FarmVille - Facebook Application
Getting worse every week! - FarmVille - Facebook Application Infotainment

Newest Review: ... plant will wither if you forget to harvest them, most of the time you will have to start again plowing these plots and lose the coins you ... more

Getting worse every week!
FarmVille - Facebook Application


Member Name: bettyboop2002


FarmVille - Facebook Application

Date: 20/08/12


Advantages: Good social game

Disadvantages: Too many technical issues

Farmville is one of many facebook games I have played over the years since I joined the site. I find myself coming back to it from time to time but soon getting sick of it again.

When the game starts you are presented with a farm, it is your job to place plots to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers. You are to plow the land, plant the seeds and then harvest them when they are ready.
You also buy animals and trees and harvest them when they are ready. The time animals, trees and seeds take to harvest varies depending on the species, for example strawberries can be harvested after 4 hours and watermelons take 4 days.

You can add neighbours and visit their farms to gain coins and experience and sometimes find gifts. You can send and request gifts to and from your neighbours. You now have the ability to add neighbours without having to be friends with them on facebook.

You progress to a higher level by gaining experience points. There are many ways to gain experience points (XP's) and here are a few examples:

Plowing a plot of land costs you 15 coins and gains 1 XP. You also gain XP's for planting seens, the amount of XP's varies depending on the harvest time ranging from 1XP to 10XP.
Each crop, tree and most animals have mastery rewards. For example if you harvest 200 plots of one type of plant you will reach mastery level 1 and receive a generous XP and coins reward, harvesting 500 will get you to level 2 and bigger rewards and harvesting 1000 will get you to mastery level 3 and larger rewards again. Seeds you plant will wither if you forget to harvest them, most of the time you will have to start again plowing these plots and lose the coins you spent on the seeds. Occasionally you may find an unwither spray which you can use to unwither crops and harvest them as normal.
The mastery levels also apply to trees and most animals although these will not wither.

You also gain XP by completing missions which are on the left hand side of the page, there are usually 2 or 3 requirements to complete a mission. One element of the task may require you to publish a request asking for an item. You will need neighbours to click these requests to give you the items you require. Another part of the task may require you to harvest a certain breed of animals so many times and another element may require you to harvest a certain amount of plants.
When the mission is completed you will receive coins XP's and a reward (this could be an animal or a decoration).

When you first start farmville the quickest way to increase your levels is by gaining ribbons. There are lots to get. Each type of ribbon has 4 levels.
You gain ribbons for the amount of neighbours you have, how many coins you have, coins spent, trees harvested, plots plowed, crops harvested, fertilising neighbour crops, the amount of animals you have, buying and placing decorations, placing fences, opening mystery eggs (found in neighbours' chicken coops) and many more. For each ribbon you achieve you will receive coins and lots of XP's.

You can either start a job yourself or join one which a neighbour has start. These jobs require you to set up a team and harvest a required amount of crops in a time limit to gain medals. For completing these jobs you receive coins, XP's and some kind of reward.

This is quite a new feature. There is a leaderboard for each task which changes weekly. You are to compete with your neighbours to reach the top of the leaderboard and receive XP's and rewards for moving up the leaderboard. The task could be to harvest a certain plant, to harvest the most trees, feed the most baby animals or craft goods in your workshop.

You will start with quite a small farm, but you can expand this as you go by paying coins or asking neighbours for help in expanding. You will also need to collect parts to create storage buildings to save space on your farm. There are many types of buildings now including a horse stable, dairy farm, chicken coop, orchard, duck pond, zoo and more.

You can also buy a tractor, seeder, harvester or combine harvester which is good for large farms as it allows you to seed and harvest multiple plots in one go.

You will receive bushels from harvesting plants and trees which will go to your workshop and market. This allows neighbours to buy bushels from you and you can buy bushels from your neighbours. You will need a combination of bushels to create goods in your craftshop. These goods can then be converted to fuel to use in your machinery.

I enjoy the game but the problem I have is that they have tried to add so much to the game to improve it and it's just too much to do. With these added features came more glitches and I frequently have to refresh the page as it freezes or something goes wrong.
You now not only have your home farm, you also have an english countryside farm, Lighthouse cove farm, Jade falls farm, winter wonderland and Hawaiian paradise. Each land is a new farm with different scenery and animals and you can either pause these while you are on another farm or let them running so you could have plants growing in every land.

When they added the first couple of farms I thought it was a good feature as I would use one for my trees, one for animals and one for crops. Now there are too many, sometimes it takes a while to travel between farms and it's too time consuming.
Another negative in this game is it is difficult for people with few neighbours to complete many of the tasks. Also some of the items in the market can only be bought with farm cash (FC). You receive 1 FC every time you reach a new level. Others use a credit/debit card to purchase FC so it would be very hard to catch up with your neighbours' level if they are spending money on items.

Overall I found it fun at first and tend to go back to it to kill boredom now and again but normally end up giving up again because it is either too slow or freezing up.
The application is also available as a mobile app for phones or tablets so you can tend to your farm on the go. I don't use this as my make believe farm isn't of that much importance to me.

I think this started out as a fun game and I used to enjoy competing to reach a higher level than my neighbours, but I think they have tried to add to much to the game which if anything has made it worse.

Summary: Worth a look to decide for yourself

Variety of features:    Variety of features
Reliability:    Reliability
User friendly:    User friendly
Installation:    Installation
Update possibilites:    Update possibilites

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