Unfortunately for us and Zynga, FrontierVille (or, as it is now titled, Pioneer Trail) is starting to lose tons of its popularity and in the past 15 days the game dropped from 11 million active monthly players to a bit below 6, which is an impressive loss of no more than 5 million players!
Apparently, Zynga only lost most of the casual players, because the FrontierVille Daily players remained at about the same numbers: 2 Million, compared to a bit over 2.4 when the peak hit in October. Still, it’s a big loss here and FrontierVille used to do so much better.
I have seen most of my neighbors stop playing the game and judging from the traffic on this website that has gone so much down that FrontierVille Info itself is really hard to maintain from a financial point of view, many other players have stopped playing FrontierVille as well (if the numbers were not obvious, thanks AppData for them!).
I don’t know exactly what is the reason behind this drop in numbers: indeed, there are bugs and problems that Zynga is working non stop to fix, but weren’t they always here? Why now? Did people finally had enough or the huge competition and the tons of games available on Facebook managed to draw bits here and there and resulted in such a huge drop?
What do you think?
My personal opinion – too many quests all at once. It used to be fun to play, now its a full time job. 3 frontiers, plus all the quests and making stuff, I can be on the computer all day and night and still not get to visit neighbours like I use to…They also need a massive land expansion in order to hold all these new buildings that have come out lately.
I think it’s a number of things, One especialy with neighbours, can’t remove neighbours who have left the game or no longer play it, they haven’t dropped it off their end. You should be able to remove neighbours regardless of wether they are there or not. Another one is neighbours who have no mission items for tasks, copius amounts of chickens, animals, and statues/decorations. Each item is loaded individualy on the farm and it gives browsers absolute hell when trying to load. After it has eventually loaded and not crashed due to timeouts, you find nothing there for tasks etc. Then spend a fruitless search as it has now slowed down because of the congestion the previous farm has made. These are the neighbours one wants removed but because zynga hasn’t made that option available, they are stuck there. What’s worse is that some counsulants say that they have removed the neighbours when other consultants say it can’t be done. I think 3/4 of their troubles is that they didn’t allow it to be so popular and it’s pushing the flash platform beyond it’s original design. What they should be doing is having it on a seperate platform and away from facebook but of course…that will be unlikely. Zynga is incredibly tight with their rewards and some rewards are just not worth the anguish of putting up with. I gave up with pioneer trail as it was taking far too long to get anywhere and my friends who did complete it said it wasn’t worth the effort, very dissapointing ending. Ghost trail was somewhat better but because of all the outbreak of new missions in the original frontierville I haven’t had time to get back to it.
Honestly, I used to be a daily player, I even put money into it with Zynga cards, but ever since the PT expansion, I just can’t keep up. I don’t have time to sit on my butt all day and night like some of these players and have 1000+ people I don’t know added so I can get everything I need in an adequate amount of time. What takes others a week to finish takes me months, and that sucks all of the fun out of it. As soon as I have a new building with 5 missions, sometimes repeatable ones that end up being six or nine in total in addition to those, before I can even turn around there’s another building. And on top of THAT, you need 15 of 3 items you have to privately beg for, and 10-15 you have to publically beg for just to finish one building. I had seven buildings waiting to be completed at one point, on top of PT and GT and they needed their own requests. So I would use up all of my requests on FTV trying to finish all of the damn buildings and be screwed over on the other two because I couldn’t finish quests there again. The PT asked SO MUCH of us with only giving us like, 15 or 20 energy at a time. You can’t get anything done in any timely fashion with 20 energy! I use tons of meals that I get through gifting every. single. day. on FTV, just to attempt to stay afloat, and I can hold 50 energy there at a time. I know they want us to buy gumption/ration refills, but their reality is that people AREN’T paying for a game that is taxing and overwhelming and a full time unpaid job as it is. They suck all of the fun out of it going way, way, WAY too fast, putting out buildings we DON’T NEED and then giving us new games to play where we can’t keep up with them. I barely even go to PT or GT anymore because once I finish with my hundreds of mission parts on FTV, I’m too exhausted to be bothered. Which is really upsetting and discouraging because I WANT to do them, but without enough energy, and without the ability to request things there since the FTV requests count against it, I just can’t be bothered. There is too much going on too quickly, and they cater to the impatient higher ups in ways that make it too difficult for the rest of us. I even tell people who ask if they should start playing it not to bother because there’s just no way to catch up and no one is going to help anyone who is so behind everyone’s finished that. I mean, we only get 50 requests/30 gifts a day on our feeds, and I can run out of those in 10 minutes helping people out without making a dent in the requests. It sucks! No one can get anywhere quickly enough and it’s discouraging. The bugs don’t even bother me because I know if it gets really bad and I don’t get a necessary reward, the support will help me out generously.
As for the other issues addressed, I don’t mind having all of those old people on my list because the ones that quit playing that I removed will always have debris and trees, whereas anyone currently caught up won’t have room for it because of all of the unnecessary buildings getting in the way. Couldn’t they have condensed the Greenhouse into the 3F garden? Couldn’t the pet shop have started giving us Critter Milk/Blankets/etc instead of the Ice whatever? They could really condense a lot of this stuff and add them to existing buildings without making us build a ton more.
I’ve been trying to gather the strength to quit the game because I’m a real addict to it, but somehow during these last 2 months I’m not enjoying playing anymore. I try to play for just half an hour and I can’t because I get caught on finishing missions, helping neighbors and receiving gifts and when I feel that I’ve accomplished everything they come with a bunch of new missions that need more requests to send and consumes more and more of my time. On top of that, the game uses so many resources of my computer that it gets really slow to play and eventually crashes making me lose progress… I completely understand why people are leaving. I’m one of the faithful players that used to love this game but now when I see new missions I can’t help but feeling frustrated because I don’t have the time to do them all. I think that Zynga hasn’t realized that the majority of people that play these games are adults that work, have a family and a life… using a bit of your time during a busy day is fine, but when half an hour turns into 2 o 3 hours straight trying to make some progress in a mission, people will not see the fun on playing anymore. At least that’s how I’ve felt lately.
At the moment there are too many missions that require you to be playing all day to be able to ask for all the items etc. I’ve just gone back to work after being on maternity leave and I don’t know how I’m going to keep up. Because of everyone leaving, I’m struggling to get neighbours to send items that I need.
I get sick of all the error messages. The new error message that asks you report the bug, just seems to be a replacement of the blast message and I don’t believe anything is done about it.
I also have trouble with support. I reported an issue with PT this week and after 3 1/2 days I still didn’t have a response. I was still ok with that as I know they’re busy. But then…I got the survey from support, with the matching ticket number to my issue…how am I meant to rate their support when I didn’t have any??? I have reported this issue to support…still no response.
I was a regular player and then quit because of all the glitches. I couldn’t ask for items, couldn’t post requests on my wall and could not send gifts to friends.As other people have said, there are too many missions that show up at once, and ones that show up that you have completed. I have Jacques constantly show up from the wedding mission, have deleted him and shows back up. I contacted Zynga support and they said they fixed it and the problem is still there. I dealt with this for over 2 months and got tired of the frustration and stress when this was supposed to be my stress release. I may come back in a few years….nah, got better things to do!
I would have to agree with everyone. I play the game every day and now it is getting to were I don’t want to play anymore. There is way to many missions that you have to ask for items right along with the buildings. I was doing great with keeping up with all the missions, but now they are starting to build up becasue I can’t get everything I need to finish the mission or buildings. I only have 25 friends that play and I don’t want to have people on my facebook that I don;t know. As for the bugs the game has, that is an issue all in its own. They say they are fixing the issues, but I don’t see how. I have had the same issue that I have talked to live chat or emailed in for over a month now and it is still not fixed. I get the same response every time, ” it is a know issue and they are working on it”. If they are working on it then why is it not fixed. If they would stop coming out with all of these missions and buildings long enough to fix the issues and fix it, they would have it fixed in a few days. It feels like they only listen to the people that have all day to play the game and that have over 1000 friends playing as well. It is no different that a big corp. They only take care of the higher up people and not the people who are really making the company ( game ) what it is today. I have said that if they take the game away from facebook and charge a yearly fee I would have no problem paying a fee. I’m starting to play the game less and less now. Zynga needs to start listening to the players that really make the game to what it is today. That is what it wrong with all these companies today is that they don’t listen to the customer ( players ) and do what they want and that is how the lost customers ( players ).
