FarmVILLE on Facebook

[PrincessKsMom]

My current farm:

The blank spot in front of the pagoda is where the panda sits, and the empty pen is where the penguins are. Neither one show up when I zoom out this far for whatever reason.


I was able to increase my number of plots to 355 with my last re-arrange. I think that's about as high as I would like to go.

I will be spending lots of time at 7-11 this weekend.

 

[Toad_Passenger]

I just wanted to note that I don't know how people can use the grab bars/feed grabbers. Another guy in my IT department installed one on my machine to show me how "great" they are. It ran for about an hour, and I logged into my farm. My gift box had 83 items in it!?!?!? I told him to remove it, because, honestly, who has time to go through all that crap that fills up in your gift box?

The people using these things must have hours upon hours, and, in the end, what are they really getting? I had about 20 white eggs, which are useless IMO.

I just wanted to give my 2 cents about these things everyone has been talking about. I don't see what their advantage is, besides making the game take longer than it should.

Then again, I'm the type who logs in, harvests/plows/plants and doesn't stop in again until the next harvest.

 

[My sister's princess]

I will be spending lots of time at 7-11 this weekend.

We don't have a 7-11 anywhere near us!

I just wanted to note that I don't know how people can use the grab bars/feed grabbers. Another guy in my IT department installed one on my machine to show me how "great" they are. It ran for about an hour, and I logged into my farm. My gift box had 83 items in it!?!?!? I told him to remove it, because, honestly, who has time to go through all that crap that fills up in your gift box?

The people using these things must have hours upon hours, and, in the end, what are they really getting? I had about 20 white eggs, which are useless IMO.

I just wanted to give my 2 cents about these things everyone has been talking about. I don't see what their advantage is, besides making the game take longer than it should.

Then again, I'm the type who logs in, harvests/plows/plants and doesn't stop in again until the next harvest.

What are these grab bars? Is this why sometimes my neighbors' give aways are gone in seconds?

 

[Toad_Passenger]

What are these grab bars? Is this why sometimes my neighbors' give aways are gone in seconds?

The one the guy installed (and I have since removed...UGH!) used a program that sorted out only Farmville posts on Facebook. It would then automatically refresh Facebook every few minutes and (automatically again) "click" on all the bonuses/items on my feed.

Yes, these are the reasons why stuff disappears in seconds! They are also the reason I have setup specific groups that I share certain items with.

Again, though, I'm having a hard time figuring out why someone would go through all that trouble, and then spend more time opening up 100's of useless eggs?

 

[My sister's princess]

The one the guy installed (and I have since removed...UGH!) used a program that sorted out only Farmville posts on Facebook. It would then automatically refresh Facebook every few minutes and (automatically again) "click" on all the bonuses/items on my feed.

Yes, these are the reasons why stuff disappears in seconds! They are also the reason I have setup specific groups that I share certain items with.

Again, though, I'm having a hard time figuring out why someone would go through all that trouble, and then spend more time opening up 100's of useless eggs?

That makes me mad. I don't understand why people can't play the game for the love of the game, and the silly rules that go with the game.

 

[bicker]

As pointed out before, the game is FarmVille, not Facebook. I don't know many people who enjoy "playing Facebook".

 

[My sister's princess]

As pointed out before, the game is FarmVille, not Facebook. I don't know many people who enjoy "playing Facebook".

Who said they were playing facebook? I think you are laughing at yourself for not reading what was posted?

 

[bicker]

I'm sorry that my point was not clear: The grab bars "play Facebook". They don't have anything to do with the Farmville game itself, i.e., the planting of crops, decorating of farms, raising of animals, etc.

The most effective way Zynga can make the grab bar issue go away is to stop posting bonuses to Facebook, and instead issue bonuses solely within the Farmville game itself. Hopefully, by the time the game opens up to Yahoo! members, they'll be using Facebook solely as an authentication mechanism, and nothing else.

 

[Toad_Passenger]

I'm sorry that my point was not clear: The grab bars "play Facebook". They don't have anything to do with the Farmville game itself, i.e., the planting of crops, decorating of farms, raising of animals, etc.

The most effective way Zynga can make the grab bar issue go away is to stop posting bonuses to Facebook, and instead issue bonuses solely within the Farmville game itself. Hopefully, by the time the game opens up to Yahoo! members, they'll be using Facebook solely as an authentication mechanism, and nothing else.

Unfortunately with the new 5-year deal in place, I can't see them stopping the Facebook feeds.

 

[My sister's princess]

I'm sorry that my point was not clear: The grab bars "play Facebook". They don't have anything to do with the Farmville game itself, i.e., the planting of crops, decorating of farms, raising of animals, etc.

The most effective way Zynga can make the grab bar issue go away is to stop posting bonuses to Facebook, and instead issue bonuses within the game itself.

Which is an issue of game play, the way it is run now, because the rules prohibit programs that automatically collect bonuses.
The sharing is necessary for aspects of free game play. And seeing as Zynga and FB just signed a 5 year agreement I doubt they will stop anytime soon.

