Just in time, FrontierVille has decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. While you're out hunting Leprechauns, you'll also work to complete this St. Patrick's Day Collection by finding five items. The five items include a Penny Whistle, Pint Glass, Shamrock, Hurley Stick (nice reference, Zynga) and a Celtic Harp. For completing the Collection, players will receive their very own Pot of Gold. So, get to hunting those Leprechauns and hope that luck (couldn't help myself) is on your side.
Pot of Gold
[Source and Image Credit: FrontierVille Legend]
Have you seen this Collection in your game yet? What's your plan to complete it as quickly as possible?
Thứ Sáu, 6 tháng 1, 2012
CityVille: Daily bonus now offers energy instead of coins
It seems that Zynga is looking to stick with their new energy policy in CityVille, as they have added yet another change to the game that will help users get a bit of extra energy when they play the game, without actually changing the new energy caps that have been put in place.
From this point on, the Daily Bonus reward (received for logging in daily without missing a day) will reward you with energy, rather than coins. For the first day you login, you'll receive a single extra energy, that will be added to your current energy bar, regardless of its current total. For the second day, you'll receive two free energy and so on, until the fifth consecutive day that you play, which results in the maximum reward of five energy points.
The other features of the Daily Bonus system haven't been changed - the counter still resets every five days, and you'll still have the same percent chance of receiving the Penthouse Tower on your fifth day as you did before.
Does this really help matters? For once, opinions over on the game's official forums seem to be mixed. While many users are claiming to appreciate the added energy, some are still upset by this meager offering. Take, for instance, user alterdstate, who seems to sum up the negative opinions fairly well.
They need to get rid of the really low energy limits before I will come back period. 1-5 extra energy a day DOES NOTHING when I have over 50 businesses, several houses and tons of ship and farmland.
We'll continue to bring you all of the news surrounding these changes if and when Zynga once again tweaks the energy system in CityVille in the future. It looks like the developer has a lot of work cut out for them, to convince upset users that their changes are worthwhile, and not lose them forever.
As always, we'd love to know what you think of these continuing changes in the game. Have you already quit playing CityVille due to the "death" of energy stockpiling, or was that never your method of play to begin with?
From this point on, the Daily Bonus reward (received for logging in daily without missing a day) will reward you with energy, rather than coins. For the first day you login, you'll receive a single extra energy, that will be added to your current energy bar, regardless of its current total. For the second day, you'll receive two free energy and so on, until the fifth consecutive day that you play, which results in the maximum reward of five energy points.
The other features of the Daily Bonus system haven't been changed - the counter still resets every five days, and you'll still have the same percent chance of receiving the Penthouse Tower on your fifth day as you did before.
Does this really help matters? For once, opinions over on the game's official forums seem to be mixed. While many users are claiming to appreciate the added energy, some are still upset by this meager offering. Take, for instance, user alterdstate, who seems to sum up the negative opinions fairly well.
They need to get rid of the really low energy limits before I will come back period. 1-5 extra energy a day DOES NOTHING when I have over 50 businesses, several houses and tons of ship and farmland.
We'll continue to bring you all of the news surrounding these changes if and when Zynga once again tweaks the energy system in CityVille in the future. It looks like the developer has a lot of work cut out for them, to convince upset users that their changes are worthwhile, and not lose them forever.
As always, we'd love to know what you think of these continuing changes in the game. Have you already quit playing CityVille due to the "death" of energy stockpiling, or was that never your method of play to begin with?
Thứ Ba, 3 tháng 1, 2012
Earn 2 free FarmVille Farm Cash in Dove Soap promotion
News flash: People like free things. Zynga knows it (to a point), which is why its released another FarmVille Sponsored Link. While we've yet to see it under our game screens, FarmVille Freak has all the details for the folks that do. Just click on the link with the Dove icon beneath your game and a pop-up will appear. Within is a short question next to a Dove advertisement video that reads, "What do you do to keep your skin beautiful?" Just type in a response, hit the "Next" button and the 2 Farm Cash should post to your account within an hour or so. Just remember not to close the pop-up window until you see the familiar confirmation in the upper right corner of the screen.
[Image Credit: FarmVille Freak]
Have you seen this Sponsored Link beneath your game screen? Do you participate in these promotions or do you avoid Farm Cash promotions altogether?
[Image Credit: FarmVille Freak]
Have you seen this Sponsored Link beneath your game screen? Do you participate in these promotions or do you avoid Farm Cash promotions altogether?
FarmVille scams are out of control; Zynga can stop them with Goals
It seems that at least once a day a new FarmVille scammer emerges, and we're always here to report the news, spread the word in warning. Unfortunately, that's about where our powers of prevention stop. Admittedly, I am no security expert, so suggesting methods for either Zynga or Facebook to track and thwart these scam artists is beyond my knowledge. However, the creators of FarmVille have one tool to impede the scammers' progress: the game itself.