In the early days of the game, building materials could be gifted, and the buildings used the same materials. Then they came out with new building materials, which was ok at first as you could gift the extras in your inventory. Now every new building requires all new materials, all of which must be asked for. Almost every mission includes a begging component, and some missions require you to keep repeating other missions 2-3 times. Add to that the terrible problems visiting neighbours, plus the lag in the game that was introduced with the launch of Pioneer Trail, and you had a recipe for disaster.
I also agree with just about everything everyone has said here. In looking at the stats, what I realized is why Zynga CS has been so generous with every issue I’ve emailed in: they don’t want me to be part of the next million to leave! (Maybe if I complain about not being able to get to Ghost Town they’ll just give me the horse…..hmmmm……)
There’s similar griping going on with FarmVille, again with the endless missions & begging.
I am losing good neighbors that play daily. Most of what I read on the feed is frustration. There are way too many missions being introduced way too fast for people to keep up. A lot of my neighbors can only spend 30 minutes to an hour a day on the game. They can not stalk the feed all day to get materials they need. If I didn’t have several family members playing I would have quit long ago. My high level neighbors quit sending after they get what they need and almost none keep 5 of everything on their homestead in order to help their neighbors (Crops wouldn’t be expected but you know what your neighbors need when the missions are released) The Game should be fun not give people an ulcer.
ive been playing since the game started & im very close to bein done with the game:
my issuses r:
neighbors having ppl who r no longer on my friends list still on my FV/PT list
ppl sending me friend requests & 2 weeks later stop playing & having to spend time figuring out who still plays
the amount of stuff i need to collect via wall posts & requests… if u want me to get all this stuff let me ask for it more often or be allowed to have more than 2-5 click on each wallpost
the rewards r not as good as they use to be…who the hell wants to work for 3 damn cats that do NOTHING…
all the extra building materials in my inventory…dont we have a trading post wasnt that suppose to fix that… i dont think its been updated since feb…
almost all the newer missions want u to harvest crops but they r all the crops that take 12+ hours to grow some days i can only play once & when i get on the next day my corn has withered
& the list can go on & on….. but i’ll stop now
i know every game has bugs so thats just part of playing game so its whatever on that subject
The main reason is: Zynga does not seem to listen to the players.
All I’ve heard from my neighbors is there are WAY too many missions now and too much to request for and the daily limits restrict you from getting the things you need, especially when they require you to collect thousands of “charms” or “golden hammers” or “tricks/treats”
When you spend an exhaustingly good chunk of your day trying to get all the items now required to finish everything and then you have no space left to put all this new content on, there comes a time to just cut the cord.
I, for one, have loved playing this game since June 2010, but recently, even I feel overwhelmed with all the new content and spend countless hours working on the game and don’t even feel like I can complete ALL my daily chores like I used to.
My main profession is programming Logic Controllers ( computers controlling machinery and process operations). I often write flash based user interfaces for companies so they can see what their operations are up to. Flash is good for that type of applications but it wasn’t designed to handle so many users at once let alone complex tasks and missions all at once. So they have basically overloaded the flash platform. What’s worse is that if theu don’t get one bug sorted out and they introduce another one, you can result in a whole new generation of additional bugs.
In the early days, you would be given a mission…complete it, then wait for the next one. It was fast and reliable.
To sum it all up, faulty neighbour database to which they have little control over, if a user deletes facebook or changes to another account without dropping frontierville off first, then it tends to stay on and often becomess a ghost neighbour as their is no refference to that persons account on facebook. This is where zynga falls down badly, they should be able to remove that person entirely off their database…but they can’t. They never looked that far ahead.
You can get hold of live chat sometimes, when they have it turned on and you can get replacements and or/ missions completed or fixed. They are quite good in that respect.
There are two live chat links, I alternate inbetween the two until I get the live chat logo to come up…it can be slow and sometimes fast, just keep reloading until it comes up. I wait about 20 seconds on each page, if no result I’ll click on another chat link and repeat until it comes up.
Another bad fault which is not zynga’s is that neighbours have wall to wall statues, decorations and other useless items cramming their farms. When their farm loads it’s quick for them as they have direct connection to it but for an outsider it has to load each item seperately and this will very quickly bog things down to a crawl. That and other things can cause ( not always ) the browser to time out and crash, flashplayer gets overwhelmed and crashes. If you where successful in loading a crammed farm and you leave, then your browser can be very slow from that time onwards ( many reasons for that ).
The obvious sollution is to remove those useless neighbours but then it falls back to that 9/10 times, they won’t remove…catch 22.
I am not a real game player except back in the DOS era when games where actually games
Frontierville is the only rreal game I don’t mind playing except for farmtown but that became a bit repeative for me. Sad to see a good game go downhill
I love Frontier Ville. I know there are a lot of problems right now but they will get it worked out. It is the best game on face book for me. When I am spending a lot of time on Frontier ville I spend less time on the other games I play. I don’t let the game take away from other things I need to do. To me it’s like reading a book or watching your favorite tv show. I’m not really big on tv so I spend time on frontier ville.
i have stopped and most of my neighbors because with the “glitch” the happened several days ago all my missions are reverted to 0 daily. So why bother until they get it fixed ? Will be interesting to note how many do return after the problem gets fixed. As of now i intend to return. I contacted support 2 days ago with no reply , that will also interest me. How are they gonna handle the mess they got themselves into ?
I know a lot of my friends stop playing because of the large releasing of new missions, buildings etc. They all complained about not being able to store animals such as Moose etc.
All my missions are resetting to zero too and have not heard from support. I used to play cityville and cafeworld but left because the missions got riduculous. I contacted support weeks ago to complain that the developers were spoiling what used to be an enjoyable game, that with all the new buildings I had to reduce my crops, which meant less food, and I couldn’t receive gifts. It just goes from one serious glitch to another and where it used to take hours to sort out it now takes days/weeks. I think the 400 brooms was the killer for the game, as 250 tomatoes was for cityville. I was lucky I planted lots of corn and got my brooms that way, but not everyone has Frontierville info to help them with gameplay.
I think it’s the endless asking for items that drove a lot of people away. We need so many parts now to build some thing (for example when we built the spook shop, craft shop, and that new baking thing).
Also the glitches get annoying, but I’m used to them.
One thing I have done to help my neighbors is to have 5 of every animals on my homestead, and I always place 5 of every crop they say we have to harvest from neighbors, That way, when my neighbors visit, I have the tomatoes, pumkins, wheat or what ever they need. I notice a lot are following my lead now…and it realy makes it a lot easier.
For the small players like me who only have four of five friends who play the game, it just takes too long and too much effort to beg for all the items you need. Now that there’s a problem with the items disappearing and missions restarting, when it’s taken you ages to complete the mission in the first place it’s just too disheartening to start all over again especially when you might have to repeat it all yet again.
A game is supposed to be fun, this isn’t. It’s also not a way of life but a way to spend an hour or so a day. It comes as no surprise to see that it’s the hard core fans who are staying and the causal players are leaving in droves.
If that is Zynga’s strategy then they’ve done it very well. Personally I think it’s a shame because I liked the game – but it’s not going to ruin my life to stop playing!
My reasons why I have finished playing Frontier Ville (I like more older name). I think they are similar to comments above.
