I'm afraid I don't believe this game should have been released in its present state, even as a "stealth release". I'm sure that if the LDW team alone had been involved in the development they wouldn't even have made it available for testing as a beta. At the moment the game is liable to put people off from buying LDW's regular games, rather than act as an advertisement.

It is far too buggy. Although the developers have fixed a few bugs, other important bugs remain, and new ones are being reported that prevent the players from advancing. For example, the peeps' experience isn't saved between sessions, so every time the player opens the game they are all totally untrained, and are just standing around doing nothing.

Also, the gameplay doesn't seem to have been thought through completely. The game follows the common formula for FB games of having your friends playing the game as 'neighbours'. Although you can visit neighbours' islands, there is nothing you can do to interact with them. In the FB forum one of the developers asked for suggestions from players in response to complaints along these lines, which to me seemed to indicate that they hadn't paid enough attention to gameplay as the thought hadn't occurred to them.

However, I think this can become a good game in time, once the major bugs have been squashed and gameplay is developed. Certainly, the graphics are excellent and the general way of playing is the same as in VV/VF. The villagers are recognisably those from Virtual villagers, although, since they interact more with items such as trees (by cutting them down) the plants and so on remind me of My Tribe. One action in particular I enjoy watching: when a villager isn't doing anything s/he'll stand there scratching. Their expressions also change, and can be seen if you use the zoom facility to get close up.

At the moment, it's certainly worth a look out of curiosity, but don't expect a finished product.

Alan, I wholeheartedly agree. The game wasn't ready for the FB masses.

I guess we are spoiled by the quick response of the LDW team; because, on the FB discussions "official" responses are extremely far and inbetween. With most of the responses, thanks for the feedback or I'm passing on to the developers. There are so few actual response to questions which are rising in tone to being screams. The lack of communication is causing frustration among the players. While I see many saying that they own VV games, I also see some new faces and I agree that this type of non-communication and lack of gameplay could put people off.

The polished touch of the "REAL" LDW team is noticeably missing.

Facebook development is quite different than desktop development. Even the big players like Zynga are launching games that change wildly, and have a lot of bugs. The estimate is that Facebook games launch with 5%-10% of their intended content (and polish...), and then continue to be devloped as they are played and tested.

It's a new ballgame, so to speak, and also to me it is a little odd, but the key difference is that VV Facebook is receiving updates MULTIPLE times per day (bug fixes, rebalancing, content updates). Our normal desktop products receive updates much less often and it is much harder to do.

All this being said, we have not 'officially launched' the game. We have not made a peep about it, although some media has picked it up. We are fixing bugs as fast as we can still while 'family and friends' play it. Soon we will announce it to our community.

I have to chime in on this one as soon as "Zynga" was mentioned. From what i read just in these 3 posts VV is coming to FB or already has in a far incomplete state? Though i totally agree that games should not be released in very incomplete states, that is the trend on FB, and in most regards wont stop people from playing. I am a ....Zynga game nazi. I have played almost all their games, i have yelled, and screamed at the computer and the countless bugs, i have even spent a week or three totally unable to log in from new bugs or old ones resurfacing. But the games when they work, are just addicting and fun. As mad as i get, i always come back and so do 95% of the other facebook users, because zynga is by far dominating the market and they are known for their early bugged launches. Facebook is a totally different development platform and has adopted a habit of developers releasing games that are forever titled "beta". In real world tangible game market, this would be unacceptable. Why would anyone buy a game from the store that was a beta? You wouldn't but free online gaming this seems to now be the trend. I still play 3-4 Zynga games fairly regularly...i don't know why. The games are buggy as heck, slow as heck after you actually get playing them (they work great at the start when your island/farm/cafe are empty) but the numbers dont lie. Zynga has billions of fans between all their games and if LDW is making their way into that market, i applaud them and im gonna go sign up for any game they put out simply because i have a special place for LDW in my computer. And ill play whether its buggy at start or not. /me runs off to check out LDW on facebook because he has been away from this forum for a long time.

Hey btw, um I'd love to see the bugs that are bothering you.

I'll make a sticky thread for that purpose. I have my own list, and we are attacking them based on seriousness/disruptiveness, but I am sure you guys are seeing ones I am missing.

Since I wrote my OP less than 24 hours ago, some of the worst bugs have been fixed, which bears out what Arthur says above. Also, I think it's important to look closely at the posts in the FB forum. Although it looks at first sight like the developers are ignoring the posts by not replying, in fact that's an illusion, based on the sheer volume of hundreds of posts, all hysterically (and in various degrees of comprehensibility) want their particular problem fixed NOW. I imagine that it would need a team of people 24/7 to monitor the forum and reply to each post definitively, which is not possible and wouldn't be of much use in game development.

