Thread: Dev Diary Feedback: The New Farmers Faire

The Farmers Faire is a seasonal festival mixed with a Farmers Market and it celebrates the bountiful late-summer harvest in the Shire. Read more in the latest Developer Diary from Lauren "Budgeford" Salk and post your comments here!

Sounds fun! I can't wait to try it out!

Great to have a new festival to look forward to. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this!
What strikes me as odd though is that this festival "...celebrates the bountiful late-summer harvest", when we haven't even had the regular summer festival yet, nor is it late-summer yet either. Perhaps the timing of those two festivals got a bit mixed up?
In any case, I will dash into the festivities, summer or not.

Sounds like lots of fun.

I'll be holiday for the first 4 days. :"(

But the fact I'll be at Historicon will make up for it most of my loss.

As a big fan of food, I'm looking forward to the Faire!

Should we expect this to become an annual event, or will it be a floating event along the lines of the Treasure Hunt? I'm concerned that the more world events are added, the briefer and less "special" they become.

I don't want players to get event fatigue.

That sounds like fun although I probably would have named it The Bywater Food Festival since it's such a local event. Farmers Faire gives you room to expand the festival to other areas in the future though I suppose.

I enjoy all the festivals so I'm sure this one will be no exception. Now all I need is for you to increase the wardrobe space again, please.

Looking forward to the new festival.

I wonder though if there is going to be a mount with this festival what it would look like given the festival theme. LOL

It sounds like a lot of fun. I might bring all my alts to the shire to have some fun

Can't wait!!

Looking forward to it!

I'm looking forward to this as well, as I've always enjoyed the festivals. Budgeford does good work - give her a raise!

This is the type of communication of which I'd like to see more from Turbine. It is a great way to reveal not just the work that has been done but a method and some reasoning behind the work we end up seeing. More and more I'm hearing fan podcasts talk about how out of touch Turbine seems to be - putting out content we didn't ask for while seemingly ignoring the fantastic ideas and the passionate pleas to fix or rework things the community IS asking Turbine to consider. I can't help thinking that if we got more of these diaries, the transparency Turbine promised would be better fulfilled and the fans would feel better about the direction the game is taking.

Though we hadn't asked for this festival, I do find myself a little excited and curious. This diary is a good one, letting us "behind the curtain" just a little bit and I, for one, am more sympathetic to the work necessary to bring us a quality game. I say bring us more of that quality instead of churning out quantity. That work makes replaying more fun which leads to spending more time instead of just power leveling to the end. I want to smell the flowers, not trample them, and this diary says to me that at least some of the focus from the developers is on that sweet fragrance. Perhaps it truly is the management at the very top that has their heads too deep in treasure hoarde.

Thank you, Lauren "Budgeford" Salk!

Originally Posted by Clover

The Farmers Faire is a seasonal festival mixed with a Farmers Market and it celebrates the bountiful late-summer harvest in the Shire. Read more in the latest Developer Diary from Lauren "Budgeford" Salk and post your comments here!

If I read between the lines correctly, it looks like Lauren is also responsible for the festival cosmetics? If so, my hat (the Symbelmyne one) goes off to her - there's been some lovely designs lately. (Also ones that I don't care for, but that's good - there's only so many tokens I have time to earn.) Thanks!

I always enjoy festivals in games. Must be because I don't get to many IRL. This one sounds like a lot of fun since I really enjoy the Shire

Food and insatiably hungry hobbits, now how can this new festival not be a winner? My own hobbits have applied for vacation time so as not to miss out on the fun.

Cool. But where is the summer festival?

Originally Posted by The-Walrus

Cool. But where is the summer festival?

Check the calendar, the summer festival starts about a week after this faire ends.

The calendar still shows this event as tentative. Is it going to start Thursday, or is it still tentative?

When does it start because the calendar says today.

Well it says it starts today. But no sign of it in the shire yet...

Aye, I've also been to the Shire. Nothing thus far.

And considering the data for this was loaded last patch... where's the trigger to start the Faire? I'm surprised it was not on a midnight timer so that it kicked off at 12:01 AM EST this morning.

So is it, or is it NOT starting today. And if so, when?

(See, that's the point of having a calendar...) :P

Hmmmmm Calendar still says Tentative date. I've just been in the Shire, nothing new... Common guys? When is this happening? I was sooooo looking forward to this!

Hey Turbine, did someone forget to turn the festival on this morning!?

They've announced on FB at least, that the festival open has been pushed back a week to July 26th, and will end a week later than previously scheduled, too.

Pouting.

Summer festival is taking a beating isn't it? Kids go back to school in a few weeks and still the Summer fest is bumped again... I will trade for a Summer Fest now for the Farmers thingy later (when it's working).