1. Too much missions at once. I don´t have time to control all tree games in one and I´m completely lost in missions.
2. Bugs in game
3. Looking for crops or animals on neighbours´ homesteads. Is isn´t funny.
4. The game is too slow. When I have to visit neighbours, I must give a cup of coffee or tea. And the game doesn´t run quick and I have slideshow on my screen and it is problem to click on anything.
I think the game needs new engine (or radical improvement of its actual engine). New games from Zynga run smooth and quick (Adventure World, Mafia Wars 2)
5. The playability is still the same – we must still request friends on wall for items for building. Other games need it too but Frontier Ville is extremely in that.
I must say Pioneer Trail is the most complex game on Facebook with its features and I liked it very much but it needs radical refreshment now. I hope when people are leaving game that Zynga won´t close Frontier Ville and will think aboout players´ opinions.
Sorry for my bad english,
I just don’t have the time to be sitting in front of the computer waiting for the game to load. It can easily be 30 minutes before everything loads and when I begin to play, I’ll often time get “Blasted Internet…”. It’s very frustrating. Yes, I now consider myself a casual player, although I used to play twice daily prior to all the loading problems.
I am also frustrated with the constant begging. The flying broom is so bad that I quit looking at it a long time ago. Then they come out with the crafting shead, with the idea that when you finish it, you could craft a ROBO CHICKEN. Has anyone figured out how many items you will have to begged for to complete it? It looks to me like over 1000. What is Zynga thinking?
Then we have all of these new item we can buy. With what? I have over 10,000,000 in the bank, and over 7,000,000 on the homestead. But they want 150 HS for a rideable wolf!
I am at the verge of being one of the millions that have quit!
I agree with all of the above postings.
I am very near to quit playing Pioneer trail too.
I am wondering why you should have to have so many neighbors when the limit to ask for stuff are only 85. And the most annoying when you click on the wall posts and you get that sorry pardner…
All those horseshoe items are fun but I dont want to put in that amount of money.
Better to have them as rewards from missions.
There are also too much buildings and stuff so it gets so crowded.
Hope PT will be better to play or I will be a quitter too!
I all ready have a full time job, and now another full time job with Pioneer trail. Too many missions/quests. Too many items needed. I love playing PT, but, will have to quit to keep my sanity. I all ready quit playing MW, CW and FV because of the ridiculous demands. Now, it’s looking like PT will have 1 less player if things don’t change.
I agree with everything that you all have said about the game. But, there is ONE very important issue everybody has overlooked. And that is GREED on Zynga’s part. They throw all these missions at us so we get frustrated and buy the darn mission. That is exactly what they are counting on. I even have mentioned that to them in chat. But of course they deny that. But really, think about it. All their pop-ups work perfectly well. We all get tired of the begging and visiting neighbors is a real nightmare. I just finished looking for 10 cactus on the neighbors homestead. I could always find them and now I had to visit at least 15 neighbors to find 10. I left a huge plot open the whole day long and did not plant any crops, and not even one cactus dropped in on my homestead, actually, absolutely nothing dropped in. Normally you leave a little space, and you reload the game and here is a whole bunch of stuff that had popped up. All these things are a sign to me that they want us to buy the stuff with valuable horse shoes. I am a daily player sine day one but I am thinking very hard of just dropping the game totally. And then the Pioneer Trail and Ghost Town are total money grabbers. I quit playing them a very long time ago and never finished anything on there. Also that was all about the money. I understand that they have to pay their people, but now it became greed. NO THANK YOU!!!!! And I can give 100 more reasons why this game really is not worth playing anymore. What happened to the 1800′s Frontierville???? Now we have Capital One building we have to build and Intuit Computer stuff. Did not even exist in those days. Could it be paid advertising???? And do WE have to support that??? It really does not surprise me that they lost that many players. You read the forums and everybody is frustrated and complaining.
I have had it with this game. Zygna know’s we are losing players by the thousands daily, but instead of easing up on some of the requirements, to make it more do-able for us players that have continue to play, but no they pile it on us! As far as fixing things…I have had problems with receiving items that were sent to me, for months now. I have contacted them many times. I have done everything they said to do, but no avail. Now with the big issues a few days ago, the items that I have begged for – for weeks.. are GONE!!! 90 HS are missing!!!!! GRRRR Started to redo them, and when I leave the game, my progress disappears. So frustrating… I only have about 9 friends still playing… and some are not playing daily anymore. They also need to fix things like the tags for mastery points, it always gets in the way, and you can’t see what your doing. the inventory is awl full to navigate, and search is useless, they need to use tabs like farmville. Speaking of farmville, they have brought to much similar stuff over from farmville. I could keep going on and on, but I need to go beg for some more items.. maybe they won’t disappear. going to quit soon, if things don’t improve…
I think a lot of it has to do with the changes in facebook. the newsfeed used to be a place to get items but now you get what facebook wants you to see and by the time you see neighbors requests they are 2 hours old. Hard to get thing and complete missions when the game stories are no longer there and the newsfeed is two or three hours old.
I love the game. It is not fun anymore
The begging – my friends are tired that I am asking them again and again the same thing.
The task to craft a broom and need 400 corn bristles – it is a bit too much
Repeatable missions – hate them. Did once and it is enough.
Last year for the New Year invitations it was a ridiculous amount to get the prize.
Keep it simple, maybe some friends will come back to their homestead.
“the rewards r not as good as they use to be…who the hell wants to work for 3 damn cats that do NOTHING…”
hilarious!!! And I totally agree Dee.
“Then we have all of these new item we can buy. With what? I have over 10,000,000 in the bank, and over 7,000,000 on the homestead. But they want 150 HS for a rideable wolf!”
EXCELLENT point bob! Why do I have milliions of coins, in the bank & out, but yet I have nothing to spend them on? They have the same decorations in the market as they have had since spring. And even if I do buy some decorations I can’t put them out because with the amount of animals that I can’t store, and buildings that I sorta need (not to forget the crops that you can’t put in the greenhouse because IT ONLY HOLDS 36 CROPS), etc, there’s not enough room for the “cutesy stuff”. I think it’d be nice if they could at least update the decorations market with the fall/winter stuff, or let me buy animals like the ridable wolf with my coins and not with horse shoes.
I also have an issue with all of the items that you beg for that could be useful to you, such as the granny’s gut punch, that they take from us when it’s over. if you want to keep the items you have to pay horseshoes to finish the mission.
And why do i have 49 buildings (including shaman tent, orchard, etc.) when frontierville’s support suggest that you have 50 items total on your homestead for smooth game play?! Bottom line is that if they’re going to push all these new buildings on us they need to give us another land expansion. They said you were going to be able to store buildings in the shed, but the only “building” i’ve gotten in there is the flower shop. I’m trying to stay positive about the game because i do like it, but the combination of all the factors that everyone has mentioned is dragging me down. I too may say goodbye to a game that i’ve played from it’s release if something is not changed soon. I just can’t make this game my life, and it’s demanding too much of my real life already. can you imagine what it’ll be like if it keeps going like this? and christmas is coming, lord help us all when those missions get released. especially if we still have not figured out how to balance our homesteads and still keep what we need for ours and our neighbors’ missions. Good luck to everyone.
I quit playing pioneerville — too many glitches and now the game has left me stranded in the Avalanche section — no missions, no blue exclamation marks, no way to advance, no nothing! Will stop playing Frontierville — although I truly enjoy the concept and building my little plot of heaven. Having to repeat missions, collecting anything over 15 items, and begging and begging and begging for items from friends is too much! So what if some people can breeze through missions when it’s set for 10 — give the rest of us normal joes a break!!!!!! I’m pulling the plug and taking back my frontierville time to do something much more productive.
NUMBER ONE: Fix the glitches.
NUMBER TWO: Ditch the non stop repeatable missions.
Nobody has time for that and its BORING. Slow down the building releases…I have played since day one and am running out of room for the new buildings. IF you actually expect me to plant a crop now and then….
