New Release -- December 22nd, 2009 - UPDATE

[teemufan13]

I am happy that you are going back to the old version the new versions was very frustrating when i tried to harvest today. However limiting the amount of peopel we can hire should be left up to each farmer. I am with sassy kathy who has neighbours that meet at eachothers farms to help harvest and catch up. If you limit the number of farmers we can hire then we can not get together at our neighbours farms. I have gone to farms that are small, medium or large and they may have to many people harvesting that it looks like caous. I simply tell the farmer thank you for the hire it looks like you have more then enough workers and leave the farm. It should be our choice to stay or go. I think the limit is not fair to those that have farm parties. But a fire button which has been requested over and over would be a good idea.

thank you again for going back to the old version, and for listening to our concerns. you guys rock. trisha

[kensfreedom]

I have been playing this game for a long time now (level 60, over 440,000 XP) and have seen many upgrades. Personally after trying several hiring schemes over time, I have found for me it works best to hire one person at a time and give them all the work I have at the moment. Harvesting and plowing. I have observed that 99% of the time everyone I have hired to work the whole farm is happy to make the maximum amount of coins that can be made from completing the job. Rarely have I run across people that do not have time to do the whole farm. When I used to hire multiple people so that the job would get finished faster it resulted in people arguing over work, people quitting and having to hire more. Ultimately it takes more time to get a job done then hiring only one person. For a while I refused to hire anyone from the market and only did my own work or higher neighbors. I lost too many coins by doing it myself. I would like to see the ability to allow a single worker to harvest or plow multiple fields like we can when we do our own work. This would speed up the work. As it only takes a couple min to cover a large farm 32x32 plots is 1024 plots on a farm with nothing else. When allowed to harvest or plow 4 plots with every click you only have a maximum of 256 mouse clicks to harvest the largest farms. Results in very little time to get a farm harvested and plowed. By allowing only one person to be hired at a time will result in more work being available at the MP. By allowing that one person to work multiple plots with each mouse click results in more productive work.
I also rarely accept job offers at the MP because it is too much of a hassle to work a farm with several others for very limited pay.
Thank you for reading and considering my post.

[Sapai]

Originally Posted by crodgers

I would be in favor of reasonable limits such as:

Max 4 workers at any given time on the largest size farm; prorate it down for smaller farms (somewhere drop to 3, somewhere drop to 2, smallest farm max at 1). Any mix of workers, but the max only limiting workers. People visiting you on your farm don't count against the number of workers.

If we do get limited, it would REALLY be nice to have a Fire option that would reset their screen back to their own farm, ending the hire. That way, you don't end up with someone really slow or distasteful working for you beyond what you are willing to put up with.

I don't like the idea of this 'Fire' option. Someone else suggested just blocking that player; and that sounds like the reasonable solution.

If you do happen to fire someone, they are bound to lose coins or points. No matter how bad they are, it is not fair to not pay them for the work they have already done. How would you like your coins to be rolling and look up and you're standing in your own farm?

I don't think the developers want that headache. It really isn't up to game developers to settle disputes between players. We need to exercise our adult maturity. Don't you think?

[PollysFarm]

Too many workers on a farm is the problem of the one who hired them! If you fix the servers so they actually will SAVE, there is no problem getting your points. I wouldn't recommend limiting the hiring to only one . . . some of these farms are 'crops only' and are HUGE! Thank the Lord you're going to eliminate this new harvesting/plowing routine! I can't even describe how BAD it is!!! Thanks for listening!

Originally Posted by Raul

Hi There,

We have been monitoring you feedback and most likely we will be reverting to the old version early tomorrow and try to find a better compromise.

One of the alternatives that we considered was to only allow one worker harvesting and one worker plowing on your farm at the same time. This was also suggested by several other users on the other thread, however we thought that was going to be even more problematic.

Please provide some feedback about this other alternative on this thread, or if you rather prefer the way it was before, unlimited hiring, faster work but more potential for collisions and lost coins/XP.

thanks

--Raul

[shadman]

i reallllllly like the hiring one person thing ! a much better fix to the problem !!!!!!woohoo !!!!!! it is crazy hiring 10 people for a lil crop just to let people go at each other . or a max of 2 even would be awesome ! but anything other than what was done .
it is trying because the avatar does not teleport like you said it would either . and i still get run over with other avatar's being greedy as you said .so it did not fix that issue at all!
i have a huge farm and only ever hire 1 or two workers , ever cause i know what a pain it is to harvest or plow with more than that . it's a wonderful solution !!!!!!!!]
cause i am a level 40 with 5.6 mil in coins and am ready to quit if things stay like this .

