Too Late for Farmville? Part 3

Other things we want less of:  stOOpid control-freakish rules, limits & requirements...oh, and clutter! Unless it's our clutter, then it's okay - yours is not.  
 
Rules
 
I have - had - a system for my trees. Other players have - had - systems for their horses... or other critters, or whatever.... 
 
sure... go ahead and lock trees, horses, pathways, pens, whatever.... to a particular farm ... it's your game... if you want to piss off more players and make us leave because now you've decided it would be a good idea to break our collections AND our systems - if that's your goal, well done... you're doing an excellent job.
 
If, on the other hand, you'd like us to stick around, play, and give you money ... perhaps you could quit with things that really just don't matter?
 
Limits 
 

Seriously...I buy expansions using actual FC and you fill them with ugly crap I can't move that needs 28 or 42 ugly stupid parts to get rid of each one and THEN you set a limit on how many I can collect for each post?

You want I should collect daily collections stamps and then you limit each post as to the number I can get from the (very) few friends I have who are still playing?

And while I'm on the topic, why IS it that in your other games the gift box actually works and lets me access whatever gifts people have sent me, but in Farmville, the max is 50 and anything over that seems to disappear into the ether? Does anybody even bother sending/receiving gifts in Farmville any more? I don't ... too tedious to flip through pages of crap I don't want to send to get  to the few things I might ... and then the vast majority disappears anyway.


And the safety deposit box and bushel limits? Hello? We've been whining about the bushel thing for eons ... ever since you started throwing new farms at us for no good reason.

You've broken the gift exchange thing ... so we are left trying to craft the things we need ... but we are CONSTANTLY having to dump bushels that we COULD use for crafting things we need if only we didn't need so much fuel to keep trying to grow the bushels we need to craft the things we need to... well, you get the idea, right?

We're not nearly as stupid as you think we are, by the way... we know you changed the settings on the bushels that we get from farming to try to push us toward buying what we need to craft things... what, exactly, ARE you people trying to do with Farmville, kill it entirely?

Now that the farms don't load/play properly with too much (any?) stuff on them, I've been trying to clear out my junk into my safety deposit box .... not enough room there either. Which means that I have to either sell off all my old stuff, or stop buying/growing new stuff. Guess which one most of us are choosing?

I invested time and money into my trees back when Farmville was fun .... not likely to dump all that in favour of new stuff now that it isn't.

Requirements

Stop already!

I know, I know... someone went to the trouble of making the fishing hole... the yarn barn... the dairy .... whatever...  but honestly, if we don't like it, we don't like it - and constantly forcing us to do stuff like "craft 12 yarn" in the yarn barn is NOT going to change anyone's mind.

What, you thought that somewhere around #10 or 11, they were going to say "gee, this is fun after all!"?

Not happening.

Ever noticed that you had millions more players BEFORE you started shoving quests down our throats? Billions, even, by some accounts.

Less trees, less horses, less crops, less buildables, less farms - but you had many, many times more players than you do now.

I know, I know ... y'all are convinced that people started leaving in droves because they preferred other games on other platforms... they got bored, right?

Except that that is NOT what happened.

What happened is that they got frustrated, fed up and over whelmed.

Zynga lost sight of the fact that some sorts of players prefer this type of game and some prefer that...

some people like quests and demands and challenges and competition ...

but those of us that played Farmville? That was not why we played.

We liked working together with our friends.... collecting whatever we happened to be into .... mastering what we wanted to master.... and lots and lots of us LOVED decorating our farms the way we wanted them to be .... whether we were good at it or not (I'm not, but I enjoyed it anyway).

There were lots of other games that included quests and challenges and competition... if we'd wanted to be engaged in those, we would have played them.

Farmville appealed to people that liked to do things their own way - but is now being run by a whole lot of people that demand we do them their way. It's sad.

We came to Farmville...and stayed...and paid money ... for a different gaming experience - and Zynga has, over the last couple of years, completely and utterly BLOWN IT.

And yes, we know that we don't have to do the quests - but doing them is the only way to get the blasted ugly icons off our screen - so we often do them even though we'd rather not. The icons all over our screen - and stuff like the fishing hole and summer camp adventure and lost animals and... it is all clutter and every last bit of it annoys people like me no end.

Even if the farms weren't so bogged down with bad programming, unnecessary pop-ups, and other issues, I still wouldn't bother doing any all out decorating the way I used to - between the "new" hideous facebook and the sheer number of idiotic ugly icons your devs scatter all over my screen and around my farms, why bother wasting my time?

