Feedback Unity Open Beta Feedback/Discussion thread

Everything seem much improved in Unity since maintenance yesterday and I could whiz through my farm until it froze!
It also froze when I tried to put out some wonder stables and when I tried to go from Baha back to the main field.
I am sure that this will be sorted eventually. In the meantime I will be patient.

 

Unity was working very well in Firefox yesterday, but today not so much. I started the farm day harvesting the cloudrows - with equipment it was fine, but could not harvest by hand: the screen darkened, the sheep in the barrow showed up and loaded to 100 and never opened. The same thing happened with the pet field, except can't harvest with equipment. Refreshing the game didn't help because it automatically dumped me right back where I was - with 100% load but the field not opening. Have to close Firefox and start over, but the CR and pet field still doesn't work.

Switched to Opera and, so far, everything is working - very slowly, but working.

 

So happy to see that the Friends/Neighbor list is "back" to the version we used with Flash. Not sure why someone decided it needed changing when changing to Unity. (Really bad planning to make that kind of change when doing a platform change.)

Now can we fix the problem with IGM? I can fill in who I want to send to, a title for the message but when I touch the body of the message on my screen, while a cursor appears in the body, I am unable to type anything there.

(P.S. to Brookeham: Thanks!)

 

Information on which of the deficiencies in the game are (or will be) worked on would be nice. Since none of the issues I've reported seem to have changed, the utility of providing further feedback is suspect.

 

I received an in game message and I couldn't reply to it. When I started typing the first 8-10 letters were ok but then it sent the cursor down to the middle of the incoming message and wouldn't let me type any more.

I tried originating a message instead of replying to that one but the same problem was there. I could not type the entire message. So it must be something to do with the Unity in game messaging system.

 

Giving gifts was much, much easier tonight than before thanks to reverting to the old interface. Plus when I clicked to open the forums I didn't get the silly popup warning like the last few weeks. It just opened another tab and brought up the page like it used to do.

These are steps in the right direction, and they give me hope that things will get better in Unity.

 

Adobe has been including a kill switch in their Flash Player releases since June 2020 that was set to block all Flash content from running on Jan 12 - that switch was activated on the 12th as expected, and most people are now unable to load Flash content in their browsers. The major browser developers are expected to completely remove the Flash plugin from their browsers with their next update by the end of this month. I have heard anecdotal reports, however, that Flash is still working on Chromebooks and IE on Windows 7. I'm guessing it's because they were running outdated versions of Flash Player and never got the updates containing the kill switch code.

I think leaving the Flash client up until the issues with Unity are resolved is a terrible idea because it would encourage players to either leave Flash Player installed on their systems past its end-of-life (dangerous because malicious actors can exploit unpatched vulnerabilities even if it's not in use) or look for workarounds elsewhere on the web (dangerous because third-party downloads are likely to contain malware).

Also, I believe running two completely different versions of Farmerama simultaneously puts additional strain on the servers, which may have been contributing to some of the performance issues we had been seeing in both Unity clients (standalone and WebGL) prior to Jan 12.

 

I thought I had removed all Flash from my 4 year old laptop on night of the 11th.....not sure i did it completely. Unity and Client were miserably slow, glitchy etc. Then, last night my computer went black....couldn't log in to anything. Same this morning.
Thankfully, hubby had a new laptop he isn't using....so I fired it up today....used chrome on Unity....voila!!!!!! Game is working fantastic!!!
So maybe a new computer is the answer...or BP suddenly improved Unity.
Either way....I'm very happy!

 

I was finally able to use the Market today and listed manure for sale at $1200.00. The sale appeared to be normal but then when I checked it on the Market listing my items were listed at $961.14. There was no indication before submitting the offer that it was going to be at a lower price--I input 1200.00 and it showed 1200.00 as being submitted until I got to the market listing of the manure offers for sale.

I also offered 10 separate lots and when I checked there were only 3 listed -- I did receive the money for them so they apparently sold out right away. As far as this sale is concerned this is not a problem but when it comes to rare animals, trees, etc. where the price is really high I would like to know before the offer is made what the price is going to be listed as. I don't think this is the way it is supposed to work--just another bug in Unity.

 

Appart from other issues still remaining which I don't bother to repeat again gifting in Unity is royal pain due to slow response.

 

Thank you for changing the neighbour/friend system back to the old way. So much easier to send any gifts (including pantry items) to our neighbours without having to search (and sometimes never find) their exact names.
Some more feedback, mostly trivial things as my main problem has been sorted!

Writing IGMs is better. When replying, the text of the original IGM was blue (as it would be if over-writing something) and it was hard to find the place to begin the reply. Editing was practically impossible. It is easier now but if you try to edit something in another paragraph the cursor doesn't seem to line up properly and it is not possible to land on the right text to edit.

