Dear bb

[Thanaitos]

been playing this game since February and I have enjoyed this game alot so thank you. On the other hand as my city has gotten larger the enjoyment i have is getting more and more overshadowed by the pain in the *** maintenance that must be done daily by the great evil known as medium wheat fields. This mechanic is not fun its not tolerable its aweful and needs to be changed.The wells are bad in addition but your water usage isn't as large if you have watermills (i would have quit if i didn't have watermills btw) whoever on your team is ok with the current set up of having to replace 50+ fields per day and not severely annoy your player base needs to lose his job; get full body cancer-aids, and on his death bed be dragged into the desert, buried to his head in sand, and then be eaten alive by fire ants. Only then can the anger of your player base be appeased. If you want my opinion on how to fix this issue i would make a second build que for farms and wells so that we can quickly place them down (similar to how buildings in your star menu work) and move on to more important things rather then have to spend several hours every day trying to not fall behind for instance i have 54 farms i have to replace every 20 hours thats 67.5 min of build que each day to break even and thats not counting well/mines. Or you could increase the amount in the farms. Making us wait till 50 to get the upgrade to make our lives easier is not a good solution as most of your players will get burned out and quit before they get there. And to those of you that disagree with my assessment as i have been playing for 6+ months and have made a lot of friends and told a lot of friends about this game and guess what happens when they get to lvl 35ish. They have to spend a lot of time replacing farms/well and this is about the time they lose interest as the game as it ceases to be something you log in for a little while and have fun and becomes a full time job keeping up with the farms and wells so your city can grow.

[ShuttlePilot]

...... And to those of you that disagree with my assessment as i have been playing for 6+ months and have made a lot of friends and told a lot of friends about this game and guess what happens when they get to lvl 35ish. They have to spend a lot of time replacing farms/well and this is about the time they lose interest as the game as it ceases to be something you log in for a little while and have fun and becomes a full time job keeping up with the farms and wells so your city can grow.

Greetings, Thanaitos. While I, too, sympathize with island maintenance sometimes making one feel as if the game can become a job -- where the farms are concerned I have to say that I only replace about 4 - 6 fields a day. Counting levels, I have the equivalent of 168 farms, 32 silos, and I run 32 fields to support those. My silos are leveled so that they run the equivalent of a field each.

My wheat, flour, and bread are almost always capped or nearly capped at close to 70k. And I crank out baskets, fish food, ponies, and settlers in a constant stream, keeping my provision house running 24/7.

Granted, the first several of my silos were from the first Halloween challenge, so I did not invest gems to get them, and at that time we were limited to how many we could have (3). I did, however, supplement those three with 6 more when they became available in the gemshop. I have some at L3 and some at L4. Placement of them is critical in how well they perform, as is placement of the fields in relation to the farms. Certainly, you already know this, though.

I only use 2 water wheels, but keep many L2 wells as I like how they add a certain beauty to my island. These, I ensure are built on a rotating basis so that only about 4-6 are ready to run out on any given day. I can have my total island maintained and hit my buff partners in less than 1 hour every morning while enjoying my coffee.

Having played the game since the first few days of closed Beta (over a year now) I speak from experience. Again, I'm not differing with you at all on how maintenance can be a pain, but good island management and building practices can alleviate a lot of it.

See you in game,
ShuttlePilot

[Dovahkin341]

lol I take the daily maintenance grind as part of the management of the island, I keep the amount of fields low(i have 5 fields) and amount of farms high(12+) thus i replace fields twice a day but is only 5 fields so small build time. I also rotate my wells so i spend first 15 mins logged on replacing dead stuff and the rest just playing

[Thanaitos]

so shuttlepilot your solution for me is to purchase 32 silo's at 750 gems for a total of 24,000 gems or at current prices 100$ so that i only have to replace 4-6 fields a day and that doesn't sound asinine? the average player isn't going to want to spend that kind of money to save their fraying sanity over a terrible game mechanic. I cannot be the only one who feels this need to be addressed

[RageHammer]

I completely agree with Thanaitos, island maintenance is absolutely ridiculous. BTW Shuttlepilot answering Thanaitos with "it isn't so bad because I have 32 silos" is not really addressing the issue. Your silos are doing the maintenance for you. I work all day and come home at night to my city that is a complete wreck. I routinely have 2 hours of maintenance every day (reopening mines, replacing wells, replacing wheat fields) but I usually have about 30 min to play a day. I get caught up on the weekends while I watch tv, I just keep clicking away. Island maintenance needs to be reduced, the interesting part of the game isn't plopping down field after field until you get carpal tunnel. I have 100+ fields and 30+ wells, if I hadn't picked up watermills from the Easter event I too would have given up on this game. I've spent enough money on this game already, I'm not interested in spending any more money just because Ubisoft chose to make the game unplayable if you don't pony up a $100 or more to ease the maintenance burden. If they would create some new compelling content and then there might be a reason to spend more money, making island maintenance costs astronomically high isn't a selling point for me.

[RageHammer]

Let me put this in a different light. Why do you play video games? The answer is for fun and entertainment. Ubisoft has taken the tact that playing their game will be a progressively bigger and bigger time sink unless you keep spending money to offset the maintenance costs of playing their game. Who exactly thinks this is a compelling business plan? The enticement to spend money should stem from something interesting about the game, or something that is fun, this thinking is the exact opposite. It is so crazy it just makes me laugh that they are doing this.

[Bystander]

Well actually a silo = ~ 1500 GC so liase with a pay player to acquire said silos over time and bam , done and your still a 'free' player. Crisis over.