Thanks for the heads up Eltinwe - for those of us not on the FB.

I was looking forward to a party when i got off work

Can someone send me a link to where this push back date is for the farmers faire? i was very much looking forward to it today and it isn't live?

Originally Posted by OukannaV

Can someone send me a link to where this push back date is for the farmers faire? i was very much looking forward to it today and it isn't live?

https://www.facebook.com/LOTRO

The update is on the timeline, about 6 hours prior to the writing of this post.

They also sent out a Tweet with the same information.

One would think that they might use, oh, the launcher to announce this as well, but apparently the Steed of the Jester ad is more important than informing the bulk of the players.

Originally Posted by Lestache

https://www.facebook.com/LOTRO

The update is on the timeline, about 6 hours prior to the writing of this post.

They also sent out a Tweet with the same information.

One would think that they might use, oh, the launcher to announce this as well, but apparently the Steed of the Jester ad is more important than informing the bulk of the players.

Well to be fair it is on the forums too: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...l-July-26-2012

Originally Posted by Nyrion

Well to be fair it is on the forums too: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...l-July-26-2012

That's good, then.

I just wish that the launcher would be used more often for status updates, especially considering that not everyone uses the forums.

Ah cool ty guys

The official thread wasn't up when i was looking.

I wonder why they didn't tell us this was postponed until the day it was supposed to start. Did they really not know for sure until this morning? Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Lestache

One would think that they might use, oh, the launcher to announce this as well, but apparently the Steed of the Jester ad is more important than informing the bulk of the players.

One would think Lestache....

So much for rushing home from work. I will have to assume from now on to expect the unexpected when it comes to things in a timely fashion on the game.

Server downtime to fix the Farmer's Faire issue is scheduled for... January 23rd?
I don't think the Mayor is willing to wait that long....

Originally Posted by Lyzau

Server downtime to fix the Farmer's Faire issue is scheduled for... January 23rd?
I don't think the Mayor is willing to wait that long....

Just came in here to post this.

What makes it even more funny is that the French and German announcements read July 23rd.

Originally Posted by Lyzau

Server downtime to fix the Farmer's Faire issue is scheduled for... January 23rd?
I don't think the Mayor is willing to wait that long....

/me thinks the bounders will have a tough job with the mayor instead of those hobbits who need to be reprimanded for drinking too much.

I have to admit that after seeing the Farmers Faire in action, a few potential design shortcomings (and even what appear to be some bugs) have become apparent. Some of these might have been predicted, but most probably could not be.

However, each of these shortcomings might have been revealed and addressed ahead of time if the event had been thoroughly tested by a wide variety of players, for example, on the Bullroarer test server. I realize that this might have removed some of the excitement of this brand new event by spoilers reaching the community, but I sincerely believe it would have significantly improved the quality of the event.

Originally Posted by Fredelas

I have to admit that after seeing the Farmers Faire in action, a few potential design shortcomings (and even what appear to be some bugs) have become apparent. Some of these might have been predicted, but most probably could not be.

However, each of these shortcomings might have been revealed and addressed ahead of time if the event had been thoroughly tested by a wide variety of players, for example, on the Bullroarer test server. I realize that this might have removed some of the excitement of this brand new event by spoilers reaching the community, but I sincerely believe it would have significantly improved the quality of the event.

I find it over-crowded and no fun at all- running around trying to find ingredients for the soup made me dizzy. I had to turn off floaty names just to be able to see stuff and then couldn't because of no floaty names. Too small of an area to accomodate so many people. this could have been planned much better

I really like the fact that the annoying 'Beer Hall' type quests, (Egg Scramble and Mushroom hunt) are not part of the festival deed. The fact that the Fishing quests are in their own deed is also a welcome idea.

I do think its all in too small an area, in particular I think the party goers could have been spread out far more. The Mayor might have been better off being inside a building somewhere as well so the almost constant spam dosen't obscure what he is asking for.

In general I like the faire, I gave up on the drunken hobbits one fairly quickly since it's clear that the quest mechanics aren't suited for such a densely populated area. I don't have much luck on the egg and mushroom scrambles so I think I'll pass on those too. But the rest I find cute and enjoyable, esp. when Hal Hornblower tells me 'I bet YOU couldn't find five fish!"

I have two questions though:

I haven't been able to get the mushroom stew quest to work - I find the recipe and click on it to read it (just like I do with the "shopping list" quests) but the quest never advances, it just stays stuck at "read the recipe", never goes on to further steps.

Am I doing something wrong, or is it broken?

Also, when I use the pie to get the boost for the delivery quests, I don't get the buff notification, but I get an animation that looks like the tossed flower petals from the winterhome theatre. Is that how it's supposed to be?