Thanks to the release of FrontierVille, there has not been a more powerful feature at the hands of Zynga: Goals. In fact, these series of requirements guiding players into new content have been incorporated into every one of its games since. Even the original FarmVille has seen its fair share of Goals. These Goals make themselves known before the player can even resume their daily routine of farming or city management.
FarmVille Scam
It's been said that the ultimate prevention is education, and considering that stopping these scammers would be a job in itself, this is likely the best method to bring their impact to a screeching halt. Isn't this exactly what Goals do? They educate players in new ways to interact with features and content, most times without the player even realizing it. It's a brilliant method, really.
Zynga could easily create Goals detailing the dangers of News Feed scams and the like through all of its games. Of course, the Goals would have to be available to all players regardless of their progress. More importantly, they would have to be included in the first few levels of each for brand new players months from now to learn of the dangers of News Feed scams. Sure, some players are likely asking their computer screens, "How does fit in with the overall theme of the game?"
FrontierVille Goals
It doesn't nor does it have to. When is the last time the words "This doesn't fit with our theme" stop Zynga from introducing McDonald's to FarmVille? It sure didn't stop the company from adding a new building surrounding Intuit, the business website builder service to the game. (Not to mention a bear using a laptop within the loading screen.) So, somehow simulating a scam situation and tasking players with making the right moves to prevent its effects--and later spread--doesn't sound unreasonable.
How the Goals would look and play is entirely up to Zynga. In fact, this would be in the company's best interest, no? Surely the FarmVille scams have scared plenty of players away. Better yet, this would likely reduce call after call into Zynga customer support for something that's generally out of their control. But it doesn't have to be. Instead of releasing the next big feature, push it back and release some educational Goals--this is far more important than the next Crafting Building.
[Image Credit: Virus Removal Support]
Have you fallen victim to a FarmVille scam before? Do you think this would be helpful in preventing future successful scams?
Thanks to the release of FrontierVille, there has not been a more powerful feature at the hands of Zynga: Goals. In fact, these series of requirements guiding players into new content have been incorporated into every one of its games since. Even the original FarmVille has seen its fair share of Goals. These Goals make themselves known before the player can even resume their daily routine of farming or city management.
FarmVille Scam
It's been said that the ultimate prevention is education, and considering that stopping these scammers would be a job in itself, this is likely the best method to bring their impact to a screeching halt. Isn't this exactly what Goals do? They educate players in new ways to interact with features and content, most times without the player even realizing it. It's a brilliant method, really.
Zynga could easily create Goals detailing the dangers of News Feed scams and the like through all of its games. Of course, the Goals would have to be available to all players regardless of their progress. More importantly, they would have to be included in the first few levels of each for brand new players months from now to learn of the dangers of News Feed scams. Sure, some players are likely asking their computer screens, "How does fit in with the overall theme of the game?"
FrontierVille Goals
It doesn't nor does it have to. When is the last time the words "This doesn't fit with our theme" stop Zynga from introducing McDonald's to FarmVille? It sure didn't stop the company from adding a new building surrounding Intuit, the business website builder service to the game. (Not to mention a bear using a laptop within the loading screen.) So, somehow simulating a scam situation and tasking players with making the right moves to prevent its effects--and later spread--doesn't sound unreasonable.
How the Goals would look and play is entirely up to Zynga. In fact, this would be in the company's best interest, no? Surely the FarmVille scams have scared plenty of players away. Better yet, this would likely reduce call after call into Zynga customer support for something that's generally out of their control. But it doesn't have to be. Instead of releasing the next big feature, push it back and release some educational Goals--this is far more important than the next Crafting Building.
[Image Credit: Virus Removal Support]
Have you fallen victim to a FarmVille scam before? Do you think this would be helpful in preventing future successful scams?
Zynga's Brian Reynolds: Open Feint and Game Center are 'awkward'
Zynga' Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds recently met with Games.com - The Blog! to talk about FarmVille, Zynga and the state of the social gaming world.
Among other things, he talked about Zynga's plans (or seeming lack of plans) to take their Facebook games and make them playable on mobile phones. In short, Reynolds says that it has been difficult to recreate the social/Facebook experience on mobile because, well, no one's created a platform that does it right yet -- not even Open Feint and Apple's Game Center, which are the two leading game-centric mobile social networks.
Here's a snippet of the larger conversation:
Zynga has been slow to get its games on mobile. What's the philosophy behind that as a company?
