Producer's Newsletter

Hello Farmerama!

Since I’m relatively new here, I’d like to start by introducing myself. My name is Souni, I’m a 32-year old Canadian (female, in case you’re wondering – I know the name isn’t clear). I’ve been in Germany for 6 years and BigPoint for 4, and I’m the new producer. I’ve been on Farmerama for a few months now and I’m starting to feel more on top of this massive game!

My top priority when I arrived on Farmerama was getting the worst technical issue, the unexpected logouts, stopped. Last month we found and fixed the problem that was responsible for almost 100,000 unexpected logouts per day, and also fixed something that should improve performance. We’re not finished with the topic of technical improvement, but we are far enough along that we can also start focusing on other things. Here are the next priorities as I see them:

1. Mentoring: As you all know, the mentoring system doesn’t work as it should. Even if it did work, the fact is that there will always be large discrepancies between the number of new players per day and the number of active players per day, so we need to rethink the system … and that’s what we’re doing! Potential ideas include:
a. Allowing you to choose which languages/countries you would like your chicklet to come from, so that you have more chances of getting a chicklet.
b. Integrating the mentor system better into the neighbor list.

Please keep in mind: Rethinking the mentor system is a major task, and 10 people can’t do it 10 times as fast as 1 person! We have someone working on the concept and that is my major priority, but we won’t start working on the actual art/code for a long time, and I don’t think it can be done before early 2014.

More space/New event mechanic: It’s always hard to really have a numbered list of priorities because there is so much to do! But I’d say more space and a new event mechanic are about equal as the next most important points.
a. New space: I’m sorry to say, we can’t just give all of you a new playing field. There are many reasons for this, but to keep it short let’s just say from a technical and game design standpoint it wouldn’t make sense in the game. What we can do is give you a place to keep your extra trees, stables and givers that isn’t just the inventory – somewhere to decorate and even use your extra items, but with new gameplay and rules attached. We’ll give you more info as soon as it’s available.

b. New event mechanic: This one’s trickier than you think! We know you hate event plants, but they are the great equalizer – they are the bottleneck that means that low-level players have (almost) as much chance to finish as high-level players (the extra playing fields do make it easier for high-level players though). But we will be trying to find a way to have new events that are fun and challenging for all player levels. Let us know if you have any ideas!
News screen/User Interface polishing: We have a lot of layers that aren’t very clear – I’d like to make them clearer so more people have a better understanding of what’s going on and we can announce things more clearly and earlier in the game too, and not just in the forum.

Greenhouse: I would really like to rework the plant crafting! But between the stuff mentioned above, the stuff we’re already working on now that we have to finish before we start the stuff above and the events we have, we have a lot to do! So this might take a while.

What are we working on right now, you ask?
Answer: I can’t list everything, but here’s an overview:

Farmers Society Redesign: The layers for the farm hall will be completely reworked so they fit the “new” Farmerama style and so they are clearer for new players. Improved features include:
- You will be able to scroll through the steps of a quest without finishing the step first, so that you can see the final reward from the beginning and decide if you’re interested.
- Filters so you can choose to see only Bahamarama quests, only event quests, etc.

Farmwheel Rework:
The concept to make the farm wheel more fun (and more rewarding) is already finished and already in the works. Previews will be coming soon!
And of course, we’re always working on events like Halloween, Harvest Fest, etc.

Now I’m going to answer the questions selected by the international support teams!

Is there any news about the Gift & Trade event?

Nothing satisfying I’m afraid. We assessed the code and it should work … it didn’t the last time, obviously, but we think that was because of hardware issues that we have fixed since then. When we test it in “perfect” conditions it works – but we can’t reproduce the conditions it has when it is online and all of you are gifting and trading. The next step would be to turn the event back on with a warning that this is a test and may lead to item loss – we’re considering that option now. What do you think?​

Are there any plans to offer the players more options to get golden bananas?

Yes! Depending on the timing of this newsletter, you may already have gotten a few by the time this comes out. We will be including them as event and quest rewards, Renzo rewards and maybe other places.​

Will there be news islands in the future?

Of course!​

Is it planned to have a trans-seedlantic express with stables?

As I mentioned above, we’re working on it now! But to avoid more different animal species, the top prizes in the stable trans-seedlantic will be a completely new type of stable, offering something players already need … ​

Will there be any new rewards for the farm wheel?