I take your point about the different ways of working when developing for FB. I perhaps started playing FB games late, as the two games I play, Café World and FishVille (both Zynga games) are fairly bug-free now. They do seem to have problems with bugs fairly often when they introduce new features, though...

However, I don't think that we should point to Zynga as a role model. I don't play it, but I've read a few very favourable reviews of My Tribe (yes, them!) on FB, which is of course in direct competition to VV. The reviews make a point of mentioning that MT is relatively bug-free (they mention Zynga games like FarmVille here that aren't) and has pretty good and well-thought-out gameplay. Presumably they had to test the game and iron out bugs, but they seem to have done it more successfully than VV.

Which brings me to my second point. There is minimal gameplay in VV. The quests - at least so far - are all simple enough with your hand being held all the way. At present I've no further quests showing for me to carry out so I'm reduced to dropping the villagers on axe heads, weeds and plants to gain coins and XPs - not particularly interesting.

I'd suggest posting a warning on the game's FB page, and make sure that it's seen by everyone who signs up to play. The warning should say that the game is at an early stage of development, and that those looking for a problem-free game should look elsewhere. It should be mentioned that the game will contain bugs and at present lacks some features. It should also ask that those with bugs or suggestions should report them in the forum. It can, of course, be removed when VV becomes more developed.

I think we will try to find some middleground on this, Arnie. We will notify our community soon and I will emphasize that the game is just a fraction of what we hope to be able to implement, both in terms of polish and of course content.

We are tuning it as we go, and I am trying to get the tribe to behave a little more as vv players would expect, with maybe a little less dependance on hand-holding by all the quests, but we do have a ways to go.

We are used to being the little guy, and we love it for the most part, but just to put things in perspective, we have about 6 people working on VV Facebook. Zynga is up to 1000(!!) employees now, and even they still have some bugs when they launch.

While I am actively helping tune and design VV FB, the lion's share of my time is still devoted to VV5 (which is turning out to be AWESOME...just wait).

Oh, Arthur, you are such a tease with the VV5 reference.

I will admit that I was critical of the FB game version not just because of bugs but it seemed to lack the personalization that we have become use to with LDW.

Some of the frustration from other posters seems to come from the fact that the majority of them are VV addicts. And, are use to playing the game from the PC point of view.

Since I'm in work and cannot play because of not have the latest flash; I will check out the game and post in your thread what concerns I have. I don't think it would be fair to list the bugs that I know existed last night because they might be fixed.

One request, Arthur, please don't go down the same route as Zynga and try to get us to recruit FB friends as neighbours every few minutes. I am regularly annoyed when playing Café World by the pop-ups suggesting that I add more neighbours. The ridiculous thing is that many players have too many neighbours as it is. A couple of FB friends have over 300 and cannot load the neighbour management page so they can cut out some of those no longer playing. It also takes ages for their games to load. When they contacted Zynga they were unhelpful, and suggested that the optimum number of neighbours is 30! How do they achieve their revenue? Do they get paid by FB according to the number of peple signed up to the game? Although it is possible to buy game cash via credit card, PayPal, etc., I wouldn't think that alone pays enough to fund their games.

I have been playing.but i dont understand why my female has been pregnant forever.How long does it take to have the baby?It is kind of buggy.

I don't know the exact time but it was about a day that my female took (it could have been 24 hours, or even 47.5 hours). If she's taking longer that sounds like a bug.

Thanks Arnie.A day sounds right.She is now pregnant with her third child.

Her third? I can't get my tribe to have more than one! Despite building another hut, I still get the message that they've reached the population limit.

It was an accident,i was putting her to work gathering coconuts,and put her with the male insted of the tree.That happened all three times.I have six huts.

I've got three huts, plus one large one. Only five villagers, though. The kid has now almost grown up (he's 17). I still get the message that I'm at the population limit, though!

I hope the developers fix the bug soon or my original villagers will start to die of old age.

Im getting the same message,now.

Alan, I think if they die you can resurrect them. Remember the two things on the top right hand side; one is smite but I can't remember the name of the other.

Only thing, at this rate my kid will be too old to father when one of the older ones dies.

Margi,

Yes, I realise they could be resurrected (assuming that's not buggy - I've seen reports of problems in the FB forum about that). However, if a peep dies of old age, is there much point? Or do we get to choose a completely new peep as happened when the skeleton was resurrected earlier? Even if they could be resurrected in their twenties it would simply prolong things until we lose interest.

I'm thinking of smiting one of my least favorite old guys before the kids get too old to procreate...