.
Pink Ninja has already posted a blog on this topic (click here to read it). Since we have received so much feedback I wanted to try and write a quick note to you all as well.
First, let me say that we do listen to all your feedback. The thing that concerns me most in the forum posts I read is when somebody says “the mods and the devs don’t listen”. The mods work incredibly hard and spend an amazing amount of time reading and responding to threads on the forum. The rest of the devs and I also read the forums daily and spend a lot of time thinking about your feedback, talking about it and debating what it means to our plans for the game. We may not always immediately act on what you all say, but I hope people understand that we do always listen to the feedback and form our plans for changes to the game based on what we hear.
A lot of people are asking why we changed the factory and there are really three main reasons:
1. Make work more fun. One of the most common complaints since we’ve run YoVille is people saying “we want more jobs”. Our work system has always been one of the most boring and undeveloped parts of the game. Going into a factory and clicking a machine really isn’t work at all. Sweet Factory is a first cut at a more compelling work game that users could complete in 2-3 minutes per session (we don’t want you to be “cleaning ovens all day” like some of you say). We hope that it is more fun for people (we think it is), and we know it is more extensible so we can continue adding fun new features to it.
2. Allow users more choice to pick the schedule of when they work. The old work required you to work every six hours, so if you wanted to make the most money you had to set your alarm for every 6 hours and log in. If you weren’t able to come in 6 hours because you were at “real” work, then you missed out. Now we’ve allowed you to set your own schedule, so if you can’t play again for another 1 day you can bake cupcakes and make more money then if you only visited once a day with Widget Factory.
3. Allow users to on average make more money. A big part of allowing you to schedule your own work is really about allowing you to figure out how to make the most money (see Pink Ninja’s example in the fourth question). I hope people understand that we are NOT making you pay to play the game by buying ingredients. We are giving everybody 90 coins once per day in the Sweet Factory to spend on the ingredients and you can always make money from playing games or visiting friends. In our databases, we can watch how much money people are making from the factory. We are watching how much people are making on average based on how many times they visit the factory each day. I promise we will continue to make changes to the Sweet Factory until we are sure that both our most passionate users and our more casual users are actually making more money.
Finally, I’d like to thank people for playing our game and having patience with changes we make that you don’t like. I think you probably all appreciate that YoVille changes A LOT. We ship new items to the stores every week and often multiple times a week. We usually have new features every week as well, and every month there is usually one major change. We hope that you like this. It is definitely one of my personal favorite things about YoVille. I hope that you can trust that we are trying hard to make a great game for you. We will listen to your feedback and keep working at it. I would like to ask all of you to have an open mind and give the Sweet Factory a chance. Bake some goodies for a couple of days and see if you end up enjoying taking all your cookies, cupcakes or pies out of the oven. If you end up not liking it, I hope you’ll have some patience and stick with us. Maybe you’ll love the next set of items we ship or the next big feature we ship. We have a lot of great stuff coming up and the people that have been around for a year remember that Halloween is probably the best holiday of the year in YoVille
First, let me say that we do listen to all your feedback. The thing that concerns me most in the forum posts I read is when somebody says “the mods and the devs don’t listen”. The mods work incredibly hard and spend an amazing amount of time reading and responding to threads on the forum. The rest of the devs and I also read the forums daily and spend a lot of time thinking about your feedback, talking about it and debating what it means to our plans for the game. We may not always immediately act on what you all say, but I hope people understand that we do always listen to the feedback and form our plans for changes to the game based on what we hear.
A lot of people are asking why we changed the factory and there are really three main reasons:
1. Make work more fun. One of the most common complaints since we’ve run YoVille is people saying “we want more jobs”. Our work system has always been one of the most boring and undeveloped parts of the game. Going into a factory and clicking a machine really isn’t work at all. Sweet Factory is a first cut at a more compelling work game that users could complete in 2-3 minutes per session (we don’t want you to be “cleaning ovens all day” like some of you say). We hope that it is more fun for people (we think it is), and we know it is more extensible so we can continue adding fun new features to it.
2. Allow users more choice to pick the schedule of when they work. The old work required you to work every six hours, so if you wanted to make the most money you had to set your alarm for every 6 hours and log in. If you weren’t able to come in 6 hours because you were at “real” work, then you missed out. Now we’ve allowed you to set your own schedule, so if you can’t play again for another 1 day you can bake cupcakes and make more money then if you only visited once a day with Widget Factory.
3. Allow users to on average make more money. A big part of allowing you to schedule your own work is really about allowing you to figure out how to make the most money (see Pink Ninja’s example in the fourth question). I hope people understand that we are NOT making you pay to play the game by buying ingredients. We are giving everybody 90 coins once per day in the Sweet Factory to spend on the ingredients and you can always make money from playing games or visiting friends. In our databases, we can watch how much money people are making from the factory. We are watching how much people are making on average based on how many times they visit the factory each day. I promise we will continue to make changes to the Sweet Factory until we are sure that both our most passionate users and our more casual users are actually making more money.
Finally, I’d like to thank people for playing our game and having patience with changes we make that you don’t like. I think you probably all appreciate that YoVille changes A LOT. We ship new items to the stores every week and often multiple times a week. We usually have new features every week as well, and every month there is usually one major change. We hope that you like this. It is definitely one of my personal favorite things about YoVille. I hope that you can trust that we are trying hard to make a great game for you. We will listen to your feedback and keep working at it. I would like to ask all of you to have an open mind and give the Sweet Factory a chance. Bake some goodies for a couple of days and see if you end up enjoying taking all your cookies, cupcakes or pies out of the oven. If you end up not liking it, I hope you’ll have some patience and stick with us. Maybe you’ll love the next set of items we ship or the next big feature we ship. We have a lot of great stuff coming up and the people that have been around for a year remember that Halloween is probably the best holiday of the year in YoVille
