Posts by Ardath

  • Halloween

    I keep refreshing and hoping I'll see some seeds. It's a bit bewildering that they were available on the 23rd (before I thought the event was supposed to actually begin, but I must have read that part wrong) and not available now. I'm rather sad that all of the older varieties are breed-only, because I had a few varieties where I only still needed parentless ones (having foolishly given some of them away to get first-year jack-o-lanterns that then returned to the garden in overabundance the year after... I just canNOT win...) and now apparently will never be able to get them. :( Not much incentive to pick up many seeds from the wild garden, really. But I'd like to be able to, and it seems like the only times I'm able to log on are the very times that they tend not to appear.

  • Board login separated from site login???

    This is really weird, because I was logged into the site (and just watered my plants) before coming here, and for the first time ever, the board told me I wasn't logged in. Did the cookies for the main site and board get separated? I'm used to being able to open the board, while logged into the game, without needing to do anything extra. It's not a huge deal but it was kind of weird.

  • Raising seed limit during events

    Which means that there's more of a chance of getting old ones (4/6) than new ones (2/6), because you're not counting existing trees in the distribution. This is basic statistics. The older trees are already plentiful, and by making them appear equally this year, they become significantly more plentiful than the new trees.

    Say there were 2,000 trees last year from the wild garden, divided among the four types that were available. That's 500 of each variety.

    Now say that this year there are 3,000 trees coming from the wild garden, divided among the six types that are available. That's another 500 of each variety.

    But this means that there are now 1,000 each of the older varieties and only 500 each of the newer varieties.

    The older varieties immediately become only half as valuable as the new varieties, and for every chance of getting a new tree, you're twice as likely to get an old one. This is why people are getting frustrated. If this was a plant that was available all year long, people wouldn't mind. But when there's a very limited time to get something, putting that big an obstacle in the way kind of flies in the face of the spirit of the season.

  • Raising seed limit during events

    Quote from fkrauthan

    It's a really difficult problem. Because if we would change it like you say it, new players would start the same thread because they don't get the old varieties and always just get the new ones. If we would made it based on which flowers you already had the game might goes to easy or if you like to get old variants you get sad because the game thinks he should give a better chance to get the new ones then the old ones.


    I think newcomers to the game are going to be less bothered by it being harder to get older varieties -- they're used to that with places like Dragon Cave, Magistream, and so on, where a lot of things aren't even available anymore -- than by not even having time to collect one/two of each of what's available, because there's a whole forest-ful of possibilities and not enough time to get them all. As lorimmel says, in a game where the adult plants can be gifted/traded, it's not going to be impossible for them to get things they missed. But if they only get the old trees too, they're going to be in the same boat as everybody else when it comes to trying to trade for the new trees -- worse, even, because they won't have anything saved up to trade with. By keeping the odds "even," you're actually turning the new trees and the flaming trees into ultra-rares that everybody will be fighting over, getting into bidding wars over, accusing each other of hoarding, and who knows what else. It has the potential to damage the non-competitive, collaborative spirit of the game that I like so much. We can't help each other get nice things if we all want them for ourselves.

    I also just really want reliable rules about how/where/when to try for things.

    Like, if I'd known last Halloween that the 2010 Jack-o-Lanterns were actually going to come back to the Wild Garden this year, I'd have been less likely to trade away a few valuable plants that in retrospect, I really wish I hadn't given up, just to score a bred one. Now I'm swimming in them. That... was really frustrating.

    If I'd known that burning trees were never going to be in the wild garden again, I wouldn't have given up my second one for anything. I've regretted doing that ever since. I was hoping that maybe, in keeping with the Jack-o-Lantern pattern, they'd be back in the Wild Garden this December, but no such luck. So that's a major disappointment. If I'd known, before the end of the event last year, that the burning trees could be gotten by breeding, I would have actually tried breeding my trees to each other instead of just breeding Christmas Stars with them. This time I'm breeding them all, but I'm bracing myself for major disappointment. I probably won't be able to breed enough to beat the odds and get even one, and nobody's going to want my extras.

  • Raising seed limit during events

    Quote from fkrauthan

    tempestsea but is it a problem that it takes longer for you as a new player to get everything? We are still a game with challenges. And if we would gift now more or less every plants to new players old players would say why we had to wait from year to year too to get the plants.