 

[bicker]

Zynga also signed an agreement with Yahoo. They're going to use both services for authentication. They haven't said to what extent they'd continue to use feeds for bonuses.

Remember, from Facebook's perspective, they would rather have Farmville use the feeds for less. Farmville has often been considered a polluter on Facebook, but folks who are not friends of Zynga.

Regardless: Mark my words: If they don't stop using the feeds for bonuses, then grab bars are going to be here to stay. If you want to think of it as a matter of game play, then think of it this way: To keep game play fair, they must remove bonuses from the feeds, and put them into the game.

 

[My sister's princess]

Zynga also signed an agreement with Yahoo. They're going to use both services for authentication. They haven't said to what extent they'd continue to use feeds for bonuses.

Remember, from Facebook's perspective, they would rather have Farmville use the feeds for less. Farmville has often been considered a polluter on Facebook, but folks who are not friends of Zynga.

Regardless: Mark my words: If they don't stop using the feeds for bonuses, then grab bars are going to be here to stay. If you want to think of it as a matter of game play, then think of it this way: To keep game play fair, they must remove bonuses from the feeds, and put them into the game.

I like said, I wish people would simply enjoy the game for the fun that it is, and not find a way/reason to cheat.

 

[bicker]

Interesting idea. I'm not sure, though, how they'd make "playing Facebook" fun.

 

[My sister's princess]

Interesting idea. I'm not sure, though, how they'd make "playing Facebook" fun.

Once again, I am so confused, when did I say I was playing facebook?

 

[bicker]

The pulling of bonuses from Facebook feeds is "playing Facebook". You can choose to enjoy it I suppose, but a lot of people don't and it is a big problem. It actually sucks pretty bad, which is why I want it gone. But if you have ideas for making it better so that other people can enjoy it as much as you do, that would be interesting.

I think, though, that being "confused" about the fact that so many people hate "playing Facebook" is going to make it hard for you to understand the problem. It is going to be a problem until it is resolved to their satisfaction.

 

[My sister's princess]

The pulling of bonuses from Facebook feeds is "playing Facebook". You can choose to enjoy it I suppose, but a lot of people don't and it is a big problem. It actually sucks pretty bad, which is why I want it gone. But if you have ideas for making it better so that other people can enjoy it as much as you do, that would be interesting.

I think, though, that being "confused" about the fact that so many people hate "playing Facebook" is going to make it hard for you to understand the problem. It is going to be a problem until it is resolved to their satisfaction.

What I didn't understand was what you meant by playing facebook, you explained it in a way that made sense.

I do enjoy pulling things off the feed, it is one of those thrill of the hunt types of things. I get very excited when I see a cowbell! Sometimes I have days where I can't look at my feed, I don't get upset that I didn't get every white egg that was posted, that to me is part of the game, having friends who play, and sharing things, along with the luck of being on at the right time to get what you needed to finish that collection.

 

[Toad_Passenger]

I think one way they can fix the "playing" facebook thing, is to allow us to breed our own animals. I say it all the time. What is the sense of me spending money on rare horses/cows, so that I can breed them for other people?

 

[My sister's princess]

I think one way they can fix the "playing" facebook thing, is to allow us to breed our own animals. I say it all the time. What is the sense of me spending money on rare horses/cows, so that I can breed them for other people?

That would make sense, maybe at some point they will add that feature!

 

[bicker]

it is one of those thrill of the hunt types of things. I get very excited when I see a cowbell!

Understood. I can understand how some folks could enjoy that. I sure don't and a lot of other people don't. It's just not Farmville to me. What attracted me to Farmville was that it was essentially a very pretty video game. I go full-screen almost all the time and I forget I'm actually playing on a computer. Great screen graphics, though simple in some cases.

I remember when they had that stupid Zynga message center working. What a lame bit of UI. It sucked almost as bad as the Facebook feed, but at least it didn't make you waste tons of time clicking three times to get through something... just click click click and done, and back to the real game.

So I think that's the key. Move everything into the game itself, but don't skimp on the UI. Make it all work well -- and speedy: Farmville shouldn't take longer to click on three plots of land than it takes to click on three buttons in Microsoft Word.

And they don't really have to make any of these changes, but if they don't, then people are going to find ways to make these enhancements themselves. They are using an open development platform. There is no way to lock these kinds of things down using a platform like Flash. It is almost never a real problem: Generally, the programmers for a product can write far better code than someone exploiting the open nature of the platform.

The fact that these exploits exist expose what would normally be considered grievous inadequacies in Zynga's programming. Adjuncts like this should never perform any tasks better than the native code. Something is very fishy with Zynga's implementation, and to a great extent it is misuse of platform elements and what seems like a deliberate attempt to sub-optimize the game-playing experience, as mystifying as that may seem.

I'm normally very supportive of other developers when users criticize them, but in this case, time and time again I've found myself essentially getting to the end of the line with making excuses for Zynga. It is becoming painfully clear that they're not programming this game properly. They may still be doing that for good reasons, I suppose, but I can't think of rational excuses for some of their most obvious off-target decisions anymore.

 

[bicker]

So I think that's the key. Move everything into the game itself

Seems like they must have read my message: