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Announcement - "Moving Forward!"
CM_Hunter
Posts: 448
Hello Big Farmers,
In recent months there have been various issues in Big Farm, and this has had an impact on the game, the community and the team in a big way. As a result of this we have been, and will be making, further changes to the way we develop the game and communicate with you. We would also like to take this opportunity to mention how those changes will affect development in the future.
As some of you are aware, we are in the process of updating the game for HTML5. This has had an effect on our production as some team members must focus on this task so that we are prepared when Flash support is no longer a standard for modern web browsers. We would like to remind you that this is still a while off and we are not concerned about not meeting the deadline, but the earlier we can prepare the better the end result will be. We have no specific announcement about the switch to HTML5 just yet, except to say that we are working it and will have more information for you in the near future. As part of the team continues to work on the HTML5 version of the game, we are unable to dedicate quite as many resources to repairs and new features, but have considered our new process around this to provide us with time to provide better quality. We have no intent to shift focus from Big Farm and see a bright future for the game in HTML5!
As has been mentioned in the past, we are altering the entire production process we use to develop the game. Previously there were a lot of time constraints on the team, and due to that they had no option but to release features before they were in fact at a release-quality, in order to meet the deadline. This had a negative effect on everyone, but especially you as players. You received broken content, or content with glaring flaws in the design, or events which were too difficult to play even at their easier levels. We feel (and we know you do too) that many of the issues are avoidable ones given the time, and it is our intent to avoid them wherever we can.
Our new process allows more time during the design phase to prototype ideas, to iterate on the design and make changes. It should also allow us more time to catch issues in the design and bugs in the code that can be fixed, while providing us a little more space for getting feedback and input. And this does not just apply to the team behind the game, but all you players too! We intend to gather more feedback on key topics, utilising the forums and the test servers, to give you an advanced look at features before they hit the live servers. The system will take time to be fully implemented, and so we don’t expect that every new feature will see the test server, and smaller features already in development may not all go through the same iterative process as other future features - we still have a schedule that we need to try and stick to, though from now it will be planned around implementing these new features in our production cycle.
In addition to changes in how we make the game and collect feedback, we also want to alter our focus a little. We spent a little time with the moderators collecting some feedback from the forums, not just of recent issues and suggestions but going back in time a little too. We know there are some problems that have been in the game for a while, or suggestions that we have not been able to implement previously for various reasons. Together with the moderators we have come up with some pain points and suggestions from you guys that you would like to see in the game, along with pain points from the team themselves, including features we feel fell flat and processes we feel hindered our ability to work efficiently and with a focus on quality. While we will not go into great detail on all of those paint points, we would like to present you with a few of the things we feel need to change:
New Themed Events - We know many players feel these new events are too difficult. Though they are meant to provide a challenge, we would like to rebalance these events to make them a little easier and to prevent players being caught in a cycle where level 3 is the only available option for them and is too difficult as it is.
Deep Sea Fishing - This was an exciting new feature when it first arrived, but after some drastic changes, that were not handled by us in the best way, the feature lost a little of its shine. We would like to rework this feature in various ways, such as reworking the quests that introduce the feature to the player to make them more clear, tying the feature back into the main farms a little to give them more of a connection to each other, utilising the system of dangers and items associated with them in a fun but challenging way, and more! We are currently collecting your ideas and thoughts, so please click HERE to reach our Deep Sea Ideas thread, leave your thoughts and vote on other people’s ideas.
Gold Lock - It’s a golden oldie, but still an important one. Over the years, players have asked for a gold lock or some kind of mechanism to prevent accidentally spending gold. With the release of our portable little sister, Big Farm: Mobile Harvest, also came a gold lock feature that the BF:MH team added to the game. The Big Farm web team feel this is a long overdue feature, and would like to include it.
We have also received a lot of feedback lately that the game has become more and more competitive with each new update. Some players enjoy the simpler, less frantic events and features of the past. While this is not something that can be solved quickly or easily, we would like to carry this feedback in future designs.
The list is much, much longer but of course change takes time. We are committed to providing a smoother experience, more in-line with the player feedback we have received about the game. There are many areas of the game that we would like to revitalise or alter a little, such as the Village League, the Cat Tree and various other features and events. These will be planned in to be developed further in updates throughout the year, and while we cannot fix and update everything at once, we plan to take more time for getting the game into a far more enjoyable state.
And finally, a small piece of news on the Volcano Farm you have all been patiently waiting for. Our 4th farm will be coming to the game this year after a long wait, but we don’t want to rush anything! As part of our commitment to getting feedback, we will add the Volcano Farm to the test server (which we also intend to use a little more than in the past) later in the year, and we intend to use the server to help us test the feature. More news on this when dates are a little clearer, but keep an eye out for more news from us in the community team or your friendly, neighbourhood moderators.
In the meantime, the community team would like to thank each and every one of you for your passion to our game. It is truly a pleasure to have the community we do, who are so knowledgeable of - and dedicated to - Big Farm. We look forward to the coming year, to a better future and to getting your ideas and thoughts into the development process.
Happy Farming and all the best!
Your Big Farm Team
You can discuss this announcement HERE