New Release -- December 22nd, 2009

[ROLLON2]

Originally Posted by lanesnana

Wow you have some great ideas...hope they listen. I have ofter wondered why we couldn't harv. like 4 plots at a time and plow 4 plots for other people like we can on our farms. love the ideas...

Its ok to have 2 or 4 spaces on your own farm but no way on others. Then the farms wouldnt get done by others and thats unfair. I got an idea.. why dont you ask friends for gift gas and do yourself with 4 plots. I do..

[ramseye45]

I think we just need to get use to the change. Actually is better when there is more than 1 person in a field
If you just stay where you are and start harvesting and or plowing in a straight line it actually is pretty fast. Lo and behold you are not jumping all over the place to try and irritate someone by stealing where someone is working. I like the change. Merry Christmas

[plbright]

Originally Posted by mykerry

I have only been on Farmtown for about a month and a half. This new update is awful. I can't plow or harvest on someone elses farm. It takes forever and that is being kind. I click on an area and it seems to start harvesting, and then I click on ten or fifteen harvest areas before the next harvest actually happens. I really am saddened, because I used this game as a stress reliever. I don't think I will be playing much in the future if I cant make progress in a timely manner. I hope I posted this correctly and would appreciate some direction from anyone who might be able to help. Thanks. I hope this is a temporary change. Farmer Kelly

I totally agree... I used this as a stress RELIEVER... now it just causes stress. I've been playing for months. I was ready to quit before because it was like this, then they started the queuing, and I stayed because it made it ever so much easier. Now I've tried twice to plow tonight, and where I would usually plow 100's of plots, I get about 20 because it's taking so long.

Why do they insist on fixing what is not broken? He mentions running into people??? I never had that happen before, now it happens constantly.

[ak_n_kat]

This is not helpful but slower and is actually making me think FarmVille is looking good.

Originally Posted by Raul

Hi There,

First, the Bert account was hacked recently and there were some posts made on his behalf, we are researching this issue now.

Second, we just released a new version of FarmTown a while ago. As stated before, we were going to focus mainly on the lost XP/Coins issues which are critical at this point. However, in order to minimize the lost XP/Coins issues, we had to make some changes to the way harvesting/plowing works when you are hired.

Before, when multiple people were hired on a farm, everybody starts clicking randomly on every field, and there are a lot of collisions, people harvesting/plowing on the same fields, as you don't see clearly where other people are working.

The new way is this, if you harvest fields that are close to where your avatar is, then your avatar will be teletransported and will be a very quick transition, it should be as quick or comparable to what it was before, however if you click on a field that is farther away, then you will have to wait until your avatar gets to that field to continue working.

This change will make that on some instances you work slower, on the other hand people get more dispersed while working on a farm, you can actually see them where they are working, and there will be much less collisions between them. This will also add another component to the game, now it's not just blindly clicking on the fields, you have to also consider the position of other players and your chances to avoid collisions and to get more work done. Now, when you click on a field that another player did before you, then you will see a message saying "already done", before, there was no feedback at all.

Of course, we know this release will cause a lot of complains as well, because in order to improve one area we had to change the behaivor on another area which some users will not like it, but compared to the issue of frequent losing more XP and coins, we just decided this was the way to go.

So far we have detected that there are 70% less issues with lost XP/coins that before, and it should improve with time even more.

As a separate note, the cursors on the game have been made larger and they don't get overlapped by other items on the game.

Thanks

--Raul

[caroleliza74]

Sorry for the lost coins, but harvesting and plowing are so slow now that I'm getting bored with the game. Also, what is the deal with the huge picture of the seed I'm planting or the harvester? it gets in the way and I can't see what I'm doing. Thanks for trying but please change it back.

[ak_n_kat]

This is horrible...It takes too much time. If you can't click your mouse...fast enough that is your problem. The old way is better. In order to make changes can I suggest having the program save what you have done and atomatically update your points when hitting save??? Wouldn't that be nice.

[knighta]

Originally Posted by ATL47

who cares. i am expressing my opinion. leave me alone and move on with your life.

But she is so right.

[ROLLON2]

Originally Posted by mikej35

i am going to start a boycott until its all fix and back to the way it was before

count me in!

[raindrops300]

I do appreciate farmtown. I have never complained about anything before, but this is awful. I always used to pick a corner furtherest away from anyone else and start working. If I was at a farm crowded with workers, I just would do my few plots, say thanks and leave. I never had a problem with collisions and never saw anyone collide. I was leveling up pretty fast by hiring out, but now I don't want to work for anyone anymore. It takes too long. Please change it back.

[Little Critter]

I understand that the change was needed. I hated to work with random clickers. The thing I would have done is allowed a 2 -3 square advance so that the coin and XP or wait is not covering your avatar (makes it hard to see). Tanks for the good work and everyone remember that this game is a BETA and changes will occur from time to time. Have a great day. ~G~