My opinion is the zynga is running out of ideas for this game and is trying to make it into the next farmville with the crafting and breeding. They have ruined farmville with this and people are jumping ship on Pioneerville because they see the same thing happening to this game. Its a shame, because its one of my faves.
It isn’t fun anymore. WAY WAY WAY too much going on. I am really tired of having to build things that take me weeks to get everything for because all of my neighbors have stopped playing for the same reason, too many quests forcing us to request things from other people. Just give me quests that I can do on my own. They got greedy. Plain and simple
I’m fed up of the rollbacks, the glitches, lost progress, missing items, support tickets not being answered (they used to so good on support what happened?), boring repeatable missions… need I go on? My neighbours are fantastic and I would hate to let them down by leaving the one game I have played for well over a year now.
I agree with e1 and it is a doggone shame that we have to put up with so many errors, refreshing and lost items on missions and having to do missions all over again. It appears to be happening to mainly FrontierVille/Pioneer. I don’t have to put up with too many of the other game apps. But at times I will with FarmVille & Cafe World.
So if you get all the qlitches out of the games and have it run smoothly you just might get your people back. I use to play 8-10 hrs days only for the fact that I am disable and I can do it. But now my time has been greatly reduced to 2-4 hrs per day. I try to visit my neighbors but it is hard with all the work one has to do for the missions. I try very hard to stay faithful to my neighbors that help me out daily. It is amazing how there is just a handful of people you can count on. But are very limited as to how many request that I can send. If you send you limit on one app and then it reduces how many on another app. So we are actually getting screwed. But all in all I love to play FrontierVille it is a fun game.
- Too many quests at once
- They now have THREE separate games going but they did NOT triple the amount of help requests per day- so you can’t rely on helping neighbors… or neighbros helping you now…
- Most importantly- the people who were already frustrated by the canning nightmare goal- looked at the screen when Zynga asked them to grant new permissions for PT and said you know what? I think i will go play solitaire.
Frankly – even tho i play FV, CW, and Frontier( love Frontier- spend more on the farm tho) I will probably drop at least Cafe… if not it and PT- i feel like a gerbil in a hamster wheel.
And that’s definately not what i log into FB to achieve… nor is it what my hard earned money should be going towards-
I rarely RARELY complain- im usually so chipper i sound like a Zynga shill… but im desperate for them to change so my neighbors will come back and we wont lose my beloved Frontier.
I’ve put everything that I can in storage…buildings, harvester, etc and all the animals that will go into storage too. That speeds up the game. True, you can’t collect the bonus on buildings that are in storage, but to me, it’s worth it not to have the place cluttered and can’t plant crops or get debris to clear.
These repeatable missions are ridiculous. It’s bad enough you have to beg to get items once, but to have to do it 3 or maybe more times is frustrating!
Then you can only collect a limited amount of items needed per day.
It’s just not fun anymore and I’m about to add to their numbers of former players….
The defection from Frontierville is a cascade effect, in my opinion. The long-time players have gotten bored with the missions and left the game, so now people who came later to the game (like me) don’t have anyone to help them fulfill requests and we get bored and leave, and so on and so on.
I tend to try Facebook games when they are new and then ditch them after they get too weighted down. Frontierville and its expansions are getting to that point for me. I’m only level 23 but my homestead is so loaded down now that the only computer I can play it on without frustration is at work, and even then it crashes my browser occasionally. There needs to be a hurricane or something to blow a fresh wind through the frontier so we can get rid of all that stuff we’ve collected
.
Let me start by saying “I love the game” but my frustration is building more and more.
I love the fact that we can store my animals away but then to tell us to go and tend our heighbors animals doesn’t make sense. They have their animals in their barns too!
Repeatable missions have go to go! If you insist on keeping them, then they should be like the flower missions – available but not necessary to advance.
Also, we keep being given more and more buildings but no room!
I absolutly hate repeatedly asking friends for for things. I would much preffer missions that I am responsible in achieving – not having it depend on the mercy of others and then only a few at a time.
I don’t enjoy being made to go and play another game that doesn’t interest me in the least either (mafia 2).
I really do enjoy the game but everything seems to have become more complicated. Many of my older friends have quit because they can’t figure it out. For example, Little Crow! Not much fun for seniors who like things simple.
I am now responsible to do my FV/PT as well as 2 eldery friend’s ghosttown and their little crow. Not much time left for my family and I must admit, they are complaining.
I’m trying to keep up as best I can but it’s getting difficult and frustrating.
Lee in Canada
You are so right. One of my biggest hassles is tending neighbors animals as you say they are in the buildings. I have a few of each animal for neighbors on the homestead, which just takes up room.
A solution for this is to make the Big Barn, Orchard, Fowl Pond etc the same as the Greenhouse (which most of me neighbors don’t have or if they do they don’t use it. This would mean we wouldn’t have to keep animals on the homestead and still allow our neighbors to be able to tend stuff. I think they also need to increase the storeable number of every animals, trees etc to 1000 regardless of what it is (1000 Ox, 1000 Blue Ox…). They should also allow us to store all the new animals etc in the existing buildings, Moose could go in the Big Barn no need for yet another building.
I agree repeatable missions should be permitted but not necessary to advance. I am so sick of having to ask for so many items especially since they haven’t increased the number you can get.
PT has started taking so much time and when you are as busy as I am you have to consider if you want to spend that much time.
Wow! I understand how frustrated everyone is! 4 months ago I used to think I will never leave this game, I love it too much. Never say never. I agree that the game has gotten so overwhelming. Especially begging for items on the feed and only getting 3-5 clicks per post. Also with the game having to be reloaded all the time and losing your progress. I can’t bring myself to block it yet, but I am thinking about it more often. They do have excellent customer service as far as compensating the frustration I’ve felt and helping me complete some missions, but that will only go so far. I hope Zynga does something soon, it really is a fun game to play.
1) Too many missions, too fast.
2) Bad Mission Content – The mission writers are either lazy, or are being forced to write bad storyline missions trying to funnel the player to buy horseshoes.
Example: We have CRAFTING missions – so why aren’t the actions more crafty. Don’t ask Friends for Cocoa, harvest the Cocoa trees until you have enough. Turn the cocoa into chocolate using milk we churned from out own cows. Speaking of our own Cows, why aren’t we getting milk to turn into cream cheese from them? It’s just lazy, stupid mission writing that’s B-O-R-I-N-G,
3) THROTTLING: Here we have three games in one and we still have the lame arsed limits that we had with one game. I know that The Trail and Ghost Town are mini-games, BUT, they still have you ask for stuff.
a) Daily limits need raising. From 50 to 75 for Helping others limits and perhaps 40 for personal “reward” limits.
b) The Game Feed postings need raising from 1-2 to 5-6. It’s just stupid now, really stupidly obvious that they want to frustrate the players to make them pay cash to end the painfully l-o-n-g missions.
Players get more of a kick from helping each other than they do from collecting silly pixels that mean nothing. I NEVER check out anyone’s so-called “collections” of animals and such, I can’t wait to get off of my Neighbors overloaded frontiers so as soon as I’m done, I’m gone. No, I’d rather help people than look at “stuff”.
c) Gift Requests have been severely throttled. It used to be that every time someone requested something you got one too. Now you don’t, they NEED to put the old system back in.
Instead of changing the Gift Requests for the odious complainers whining about “too much in my Inventory”, they SHOULD have made Mission items sellable like they did in FarmVille.
4) Releasing expansions before the majority of bugs were worked out.
5) Releasing Missions that are far too long (whatever happened to 3 steps, you’re done) and pop up far too late to get done before an “event”. Yeah it was real fun getting a Broom FINALLY a week after Halloween – NOT.
That’s what I’ve got right now…I think it’s far more than enough.