I have also noticed that you cannot go to certain areas (Pet Playground for instance) with one click. It seems to refresh and then you need to click again. I have just tried to duplicate this to describe it better and I managed to get into Pet Playground with one click so this only seems to occur when you haven't been into it before.

I am finding Unity more and more user friendly. All your hard work is really appreciated ... we all knew it was going to be tough but look at where we are after little more than two months. Thank you!

 

The client works but with limitations, no refreshing; you have to quit and go back in, default position in every function means you have to go back and click it to raise/lower when using the side bar. Freezing my computer is an issue. the Unity takes a bite out of processor usage that is too high up to 85% meaning no other programs will work smoothly, I cannot use it and expect to be in a good mood. I'm trying the tiny screen for now and doing once or twice a day if time permits. Events are off the table, this is too small of a screen to get into the game. I'm losing interest in doing this, it's a chore to harvest, a chore to load. The game is now like watching a turtle race.

 

Why can't I open my crates? Any help would be grateful.

 

You should probably post this in the help section instead of feedback.

 

If that's the case, then it would really be a bad idea to keep a Flash version running.

****

That brings me back to the key issues for smooth playing that have not yet been fixed after several months of too many players having reported them too many times. In my opinion, not hearing back from anyone about them and see them go on making our game experience miserable shows, at the very least, a serious disregard for what players are actually thinking and suffering. They could tell us why they haven't solved them yet, they could tell us if and when they expect to have them resolved. But, nothing, silence.

Silence opens the door to guessing and speculation. And, so, all those who think not enough work has been done, or, at least, not well enough, are justified to think that for the reason they may choose. That's the direct result of no feedback. One must wonder if that is a clever choice...

Performance has improved, though many performance problems persist (to name just a couple: both having to click several times on a field to get into and the game freeze and slow down when you activate dozens and dozens of buffs in a short time window are most probably a memory handling design problem). I'm sure that performance problems will eventually be solved and that's why I did not mention in my previous posts any performance problems.

But eventual good performance with still poor functionality is a bad marriage. They don't get along.

One possibility would be that they invite some of the players who have reported these key smooth-playing problems (many of which may be apparent to a handful of players only, when performing complex operations in a short time window) to perform specific sessions with developers to show them exactly what the problems are and when they get especially cumbersome (because I bet that developers don't play the game and, therefore, simply don't know....).

Brooke, I have a very powerful new computer and one of the best commercially available Internet connections (1 Gbps fibre) and I still have performance issues like the two I mentioned before. So, they still have a long way to get to a truly well performing product.

So far, what I see is that Unity, as is, disunites us. And their silence doesn't help.

 

Wouldn't it be nice if the "powers that be" would make a running list of issues and add to it as new issues are discovered and cross them off as they are fixed. That way, we would know that they know what issues are being experienced and we would know when something has been solved/fixed or at least reported. I don't know about anyone else, but I get all cross-eyed when I try to read through all the posts of issues other people are experiencing, just trying to find out if anyone has reported the same issues I am having.

It would be nice. if we are going to have continuous back to back events, if they were kept easy to medium difficulty events (or long running ones,) so that more people would play them, and more issues could be discovered with less stress for all. I don't think the rewards for them need to be higher level earners (though it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were) so the lower level players would be encouraged to play and stick with the game through all these growing pains of switching to the new Unity platform.

 

I completely agree with you, tlcsquared!

 

That would be a full time job in itself.

I was pleasantly surprised when I logged in this morning that the game is working beautifully, and fast. There are still some issues with certain graphics not loading at all, but the speed was greatly improved. It may not last long, but it was there and I just want to say thanks to the Devs as we are definitely seeing progress.

 

Unfortunately for at least 8 hours out of the day I have to use my Android phone to participate in my farm. I always use the Puffin browser and had successful luck doing this for a long time. Today, while trying to play on my phone, it took me at least an hour and a half to get through my all my farming chores when normally I could get this done in 10 to 15 minutes using Flash in the past.

I am glad that I can still play using my phone; however, could you please remove the larger timer button? It covers the farm map arrow so one has to guess where to click to leave the page. With things moving so slowly, sometimes I would be waiting for no action to happen because I wouldn't know if I successfully clicked the arrow or not. Hopefully this image works to show what I am talking about. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PJ5EUCK7e76dxZvn7

Also, I found that the main field was never available when first logging into the farm. It would act like it was loading but then just quit. If I go to another field and then come back to the main field, it would usually load.

I greatly appreciate the change to the friends list and gifting. A great step in the right direction. I was able to gift as I normally do with no issues on any platform.

 

It's lonely over here with the 'Stand Alone Client', can't go to the forum or buy anything from the bank, there's no wood border/ farmerama logo or refresh toggle... but it sure is fast! Had to come over to slow Unity to buy and post.

But I'm still here!!