Well, the philosophy up to now, or the obstacles up to now in the mobile space have been -- what I would say are -- ironic obstacles. Cause you think about it, that phone has all your contacts on it, you text people on it, and then you email, and they're all they're on the list. When you hit someone's name, it'll ask you whether you want to text them, or call them, or email them. It's right there on the interface. It's an inherently, natural, social device.
But, as they are built right now, there is a very high friction involved doing some of the important things to do in a social space. Even to do social networking, let alone social gaming. One of the way that Facebook makes it very efficient to network with people, to officially keep in touch with a lot your real friends from the history of your life, is for example, you can broadcast something to all your friends, and they have an easy way to comment or like it, or a very low friction, a quick 'Oh I like that!'. That's the social touch. 'Oh, I remember that person! Yeah, it's cool that they like this. I haven't talked to them in a while. Maybe I'll send them an e-mail!' And that doesn't exist really, correctly yet, on mobile. It's getting there. Slowly getting there.
What about OpenFeint and Game Center?
Yeah, those are all a little bit awkward. OpenFeint feels like multiplayer match-making, which is something... I'm not sure what even Game Center feels like. But what's really missing is I want to be running in Facebook where I'm just naturally playing the game and I can say to my friends: Hello! I'm doing this thing!' and 'Here's this cool thing I did!' or 'Here's this funny joke that the game just wrote for me!' or 'I made this!' You show your pictures on your mobile device. I want to be able to express myself, which the web games do really well, but can they make it so that it's easier for my friends to come see me express myself. There's just too much friction, but the friction is going away. And so the mobile is going to be a really big space for social.
Is Zynga interested in HTML5?
Yes, we're interested in HTML5. Obviously that's a technical word that brings up a whole bunch of technical and political issues.
Like, being able to play your games on any and all platforms.
Yes, we're thinking about all that stuff, and ultimately where we're driving to, is where that kind of social play going to be. We're not going to become just an app company that makes little solo games that you play. That's not what we're interested in. We're interested in the social stuff and so, we're always going to drive to where the social is, and that's where we're going to be. We're really excited about Words With Friends and having that, because that feels like real social interaction. You're playing with your real friends. They've taken a lot of the friction out, and I think more is going to go out. That's kind of the path forward.
Among other things, he talked about Zynga's plans (or seeming lack of plans) to take their Facebook games and make them playable on mobile phones. In short, Reynolds says that it has been difficult to recreate the social/Facebook experience on mobile because, well, no one's created a platform that does it right yet -- not even Open Feint and Apple's Game Center, which are the two leading game-centric mobile social networks.
Here's a snippet of the larger conversation:
Zynga has been slow to get its games on mobile. What's the philosophy behind that as a company?
Well, the philosophy up to now, or the obstacles up to now in the mobile space have been -- what I would say are -- ironic obstacles. Cause you think about it, that phone has all your contacts on it, you text people on it, and then you email, and they're all they're on the list. When you hit someone's name, it'll ask you whether you want to text them, or call them, or email them. It's right there on the interface. It's an inherently, natural, social device.
But, as they are built right now, there is a very high friction involved doing some of the important things to do in a social space. Even to do social networking, let alone social gaming. One of the way that Facebook makes it very efficient to network with people, to officially keep in touch with a lot your real friends from the history of your life, is for example, you can broadcast something to all your friends, and they have an easy way to comment or like it, or a very low friction, a quick 'Oh I like that!'. That's the social touch. 'Oh, I remember that person! Yeah, it's cool that they like this. I haven't talked to them in a while. Maybe I'll send them an e-mail!' And that doesn't exist really, correctly yet, on mobile. It's getting there. Slowly getting there.
What about OpenFeint and Game Center?
Yeah, those are all a little bit awkward. OpenFeint feels like multiplayer match-making, which is something... I'm not sure what even Game Center feels like. But what's really missing is I want to be running in Facebook where I'm just naturally playing the game and I can say to my friends: Hello! I'm doing this thing!' and 'Here's this cool thing I did!' or 'Here's this funny joke that the game just wrote for me!' or 'I made this!' You show your pictures on your mobile device. I want to be able to express myself, which the web games do really well, but can they make it so that it's easier for my friends to come see me express myself. There's just too much friction, but the friction is going away. And so the mobile is going to be a really big space for social.
Is Zynga interested in HTML5?
Yes, we're interested in HTML5. Obviously that's a technical word that brings up a whole bunch of technical and political issues.
Like, being able to play your games on any and all platforms.
Yes, we're thinking about all that stuff, and ultimately where we're driving to, is where that kind of social play going to be. We're not going to become just an app company that makes little solo games that you play. That's not what we're interested in. We're interested in the social stuff and so, we're always going to drive to where the social is, and that's where we're going to be. We're really excited about Words With Friends and having that, because that feels like real social interaction. You're playing with your real friends. They've taken a lot of the friction out, and I think more is going to go out. That's kind of the path forward.