Apart from the zynga issues with greed..bugs etc…. what I can’t work out is why high level players insist on having tons of statues, decorations and other totally useless items as well as animals crammed inbetween items to the point where you can’t get to themon their farms as well as not having any mission items available for visitors…surely by the time they reach level 100 they know that these items pay very very little to the point of uselessness ( if there is such a word ) these items among other things make it damned hard to load their homesteads. I got to the point of ultimate frustration to where I made another account just so I could do mission tasks for the original account then I get accused of cheating by these players who have no mission items on their homesteads….and to make it worse..I can’t remove them off my neighbours. Sure as hell removed them as friends >:)
I keep a minimum of five to ten animals….crops etc all outside in easy reach.the rest of the animals are stored. When a new mission comes out, I’ll bring out the animal needed or plant the crop required and then leave it there… If you get rid of the useless stuff there is enough room…..just but do-able.
It’s a strategy game…think before doing
so…………… all the faults basicaly are Zynga 99% players 1%
frontierville is still my favorite FB game, but i understand why people would quit… i’m even myself very worried about the bugs and slows in the game… i mean, a 3min long loading page, with a maddriving music u can’t turn off that often crashes flash!!!and when the homestead inally appears, it takes 2more minutes to have some usefull items appearing!
i knopw how frustrating it can be not to be on time with questsi’ve tried to join friends in city ville last month, but couldn’t take that frustration for more than 3weeks!
that been said, my sick mind can’t reject the idea those bugs doesn’t remain with purpose… when the trail finally released, 2 things happend… ANY yearly frontierville player came back… and well; zynga’s server didn’t seem to carry that lot of players, leading the game to so much slowing and bugs!
zynga accepted the hardcore orientation of the game! only them answer the wall requests (usefull one’s only! 50/30replies are easily wasted!)so ony them really get wall requests items. and they are the most valuable player, few casual really buy horseshoes!
maybe zynga is willingly getting rid of few casual serveroverloading player, in order to be able to solve the remaining players’s loading issues!
i’m myself not spending real money into the game, but i have enough neighbours and playtime to catch up, but with 1h daily playtime or only real life neighbours i would have quit the game long ago!
Ditto practically everyone else here!
1. Too many missions at once. I’m on three pages, and have been for months.
2. Needing c.70 items (either wallposts or requests) per building, and another 10-20 per mission level.
3. No room on the homestead. Too many useless/pointless buildings.
4. Missions involving visiting neighbours and harvesting animals they keep in barns or crops they don’t have room/time to grow.
5. Having to repeat missions to progress. Ugh. No thanks.
I would suspect that the big drop-off happened when all the missions rolled back to zero. That was probably the closest I came to quitting, when I had to face the prospect of harvesting another 1500 peanuts…
Zynga seem to be panicking and just throwing everything at us in some mad poo-flinging frenzy – perhaps it’s a cunning ploy on their part to get rid of the players who won’t pay to play to free up their servers for those who will. As far as I’m concerned, it’s counter-productive, because if I believed I was getting a good game for my money, I’d be more likely to spend it, but what’s the point in paying to finish a single mission for a decoration that you don’t have room to put on your farm anyway?
I find it disturbing also that they seem to have taken this incessant begging idea and applied it to Farmville. Is it not enough to er, um…own a farm, plant some crops, harvest them and tend your animals? Obviously not.
The constant redoing of missions to earn one item – and when those missions entail begging over and over again – is one of the issues. I am frustrated by a rollback that is stopping me from continuing with the halloween quests I have worked on all month
I have emailed support twice. By the time they help will it be too late to finish!?
For me it was a combination. The begging requirements went up drastically so that not a single quest was doable without it. But what turned it from bad to worse was the facebook gamebar change that made it impossible to sort by just the game. I had to scroll through my entire timeline to find a couple of posts and it slowed down my gathering. The combination made me think about how little enjoyment I was actually getting from it. Add to that the utter disappointment that was the Pioneer Trail and the same complaints that a lot of other posters have already stated and I called it quits.
WAY too many missions and buildables requiring WAY too many items requested directly from neighbors (or efforts to get non-players playing). I won’t friend-request strangers to my fb page simply to play games and only about 10% of my friends play any games at all. So out of maybe 23 playing friends, I have 15 who actually play Frontierville and of those maybe only 5 who play regularly. Well, along comes all these missions and buildables like rapid-fire machine gunning and I’m sitting here with 385 DIRECT REQUESTS – I’ve logged and counted them!! (and it’s not counting those needs that can be sent to my wall for anyone to click on), so figure that out, if I have 5 active players, it’ll 77 days to complete the mission/buildables I CURRENTLY have. I’m ready to say “let the 24-hour a day gamers with 600 friends who are ALL fellow gamers have at it…I hope they can ‘occupy’ themselves” and I’ll mosey onto games that don’t require such stressful effort – sheesh, there isn’t enough time to even make these farms/frontiers attractive…which was kinda part of why I started playing them in the first place. Oh well. Add to the time spent attempting to get help, the way we have to accept the gifts we get through fb which also has the stupid https security pop-up with each one and I’m getting tendonitis/carpel tunnel along with my frustrations. Tired of it all.
It really is a good thing that I didn’t spend money to play any of these games because I’d be really pissed off if I had spent money on these games and had these continual problems. I could make a list of problems but numerous people have already stated the problems with the games. Facebook just added to the frustration when they changed their feed the last time. Not sure where ZYNGA and Facebook got the idea that the constant ads and popups were going to increase users. When the ads and popups become so intrusive that visiting the website and the games are an exercise in frustration you lose people. Get a clue… Actually writing these comments are most likely a waste of time because the only people that are reading these comments are other frustrated and disgusted players…. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA We’re all freaking morons… HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
…..
are you still reading?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
you really are bored….
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Let us prey!
I think it boils down to this with casual gamers – too many problems/bugs and too many missions. You really can’t get anywhere in this (or games like it) game without playing at least every other day.
I think a really big thing for me was how Pioneer Trail turned out. Everyone kept saying it was so much like Oregon Trail.. and, while it is (in a way).. it was a LOT more tedious. Rations ran out so fast and it got so repetitive having to chop trees, clear debris, etc over and over to try and get supplies got so dull. My reaction to it was.. that’s it? I reached the end of avalanche pass a long time ago and even though I play daily I haven’t had any desire to work on getting to fort courage. I can definitely see people getting too annoyed or disappointed in this part of the game.
I must be in the minority because I love the overload of missions – it keeps me from being bored. I’m not the type that just likes to farm and move stuff around on my homestead. If there are no missions or goals to work for, why even play?
That said, the thing that I find most annoying are all of the dumb buildings they come up with – a pet store, really?! The detective agency.. and the animal hospital is dumb because the animals aren’t injured.
I’m also lucky in that I don’t have any computer troubles with loading and playing the game.. no glitches, no game play problems.
I think that frontierville needs to really step its game up to keep people interested. Or make simple improvements.. like having to build everything with 100% new materials.. I could see one or two.. but having to worry about getting all of those new materials is ridiculous.
It would also be really nice if they lowered the prices on special animals. I really wanted that purple spectral horse but there’s no way I could justify spending just under $20 worth of horseshoes for it. Earlier in the game I used to buy all of the mystery animal crates. If they hadn’t gotten so ridiculous (seals, really?!) I’d say I want them back. I don’t mind spending real money on horseshoes but I think the prices should be more reflective of current economy.
1 – I do not want to friend people to be neighbors. I am not friends with my real neighbors.
2 – what is the deal with the flying notices. I know I am low on energy.
3 – I have spent $$ on this game. Yet if I don’t have ‘neighbors’ I need to pony up a couple grand to complete all these missions and buildings. I play for fun not to socialize so I don’t have neighbors..and thus can not complete missions without mega cash.
i have been trying for 3hrs today trying to drop pioneer trail. been trying for two weeks. no help from any one. glad i found this page. i haven’t played this game for a long time. my farm is loaded. could not sell stuff. that darn jack makes me angry knowing this is just a game. i hate this game. it was fun when it first started but knowthey had to keep changing things. can you tell me how to get rid of it for good? thanks for this page.
