Farm RPG

No need to imagine "If EA made it." Magic & Wires LLC already did it. 10/10 would pay again.

I am writing this with a conflicted heart, and a rationale brain. On one hand, I am enjoying the majority of mechanics within the game, and making friends whilst working towards late game achievements. On the other hand, there is a toxic culture within the game that results in many players leaving, and new players feeling isolated. The front facing admin of the game whom you will see in the chat more frequently than the creators has a dictator-like personality. He/she/they take great offense to the minor feedback from paying and non-paying farmers. Unfortunately as the game has grown, their processes to address constructive criticism has wavered. What you will find is a 'we know better than you' mentality that reeks through the community. I would avoid getting into the politics of this game. You will be disheartened that updates and announcements to better the game are often left unattended for years at a time. Yes, years. The management team seem to not want to communicate with the community as to what their vision is for the game, or what they are working on which makes you wonder where your subscription money is going. Most games these days have an ongoing developer diary of sorts, even the smallest of indie games communicate with their communities frequently. A lot of the content is rehashed from previous years too, which destroys the excitement when a new month starts. I can't imagine a game as simplistic as this is that hard to develop. I do believe they have good intentions, but they need to implement a few processes and improve the way they engage with their customers. Its best to stay silent for now or else you risk being banned for speaking your mind. This attitude is vastly different to how the game is portrayed (a positive wholesome community etc). A lot of the unpaid moderators who spring to the defense of the game at the slight increase in opinions jump to assumptions that your feedback is complaining, and then express how they become moderators by behaving like a teacher's pet. The premium store in the game is called a flea market where prices are 1000x inflated compared to the player-to-player trade market. I personally find this unethical and such items should be removed from the flea market or greatly reduced in price or increased in quantity. You'll experience this as soon as you run out gold, which will happen early. A feature called Craftworks is marketed as an autonomous way to convert your resources into end products, but due to their lack of investment in server infastructure, this process takes 5 - 10 seconds longer than stated due to the server lag (acquiring the items, and the game registering them as in your inventory). This might not sound like much, but given how you can gather these resources quickly, as well as this feature requiring a lot of premium gold to upgrade, it is a blight on the game. The aforementioned staff member defends it religiously.. Whilst marketed as an idle game on steam, this is far from the case. In order to access the automated fishing feature, you need the alpha patreon subscription. The robot in the game to assist in automating your farm only works for a few features that can be clickable within a 20-60 second period once per day. Expect to login to the game frequently to work towards temple rewards (potatoes with a 3-5 min growth time that rarely drop a resource needed for the temple). I can only imagine unemployed people having the luxory of time to achieve such objectives. Their giveaway channel says you can ask for gold, but it will be frowned upon. As soon as you ask for it, five + people latch on to you and link you to the rules for the channel. This anti-social behaviour is persistent, with most of these people trying to act with authority they don't have in the hope of becoming a moderator. The giveaway culture is strong in this game, and I enjoy it, but if you want to help people with gold, you are crucified. I have helped people in third world countries with gold as the premium store prices are out of sync with their local economies. I have high hopes for the game as I think they have interesting concepts in their development pipeline. However when they occur is going to be a mystery, but when they do, it will be game changing. Their feedback loop system has ideas recommended by players that have been assigned as planned to be in the game, but two years later, they are still not. I think they need to invest some of the 3,000+ paid members revenue into more developers and positive front-facing staff that understand customer service and what gamers need. The main developer firestream seems to have a cool head and is probably under a lot of pressure. I feel like he would make a good ambassador for the game, but his frequency in the community seems to be infrequent and he has delegated this responsbility to others who lack core customer service skills. I would tread into this game carefully, be careful what you say, and be prepared to pay $70 - $100 to boost your account to a reasonable level to enjoy it consistently. This is done via $2 USD refresh packs. The F2P cap is painstaking and not worth the effort, unless you genuniely like that playstyle. The game has a large F2P community that has been there for five years who mostly belittle the paying members that want to support the game and have an opportunity to enjoy it at a pace that suits them. Within the game you will find like minded people who believe in the games potential beyond its current teething issues. These are the people that make it great. I will change my review when the systems have improved. I'll give it a 4/10, with all 4 points attributed to some people in the community that are great, and scratching my itch for numbers going up in the player-to-player giving / trading culture. which is rare to find in a game today. The remaining 6 points are lost to the issues described above.