Feedback Winter Calendar

The prizes were nice... thank you. My "baby farms" were ever so happy to pay a couple BBs to get those first few days of missed prizes as the farms didn't exist when the calendar started (and each week cost more BBs if you missed a day). So I'm thinking it's all relative.

I remember a time when if we missed a day - too bad, so sad, you missed it, you couldn't fix it at any cost. So there is that. BP could go back to that... or as Mir85 said, we can choose whether or not we feel it's worth the cost in BBs - if it's something we want, we pay. If not, let it go.

 

I agree. They have definitely made the prizes unworthy of spending BBs just to get them. However I think they also realise that there are a lot of players who like to get involved and don't want to miss out, and for every player who decides the item isn't worth the BBs there will be a player who wants to be a part of it and will spend the BBs just for the sake of inclusion and involvement. I personally think it's pretty poor form to charge people for having a life outside of the game.

Additionally, one can in fact log in "every day" and miss a prize, depending on their time zone. For example - I live in Melbourne, Australia (currently on fire). For me, the "new day" starts at 10:00am - that's when the clocks hit midnight CEST. If I log in for 30 minutes on Monday at 9:00am, and my next login is at 10:30am on Tuesday, I have logged in on both Monday and Tuesday but have missed Monday's gift, because I was too early on Monday (not yet Monday CEST) and the clocks had already gone past midnight to start Tuesday when I log in at 10:30am the following day. And so despite doing my due diligence and being a good customer and logging in every day, I could very easily "miss" a day and be forced to pay (this didn't actually happen to me, but it is an example of a very conceivable scenario that others may face).

Making people pay for not being available in the game-prescribed 24 hour window (despite claiming the item is a gift) is a sneaky moneymaking move at the best of times. At Christmas, a time for charity, generosity, thanks, appreciation and kindness, it is entirely against the spirit of the season.

 

It's all a matter of popularity for BP. I play Zoomumba, the advent calendar was completely free. You could log in Christmas day and open every day for no BB equivalent.

That said, it does have lots of minors that play that game compared to this one. Personally, I would prefer it be free if I miss a day, but the astronomical increase of BB's is ridiculous.

 

Disagreeing with -Mir85- because you think an implicit statement takes precedence over an explicit statement is what I would describe as "twisting yourself into a pretzel" or, at the very least, "bending over backward". I'm sorry if you disagree.

"Obsess" may have been too strong a word. What I should've said was "why fixate on the use of the word 'gift' ...". My bad.

I stand corrected on disagreement =/= argument.

The FAQ makes it clear that they are rewards and that there will be a penalty if you miss a day. I don't understand how that is "misleading advertising". How is it BP's fault if players choose to ignore certain parts of the FAQ?

Anyway, my point was that even if BP called the rewards "gifts" which took the form of presents, the purpose of the calendar is to get more people playing Farmerama more frequently so they can eventually make money off them, not to generate goodwill among their customers for the sake of generosity during the holiday season.

I didn't mean people had no reason to be upset even if BP had specifically called them "gifts". Had it not been for your reply to -Mir85-about how the FAQ totally says it's a gift when it doesn't, I would've stayed out of this thread and minded my own business.

When nwTrout1 said BP "would do well to remove this practice by changing their policy and actually rewarding their players", I thought they meant BP would have more success with customer retention and monetization if they removed the BB penalty from the calendar and just let players collect rewards whenever they want with no form of "punishment" whatsoever. I was just trying to take their comment to what I felt was its logical conclusion. But if I misrepresented what they said, I apologize.

If you can come up with a better system that will motivate players to log in every day, by all means, make a suggestion in the appropriate section of the forum. Please be a bit more specific than "listen to the players for once" though.

Still missing the point of the calendar... sigh. Their goal isn't to extract more money out of players in the form of BBs during Christmas - that would be an incredibly stupid way to make money. Their goal is to make the penalty high enough so that a player will think twice about staying away from the game for more than 24h at a time. Yes, they know most people are busy shopping (spending those sweet $$$ elsewhere) and spending time with family and friends. That's the point! They don't want people to spend all that time away from the game so they're trying to lure us back with rewards.

I agree 15 BBs for one day is way too high for what most would consider mediocre rewards, however.

Gonna peace out of this thread now...

 

I never said it took precedent. But it cannot be denied that the FAQ does state that the items are gifts. Even if we were to assume that only the bonus items are gifts (as explicitly stated in the FAQ), they would still require payment of any missed days - so would not be free. If in the one FAQ they are referred to as both a gift (inherently free) and a prize (must be earned), how are the players supposed to know which it is intended to be?

