Stop adding to the game and

fix what is. All the free harvest coupons in the world are useless if we cannot sign into the game or the game is constantly getting hung up or the spinning flower of death keeps appearing.

Everyone providing suggestions have great thoughts. What else can be implemented without creating an even further mess?

When is that sheep pushing that other sheep going to loose some weight? That poor sheep must run for trillions of miles. You know, the one I look at with the sign saying please wait. Not even funny!

No need trying to complete events because one cannot harvest on time.

No need to buy anything here because it has limited usability.

We just accept it now and say nothing like this is the way it is going to be.

Hopefully clearing their cache will help some poor soul understand.

My final offer is 2 ccs for this mess and change the name to: Exercise In Frustration

 

Actually, I happen to usually just chat away about all the stuff that could be done with the game...
The bugs on the other hand, I use to leave to the team.
I believe if they make overall improvements to the game, they would hopefully do it at their own pace and when there is problems ASAP and it becomes very hectic. I believe every human being would rather avoid such stressful situations.

I hope the dev team knows that I rather would like them to take a little more time then to rush a job and make sure there is no glitches... Nobody should have to run at superspeed except some players mills... And I don't need 4 events each month.

EDIT: I am waiting for the new newsletter by the way... All this suspense.

For me personally, I am looking forward to the Corral Reef. And I believe that a lot of the problems could have to do with that big new feature being introduced. I have not opened a thread about that because I am curious as to how it turns out. Surprise...

And then we could talk about that wishlist of the community even more seriously.
But one big project at a time, maybe... up to you guys...
Let's get the Corral Reef going? I hope all is good and that you are making progress.
And will it cost GB at all? Or can everybody be a part of the adventure from the start?

EDIT: Still, a well functioning game is the highest priority.
Especially when real time timing is involved, it is necessary to being able to access the game at all times.
Players plan ahead to be on the game at lunchbreak or whenever and it should be possible at all times or the game becomes unplayable in the first place.

 

I think people seem to forget that the producers don't do this on purpose. It is as detrimental to them as it is to us that there are some players who can't log in. Do you really think they like the fact that some of their most loyal players can't access the game? Of course they don't.

It seems only logical to me that if they had a sure-fire fix, they would use it. Why would they continually put us in this position if they knew how to fix it permanently?

The thing is, they don't. They don't have a sure-fire fix, they don't know how to permanently stop this from happening, because they have very little control over glitches. That's the point of a glitch - it's an unintended error. Something that they physically cannot stop from happening because they physically do not start it in the first place.

Asking them to make a permanent fix is fruitless, because they can't. Not because they're incompetent, but because glitches are unforeseen errors that they cannot predict and cannot stop until the glitch occurs. Every single time a glitch has occurred, they have worked quickly and efficiently and got the game running smoothly as soon as they can. It frustrates me that people seem to ask for more than the best work that the programmers can provide.

Let's say you work in retail, and you've presold a product to hundreds of customers, and the shipment is supposed to arrive the morning of pick-up. Only the shipment doesn't arrive. You ordered it, and you did your best, but some things are out of your control. How would you feel if customers continually harassed you and complained about you for something that you can't control? The best you can do is perform damage control. Fix the issue as quickly as possible and compensate those particularly impatient customers. You work over time, you're frantic, you're doing your best to deal with a situation that you could never have foreseen. All you can do is deal with the situation as it arises as quickly as you can, as efficiently as you can, and as well as you can.

That's what happens with glitches. The team do everything they can to make this game as smooth as possible, but testing on a relatively small sample is nowhere near akin to being used by millions of players. When the event, feature, quest etc. goes live, it is effectively a live test. And if, or when, a glitch arises, they have to do exactly what that retail worker had to do. Perform damage control. Sort out the situation they could not have foreseen (or could not have controlled ahead of time) as quickly as they can, as efficiently as they can, and as well as they can. And they will provide compensation. But there is nothing they can do about it.