    And yes it was always complete random which variant you get if you pick up a seed since we introduced it.


    And this is the problem now that we have seven possible breeds of Christmas tree in play.

    If I want to pick up one of the new seeds in the Wild Garden, I have a 1/3 chance of getting a new seed and a 2/3 chance of getting an old seed. If I want to pick up a specific new seed in the garden, my chance drops to 1/6. If I want to breed a flaming tree, my chances drop to 1/7. This means that, to meet my goal of two of each variety, assuming the randomizer works out evenly, I'd have to be able to raise 24 Wild Garden trees and at least 7 bred trees. With the current number of available pots, that's not possible. Even if I could do it, in the process I'd get swamped with plants that I wasn't actually trying for, already had enough of, and which don't have any actual trade value.

    The problem with the odds that you're currently using is that you're not weighting for already-existing plants. Doing this works against you because it means that older varieties become more and more common and less and less desirable, until nobody will want them anymore. The oldest (and most widely-held) Christmas trees should be the hardest to get this year, and the newest should be the most prevalent among the new seeds. You risk making people dislike the older varieties if they constantly get in the way of everyone's goals for new types.

    We either need a whole lot more pots, or much better odds.

  • Raising seed limit during events

    Quote from Gwen

    I don´t have every variant for some event plants. When I miss something I try to trade or I wait until next year. If I have more space to collect more event plants there will be less chalenge and I'll probably get bored because it will be easy.


    I have to disagree. The number of event plants is, in my opinion, getting out of hand, and I've been with the game long enough that I actually have an almost-complete compendium. I can't imagine how discouraging it must look to a newcomer -- if I were thinking of joining the game now, I'd probably decide not to just on the basis of how impossible it would be to catch up, and just based on how many of the dormant gardens went inactive with event plants in them, I know a lot of people leave in frustration during events.

    Even as an established player, picking up the seeds and just getting the same old trees I already have (and knowing that my chances of trading for the new ones are probably nil because everybody's going to be trying to trade for them) is really dispiriting and not in keeping with the festive mood of the game. Two new trees and a new Christmas Star? Really? At least we have a decent amount of time this month (my big gripe about Halloween this year) but still. There's a difference between a challenge and a Herculean task, and we're already on that line, IMO.

    Maybe if there were some way to tell what we're getting, or what the rules are, I wouldn't be getting so frustrated. But there was no logic behind the way the flaming trees virtually disappeared last year -- if things had been handled in keeping with the Jack-o-Lantern policy, all of the previous year's trees should have been breed-only and not just that one -- or why this year there are two new trees. The type of flower that you're going to get doesn't even seem to be encoded into the seed but randomized at the time that a plant becomes full-grown, based on the way many really old heathers in the Garden Helpers click-thread grew up to be the brand-new variety. The result is that there's no challenge or technique to the game other than just filling your pots as quickly as you can and hoping for the best. :( And with the overabundance of breeds, it's not enough pots anymore.

    Sorry... this is really just bugging me. I've enjoyed the game a lot but lately it's become a source of frustration instead of a source of fun. The odds have just gotten way too skewed. :(

  • Christmas Star Glitch?

    Well, my point is that they're already showing up as breedable, but not in any of the pairings from last year or the year before. I don't mind waiting, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that the breed pairing rules from last year and the year before are the only ones that don't work.

    Edited to add: it looks like the glitch may have already been fixed, since other Christmas Stars no longer show up as breeding options on current Christmas stars. I assume that if they're bred to poinsettias they'll just produce more poinsettias right now.

  • Christmas Star Glitch?

    I see that we have a new Christmas Star this year (a new question mark in the compendium). I went to check to see if they were breedable yet, and noticed that for the first time, it appears that the Christmas Stars themselves can breed. But when I went to check to see if my old pointsettia x Christmas tree pairs could breed, I saw that they couldn't. The pointsettias only displayed the option of breeding with other pointsettias or Christmas Stars, and the Christmas trees can only breed with each other. I'm really hoping this is a mistake, because it seems wrong to not be able to use existing breeding pairs again.

  • Problem with logging in..?

