Farm Story Events and Challenges

[Rynetory2]

Please put the name of the event at the top of your post if you are giving feedback for specific event.
Thank you for your feedback.

[spring_peeper]

Thank you rynetory2 for suggesting I post my issues in this section. Hopefully you are right and TL takes suggestions seriously.

I play Farm Story 2 as a fun little hobby. I like how I can figure out what needs to be crafted for deliveries or what I need to level up or purchase something. I do not spend more than a few hours playing this game a day. That's fine, with the time certain items need to grow or be crafted, I can play at this rate and still grow my farm.

There have been a few events in the past that have been doable for someone who plays as much as me. Granted, I don't know if my gameplay is average or not, but I'm assuming a vast majority of players have daily commitments (and enjoy sleeping at night) that prevent them from being on their device all day long (and setting timers at night). With a *slight* increase in my playing time and some thought put into my farm, I was able to complete the challenge.

I think I speak for a lot of players when I say these events are getting out of control. I'm going to use this recent grape growing event as an example. For starters, I do not agree with having a permanent fruit/vegetable/crop producing item available through the purchase of gems. This defeats the purpose of the game. There will be many orders that need to be discarded for players that do not have the luxury of spending 99 gems on a crop bearing item. Spending gems on cats or decorations makes more sense, but in order to advance in this game, one is required to harvest crops, craft items and complete deliveries. I'm sure a great suggestion would be to either buy the grapes in the market or discard the orders and craft other items. But why should we have to do this? I don't have access to cranberries yet, and I can't buy them in the market. Furthermore, the guilded vine only gives a few grapes every few hours. I'm doubtful the people who have these are going to be selling an abundance of grapes.

Sure, we can achieve the permanent grape vine by completing the challenges and goals. I ask you, how do I do this? Please TL, give us some words of wisdom. With my play rate and the low and inconsistent drop rate for grapes, I cannot mathematically complete this challenge. My options (as with the majority of the events) are as follows:
-play 24/7 and set timers to wake up every two hours to collect grapes.
-play 24/7 with hopes someone is selling grapes.
-give TL money to buy gems to speed up the process.
-give TL money to buy the guilded grape vine thing.

I am frankly rather tired of hearing these events are based on luck. Even so, I can't see how this event is beneficial from luck. It's just poorly planned.

When will TL actually plan an event with careful thought and consideration? Maybe in the future, events can be based on s**** and having us players actually view the event and try and come up with a game plan on how to achieve the final goal. For example, let's take those events where your progress is measured in percentages based on collecting items. From what I found, you can craft items that take extremely long to craft or require a ton of ingredients, and the progress bar moves up 2%. Come on, this is common sense. Unless the end goal of these games is to get people to spend money on gems.

Put some thought into future events so players actually get to put some thought into how they are going to achieve the goal! Make us think about how we are going to plan our crop harvesting and crafting. Don't reward effort randomly or by pure "luck". Please stop making these events achievable mainly by purchase of gems. Make an event that makes us think and plan. Be fair but make it challenging. I like a challenge that I know I can complete, but one that will require an effort. I abhor a challenge that I can already tell I will fail due to the poor execution of the event.

Wouldn't it be great if for this event, instead of winning a SINGLE item (or purchasing a SINGLE) item to grow grapes, it was tiered towards grape production. For example, the first few days of the event could be spent doing things to actually win a PERMANENT bare-bones grape vine. This vine will produce one grape every two hours. But, now have other challenges and goals to improve that grape vine. Maybe after completing the next few goals, you could upgrade to a vine that produces two grapes every two hours. Maybe the final set of goals would produce two green and two red grapes every two hours.

Same with the other challenges. Let's say the end goal is a pet. Cool. So let's say the very first thing needed is to purchase something from the market needed to ultimately complete the challenge. Players would then have to sell some items and complete some deliveries to buy the item (and not something worth 50,000 coins either, perhaps 2500-5000). So some can buy this right away while others will have to play for a few days to get the item. BUT, in the meantime, they can also be doing other things to keep moving with the challenge. This would allow a player to PLAN and THINK without having to give up everything else in the game and purchase gems.

All I ask TL is for you to put more thought into these challenges. That's all.

[PookieBear50]

RE: St. Patrick's Day Event 2016

Although I believe I can understand the reasoning for the highly limited drop rate for the Lucky Coins for this event, judging from the complaints in the event thread I think everyone would be happier if drop rates were made more player-friendly.

Taking the Mine for example, if drop rates for all the possible items remained relatively consistent between normal play and event play, I think players would be more satisfied. Obviously, something needs to give to accommodate the inclusion of a new item for the event, but making already difficult to obtain items even more difficult to get is really stacking the odds against the players, and is more likely to drive them away than encourage them to continue.

The Mine in my game, for example, seems to primarily be a silver mine, in that I seem to get more silver out of it than anything else. That's fine, except that when I actually need silver for an event, it suddenly becomes strangely rare. Consider: during normal play, my mine's output seems to be (just tossing numbers out) maybe 30% iron, 40% silver, 15% gold, 5% rubies, and 10% everything else (coins, gems, tools, etc.). Adding an event item (in this case, emeralds) would of course mean adjusting the numbers, but it seemed like, rather than decreasing the most easily dropped percentages (iron and silver), these were instead boosted, and an already difficult to obtain item (gold) was further decreased to accommodate the emeralds...so that the new percentages were more like 35% iron, 45% silver, 2% gold, 5% rubies, 5% everything else, and 8% emeralds.

Perhaps referring to these percentages as "output" is wrong, though that seems to coincide with what I was getting. Perhaps, instead, these are the odds of finding something in the mine? Because again, I was getting more emeralds than gold, and a lot more iron and silver than either. I even found more rubies than I did gold. And of course, the Lucky Coins were rarities as well, tossed in among the "everything else" category, which would account for their scarcity as well.

