your bees. Any way you slice it, that system has left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The crafting sytem needs a ton of work, and now it is a pain to get bushels to use for your own crafted items. I can see this system getting used until everyone levels it to the max, but I don't know that it is truly useful except for getting fast fuel. Eventually no one will buy my level 1 or 2 items because the fuel yield will be too low. Zygna needs to make sure those lower level items will still be viable down the road. It is also only available to your neighbors, so that limits the field of who may even purchase the lower end items. Zygna needs to open this part of the game up to everyone even if they aren't neighbors to keep this system from being a complete failure. The system is still very complicated as well. It is confusing for the general public now to see what they have in inventory for their own bushels versus what is on sale to their friends. They just raised the number of bushels you can have in your inventory, but I don't think there is a clear line for people to see what can and can't be bought or removed from the personal inventory by other people.
Basically, I think Zygna needs to slow it down and streamline all of these new systems before they alienate their entire user base... Zygna has taken a pretty much mindless time waster and turned it into a lagging nightmare for most of us...
That's all I got for now.
The problem I have with this is that when I go through and see that my friend has posted a link to an egg or some other item I can not get them even if I click on it within 15 seconds of seeing the post. There are a limited number of people that can collect certian items from other people, and since I choose not to run these programs, I often miss out on stuff that I would like to have on my farm.
I don't breed animals, and I don't really care for the new crafting system. I do like to have a few rares on my farm, and I do like to decorate. I don't mind farming, but it costs me some cash since I don't want to manually click on over 400 plots of ground. I don't take stuff I don't need just to sell for coins and I don't collect things I won't ever put on my farm. Point is that when I want something, I actually want to use it and not just to take up space or collect some coin. The scrub farmers make it almost impossible to get anything.
I really don't mind if they use a bonus checker, because you actually have to interact and choose what you want from the list of all available gifts you can receive. The scrubers can be set up to accept "all" gifts as they come up and that's the part that irritates me.
Farmville is progressing with new stuff rather quickly, and that is good except for the fact they are getting to the point things won't run on older computers anymore. You have no choice to opt out of certian checks and you have no way to slow down or stop the flow of crap they are throwing at you. I understand why they may want to ask you to add a friend or tell you that you have found something, but when it stops you from playing the game then I have a problem with it. Zygna needs to go back and take out some of the suck while playing. There is no reason to have so many checks and so much going on all the time that even my 4gig laptop cringes every time they want to stop me from plowing my ground.
The new Lightning round stuff is just about the biggest pain in the ass I have ever had to deal with. Some of the gems require that you send them to a select list except for the rare items, which get picked off by the scrub farmers. I was lucky enough to have some friends that don't have scrubbers as neighbors so I could complete my gems collection. I don't really see much of the point in what they are doing with this. It is mostly just irritating.
The bee-hives are a joke. I have had one crop fertilized out of about 20, and I don't see why I want to take up the space for something we really didn't need. There are some rules to the bee-hive that aren't consistent with the rest of the game, like losing bees for not being there and harvesting every two days, plus there is supposedly something about having either bunches of flowers or flowers planted to keep all of your bees. Any way you slice it, that system has left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The crafting sytem needs a ton of work, and now it is a pain to get bushels to use for your own crafted items. I can see this system getting used until everyone levels it to the max, but I don't know that it is truly useful except for getting fast fuel. Eventually no one will buy my level 1 or 2 items because the fuel yield will be too low. Zygna needs to make sure those lower level items will still be viable down the road. It is also only available to your neighbors, so that limits the field of who may even purchase the lower end items. Zygna needs to open this part of the game up to everyone even if they aren't neighbors to keep this system from being a complete failure. The system is still very complicated as well. It is confusing for the general public now to see what they have in inventory for their own bushels versus what is on sale to their friends. They just raised the number of bushels you can have in your inventory, but I don't think there is a clear line for people to see what can and can't be bought or removed from the personal inventory by other people.
Basically, I think Zygna needs to slow it down and streamline all of these new systems before they alienate their entire user base... Zygna has taken a pretty much mindless time waster and turned it into a lagging nightmare for most of us...
That's all I got for now.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Yo'Ville Has Castles, I'm Down With That! & Other random thoughts.
The only real reason I even tried Yo'Ville was because I had some 7-11 rewards that I had turned in so I stuck them in my appartment on Yo'Ville. Later I was looking at the buildings you can purchase and found a castle. That made my decision to get one and play at least in a minimal fashion.
I do like doing the "jobs" or quests they give you to make money. It is easier to pick up energy in Yo'Ville then it is in Frontierville, so I can play a little longer.
