If You Build It They Will Come, does not necessarily always works as the phrase implies. You need to maintain and improve it for people to come, as the best advertisement is word of mouth. I have seen too many players leave the app since last update was released some that have been playing since day 1. I personally feels that the Hay Day Team has become lackadaisical (sorry honesty hurts).
Points of Interest:
Fishing Area:
Nothing new in terms of more open spaces, yes we all understand this is a time management game, but some things are just unrealistic:
- lobster traps and lures are single use, um in real life really single use and takes so long to make them?
- lobsters sit in lobster pots for hours, um you do realize lobsters it one of the quickest to cook in real life, are we going for inedible lobster tails?
- With trying to load lobster pot and duck salon and fishing at same time, would it not have been realistic to give us more fishing spots?
Town Area:
Since Town introduction to Hay Day there has been nothing introduce to Town whatsoever. (Derby task
does not count as it does not add anything to Town Area.
- Townies still cross tracks when a train is pulling in, which advertises poor train track crossing safety guidance. With all the hoopla that this is a family game is this the message we want children to see, that yes its safe to cross rail road tracks with a train mowing you down. (For those who have not seen it, call your personal train to come in with townies from a neighbor as your big train is pulling in, look at how many get mowed down.)
Main Farm Area:
- Land Expansion: There is usually a roll out of new land plots to expand at least once every fiscal year. This year we have not had any. Since when does a successful farm not try to have more land, especially when added new machines, crops and trees? I applaud the effort to bring new crops, machines and trees, but with any new addition to an area that has a footprint consumption you must give an opportunity to increase the overall playing area.
- Decorations and Themes: These have been getting even more abysmal as of late if that was even possible.
- Recycling Decorations is okay, but add something new, seeing the same over and over with no variety shows lack of appreciation to players who have supported your app.
- New Decorations can only be achieved in buying a diamond package and is limited, so if I want a decoration I have to spend up to $40 US Dollars to get an unbelievable just one decoration?
- Machines, Decorations and Trees: These are not able to be full rotated 4 different ways, instead limited to just 2 ways? Have we not ever heard of using mirror effect on a object where you can flip horizontally or vertically to achieve more visual effects? Some things just defy sane logic. you are going to put a bench on your farm but you cant turn it to have its back facing you and it facing the river for example?
- Playing Area: Still 2 Dimensional and on a slight slant with playing area sometimes inaccessible in the corners of devices depending on what device you use. Majority of apps have adopted 3 Dimensional with pan, tilt, zoom and rotate, why has Hay Day still not adopted common practice?
- Dairy & Sugar Mill: With all the introductions of new products to be made the strain on these 2 machines have gotten very high with no logical compensation. When a farm needs to achieve something they go out and purchase what they need or upgrade what they need to upgrade. If adding another Dairy & Sugar Mill is not feasible add another mastery option or spend diamonds option so that all slots are produced simultaneously rather than sequentially. This feature should only be available to achieve after 3 star mastery.
Quality Assurance\Quality Control & Beta Testing:
- This seems to be non-existent as updates are constantly released as rush jobs full of bugs. It's appears that updates are done in a 2 weeks cycle when pressure from players are applied asking when an update is coming out. Successful app developers usually release a beta version of an app to testers to play the app and find any bugs in the app as well as provide feedback to developers so that an app can be rolled out relatively bug free, it's understood there will always be some that falls through the crack, but it seems its not some when it comes to Hay Day. It is important that these beta testers are actual impartial testers and not in house employees who maybe slighted to give favorable reviews just to give the developer an inflated sense of unwarranted grandeur.
- Quality Assurance\Quality Control Teams should be the fail safe that reviews all updates before release to ensure all parts of an app is working within its intended parameters so that a viable, profitable, and enjoyable product is released.
Events:
Events have gotten stale, same milestones, same goals, similar rewards, equals lack of innovation which in turns results in lack of enthusiasm on parts of players to achieve global milestones hence why may are missed. As a business if you want your players to invest in your app you must diversify and improve.
Derby:
There has been improvements but nothing substantial, it was a smart move by Hay Day Team to remove lower point tasks below a minimum for champions league, however there is still much to improve to make it a fun experience.
- Derby Prizes need to be improved for Top 3 Placing Trams, make it worth while for every Neighborhood to achieve Top 3 Placing, if the prizes are good, competition will get fiercer which in turns will encourage diamond spending for extra tasks.
- Improve Horseshoes Rewards
- Allow Hood Leaders an option to make derby tasks a pool vs individual. Meaning a Hood of 30 Players have 270 tasks to complete as a team and not as an individual they can spend diamonds as a team to do bonus tasks to achieve maximum of 300 tasks total for a derby. What do I mean by this it means a player is no longer limited to 10 tasks per week, this will also help solve those issues when a hood is in a tight race and a player becomes ill mid derby or a player leaves hood mid derby to be spiteful, it does not harm the hood in its derby goals.
- Derby Board should operate like Truck Task board, when a task is selected from board a new one instantly populates, only time a task does not instantly populate is when a task was trashed.
- Trashing of tasks, it seems to still be a problem as there is nothing to elevate awareness that task being trashed is an active task by trasher and not a task on the board. I suggest using color differential between the 2 types of trashing like red and yellow stripes to grab attention.
Reactive not Proactive:
It seems to me that Hay Day Team is a reactive team vs being a proactive team, example:
- In June of this year Apple released beta version of iOS 10 to developers so that Developers could develop apps or update their apps to work on iOS 10. They also advised all app developers as to changes in iOS 10 from iOS 9. With the release of iOS 10, Apple's Game Center service no longer has its own dedicated application. Instead, actions like adding friends or inviting them to a game are handled by individual games themselves, routed through Apple's expanded Messages app. Apple preemptively understood that the removal of Game Center may break some iOS apps implementations, and has done some work to help mitigate that. If an app does currently implement GameKit features, the developer must implement the interface behavior to show these features for iOS 10. Apple exemplifies this when bringing up the idea of showing leaderboards. Instead of jumping out into Game Center to show a leaderboard for users, the developer could implement the appropriate GameKit code and present the GameKit Game Center view controller, or just read the data to showcase a custom leaderboard interface.
- GameKit: The GameKit framework (GameKit.framework) includes the following changes and enhancements:The Game Center app has been removed. If your game implements GameKit features, it must also implement the interface behavior necessary for the user to see these features. For example, if your game supports leaderboards, it could present a GKGameCenterViewController object or read the data directly from Game Center to implement a custom user interface.
Rather than continue to be a Pioneer it has chosen to reactive in its response to release of iOS10 leaving huge swaths of player unable to add new friends to interact with on this social game without using facebook (which many have issues with as it encroaches on their private life).
I Understand many may construe what I have stated above as my personal opinions and perceptions to be negative, but understand its because I care about Hay Day that I have taken the time to write this . Hay Day an app of Super Cell is to be a profitable app, but with so much competition in the industry, staying still in terms of progress does not guarantee success. If Hay Day expects it's players to invest financially in its app it must stop trying to make big profit on small volume but focus on making small profit on big volume. Innovate the app make it an app no one can resist to not play, make it fun and addictive again and us players will support you. Players are a dying breed please don't let us become an endangered species Team Hay Day.
Originally Posted by LynnK2015
Maybe Vfrood meant fired up, i.e.. motivated?