    You might want to check your browser settings -- some browsers, for security reasons, purge user cookies whenever you close out of the program unless you tell them not to. If your settings got configured or changed to that, then your login information is getting deleted out of your browser's memory every time you close, which means you have to log back in again the next time you start it up. If it isn't a browser configuration, you might want to check your internet security program's settings to see if it is deleting cookies.

    IE is crud. If you need to use a browser other than Chrome, use Firefox, Safari, or Opera.

  • Garden Helpers - Discussion thread

    Quote from truelinor

    I don't understand - what button do you have to click? ?( I don't think I've ever clicked on a button for flowergame before, just the link.

    I was mentioning SnapLinks in referrence to flowergame, not Yarolds', btw. I was on Yarold's for over a year and am well aware of HATs. ;)


    I was thinking of it in terms of Yarold's usage, probably because other people were bringing up Yarold's at the same time and I thought that's what you meant regarding SnapLinks -- Yarold's users who click on a FlowerGame link don't get sent directly to the flower's page, but hit an interim page first. Unless they stop and click on a button on that page, they never see the flower and it never gets any dew. This was actually true for me when I clicked FlowerGame links over there, even if I was signed in.

    Actual FlowerGame members just using it to open links quickly in the Garden Helpers thread shouldn't have any trouble -- not enough links to really cause a problem -- but my caution was more aimed at anyone who was thinking of taking it over to Yarold's and using it there to build up click credits, since there are often a hundred or more links on the Yarold's page and many of them lead to Flash-heavy pages -- opening those all at once could potentially kill a computer's graphics card.

  • Back in the Garden

    Some of it didn't translate very well for me, but here's what I got:

    ... The pictures are painted, hung up, poured the champagne, baked pizza, the article will be published soon and who wants to see the photos from the opening:

    Image Gallery
    Since which unfortunately are not subtitled, this summary:
    1. Art to participate! Add a balloon
    2. Art to light: decoration around the atmospheric candles on the visitors' tables
    3. Mine: The Witch Tree - my little figures to adequately gnarled tree stump
    4. Mine: Snappy Tree Stump (whom you already know ;-))
    5. Mine: Say resin beasts
    6. Mine: Forest Spirits
    7. Mine: Once upon a time ... Collage/1982-2012
    8. If you can stand outside too long shoes
    9. Gerd: top dogs
    10. Gerd: Because we do not like her are
    11. - 16. Gerd: Different Designs
    17. We wait for the beginning of the speech
    18. - 20. Hans car stops the eulogy - and keeps - and keeps ... ;) But it was beautifully said what he said
    21. -22. Gerd E. Höhne (the other exhibitors) says a few words to action
    23. I say what. I am told. Two seconds. Um. You can see the expression of total surprise attack?
    24. The first of the "Circles as a separate moon about the woman?" Says is used as fresh manure!
    25. - 28.: People of the vernissage
    29. - 45. Gerds works
    46. - 47. Mine: they grow beyond itself! Offset it dwarfs!
    48. Mine: The Dancer of Dawn
    49. - 50.: Mine: Excerpt from "Once Upon a Time"
    51.-52. Mine: The forest spirits
    53. Opening skirmish
    54. Mine: The Cuckoo
    55. - 60: Mine: Image resin / Inchies
    Soon then a few photos where all the images in my gallery are on it.

    So THIS is the reason why everything came to falter a bit: Your graphic designer was persuaded by friendly fellows participate in a two-artist exhibition and that was CHOSEN more work than I would have thought it. In between, I was actually even with stress nosebleed to the ground and more than just once a pennte with his nose in the paint, but: Done. To 3.11. running the show here in St.Andreasberg, in the town hall barn from 11:00 bis 17:00 clock, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, I'm even there - if someone happens to come through the resin. ^^

    And now my attention is again Flowergame. First there is the fresh flower of the month and then ... there is still much to catch up.

  • Garden Helpers - Discussion thread

    I would like to say that, if you use snap links, be careful how many links you open at once. Even if you don't look at the pages, your computer's graphics card has to render them anyway. I actually overheated and crashed the graphics card on my old computer from overdoing snap links. Yarolds also has systems in place that disallow your clicks on certain sites if they happen too quickly, so you'll want to be careful about that if you're just clicking on things without checking to see what they are. (And anyone who uses snap-links to open flowergame links, and then closes the link without looking at the page, does us no good because they have to click a button on the page they've opened in order to actually see and water the flower.)