Frontierville has made a few things easier, and really the only complaint I have is when it interrupts you to share things with your friends while you are collecting bonus items. Now, farmville does this too, but not when you have 5 seconds to pick up bonus items off the ground... They either need to give you more time to pick things up off the ground or my idea is to wait until you clear the bonuses before bothering you. Better yet, find a better way to bring up the sharing like off to the side, blinking or something that doesn't stop gameplay so harshly. I really get mad when I have to publish and miss out on my little stars and energy bonus items.
Farmville has been getting so jacked up every time they update, it is making us crazy. However, it's still the primary game I play simply because I have a ton of friends playing it.. Certianly more then I could convince to purchase WoW and play.
Is it just me or do these browser based games remind you of the 80's? Is it just an excuse for people to write really cheezy games to milk people for money? At least in the 80's you only had to pay once.
That's all I got...
I do like doing the "jobs" or quests they give you to make money. It is easier to pick up energy in Yo'Ville then it is in Frontierville, so I can play a little longer.
Frontierville has made a few things easier, and really the only complaint I have is when it interrupts you to share things with your friends while you are collecting bonus items. Now, farmville does this too, but not when you have 5 seconds to pick up bonus items off the ground... They either need to give you more time to pick things up off the ground or my idea is to wait until you clear the bonuses before bothering you. Better yet, find a better way to bring up the sharing like off to the side, blinking or something that doesn't stop gameplay so harshly. I really get mad when I have to publish and miss out on my little stars and energy bonus items.
Farmville has been getting so jacked up every time they update, it is making us crazy. However, it's still the primary game I play simply because I have a ton of friends playing it.. Certianly more then I could convince to purchase WoW and play.
Is it just me or do these browser based games remind you of the 80's? Is it just an excuse for people to write really cheezy games to milk people for money? At least in the 80's you only had to pay once.
That's all I got...
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Frontierville... Why they won't play it.
I have been trying some other games lately on the old Facebook. One of them is Zygna's newest game. It's got a lot of really cool features that should be in Farmville, but they went a bit too far with keeping you from playing.
I know it's a big deal for these free-to-play games to try and "encourage" you to spend money, but Frontierville is almost unplayable without it. They feed you tons of free energy, and food and coins and whatever at the start, but within an hour, you are no longer having fun. Now you are playing like work.
Some issues I have with the game is obviously the lack of energy, and what costs energy. The game feels like it is trying to make you run out at critical times so you are compelled to buy. I don't like this at all. They charge you energy to do things like feed the animals, harvest the trees or ground and any actions where you are gaining something back, but they don't give you enough to get to a fair "stopping" point.
They are empasizing way too much on making your friends help you, getting more friends, and interupting you while you are trying to chase down all the stars, coins, wood, food, and enery that pops out whenever you harvest something.
Now, I realize, this game is still in the baby stage, but I just don't see it taking off like Farmville unless they loosen the strings a little bit. Once you get above level 7 or so, the most you can play in one shot without jumping through some hoops to get energy is about 5 minutes. I just don't think that is quite long enough to keep anyone interested very long.
I do like the fact that they have "quests" you can do to make things and gain more experience while teaching you how to play the game. I am a bit annoyed that they are trying to control the story a little bit too much, because they actually force you to get married and have a kid on this frontier. Most of my friends are under level 20, but I do have one that is higher then that only because they play all day and night, but that's as far as I know about the story thus far.
All the buildings, trees, and just about everything can be rotated and moved, which is a huge plus over Farmville. Farmville is working on this but so far all I can tell is that the non-functional housing is all that can now be rotated. We are still hoping they will let us rotate the functional items soon such as the barns, stables, chicken coops, Dairy and nursery buildings.
So far that's my prediction. I think they are going to see about half or less players then they have on Farmville... Let's see how that all works out.
I know it's a big deal for these free-to-play games to try and "encourage" you to spend money, but Frontierville is almost unplayable without it. They feed you tons of free energy, and food and coins and whatever at the start, but within an hour, you are no longer having fun. Now you are playing like work.
Some issues I have with the game is obviously the lack of energy, and what costs energy. The game feels like it is trying to make you run out at critical times so you are compelled to buy. I don't like this at all. They charge you energy to do things like feed the animals, harvest the trees or ground and any actions where you are gaining something back, but they don't give you enough to get to a fair "stopping" point.
They are empasizing way too much on making your friends help you, getting more friends, and interupting you while you are trying to chase down all the stars, coins, wood, food, and enery that pops out whenever you harvest something.
Now, I realize, this game is still in the baby stage, but I just don't see it taking off like Farmville unless they loosen the strings a little bit. Once you get above level 7 or so, the most you can play in one shot without jumping through some hoops to get energy is about 5 minutes. I just don't think that is quite long enough to keep anyone interested very long.
