New Features in Beta Testing

[Himalayan]

There are a few features currently in beta testing for a small group of players. Some players will see sick fish just before they die. Sick fish can be revived with a new Super Food, Medicine. Some of these features will change over time. Please refer to the in game messaging for details. Also will consumers of Fishville get any notice as to when the feature change takes place? Will I have time to sell my mature premium fish before the new feature requires me to pay real money to keep them alive?

[Baruti]

Apparently this change has been backed out for most of us myself included. Too bad the rapid aging on my Mini Dart Goby know as Toby the Goby caused him to rapidly age and go from age 99 to 10. I'd post that in the Bugs area but I can't start a thread there. Maybe it's really 10x and I can't see the third digit, but it should either show the third digit or max out at 99. And as for the sickness and medicine, please, please, please kill that terrible idea. If it is implemented anything close to what I saw this morning, it will be the end of it for me.

[Chuma]

First, will consumers of Fishville get any notice as to when the feature change takes place? Will I have time to sell my mature premium fish before the new feature requires me to pay real money to keep them alive? Last, will Medicines required to keep our valuable investments be available for game coins and not real money? Can you tell us what the reasoning is behind these proposed changes? Have any actual Fishville consumers been asked what they want?

[MacIntel]

You can tell the higher developers at Zynga if they listen to you that we would like to see some more features like : We dont want the sick fish update unless they can actually make the medicine for coins. They jack the prices then throw this sick fish concept at us. If their goal was to lose half their community, they probably just succeeded! We cant currently refer to game messaging because the update yet again broke the game! In-game messaging AFTER the updating is not the proper method they should be using to warn us of the updates. They should post messages to our facebook feeds at least 24 hours prior to these updates. Its a simple courtesy I think the players deserve.

[Common]

I appreciate the heads up but at this point I suspect it's going to be too little, too late. Fishville as a project falls well below even the other beta testing standards of other games by the same company; practically no courtesy is paid to the players pardon me, testers and almost no communication is offered. The other Zynga games also in beta at least warn their players as to upcoming price changes, lack of availability, and new features. Other Zynga games clearly post both on the forums and in-game when there is an issue that affects gameplay. Until recently there wasn't even a bug board on the forums. what kind of beta test doesn't want to hear about technical issues from it's testers? I sent a letter to the press, business development, and advertising departments of Zynga to let them know that Fishville was going to bring down the overall reputation of the company and a couple of days later there was a bug forum and a bit more moderator attention. Then this happened.

[AZUL]

I believe that Zynga would benefit from moving half of the Fishville people to intern on other teams for a month while moving one person from each of the more successful games to Fishville for that same time period. Frequently I question whether or not Fishville is even really produced by the same company. This is angering enough players that I doubt that happy new fish or minor play currency bonuses are going to fix the situation. When a small mistake is made usually a game team can offer something fun to distract the players and everything goes back to normal, but this just leaves too bad of a taste in one's mouth. We're not all merely players... some of us are business managers, advertising executives, graphic designers, customer service representatives or software engineers. We'll eventually learn the right combination of complaints and point them in the right direction to get something done, but it would be a pleasant surprise if somebody at Zynga would beat us to the punch and fix things before it gets that far.

[Chuma]

In my past experiences, those who worked with developers to evaluate Beta software did not have to pay to do so. Not only have I been putting money into this, but I had to sell several of my fish that were aging at accelarated rates, last night. Two of which I can no longer purchase. I have 8 tanks and dumped about 20 fish last night. because they were predicted to die before the night ended. So I feel like I put my money into this game, and then had to dump fish. totally defeating my purpose. Then when I submitted a support request, their response was to tell me that this was beta sofware with pesky little problemsand that they were like cleaner shrimp trying to pick out the problems. So not only did they do nothing to satisfy my concerns, they insulted my intelligence. Tonight, I see that the age reversal has been corrected. but I too would boycott having to pay to keep the fish that I already purchased.