New Release -- May 27th, 2011

[Farmer_Susan]

Whew! I think the last time we had an uproar like this was when they first released the glowy thing on fertilized crops but we couldn't turn it off. WOW, we didn't like that! And WOW! They changed it. So maybe this will be the same?

Anyway, here's my 2 cents. I don't like all the popups, either, but I actually DO like being able to click on people's posts on my feed to help them and me both. That's very cool and could be another way to get some of a crop you need but didn't have. However, what I DON'T like about that is clicking on someone's feed, only to be given the message that I can only give that friend something every 3 hours. I have my FT friends in 5 different FB friend groups. So I send to a group of friends and mostly don't pay attention to which friends were in that batch. I also look through my feed for those posts where someone wants ingredients for their factories. I like those so I click on 'em. But again, I mostly don't pay much attention to whose name I'm clicking on. Getting the "every 3 hours" post feels almost like getting my hand slapped - and typically I had no clue I had already given that person something or I wouldn't have bothered clicking.

BUT . . . by far, the most disappointing thing to me is that it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay waaaaay WAY too easy to get black belts! I was so excited about having a whole new kind of goal to work for in FT. It renewed my energy for the game. But the way it's structured now, the belt system is just sort of this annoying thing you have to put up with and then it'll be over because you've earned all the black belts. This is probably a bigger deal to those of us who reached maximum XP's months or even a year ago. Those of us die-hard fans who keep playing anyway don't even get that goal back with Levels updates because we stay too far ahead of the game. So I was SO excited about getting all new goals - but now I'm not.

One more whine and then I actually have some suggestions: this whine is that it takes too long for the mouseover popups to appear telling us how many we have left before the next belt. There's already a pretty big slowdown with screens that have a lot of items (such as the store and also the facilities tool). I get REALLY tired of waiting for things to load and the addition of these hover items is making the load time even slower.

On to suggestions! The belt thing: please, please, PLEASE make them MUCH harder to obtain. Probably the levels should incrementally get harder to obtain so that newbie farmers can enjoy earning them, too. But for us oldie farmers, we want goals, too! The belt system is just fine as a new goal - but make it more of a challenge. Now, the beauty of my suggestion is that it ALSO deals with the popup issue because if you don't earn things so quickly, you also don't have as many popups. Voila. Two birds with one stone.

And some presentation suggestions: get rid of the hover thing. We don't want to have the game slow down just so we can hover and find out how many crops we still have to harvest. BUT . . . you're right, that we DO want to know what that number is. How about just writing it in text inside the seed box? And if you write it with ActionScript instead of creating the text as an image, it'll load more quickly.

And a presentation suggestion for the popups: if people click "No", the other window should NOT appear. No point in annoying people twice. BUT, if people click YES, then the other window needs to appear in full screen as well as regular screen. Otherwise, for those of us full-screeners, it's just sort of a mess when you finally quit playing and find all of these little windows you have to deal with.

OK. I'm done. I really sorta hope this helps. This started out as one of FT's better ideas, IMHO, but it took some major wrong turns somewhere between inspiration and deploy.

[al_bundy]

i hate it how i go to send ingredients and it says no ingredients were sent to your storage because you already recieve the limit of xxxx amount of product within the 3 hour period

ingredient requests and belts need to be totally seperate

[al_bundy]

this was ft at the release of the belts



this was 45 minutes later



were almost to this point



lets not end up here

[maggiel29]

On to suggestions! The belt thing: please, please, PLEASE make them MUCH harder to obtain. Probably the levels should incrementally get harder to obtain so that newbie farmers can enjoy earning them, too. But for us oldie farmers, we want goals, too! The belt system is just fine as a new goal - but make it more of a challenge. Now, the beauty of my suggestion is that it ALSO deals with the popup issue because if you don't earn things so quickly, you also don't have as many popups. Voila. Two birds with one stone.

And some presentation suggestions: get rid of the hover thing. We don't want to have the game slow down just so we can hover and find out how many crops we still have to harvest. BUT . . . you're right, that we DO want to know what that number is. How about just writing it in text inside the seed box? And if you write it with ActionScript instead of creating the text as an image, it'll load more quickly.

And a presentation suggestion for the popups: if people click "No", the other window should NOT appear. No point in annoying people twice. BUT, if people click YES, then the other window needs to appear in full screen as well as regular screen. Otherwise, for those of us full-screeners, it's just sort of a mess when you finally quit playing and find all of these little windows you have to deal with.

Great ides Farmer Susan - please dont get rid of the belts Devs BUT make them a bit more of a challenge and less irksome to farmers?

[HelenJS22]

Originally Posted by driverdave

i stand by what i said......and people need to be more discerning about what they post personally i will onlly post black belts as they will serve to help my friends gain the most in return and if one has a balanced approach to farming there shouldnt be the plethora of pls send me this and pls send me that ..... and when you consider an over all picture .....one dud release (according to some ppls) for how many really brilliant ones/??????????????

The problem with this is that there a a lot of people who live in Farm Town who are anything but discerning, don't really have clue and simply do what the game tells them to do. So the game has to be made fool proof - much to my disgust very often, but that is just how it is. There is surely a way for this new belt system to be made fool proof to save our Facebook Pages from the problems we are having with them at the moment.

I totally agree that we have fantastic devs, but right now they are probably hiding in the Rubber Room with the mods. Hopefully they are in there working on a 'fix' for the rioting mob outside.

[Kath-H]

Just lose the request popups. I can live with being told I've got a belt, it's the bothering of friends I don't like - it must be an active choice, not an opt-out.

[holla]

UPDATE:: *POPUPS DISABLED Except for BLACK Belt**THANKS RAUL!--YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!..WWWOOOHOOOO!!!

[driverdave]

Originally Posted by HelenJS22

The problem with this is that there a a lot of people who live in Farm Town who are anything but discerning, don't really have clue and simply do what the game tells them to do. So the game has to be made fool proof - much to my disgust very often, but that is just how it is. There is surely a way for this new belt system to be made fool proof to save our Facebook Pages from the problems we are having with them at the moment.

I totally agree that we have fantastic devs, but right now they are probably hiding in the Rubber Room with the mods. Hopefully they are in there working on a 'fix' for the rioting mob outside.

call the swat team......and maybe the delta force but from an experienced point of view .....it really is a storm in a teacup that will go away once people achieve the black belts

[Phanny]

If the pop ups in game were dumped, that would be great. We can see where we are at with belts in the store if we want to know.
If we each choose not to publish an award at each and every level, then that would be great. Greater still if we only get the chance to publish at black belt level - something worth celebrating then.
In the meantime, we might need to let our neighbours know that we may need to block those who do publish each and every level they achieve, so we may not be as helpful as we used to.

The idea overall is great, but not when it it imposes so much on the playing of the game and our friends newsfeeds.

Tweek Tweek and all will be well in the Farmtown universe again.


Confession - having spat the dummy at all the pop ups, I feel an urge to load my store with little black belts...

[Phanny]

Originally Posted by holla

UPDATE:: *POPUPS DISABLED Except for BLACK Belt**THANKS RAUL!--YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!..WWWOOOHOOOO!!!

Wooooohooooo. Great news

Cheers Raul

I might go give myself a new hair do to celebrate