PT has become the game where you wait for your friends to send you the stuff you need.
How surprising is it that people leave in droves?
Way to much sitting and waiting going on in this game…
What happen to it being “MY GAME” Things for me to do on my land? Not….sitting and waiting 3 days for someone to help me. and that wouldnt be so bad if the goals wasnt do high in demand 16 of each item ( one time a day).. No problem helping each other..but get real..cant get much help from someone when u have so much to ask for… why cant we work our on land for items as in boards, cakes, as it use to be…
I left the game a few months back,,,came back to a nightmare of building and request..
everyone left because……..way to much waiting on others to help you out with so many goals going on at one time…and the wall request now has dropped down to only 2 or 3 clicks per item…uh what ever…………
I am ready to quit playing because they bombarded you with so many missions at one time that it’s impossible to complete them in a decent amount of time. You can only send individual gift requests once a day, and when you have 3 missions on the trail to Fort Courage & 13 on the original Frontierville, & 2 on the Halloween one… Then came the mission requiring 400 corn bristles. I could’ve handled that until they stopped dropping them from corn on Nov. 18 & all I have is 124. I’m done.
P.S. I think it’s all a plot to try to coerce people into paying more for horseshoes so they can complete their missions faster…or complete them at all.
I agree with everyone, too many missions, way to many bugs and refreshings, clearing the cache don’t help at all! I have trid for 6 hours to load this dang game and everytime it downloads perfect and gets to playing smoothe, after taking at least 30 minutes! I have had that Damn stupid “Report Bug and refresh box all day long, and they don’t even work! I have to keep closing out This isn’t worth the agrevation and disgust anymore, and sure isn’t any fun anymore. I use to lobve this game and have played for over a year but I am ready to hang it up now! I will never understand after it is running so good why you have to say there is a bug or something went wrong with the game, and as for google chrome, it sucks with them damn dialog boxes stated unresponsive shockwave flash, and NOBODY HAS YET TOLD ME HOW TO FIX THAT! you don’t answer our questions or help us all you do is tell us how you guys also play this game and know what it’s like, but you don’t tell us how you get around the glitches!
The whole game has become one huge joke. The missions get sillier and sillier let alone the severe lack of imagination. They are boring and now they have removed the quick draw and red eye drinks, so the still is now useless. I had one idiot support person tell me that because I lost a heap of horseshoes that she was reffering it to the developers…what a joke, as if they would read it.
I doubt I will be playing it for much longer..it’s just gone really stupid and boring
I really hate the green screen that I get when I try to finish up the Pioneer trail. This happens daily and then I have to wait several hours (or days) before it is fixed. And I hate having to redo so many quest items on the trail because the accumulators don’t work. And I really really hate not being able to remove “ghost” neighbors that I removed over a year ago. They aren’t even showing up as neighbors in the My Neighbors tab and aren’t even Facebook friends. So why are they showing up neighbors on the ladder, taking up slots that could be used for active players? I am about to join the millions that have dropped out of this game.
I’m falling out of love with it too. What I find frustrating is the way in which the game goes about dealing with requests. It doesn’t make sense that some requests appear in the pop-up when you load up the game, yet other ones are on walls. They should have all the requests appearing when the game loads up so people won’t miss them or not reply.
Ultimately though, it doesn’t matter how many players Zynga loses as long as there are enough of them who are prepared to pay money for horseshoes.
Why don’t all these cry babies stop complaining and just QUIT then! Yes there are lots of bugs and lots of missions but come on guys it’s just a game! If it stresses you out that bad, DON’T PLAY!
I hardly ever play this game now
@Linda Schmidt
Well weren’t you just a super nice person filled with holiday spirit when you posted /sarcasm
I DID quit. I don’t have the time, unlike “some” people who sit on their arses all day playing games, to wait for Pioneer Trail to fix their troubles.
I don’t bother entering the game at all, I help Neighbors with Gift Requests, but they are on notice that I am done and Jan 10 I am removing Pioneer Trail (and FarmVille) from my Facebook account.
Too many bugs – re-loading five to six times in a half hour, not loading – stuck at loading screen, complete crashes requiring browser reboots, etc., on top of the out-of-control mission deployments and the rampant greed of Zynga Inc?
Left me with a bad impression and HATING to open the game, particularly at the winter holidays when MOST people become a little kinder, a little gentler and a little more giving, Zynga went the other way.
Which leads me to believe that “Linda Schmidt” is either one of those oddball browser gamers who STILL think there is something to be gained by ranking other people in this game, and is fearful some illusory “status” may be taken away from them, OR, they are a Zynga staffer come in to try to make players feel bad.
Either way – fail.
Linda says @ Outre
You Have a nice day too! I am just a regular player who only has time for games like these because I am disabled and have many inconveniences to do the things I would love to do. I never said this game and I don’t have our moment of angrish, I just keep it to myself and don’t complain to the world.
I have not read all the responses here yet, but I will. My frustration is with how slow it is. and how during any sitting to play the game I have to have it restarted many times because I get a message that pops up and says it has detected a bug and do I want to report it. Then it says it must restart. Sometimes this happens as soon as I log on!!!! And sometimes it is just frustrating because I am counting on other people sometimes to make my mission so it takes a long time to finish some missions. I have though had some time over the break from school to sit down and just play. I was not allowed to get everything I clicked on saying I had reached my limit for the day. I think if I get a lot of friends, I should be able to help them all!!!!!
Susie Tatsch
@Linda who said;
>>>You Have a nice day too! I am just a regular player who only has time for games like these because I am disabled and have many inconveniences to do the things I would love to do. I never said this game and I don’t have our moment of angrish, I just keep it to myself and don’t complain to the world. <<<
Well, welcome to the club of the disabled – clap-clap. I cannot walk anymore and I'm losing my eyesight – so what.
It does NOT mean you sit on your arse all day playing games. Get some training in a profession you can do from your computer and work.
Geez, being disabled is not an excuse – ever.
AND you SAY you don't complain, but you came here complaining about people who were ACTUALLY answering a question on a fan support site. Get your specifics straight and you won't go wrong next time.
I'm through with this, I really don't have time to spare for folks like you.
@Susie
I feel your frustration. I was at that point trying to fit the game in during my spare 1/2 hour from work and doing all the holiday stuff.
It just kept refreshing and refreshing, sometimes rolling me back ten to twenty minutes and eventually, I just couldn’t justify the waste of time that the game was.
I quit. Also quit FarmVille as it was exhibiting the same behavior and well they went mission crazy there too.
Games are enjoyment, NOT a job. Jobs pay the bills, games take money and time away from you. They at least have to be enjoyable, which PT is not anymore.
If the last game I play of theirs – CastleVille – starts playing up that way I’ll quit it too. Right now it moves fairly fast and I’ve only gotten the refresh bug once or twice. But if they go crazy with numerous timed missions and the quality of the game goes down – I’m outta there.
I just started playing again and am so bogged down it isn’t funny. What I hate the most is all the crap you have to ask your friends for. It wouldn’t be so bad if the gifts would actually make it into my game. I am just so frustrated I think I will just stop playing again. It isn’t worth it.
I also want to mention that I have been playing for about a month now. When I started to play again it took me straight to PT. It isn’t a mini game for me. I can’t get into FV at all. I can get into the Haunted Hollow and the Christmas one as mini games. I think that I will stop playing all the games, CV, PT, FV, and now Castleville, and just start playing oblivion.
Totally agree!!…with everyone.
PT isn’t fun anymore..it’s just frustrating.
Adding new neighbours, is a waste, cause they all end up leaving within a month or two. Probably cause they all get frustrated and just stop playing.
The missions are meaningless, and it’s just a repeat of the same quests, over and over…pfft
I stopped playing for a few months, and thought I’d give it another try, not even a month…and I’m dropping it again.