I don't know if Farmville can even be fixed any more... it may well be too late...

but I do know that it won't get better if someone up there in Zynga-land doesn't smarten up and start paying attention soon.

Is it too late for Farmville?

Another change in management at Zynga... another faint hope that perhaps now they will actually listen and DO SOMETHING to fix the exodus of players.

Honestly though...I'm not sure that Farmville CAN be fixed any more...  have they left it too late?

Some of us are still around though...  we know the game is dead and should be buried... but we remember what it once was and stick around... always hoping...

So...what WOULD it take for Farmville to stop the mass exodus?

What would they need to do to win you - and your money - back? 

For me, what they would need to do is LESS. Much less.

Less new trees, horses, birds on a stick, mastery signs, water features...what-the-hell-ever.... 

Remember the excitement over the owl on a stick that showed up in mystery boxes? It flew!!!

Had. To. Have. It.

It was unique - then. Now, I couldn't even tell you where my original owl is... but hey, I have about 30 ...maybe 40 ....other birds on a stick that fly ... big whoop.

Every time they manage to hit something we like, now, they go nuts.... oh look... they liked the space trees - lets make 6,457 more space trees and see if they'll pay 6 or 8 FC for each one. Uh ... no... no, we won't. How many times are you going to do this routine before it sinks in that overwhelming us with more of the same ain't going to work?

Chill out, settle down, and STOP overwhelming us with more of whatever-it-was-we-liked than we could ever possibly care about.

Less broken collections

Biggest mistake Zynga has made with Farmville - well, one of the biggest, anyway - was in the destruction of our collections.

I liked the trees. I can afford to buy FC to get the trees...and I used to. Now though, we are totally awash in trees. They release ridiculous numbers of new trees every week .... Monday, Thursday, in quests, as prizes for this, that, and the other thing, with each new farm release.... 

I can't possibly keep up. And many of them, if you missed them, too bad for you. Some of them even show up in ways that are on "slow rollout" - which means, actually - too bad for you - you're not in the favoured few who got that feature so no tree (or horse, or bird on a stick, or...what-the-hell-ever for you...

Collectors don't like to be thwarted. We really don't. Once you break our collections, we sulk, and we with-hold our money.

You want my money back? Smarten up!

It's too late to fix existing collections ... there are too many holes now.

You could, however, reboot the whole collector appeal thing with a bit of creativity.

Me, I still like the trees - and I still think that the people who design & draw the trees for Zynga are amazing. So ... let's think of a way to fix the tree problem, shall we?

My suggestion would be to develop a level 3 tree.

Go back to the very beginning - look at the old level 1s and 2s ...and now make a level 3 for those sets. Still has to grow in the groves/orchards (don't even THINK about a new structure!) - but to make it different from the ones we know, have the seedlings grow into either the old level 1 or 2, or a clone of itself. 

This will allow - eventually - people who missed out on early trees to complete their collection.

The important thing here is that you MUST restrict these new trees to no more than 1 or 2 per week.

Now think about other things that people liked - or might like - to collect.

Not sure how to fix/re-boot those? Ask us... I bet people in the forums would be thrilled to be asked for feedback if it was actually going to be used. No doubt there are other ways that the whole trees debacle could be approached, also ...

The key thing here, though, is that you MUST limit items to no more than 1/2 week so that whatever-it-is remain worth having, and collectible.

Well darn. I've gone on quite long enough for one blog post already and have barely even scratched the surface!  Lots more I want less of ... but that's a topic for another post - or two :)

In the meantime...what do you think? Is it too late to save Farmville? If not, what does Zynga need to do to win you - and your money - back?

Class Action Lawsuit Filed against Zynga

Pomerantz Law Firm Has Filed a Class Action Against Zynga Inc. -- ZNGA

So many so very lousy decisions that have been made at Zynga over the past more than a year now... I, like many many others, am beyond frustrated with how persistently they have been focussed on nothing but shooting themselves in the foot (they apparently have a LOT of feet!) .... but seriously?


If you read the article about the class action lawsuit, you will see that they are basing their action on the notion that
 (i) the Company was experiencing a rapid decline in the number of users for its existing web based games;
(ii) the Company was experiencing substantial delays in launching new web based games;
(iii) the Company was failing to take advantage of the changes on Facebook's web platform;
(iv) the Company was unable to effectively monetize revenues from mobile devices through its web based games; and
(v) as a result of the above, the Company's financial statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.


Ludicrous! It takes seconds to use Google to find out how well (or not) Zynga has been ~retaining~ players. (It's not, btw - they've been leaving in droves and for very good reasons).