As mentioned above, not only new rewards but a new farm wheel are on their way.​

Renzo’s fair – will there be new mini-games and rewards added?

Rewards - absolutely. Mini-games … maybe. They take a long time to make and we have so much to do …​

Why do some quests or events have harvest helper hours instead of coupons?

That’s kind of like asking why some quests or events have better or different rewards than others. We try to give out better rewards for more challenging quests, and it would be boring if we always gave the same thing. Also keep in mind that the coupons are newer, so I’m sure there are some old quests out there that are really challenging but still give hours.​

Why do some countries have special offers or events (example: KOH quest/items only for DACH countries)?

This one is more complicated! This only ever happens when we have collaborations with external partners. Sometimes, like in the case of KOH ZOK, it’s because the partner is only present in a certain region (trust me, the Canadians are not familiar with Til Schweiger!). Other times, like with Looney Tunes, it’s because the partner won’t let us present their product in specific regions. I am aware that you don’t appreciate these “region-specific” events, and I will keep this in mind when dealing with partners, but I’m afraid I can’t promise it will never happen again – these collaborations are almost never a one-person decision.​

 

Hello Everyone!

November flew past and it’s past time for another update from inside the Farmerama team. Here in Hamburg the weather has gotten cold and gray again and every day at least one person calls in sick with the flu … winter is here! We’re working hard and already looking forward to the Christmas break.

Before I get around to this month’s questions, I’d like to give you an update on some of the items we covered in October.

Mentoring Update
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, we are planning a complete rework of the mentoring feature. We know that the current system is very buggy, but fixing the bugs would take months and not really solve all the problems you’re having, since in the current system there will always be less chicklets than mentors. I know it’s difficult, but we’ve decided not to invest the months we’d need to fix the bugs in the old system so that we can focus on the new system: We’re aiming for something broader than mentoring the way it is meant to be now, something that will allow you to meet and interact with other players within the game itself, not just via in-game message. We have a few technical limitations to deal with, but we’re confident we will end up with something useful, functional and fun.

New Event Mechanic Update
This is moving along very nicely, and I’m hoping (not promising!) we can unveil the basic version of our new event mechanic and form as early as Farmerama’s fourth anniversary! The first run will include some elements of the current mechanic as well as new challenges, and those challenges will become more diverse as we continue to expand the new mechanic. We’ll keep you posted!

Farmer’s Society Update
As sometimes happened, we discovered some inconsistencies with the planned Farmer’s Society redesign. It’s always better when we notice these before you guys have to deal with them, so we “went back to the drawing board” so to speak, to ensure as much as possible that our “improved” Farmer’s Society really is an improvement for the majority of you. We’re very happy with what we ended up with and hope you will be too – it shouldn’t be much longer now!

Community Questions - November

1. Too many stars, nothing to do with them!

We’re working on integrating more “unused items” into Farmer’s Society quests and farmhouse orders (the international BAs kindly provided us with a great list of these). The stars are going to need a slightly more involved solution, but the team has several high-level feature ideas that could make great use of them – we hear you and we’re on it!​

2. Gift & Trade – when will it be back?

As I mentioned last month we think we’ve fixed the problems that created the issues we had last time with this event, but we won’t be sure until we try. As soon as possible in the New Year, we will have a “test” Gift & Trade event, which we will announce in advance so people can choose whether or not to participate. We’re not exactly sure how it will work, but we’re thinking of offering a few trade licenses and warning people not to trade/swap very valuable items for the test so that we can minimize the negative effects on the participants.​

3. Why don't you have detailed rewards for the users? Like a reward for his/her birthday or the anniversary of his/her registration ...

That’s a great idea that I’m passing onto our game design team as we speak.​

4. When will you add new gifts in the game?

There should be a new seasonal gift or two shortly, and after that we will try to keep refreshing the selection at least seasonally – gifts take a lot of time to create and we’ve been a little strapped for time lately.​

5. When will we have the “TOP 5 most beautiful farms” feature again?

Unfortunately that feature was removed a long time ago (I’m afraid I don’t know why) and no longer actually works, so we can’t just turn it back on. It’s not at the top of our priority list by itself (I think we all agree there are more important issues we need to focus on) but the game designers will keep your request for a rating feature (and also for more/better gifts and possibly more interesting gifting mechanics?) in mind while planning the mentoring/social feature redesign.​

And that’s it for this month! Thanks again for your great questions, and “see” you again soon!