I agree…seems like all they are trying to do…is get people to buy missions. Not gonna happen here.
Just wondering…are all the other Zynga games gonna follow this “game plan”? FV did, and even CV feels like that lately. Feels like you play to a certain level, and then they make it impossible to finish, unless you put some money into it.
There are no skills required, just begging…and now..seems like “paying”…as well.
I’ll still answer requests to my playing neighbours, as I understand their frustration, but playing myself…no fun anymore. It shouldn’t feel like “work”!
The worst part…The amount of time it takes to load my own page, but even worse if I need to visit a neighbor. Sometimes it takes so long to load a neighbors page that I find myself making hot tea, then returning to a “timed out” page.
Also, no-one wants to waste their daily clicks to give their neighbors items that they themselves don’t need, it is just a wasted click since we only get so many per day.
I can’t use the greenhouse, because when I click to get back out of it, my village needs to reload completely once again, this time taking longer than the original load time.
I can tolerate bugs to a certain extent, but the loading times for neighbors and my own land is just WAY TOO time consuming. In the older days, this game loaded with speed and FV was the one with the loading issues, but now it is vice-versa.
ALSO, a huge problem that I have now is when I want to help neighbors by sending them something by clicking on their help request that appears on my homepage…We now have to click on that item, then we go to a screen where we must insert a comment, then send the item, then it goes immediately to trying to load my PT page, which I try to click the “home” button fast enough, but sometimes it gets stuck on the loading page and I have to start all over. This new way of sending request items has gotten extremely TIME CONSUMING!!
certainly like your website but you need to test the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very bothersome to inform the reality on the other hand I’ll definitely come again again.
starting to really hate pioneer trails. to many missions. Lots of repeatable missions. as if one wasn’t enough, now we are repeating 3..4.. times and we need to ask friends for an outrages amount of stuff to finish missions. just don’t have the time for all that. Zynga what are you thinking. THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT A FUN GAME ANY MORE.
I agree with all of the complaints above. I love this game so I am hanging in there in hopes that some of our complaints will be answered. The worst things are as many have said, begging for so many gifts and the fact that all of my neighbors are quitting the game. Too many missions at one time is also frustrating. I rarely visit neighbors anymore unless it is required for a mission because the load time is just so slow and irritating and half of the time they don’t have what you need to help you anyway. I do give them credit for the live chat help feature. They are very quick and helpful. I also love the item that makes the crops never wilt. I did have to buy it as I didn’t have enough horseshoes. It is the only money that I have spent on this game but it was well worth it. Jacques still pops up on my game too. I also can not receive gifts half of the time which is very frustrating especially right now when I need a zillion bluebells to finish a mission. I just wish that there was not such a limit on how many gifts we can give and receive and the time in between was not so long. The rewards are pretty crappy too. They need to give us rewards worth working for and then I wouldn’t mind it so badly. I have considered quitting many times but hope springs eternal that they may listen to the complaints and make the game better. I was a long time player of Farmville but I quit because of to much going on at one time and all of the begging. Pioneer trail is getting to be just as bad so I may have to give up on it too.
Quick and to the point.. I can’t get anywhere. I get it loaded. A zillion quests spam down on the left side.. across the top of the neighbor bar a ton of quests spam from left to right.. I get the standard spam of buy horseshoes..
Trouble is .. I can’t clear anything off my homestead. Every time I try, I get the standard “report bug” then “refresh” the page.. I come back and wait for it all to respam. Every thing I did is right back. I have reports from friends, after 20 min of this.. I have over 15 share exp of a snake. The same dang snake. To me that screams exploit. And to top it all off, the game is constantly asking me to place a building and I can’t due to the fact, I can’t clear up space. I tried the other Zynga games, to me none are interesting or fun. Guess I’m done with the game.
The biggest problem zynga have is that they make your system load EVERYTHING, that is, ALL the growth stages of animals, developments of buildings, sounds, trees…every picture file. What happens then is that even if you don’t have that animal or building, tree or decorations. statues, you are going to load them anyway. Unfortunately you have no control on this side as to what you want to load and what you don’t want it to load, BUT there is a way to stop them from loading using ADD BLOCK. You can set up custom filters to stop the items loading and it cuts them off at the pass and will certainly speed things up dramaticly. Sorry, for chrome, chrome uses a different syntax and I haven’t quite had the time to do it…but it will work on firefox.
if anyone is interested, I’ll quickly put together a document on how to do it and also include the current filters to insert
My biggest issue w/ the game isnt even the loading issues, or problems receiving gifts or sending them, not even the fact that most of the time I have trouble posting for help and collecting from feeds, what I find most difficult is keeping up w/ these missions and crafting and repeating, I still havent even got past the 3rd mission in the halloween hallow n forget about the other one, I cant even remember the name of it, all I kno is I need a skunkadillo to complete a mission on PT, I did finally finish the Xmas one but still have thousands of candy canes i dont kno wat todo w/. I have pages of missions and honestly I just can’t keep up. Visiting neighbors is horrible because it takes so long for each neighbors land to load, and trying to find the things I need on their land is almost impossible because although I have alot of active neighbors they are much further then me or much farther behind then me. It would really be nice if Zynga could back off just a bit on the missions, make them a lil easier, maybe not include so much crafting where I have to beg borrow n steal to get the thousand pieces i need just to craft ONE of the 5 items I need to craft half of the final product. It would be fun to play again if I knew that I could complete most of the missions myself w/o having to beg everyone all the dang time for things, not to mention how irritating it is wen ya have to wait 4 hrs in between posting and u are only granted 2 clicks per post. I really could go on and on about the fact that I will never be able to get enuff stuff to craft a flying broom, or enough tickets to buy a skunkadillo but i’m pretty sure ive made my point.. I miss when PT was fun to play and i would wake up in the morning excited to play because I knew my crops where ready and I would be completing a mission. I also miss the days wen the missions items didnt require horseshoes to complete. Zynga please make our game fun again ..
I finally quit Pioneer Trail last week and don’t regret it. Somewhere along the way, this game stopped being fun and became frustrating. The reason? Having to ask neighbors repeatedly for everything.
Of course, Zynga don’t care that why any of us have quit. Pioneer Trail is a money-making racket. It doesn’t matter if a relatively small number of people continue to play. As long as the remaining players are prepared to buy horseshoes and make the game profitable, Zynga are happy. It’s all down to money, folks.
I agree with Darth 100% I use to love playing now it is a pain in the ass to even load and keep it going! Nothing opens anymore, its always refreshing which takes soooo long and then it still don’t work! Games really sucking lately! And they really don’t care if you drop out or not, true, they are only in it for the money. Thay claim they fix bugs, but how come they never go away then? They don’t lisen to any request we ask them, like the overload of these missions, that you can’t open up anyhow!! This game has turned into a stupid joke and They just keep throwing their crap out on how they monitor us and trustworthy help us! I am hanging on my last thread of hope about playing much longer!
Seriously thinking about dumping this game – and I love it. But it is taking up too much of my life and is continuously frustrating with with the following things.
1. I actually have 80 (that right, 80) quests. It takes FOREVER to get everything you need, namely a) the limited amount of questions you can ask for per day, especially the ones that go to your list of neighbors and you can only ask for one a day for each person. On many of them I have asked for items MANY times and noone sends them to me. Your only other choice is to BUY them (of course).
b) You finally finish a quest just to find that you have to repeat it (sometimes several times) to really finish.
c) You can’t eliminate old neighbors who no longer play the game and therefore do not have many of the items you might need. Or, conversely, noone has any trees any longer to chop in the neighborhood, they have used up all their space to put buildings in. For instance, I’ve been growing an oak tree for the longest time so I can get one more bear. It never gets big enough. Why?
The game isn’t fun any longer. Unrealistic demands (100,000 food), freezeups, glitches, all add to the frustration. Its too bad, it used to the best game in town.