I do like the fact that they have "quests" you can do to make things and gain more experience while teaching you how to play the game. I am a bit annoyed that they are trying to control the story a little bit too much, because they actually force you to get married and have a kid on this frontier. Most of my friends are under level 20, but I do have one that is higher then that only because they play all day and night, but that's as far as I know about the story thus far.
All the buildings, trees, and just about everything can be rotated and moved, which is a huge plus over Farmville. Farmville is working on this but so far all I can tell is that the non-functional housing is all that can now be rotated. We are still hoping they will let us rotate the functional items soon such as the barns, stables, chicken coops, Dairy and nursery buildings.
So far that's my prediction. I think they are going to see about half or less players then they have on Farmville... Let's see how that all works out.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Living in the country, certainly changes one’s perspective…
Many of you that know me, know I am not a “Country Boy”. I have always lived in the city until about 2006 when I moved out to the country to be closer to my family. I still don’t visit them enough, but that is another story.
I have been so frustrated with WoW lately, that I have been taking a break. I am currently playing a game I never thought I could see myself playing in a million years.
So many of my co-workers and friends have been going on about this game, that I finally decided I needed to check it out, and I did. I am still playing, and I am no longer afraid of change or Free-to-play (F2P) games with the option for Real Money Trading (RMT).
Farmville… There, I said it. A year ago I would have killed anyone who asked me to play. Now, I am looking at level 34 going, “what the hell just happened here?”
One thing that I still don’t like about the game is the focus on making you log in at a certain time to make sure you get those crops harvested. It wasn’t until I started playing the game that I realized that you could fudge on the critical nature of that particular part of the game. You can let your crops sit for some time before anything can happen to them, and there is always the revive option if you really need to collect that cash.
It is incredibly easy, and of course with the cash option, you can get most stuff any time you really want it. Some items go on sale for coins later on down the road, but for impatient people like myself, it is nice to have the option to buy your way to the top.
I don’t really play Farmville for any type of challenge. The real fun for me in FV is that I can help other folks, get stuff they want and get to talk with friends that I might just otherwise not talk to as often being as most of our high school buddies and co-workers don’t have that much in common outside of the past, and work.
I am still not a fan of spamming my friends with everything I do in game, but at least now days people can shut off the feeds from the games and keep their friends “important” comments in tact. Its nice to play something my friends can actually talk about rather then me trying to explain how World Of Warcraft works. Its really just a matter of being able to have a more open dialogue with people rather them thinking I am just some crazy computer geek that has no life.
Now we can all have no life together. Weee!
Anyway, just thought I would throw out an update. I am on hiatus from WoW at this time, but I will probably return when FV gets too boring. I am already slowing down, but my farm is very cool. Well, I think so anyway.
That’s all I got…
I have been so frustrated with WoW lately, that I have been taking a break. I am currently playing a game I never thought I could see myself playing in a million years.
So many of my co-workers and friends have been going on about this game, that I finally decided I needed to check it out, and I did. I am still playing, and I am no longer afraid of change or Free-to-play (F2P) games with the option for Real Money Trading (RMT).
Farmville… There, I said it. A year ago I would have killed anyone who asked me to play. Now, I am looking at level 34 going, “what the hell just happened here?”
One thing that I still don’t like about the game is the focus on making you log in at a certain time to make sure you get those crops harvested. It wasn’t until I started playing the game that I realized that you could fudge on the critical nature of that particular part of the game. You can let your crops sit for some time before anything can happen to them, and there is always the revive option if you really need to collect that cash.
It is incredibly easy, and of course with the cash option, you can get most stuff any time you really want it. Some items go on sale for coins later on down the road, but for impatient people like myself, it is nice to have the option to buy your way to the top.
I don’t really play Farmville for any type of challenge. The real fun for me in FV is that I can help other folks, get stuff they want and get to talk with friends that I might just otherwise not talk to as often being as most of our high school buddies and co-workers don’t have that much in common outside of the past, and work.
I am still not a fan of spamming my friends with everything I do in game, but at least now days people can shut off the feeds from the games and keep their friends “important” comments in tact. Its nice to play something my friends can actually talk about rather then me trying to explain how World Of Warcraft works. Its really just a matter of being able to have a more open dialogue with people rather them thinking I am just some crazy computer geek that has no life.
Now we can all have no life together. Weee!
Anyway, just thought I would throw out an update. I am on hiatus from WoW at this time, but I will probably return when FV gets too boring. I am already slowing down, but my farm is very cool. Well, I think so anyway.
That’s all I got…
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