If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know that I have been playing Happy Street. One of the reasons it piqued my interest and caused me to play it was there was an upkeep cycle which rewarded frequently playing. It was detrimental because the upkeep cycle was pretty short (maybe 2 minutes max to do some farming and choose what to craft next).

Over the last few months, I have built a surplus of almost every item in the game. This is necessary as one way to get the premium currency in the game is to provide a random item when the game asks for it. I was in a nice equilibrium where I play frequently enough that it was relatively easy for me to obtain the maximum amount of the free premium currency.

Of course, they updated the gameplay and now it’s frustrating to play.

They basically added a new premium currency in the form of collectable cards (although there are only 5 different cards). Using the cards, you can get new collectible/premium content. That’s fine. Even getting the new premium currency is fair, as you trade things that you’ve crafted for a random card every x hours.

The problem I have is that some of the trades they ask add an incredible amount of upkeep to the game. For example, they may ask for 12 planks of wood (in addition to other items). Wood is an easy resource to craft as the supplies are common and it takes less than 5 minutes. But the game mechanic is such that you can only craft 1 plank of wood at a time, so in order to supply this order, you have to check the game every 5 minutes within an hour.

I know that the game makers want to convince players to “check in” with the game frequently, but every five minutes over an hour is ridiculous. And it is because of this goal that I don’t think there will ever be functionality to do batch crafting. Wood planks is not the only example of this either, as there are other objects which have this rigorous crafting schedule. This frequency makes the game a chore and might be enough for me to give it up.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: complaining, games