FarmVille Blog explains more about Sheep Breeding
While the basics of Sheep Breeding in FarmVille's English Countryside are fairly easy to understand (check out our full guide if you've yet to begin), the aspects concerning which traits are carried down from which parent are a bit more complicated. While the basic phrase of "pattern comes from the father and color comes from the mother" holds true to a point, there is a whole possibility for variation with each and ever Lamb that you breed. To help clarify matters, Zynga has posted "a bit more on sheep breeding" over on the official FarmVille Blog.
First, for those users that have been "unlucky" enough to receive the same gender of Lambs three times in a row, you are supposedly guaranteed to receive a Lamb of the opposite gender the next time around. Unfortunately, this seems to be a bit more like "wishful thinking" than an actual guarantee, as users like myself are now on our fourth or fifth Lambs, all of which have been one gender or another (in my case, all females). This may just be because the "guarantee" has yet to roll out into the game's coding, so we'll give Zynga the benefit of the doubt here. In other news, Zynga says that while the patter does come from the "father alone," the colors of both the body and the pattern of each Lamb can actually come from both the father and the mother, which is entirely different from what the basic Sheep Breeding tutorial image claimed (that color came solely from the mother). In actuality, the color comes from both parents, and can deviate through a limited range of colors for variety. That is, in order to eliminate exactly identical sheep on your land.
Here's an image preview of what Brutus the Ram and a Brown Sheep could produce through four interactions, as an example.
Hopefully, this will help clarify some of the problems and issues users are having with Sheep Breeding in FarmVille. As for the mass amounts of Ewes that some of us are being "stuck" with, we'll let you know if that opposite gender guarantee actually does start to work in full.
Check out the rest of our English Countryside coverage right here.
Have you only received sheep of one gender, or are having trouble breeding the colors or patterns of sheep you want? Have these clarifications given you an ideas of what to change?
First, for those users that have been "unlucky" enough to receive the same gender of Lambs three times in a row, you are supposedly guaranteed to receive a Lamb of the opposite gender the next time around. Unfortunately, this seems to be a bit more like "wishful thinking" than an actual guarantee, as users like myself are now on our fourth or fifth Lambs, all of which have been one gender or another (in my case, all females). This may just be because the "guarantee" has yet to roll out into the game's coding, so we'll give Zynga the benefit of the doubt here. In other news, Zynga says that while the patter does come from the "father alone," the colors of both the body and the pattern of each Lamb can actually come from both the father and the mother, which is entirely different from what the basic Sheep Breeding tutorial image claimed (that color came solely from the mother). In actuality, the color comes from both parents, and can deviate through a limited range of colors for variety. That is, in order to eliminate exactly identical sheep on your land.
Here's an image preview of what Brutus the Ram and a Brown Sheep could produce through four interactions, as an example.
Hopefully, this will help clarify some of the problems and issues users are having with Sheep Breeding in FarmVille. As for the mass amounts of Ewes that some of us are being "stuck" with, we'll let you know if that opposite gender guarantee actually does start to work in full.
Check out the rest of our English Countryside coverage right here.
Have you only received sheep of one gender, or are having trouble breeding the colors or patterns of sheep you want? Have these clarifications given you an ideas of what to change?
FarmVille: England collections officially coming to Wishing Well
At the beginning of March, we brought you a FarmVille sneak peek image of what we thought would be a Wishing Well specifically designed for release on your English Countryside farm, but it turns out, you won't have to leave home to complete these England-themed collections, as your current Wishing Well will be updated in the future to include them.
If you click on your Wishing Well on your Home Farm, you'll receive the pop-up above, telling you that you only have a limited amount of time remaining to finish the Irish collections originally released alongside the Wishing Well, as new collections and prizes will be launching in the English theme soon. If this is an indication of things to come, it looks like the Wishing Well could be updated for all future events in the game, so it's definitely something to keep on hand.
Keep saving up your Lucky Pennies, and we'll make sure to give you a complete rundown of the available prizes in these new England-themed collections as soon as we know more.
What prizes do you hope are added to the England-themed collections in your Wishing Well?
If you click on your Wishing Well on your Home Farm, you'll receive the pop-up above, telling you that you only have a limited amount of time remaining to finish the Irish collections originally released alongside the Wishing Well, as new collections and prizes will be launching in the English theme soon. If this is an indication of things to come, it looks like the Wishing Well could be updated for all future events in the game, so it's definitely something to keep on hand.
Keep saving up your Lucky Pennies, and we'll make sure to give you a complete rundown of the available prizes in these new England-themed collections as soon as we know more.
What prizes do you hope are added to the England-themed collections in your Wishing Well?
Đăng ký:
Bài đăng (Atom)