Gift and Trade

Licenses: Well first of all I really dislike that you need as many licenses as items you want to trade. As people play longer they might want to change their over all strategy (like moving from tree production to workshops for example). And this event gives that chance by swapping hard earned items around. Why no let me trade my 200 Apple Trees for a workshop for example (it makes sense to me to use one license for one trade, independent of the amount of items exchanged). Especially considering that BP has moved towards rewards like secret seedlings and secret stablemasters, which are a nice little lottery but leaves a lot of people with stuff that they don't necessarily want. I am of the opinion that BP is not giving enough licenses in the first place (really folks? one license a day and usually only two days to go for the whole event!!!).

Search Function: Searching for specific items has become such a pain that I am not enjoying this event at all anymore (and it was one of my favorite mini-events). There seems not much rhyme or reason on how items are arranged and there is no search function available!! So for example players can't just search for all XXL Mate tree offers within the thousands of possibilities. Right now the event involves HOURS worth of stressful searching just trying to find if the item I want to trade for is even available, rather than an exciting chance for two players to come together and trade for a mutual advantage. Especially if I find an exchange but have the necessary item still out on the field, it takes me forever to even find that exchange offer again after having taken down the item.

Frequency: The event should be available more often. It is really sad that some players are actually asking for a function to just delete valuable items from their inventory just to make it less messy:
https://board-en.farmerama.com/index.php?threads/inventory-delete-or-recycle-function.12053/
These items could be very useful to other players, especially early in the game (Egg farms for example to finish the timed quest).

All that said I do think that the developers should concentrate more on making the most beloved events more workable instead of introducing new stuff all the time that we don't need and can not really use in the game. I got a lovely strawberry tree from my last seedlings and even if I actually would grow trees (which I don't in the first place), there is just nothing to do with the fruits that is worthwhile.

 

It is very difficult and it takes so much time to find a good offer.
A lot of things need to be changed as you said.
jennifersiegel You have pointed out all the problems of the Gift and Trade

 

Well put, jennifersiegel!

Spares me the time and anguish to get it all down in one message.....only thing I have to add (ok, actually two things):

a) multiple licenses I can agree with, if for example I'm asking or offering 2 egg trees and 2 rowan trees, in case this was possible. This way I could create possibly more interesting offers when I'm out of competitive items. But if I'm offering/asking 10 apple trees this should be counted under one license.....

b) there are items that are highly tradable in my opinion, jumbo trees, magic trees only to name two....to some these are priced possessions, but sometimes also the only valuable item to offer for needed items.......so why aren't they part of the deal?

I would like to finally see a "anything goes gift & trade", in this case I would even agree to a categorized license system, 1 license for low level/value items and 2 licenses for high value/level items.......(I hope this is not waking the beast and I'll have to drop 10 Licenses to see a peach tree the next time around)

 

I am in agreement about the licenses. I do not for a second dislike BP for wanting to make money off us - they give us a free game, and it's the least that they deserve in return. However, not all players are able to afford luxuries like that, no matter how small. Some players are simply living paycheck to paycheck, and can barely afford luxuries like extra licenses for in-game trades. Others are minors who have to borrow credit cards to make online payments, with parents who are unwilling to spend money on games. Paying for things is simply not a possibility for all, and whilst I totally believe that BP should be able to make money somehow, it would be better for everyone if they made their money off optional products like memberships and subscriptions, rather than things that are necessary to become involved in the game.

I also agree with the search function. Even excluding the Gift and Trade event, it can be very difficult to manoeuvre one's inventory. Even if I'm trying to figure out which trees I need to plant more of, it takes a long time to see what I have, what I need to plant, and then actually find them to do the planting. A search function would be much loved for daily use, not only this event.

As for how regular the event is, I think that everyone would love this event to come around more often, but we ought to understand the difficulties of the event. Whilst the game may run semi-smoothly from our end, it's a huge jumble of programming and glitch-fixing on the other, so it's understandably not as sustainable an event for the devs as it is for us.

Finally, I do have another suggestion, perhaps alternative, to add to jennifer's post.
What we could do is trade our products in to a worldwide pile of donated items. Rather than using licenses to trade these items in, we could receive tickets in exchange for our donated items according to the value of the items, and use these tickets to purchase other items from the donation pile.