The forums for each and every Zynga game are wide open - you don't even have to play a single game or create an account to wander through and have a read. And of course, there are plenty of other blogs and wikis and fan sites and news articles and....   give me a break!


If potential investors couldn't be bothered to spend 10 minutes having a look, they deserve what they got.


If they didn't, well ...as my brother would say .... "wah".  So now you've figured out that you blew it and want to do something about it? How 'bout instead of wasting your time & energy on lawsuits that reveal that you didn't take any time at all to research anything before you jumped, you spend a few minutes demanding that Zynga smarten the hell up and listen to its players? Far more productive.


They do have, among their many offerings, some winners... or would-be-winners if they could just stop with the foot-shooting thing for awhile.


Fortunately, there is, finally, a tiny glimmer of hope that things might be about to improve at Zynga!


Apparently this John Schappert dude has been there about a year - and that is about how long things have been going really REALLY badly  - if he WAS the sabateur that has been so intently driving Farmville and other games in to the ground, perhaps things might get better now?


I'd be happier if they had not just demoted him, but got rid of him entirely  - and I think that they really do need some new blood in there, or at the very least, an advisory board of players for each of the games (that they actually LISTEN to)....


but maybe, just maybe......

Spending money on Facebook

Do you? 

I do...well, I have done....   up until this week, I have loved doing the tree farming thing on Zynga's Farmville....  had to have the trees, therefore had to have farmcash.

I won't make that mistake again.

It's quite possible to spend a LOT of money on facebook games - they make it easy for you ... but what they do NOT make easy is maintaining your account.

If you somehow breech their terms & conditions by having too many friends, or sending too many messages, or posting something they don't like, or ...well, whatever.... when they disable your account, you lose everything and they DO NOT TELL YOU WHY.

Nor do they give you any sort of explanation when you ask.

Nor do they respond to your queries.

They just shut you down, wipe you (and all your stuff) out and there you are... no pictures, no contact info for the people you were connected to, no past posts, and no access to anything you spend real money on.

IF it were true that only spammers or people who harrass others or whatever were subjected to this sort of treatment, that would be one thing...

but it's not...

it's all sorts of people who never deliberately did anything to deserve it.  Google it... you'll see that in far too many cases, it's people like my friend, who never did anything against the site's T & Cs as far as she knows...not once.

After it happened to my friend, I did google it.... and it makes me sick to think that all the time, energy and money I have invested on Facebook could be wiped out in an instant and I would be left hanging just as my friend is.....    no recourse .... just canned responses and lies.

Invest in Facebook? Or Zynga?  Are you out of your freaking mind?

I am done. 

Unfreaking Believable

Today, because one of my facebook friends has had her account disabled for no good reason, I have been googling ....


and getting more and more angry.


How is it possible that companies like Facebook and Zynga can just keep taking our money and then - without warning, without explanation, and without recourse, just wipe out our accounts, games, farms, whatever?


How long would YOU keep buying clothes, a car, furniture, whatever - if the people you buy it from retained the right to come and take it back for no reason whenever the hell they wanted - and you wouldn't have any way to argue it?


Any company that worked that way wouldn't be in business long, would they?


Would you buy stock in them?


Nope, me either....


and I'll no longer be spending any money on FC, either.....    so once my current cash is gone, I will be done with the trees.


Not a huge loss, anyway ... now that they are swamping us with 20 or more trees a week - some of which we can NOT buy ... it's impossible to keep up and impossible to maintain a complete collection anyway.


It is too bad no one at Zynga can be bothered to spend an hour thinking about how and why their players play.


It is too bad no one at Zynga can be bothered to spend an hour thinking about how to keep their loyal players loyal.


And it is too bad no one at Facebook can be bothered to redesign their warning/disabling system so that it is FAIR. Clarity around the cause of being kicked from the site would be a damn good place to start - but they also need a fair review process.


Both of these companies IPOs make me laugh - they ain't worth a pinch of coon shit given their current (lack of fair) business practices.


Who the hell is buying these stocks?

2 days in a row

For the second evening in a row, Farmville is unplayable... can harvest and seed - but anything that requires posting to the feed, forgettaboutit...

2 different problems too - last night, could post, but Farmville was out of the facebook feed altogether, so no one could see/respond to anyone's posts... tonight, we just can't post.

Given all the time limits that require that one posts to the feed and gets friends to send them ~stuff~ this really SUCKS, Zynga.

If you can't support your games, you have no business putting them out there and taking people's money .. from players OR investors.