I won't say anything about the Fishing Hole, because I really don't understand that place at all, what with me pulling out Catfish and Bass repeatedly with just Dough Baits and Spicy Baits at times hooking only an Anchovy or two.

The drop rates of the Lucky Coins needs to be improved as well, or at least next time give us an opportunity to CRAFT our own Lucky Coins. During one of the first Prize Machine events, the 2nd Birthday Celebration, we were able to craft the needed items to use the Prize Machines. Although it was incredibly time consuming, at least we needed to trust in luck only once--when we used the machine--instead of twice as with this event, in which we must not only trust to luck with the machine, but also in our somehow obtaining a Lucky Coin to use with the Machine. In this instance, I would have suggested--after NOT tampering with the drop rate of Gold in the Mine--that we need to find Lucky Clovers and combine them with gold in the Jewelry Maker. At least here, while we must trust in luck to get the Lucky Clover, at least we could quickly grow more Clovers and keep hoping for the Lucky Clover to show up.

Please consider these suggestions for future events. Thank you.

[kellanrevere]

Great post ! Thank you .

[jumpsforjoy1]

I have earned the foal on my daughter's game and will have the foal on my game in just 2 more collections from the Spring Meadow event April 2016. I am not sure if anyone from Storm 8 ever reads our comments but on the off chance they do I am hoping they will give a lot more thought into the next event that they run.

I play games for fun and relaxation and I am willing to spend money on my games. I enjoy the challenge of an event. But this event was downright grueling and monotonous, sending delivery after delivery after delivery only to not get any upgrade parts. Buying both regular and deluxe bird houses that out of 10 bird houses would yield as few as 2 or 3 upgrade parts. Stormie showing up in our neighbors shops and buying up upgrade parts. All of this has made me very unexcited about the game and very reluctant to partake in the next event.

I get the fact that Storm 8 is out to make money but we deserve better than as shoddy of an event that this has been. Storm 8 also needs to take into account how much people might possibly be willing to spend to reach a goal in an event. My threshold is $15. Storm 8 needs to realize that for as little as $7.99 a month I can subscribe to Netflix and have an entire month's worth of entertainment. When you begin to think about how you will spend your entertainment dollars, events run by Storm 8 do not make much financial sense no matter how cute the prize is especially when the event requires so much of one's time and patience to complete.

[stm4522]

Spring World Event. April 2016
This was probably the worst event that I have played in FS2. Very disappointing to work and work and no upgrade parts for days! Not a fun event at all. The only positive I had was building up my supplies and getting lots of coins earned from selling my goods. Poor results from Storm 8 personnel as usual. No changes and certainly no answers to everyone's questions.

[Grannaville]

Spring World Event 2016 - long time player - I'm very disappointed in this event. Like the other players, I've played continuously and scoured the newspaper constantly for upgrade parts.....to no avail. Pathetic! I will not be able to achieve the goal, but certainly not for lack of effort. TL, this is not the way to improve reviews or keep current players. I'm giving serious consideration to one of the other similar games that I keep seeing in the ads.

[PookieBear50]

Spring World Event 2016

Although I was able to fully upgrade my tree and achieve the goal, it would not have been possible had not some players who chose not to participate in the even, contacted me and sold me whatever upgrade parts they received. It would have been extremely difficult--most likely impossible--to complete, as I would be trying to play while working around a job and sleep.

I would suggest that, for future events, the drop rate of upgrade parts be tweaked a bit. I do not know what algorithms are used to determine how frequently parts are dropped, but I would suggest increasing it by at least 0.5% to 1.0%. I would also suggest not preventing players who fully upgrade their trees from assisting others by allowing them to continue to receive upgrade parts that they can sell. On the one hand, I can understand the desire to have players purchase packs that give them the upgrade parts and/or gems to purchase gems to advance the upgrades without collecting upgrade parts. On the other hand, the low drop rate has likely generated more negativity than good will with players.

Perhaps the opinion was that the longer event period would justify the lower drop rate, and there might be some validity to that. However, I think the drop rate was lowered too far, resulting in difficulties in completing the event. I think the next couple of events will need to be much simpler and easier, to earn back the interest and trust of the new and old players who were angered and frustrated by this one.

[spring_peeper]

Oh man, I didn't know Stormie was buying up the upgrade parts from other farms. That says a lot right there.

I'm sure this next May Flowers event is already planned but it would be the perfect event to gain some good will back with the players.

TL needs to realize a few things for every event:
-players cannot devote 24 hours a day to this game.
-players do not want to spend a lot of money (or any money for that matter) to win a prize.
-maybe I'm speaking based on my thoughts here, but most players (I assume) want a challenge that is fair.

It is possible to change drop rates. Remember the event a few years ago when "Piper was stealing the shears to cut Morgan's hair" or something like that? After a bunch of unhappy players posted about the drop rates, they suddenly increased.

Could it be possible that instead of assigning random drop rates to deliveries, have a specific item drop when a specific item is crafted and sent? Take the last event for example. What if garden gloves dropped when cornbread was sent in an order? Maybe the rake would drop if scarves were crafted and sent? That would add an element of thought to this whole process. Just don't go and never have these things in delivery orders, that would defeat the purpose of it all.

[kooky panda]

Oh man, I didn't know Stormie was buying up the upgrade parts from other farms. That says a lot right there.

Please note that stormie will buy items that have been up for sale for some time. He does not buy immediately.
If you have had stormie buy an upgradeable part from you, please let me know what item he bought and how long you had it up for sale so I can report this over.