[anotherfarmer]

I just came here to see what is happening today and now I know why and must say I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy its going back to old version, i would have given up otherwise........... wooohoooo cant wait

[kensfreedom]

I might also suggest that you could have an option of if a farmer hires only one person to do there work that one person can work multiple plots with each mouse click. How ever for farmers that think it is better for them to hire multiple people to do a job their employees are only allowed to work one plot per click. This allows for most everyone to do what works best for them.

[Ree Lynn]

I am basically in complete agreement with most ppl. I do NOT like the changes in the 12/22 update. Some of us have families & jobs & can not spend close to 2 hrs at a time trying to farm. I have been playing since the beginning & actually took a break from the game for a while because it took so long to work a full farm before the queing was introduced. Then the Devs gave us that great gift & I came back & fell in love with the game all over. Some of us have to log in on our lunch breaks or between dealing with personal life stuff to get as much done as possible on our beautiful farms. We don't have time to wait 45 mins or longer for our employee to harvest & plow just so we can start planting again. Now in saying that...YES, I know that I could hire more than one person to work on my farm to speed up the process, but I prefer to hire neighbors as I am guilty of being greedy for one, plus I enjoy hiring my neighbors to help friends out that are saving for the same things I am. I do hire from the market on occasion but mostly from my neighbor list. In my opinion that's kinda the perks of being my facebook/farm town buddy, we work together & help each other. We enjoy getting together & chatting. When I hire from the marketplace, we don't usually talk which in turn makes the long process of the new update even more boring.

I really like the idea that a few people ahead of me brought up about allowing the amount of employees you can hire to be based on the size of farm you have if that's possible. It gives you something to work towards, just like when you first start you can't use all the plow options, or you have to have so many neighbors before you can hire. You'll have to earn it. So then we won't run into the situation of having the smallest size farm with 10 people all trying to work on it. But don't make it so a huge 2 farm player can only hire one or two people. If you get hired & don't want to work with that many people, leave & go back to the market place, you only lost a minute or less of your time. I personally have been one of the people that has lost coins & xp and to tell you the truth that really didn't bother me personally. I can see how others might be upset & I don't hold that against them. I have a gaming tower, keyboard & mouse that I have spec'd for my hard core mmorpg's with a speedy connection. It is most likely my own fault that I lost out on coins & xp for being skilled at fast farming, I have no issues personally with being punished for that by the small amount of loss I may receive, but I am NOT pleased with being punished for it by having to play the game at a snails crawl. When I work on a farm that has many other employees there also, I pick a corner do a few rows, say thank you & move on. I know that their are others out there that may plot steal but those of us that don't shouldn't have to feel tempted to leave the game because of the changes that were made to try to solve that.

I know that most people say, "It's a free game, just relax". Well some of us actually donate to the game through paypal on a reg basis to buy FarmCash, so when I think about all the real life money we have spent on a game that we may no longer have the time to play is rather heart breaking. I had decided to leave the game again due to this so I am very GRATEFUL that you are changing it back so I can stay. We don't mind donating to help support a game that we enjoy playing but if it's a chore to log & get our crops before they rot, then we won't enjoy it & will not continue to play. It was nice to see the Devs attempt to try something else to fix the problems, but the bad out weighs the good this time. It's great that the Devs are willing to listen to us & revert back when need be, unlike most of the other apps on facebook...kudos to you!! )

[HarleyHere]

"Hello Farmers! In order to minimize lost XP/coins we did some changes to the way the game works when you are hired, but we are restoring the old version sometime today due to popular demand. Thanks."


I'm here BEGGING that the old version NOT be restored...it's so much easier & faster the way it currently is & harvesting & plowing is so much faster & easier on the wrist too...PLEASE do NOT revert back!!!!!

[shiylo]

Raul my very point just happen I higherd one person to do 50 plants and it took 45 min just to get it harvested still not done all my friends are sleeping but I am a die hard so here I sit and if I couldn't rehire they would all die was out working also and nothing but crashes with avitars this is just way out of control so glad you rolling it back but my question is now if we have a number we can higher and we know no one who maybe on at the moment and get someone like I just did what can we do about it we will loose crops and time who care at this point on the money well I can say that because I am a die hard but to other it is alot but I also don't want my crops to die we need to be able to do a good higher and not depend on the first higher,Thanks for hearing our words to put the game back how it was now if we can only fix the huge tools and get real about the people we can higher so greatful for the game glad it is coming back to normal have you watched what is going on out their pretty funny now that we know it is going back to normal never have I seen so many Avitar crash into each other to funny ...glad this update is going to be gone soon...Oh and my 50 plots still not done she is just their doing nothing but walking backwards....LOL gotta go do something or loose them ...