It is not an issue of what the players understand or are aware of - we aren't talking about making the mistake of missing a day and being surprised when you have to pay. We are talking about the appropriateness of making someone pay for something that, based on the wording used in the FAQ, should be free. The FAQ may state that payment is required if a day is missed, but that doesn't change the fact that they have called it a gift and are not treating it as such. Perhaps "misleading advertising" was the wrong phrase because it implies that players are unaware of the payment component. My point was that you cannot call it one thing and treat it as another; if they said "you get a free stable but you have to pay for it", I think you can see the issue there. That is the problem at hand. Just because you say it has to be paid for doesn't mean it is ok to make people pay for it - not when, by definition, it is meant to be free

Again, we aren't talking about the purpose of the calendar. I am well aware of what they are trying to achieve with offering it. My argument is that at Christmastime especially, perhaps they could take two seconds to stop thinking about their own pocket and show some generosity. We are talking about the morals of their actions, not the purpose.

nwTrout1 wasn't (in my interpretation) arguing that they should give us the carrot without the stick. Just that the policy should be changed in a way that didn't put players at odds with BP. The suggestion was that if they want more money and customer retention, they should actually make the players feel heard and involved and cared about. When you are constantly trying to grab money from people and ignoring all suggestions from players (more on that in a second), they aren't going to want to get involved. Rather than trying to entice us to log in every day to collect a few supergrow before we have to pay 15BB for them, perhaps they should get rid of the system where we have to be there to collect our gifts, and instead make us actually want to log in every day by making the game what we have repeatedly said we want it to be.

This is precisely what the issue is. Countless players have made countless suggestions for months, nay, years on end, in the player suggestion forum and in feedback threads. Almost none of it has been heeded. We ask for less events. We get more. We ask for more playfields. All we get is an event field that is almost never open for events. We ask for time to actually farm in between events. We get more events. We ask to pay less BBs for these calendars. We get charged more. We ask for more space to store our massive excess of givers. We don't get it. We ask for events to be more achievable so that those who play this free game for free can actually participate fully. They are made harder and less manageable than ever before. We tell BP that we are so fed up with being ignored that we are going to stop paying RL money. They continue to ignore us. These are just a few examples. So yes, I have made a suggestion in the appropriate section of the forum. Multiple times. I have made the same suggestion dozens of times in feedback threads. Nothing has changed. I started this game at an age where I didn't have access to my own online spending money. But at that stage, in 2010, I felt that when I did have access, I would spend money on this game. Now that I do have that ability, I have absolutely no desire to give a dime to BP. I love this game, but I despise the company. They are greedy, they ignore their players, and they have no desire to actually appeal to their players. So if they want my money, the best way to do it would be to make me actually like them - and they could start by not making me pay them because I was spending time with my loved ones.

Here are just a few examples of the endless times people have asked for fewer events and more space:
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/too-much-going-on.37177/#post-243852
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/expanding-field.37063/#post-242890
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/players-are-leaving-the-game.37022/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/empty-storage.36901/#post-242692
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/give-us-some-rest-please.35977/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/space-to-farm.36110/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/holiday-event-games-the-way-they-were.35299/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/give-us-a-break-please.34827/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/almost-had-enough.34089/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/player-frustration-with-events-lately.32645/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/we-need-more-mill-space.28834/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/new-field-and-events.31859/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/thre...rs-as-an-option-for-unlocking-new-land.30028/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/event-field.28180/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/another-field-for-decorations.28335/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/threads/the-future-of-farmerama-high-players-more-land-etc.25572/
https://board-en.farmerama.com/thre...er-level-players-aka-farming-continues.24756/
These go back as far as 3.5 years ago, and these are only from the suggestions forum (not feedback threads). They also don't cover many other common topics. We have been asking for these things for over 3 years and nothing has been done about it. And from my cursory glance at the other suggestions, almost none have been implemented.

Why can it not be both? Kill two birds with one stone. Get people to log in to the game and for those who still can't, make a pile of money off them buying BBs because they've spent all their stock opening gifts.

If people are so busy during the Christmas period that they wouldn't ordinarily log in if not for the calendar, what makes BP think they're going to stick around to harvest and take part in the events?

 

People, there are two and really only two ways to get bp to take notice.
1) Lack of participation, if players banded together on masse they will take notice.
2) Lack of income, a no shopping month would hurt the fading bottom line.
This game is basically 1M players with 40 accts each.
Start a fight back thread, the players controll this game we just have to get things done old school, like how girls got the right to vote.

 

I am not voicing an opinion here. I am too mad to even think about having one.

I'm just going to say what happened to me and my reaction to it.
BP can take it or leave it....but I will say that it has most definitely affected the amount of money I will NOT spend here any more.

I missed 3 days in a row during the last week. When I returned and saw three closed 'gifts', I was so tired I just clicked my way to the end thinking the price would be reasonable (5BB's ea. or less), and they would be the best ones(saved for last). When I saw that I had paid 15 BB's for ONE 'box', I was so shocked I just sat there looking at it. On Principle alone, I was so offended I have no words for it. I couldn't even look at the other ones, and have no idea what they were or how much I paid for them - they couldn't have added any more to the offensiveness of being robbed like that...all tied up in a pretty bowed ribbon!!
Had they each been 5BB's or LESS I would have felt like I had paid the price for my curiosity. But at 15 BB's for just ONE, and NOT all 3, - I feel I was definitely robbed. I don't even know how much I had to pay for the other two, as I thought BP would be 'fair' and 'reasonable' with them all and was too tired to be looking.

I actually 'trusted' BP!! How's THAT for stupidity?!!

And that is all I have to say about it, lest I sink to their moral (lack there of) standards.

 

Thank you all for the feedback provided.

Best regards,
teddy.bear

~ closing thread ~