And at the end of the day, this is just a game. The world isn't going to fall apart if your roses turn to weeds or you miss out on a production pen or you don't quite finish an event. Guess what? You dig up your weeds and try again. You get that production pen another time. You finish the next event. And you go on with life because being healthy and happy is so much more important than your stars. If you can't get into the game, you aren't going to fall in a heap. You can go outside. Go for a run. Bake some cookies. Read a good book. Call a friend. Get a coffee. Listen to music. Meditate. Watch some TV. Start a puzzle. Life goes on even if you can't get into the game.

 

Just want to add that many of the glitches have to do with things outside BigPoint. Think of it this way. If a street was fine yesterday, but a water leak causes it to undermine, the best car in the world is still going to have problems.

 

Exactly. There apparently seems to be the assumption that people aren't working hard enough or aren't doing their job well enough. But clearly the workers suffer just as much as we do, in different ways, when things go wrong. They don't want it to fail, but they do their best to deal with situations that arise. If players are not going to be grateful for that then I personally don't think BP should compensate them. Life isn't about being paid in excess when things don't quite go the way you want them to.

 

Having built Websites for years, I understand all the little issues that pop up. All it takes is for an update in the programming language you are using, and things can fall apart. Or you add a feature which may affect another one negatively. And THEN you have to go through lines and lines of Code to find the problem. Sometimes, the problem may be one little forgotten semi-colon, and the whole module breaks. So much goes into a game of this magnitude, with so many features and players. Not to mention the languages that it must be translated into. Wow! It blows my mind!

With a game of this magnitude, it is nearly impossible to predict the combination of things that may go wrong in the game. Testing can never be 100%. Testing is binary.

For example, if you have one switch, you have two options to test.
If you have two switches, you have four options.
Three switches is eight options.
Ten switches is up to 1024 options to test.

I'm sure there is more than ten switches in this game!

I, for one, am quite impressed with how much goes on in this game and how well it works. Even more impressive to me is how quickly the developers take care of the bugs. It's not as easy as one may think.

I think we should give the developers a little bit of a break when they are working so hard to give us so many wonderful events, quests, gifts, variety, etc. for free. They need a pat on the back for all the work they do!

 

Brilliantly said, Daizy

 

DarlingDaizy, would like to see that explanation "stickied" or added to FAQs. I doubt it will stop complaints, but maybe it would help a tad?


Squiq-- just be careful to distinguish between complaints and opinions/suggestions. The developers will decide what will and will not work, what needs to be a priority for them. Ironically, sometimes making big changes can be easier than making small changes, in part because it often involves new code, adding an entirely new section (with already updated code), rather than having to try and patch something into already existing code. Sometimes the reverse is true, it just depends on the situation. Sometimes making what we think of as a small change is critical to making the whole system work well. Also, we don't know all the "behind the scenes" priorities.

 

I don't think I said anything about priorities. What I did say is that I think it is incredibly rude, selfish and ungrateful to be constantly harping on at the devs who bring us a wonderful game, like they don't already know there are issues. Like they don't already want to fix them. What I said was that the dev team works incredibly hard and cannot foresee what glitches are going to occur. They work as hard as they can when said unforeseen glitch occurs, because a glitch is just that - unforeseen. If it were an error that they could pick up on in testing, it would have been fixed. But like in my retail worker analogy, there is nothing they can do about an in-the-moment issue other than work over time to try to find where the issue comes from and fix it. And they do that incredibly well; within a few hours, they've found the issue, which they could never have found before, figure out how to fix it, and do it, all within a couple of hours.

And yet in spite of the fact that these people work incredibly hard for our benefit - not theirs - players always whinge and moan and complain about "I can't log in! You need to do the programming better, there are so many glitches!" or "I lost my roses because you mucked up the programming" or "At the very least they should compensate us, I couldn't finish an event" and at no stage do any of them bother to thank the dev team for working at the speed of lightning to fix little issues in a game that they built for us from the ground up.

I am not saying do not be frustrated at the glitches. It is annoying when you can't log in. But like I said, don't be ungrateful and selfish and rude. Don't harass the dev team like it's their fault. Treat them like the human beings they are and thank them for working to fix the problem. It is not the end of the world if you cannot get into the game for a few hours, so it is disgraceful that people treat a team that works so hard for us as though they've ruined Christmas not once but every year.