TOTALY AGREE!
I think players are getting fed up with the constant increase and demand for HS, the repeat missions are ridiculous and the constant upgrade habit they have formed is frustrating in the least. When they decided to combine game activities from/with other games, it wasnt the same, different game, same crap.
As this has been going on since nov 2011 and nothing has been about it I can’t see it getting any better pity really but I will be looking for another game to relax with as with other comments above this is just getting to frustrating for me.
I agree with Shanesangel13 I am still working on the Halloween quest, I just wish I could do me all on my on and not depend on other people. That way I could get things done. I am now looking for another game that does not require other people! I don’t mind playing with other people but when you have to continually ask for stuff from other people they get tired of playing and stop, plus it is just too much of each thing that you need of a item. Like the nut cracker. Or the reed and Santa outfits and bows. It just takes too many to get the job down!!!
wOw
Just had another look at AppData at http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/266989143414-pioneer-trail.
This game is a loser because of bad mission/quest writing and handling whereby they try to force the players into enough frustration and/or anger to pull out the credit card and spend, spend, spend on normal game play in a FREE TO PLAY game.
Look at appdata link. They’re down from 6 million players in Nov 2011 to under 3 million currently.
I guess it’s all part of the “Don’t innovate, copy [other games]” and the “Do Evil” mantra of the CEO and Board of Directors.
Way to kill your games Zynga.
I am SO glad I quit at Christmas. I feel sorry for their support team, they were the only good people in Zynga games I ever ran into. Most of their forum “Moderators” are nasty people with bad attitudes.
Let me start by saying “I love the game” but my frustration is building more and more.
I love the fact that we can store my animals away but then to tell us to go and tend our neighbors animals doesn’t make sense. They have their animals in their barns too!
Repeatable missions have got to go! If you insist on keeping them, then they should be like the flower missions – available but not necessary to advance. Horseshoes are NOT getting credited. I have lost approx. 50-60. AND THE POP-UPS – pleaase spare us!!!
Also, we keep being given more and more buildings but no room! Also there should be a way to go back and complete a mission – e.g. I did not get the missions on the forges(firing guns) so now I cannot proceed with any other mission that has this requirement.
I absolutly hate repeatedly asking friends for for things – begging and pleading. I would much preffr missions that I am responsible in achieving – not having it depend on the mercy of others and then only a few at a time.
I really do enjoy the game but everything seems to have become more complicated. Many of my older friends have quit because of these factors.
I’m trying to keep up as best I can but it’s getting difficult and frustrating.
Way too many missions all at once; and I have some that are ancient – should be able to do away with them after a certain amount of time. Hate repeatable missions and really hate that some items needed to complete a mission must be bought with horse shoes (or you just have to hope they are gifted to you). I haven’t even bothered with the gold digging part of it.
I have played Frontierville since it’s beginning. I play daily, but I find myself skipping days, or even a week at a time. Mostly because it’s just not fun anymore. What I used to find fun and relaxing has become work. WAY too many quests that are way to complicated to finish.
I find it difficult to keep track of what I need for which quest. There was a time where I had eight or ten going at one time. Now I have 45. FORTY FIVE! Come on.
MESSAGE TO THE DEVELOPERS: It’s just plain lazy to force players to repeat the same quest over and over and over. I’m so sick of the Ready to Rush quests. It’s ridiculous.
I really enjoyed this game, and I don’t want to quit. I’ve invested a lot of time in it, but I’m not willing to give any more. Not if the developers aren’t going to pay attention to feedback. Stop it with so many quests, and the repeating them multiple times.
I wish there was a way to delete quests from the queue if you don’t want to complete them.
I spent time reading all the older responses to this thread, and someone made a good point. Neighbors with too much stuff on their frontier slows it down so you can’t help them. It takes forever for their land to load. I usually give up.
Right this minute I am removing any extraneous stuff not necessary to play the game.
-Holly
I can assume that most stop playing for the reason I did – too many quests – all relying heavily on my few friends that play. Horrid music that is incredibly loud (I have to mute each time). And if that was not enough, they decided to start loading up my place with people everywhere. No option to make these characters go away. If I can’t play the game the way that I want to play it, if I am forced to play it “their way”; then, I don’t want to play. I have revisited this game a few times in the past 6 months and leave swearing not to bother to come back… Too annoying and cluttered – too many pop-ups trying to sell me something…
I agree that most players have way too much stuff on the homstead that is useless except for decoration, and takes too long to load when visiting them.
The main object of the game is to make money for zynga! That’s why they make it so hard to get things, and so MANY of some items, etc. They do this hoping you will buy their dang horseshoes
to buy the items instead of begging for them!
the bug are one of the reasons but the main reason is that zynga is wanting us to buy everything with horse shoes and we are not fortune to have billions of dollars to spend on horse shoes everday for this game if they don’t stop want everything bought by horshoe nobody is going to be playing we have all the coins and can’t use them because they want horseshoes for everything i play everyday from 4am til 11pm sometime longer everyday but here lately i have think about quiting the game cause i can not get the buildings built or missions finish because i don’t have money to buy horse shoes and that is the way all the players are feel about the game and quiting
I agree with a lot of the above. There are too many missions being thrown at you at one time. Some I have been working on for many months that take too long to complete. I am considering leaving also if there are no changes. It doesn,t seem that you listen to the complaints of the players.
@Zareen – you took the words out of my mouth!
Come on Zynga – listen to your players. We will keep playing and buying horseshoes if you don’t keep frustrating us to death!
I’ll chime in on this!! The problem is the game is no longer fun to play. It has actually become quite annoying to play. Idiotic missions that are too huge or have nothing to do with the old Frontieer. Missions that take 3 months to complete that should take 3 days or a week. The ANNOYING pop ups constantly in your face are irritating to the point you want to smash the monitor. I encountered typically 7 or 8 pop ups just to get into the game. Sometimes there are as many as 10 of them. Now they are even having pop ups occur when you enter and leave a mission or craft screen. In the beginning we networked with family and co workers and had a ton of fun talking about our experiences and strategy. We used to be able to come home from work and spend half an hour in the game and get everything cleaned up and all requests answered and made. Then that turned into an hour and a half then dinner then another hour to finish up. Most of this was due to the annoying pop ups and agonizingly slow loading of screens and the game itself. (Except pop up’s those come up real fast in succession.) The number of “Craft” items and drop down type requests became so ridiculous that it soon became apparent that you could never catch up. This caused me and other friend players to plain give up because there is no hope of progress and that feeling of instant satisfaction. You can do two drop down requests in a day if you can coordinate your schedule appropriately. That would end up taking another hour and 15 minutes to hour and 20 minutes more of your time. It got to the point where you were spending 3.5 to 4 hours a day just to get the basics done. We found ourselves planning our time out for socializing, chores, and vacation etc around the game. The daily responsibilities such as lawn mowing, car maintenance, house painting, gardening etc were suffering due to the amount of time on an exacting schedule that was required to try to work this game, and be annoyed by the constant pop ups and slow screens. Eventually I went from 16 active neighbors to about 7 or 8, then that dropped off to 4, two of which were family members in the house who would jump into the PC seat before or after I was there and honor the requests. So this summer when two of the co-workers took two week cruises and said they would probably drop out, the end finally came aas that left me basically with 2 family members as active neighbors. I’d never get anything done. So I no longer actively play the game as of a few weeks ago. I do pop in on occasion when I do have a few spare minutes to see if anyone might have made a request, but its rare. Zynga destroyed their own game player base. I believe this was in part due to the effort to corral players into joining more games, and getting more involved in other aspects of the game in hopes they would spend money there. I think Zynga also wasted a lot of money pursuing other gaming companies in hopes of expanding. In the end it was apparent they should have spent that money on capital improvements to their servers so their games would load and play properly. They should have also stuck to the basic principle, KISS. Keep the games simple and fun instead of trying to manipulate players into spending cash.