Hey there, everybody!
Mager and I are going to interview the developers of Friends For Sale, and post the results here. We have lots of things we want to ask them, but hey... I'm sure you guys do, too!
What do you want to know? Post a comment with your question, and we'll collect some up for the interview!
Questions for the FFS Developers?
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69 comments:
I was recently bought... for a little over a thousand dollars... but then my owner freed me in less than an hour... which happens to reduce my value back to $500. Is this supposed to happen? People might try to take advantage of it to lower the price of potential enemies or just people they want to get back at...
I would like to see more options and further development associated with wishlists. Different ways to organize it and stuff. So any questions about that would be helpful!
Thanks
Hi Greg and Andrew,
Firstly I would like to say that this blog is a really good idea, and that I probably too spend to much time playing this game lol. If I was going to talk to the FFS developers I would suggest that when a pet is put in sale, or set free, that the owner should recieve the lowered value for the pet. That would make people play it a lot more and not worry too much about buying an expensive pet and having to keep them for too long. Take care, Andrew
Dear Developers, would you consider adding mini-games as an option to earn FFS bucks. It seems as though it could be an easy way to draw people in and keep them playing which would add a new dimension to the frankly dry set of either bombarding your friends with requests, filling out obnoxious surveys or your quad-hourly allowance.
Dear developers.
Sometimes when I log in after 5 hours i don't see a "You logged in and gained 2500 cash".
What's happening there?
Just trying to subscribe to updates
I think more pet pokes would add to the fun! Thanks! =)
hey Andrew and Greg,
You guys are Awesome.. Well i do have a comment on putting pets on sale, i suggest that u shouldn't get the right to put a pet onsale unless it's not sold again for at least 7 days from buying it on ur pet list.. This would make it more reasonable and would lessen the probability that ur enemies might lessen ur price out of the blue.
to John:
That would totally throw off the balance of the game. Everyone would be buying everyone and setting them free - causing them to keep the money.
EVERYONE would have a decreased values, and it wouldn't be fun anymore... I think the current way it works well.
to Cheesehead0319: great idea! :) I like it.
As for developer ideas/questions, I would suggest that instead of having the "favorite pets" as the most expensive pets, actually allow us to chose our favorite pets. :)
While Facebook has a mobile page, FFS does not. Can you Please add a mobile friendly version?
What is the best URL to log in from my blackberry?
Since we all pay "sales tax", would I like to know what are that money used for?
Can we in the future see the sales tax money spend on supporting the poor players? or maybe as an assurance when high valued goes private?
Just my 5 cents.
Another idea would be to have every pet interaction you do giving you like $1 or some form of money. It would be an interesting way to expand that system, at least.
If you're put on sale, you shouldn't be reduced to $500. You should be just lowered by 1 increment.
Hi all, l would like to see the developers design the application so that, any person who has not installed or has uninstalled, not show up on the FFs Sale board. And l love the recently active choice but l wished it only showed players that are actually buying, not being bought or sold. l only buy active pets, those who buy other pets on a regular basis like myself, l have found that pets who are active as l have described, there is less of a risk having them uninstall, l do check the mini feeds as well, just to get a bit of an idea as to how long a pet has been playing and how often they actually play the game. Anyway, l love the game, and l do have some other ideas which l think would be very usefull to all players, but small improvements at a time is appreciated. Thanks for the opportunity to have a say....take care Maree
@jgallen829:
Yes, I have faced the same situation.. hope the developers can do something about it.
@john:
I have the exactly same thought, but instead of the owner getting the money (as gasiu have said, it'll throw off the balance of the game), I think the pet that being set free should receive some cash.
@cheesehead0319:
I do not agree with this idea however.. it makes the game (earning cash) much easier.. and lacking of fun. You may or may not agree with me, but IMHO, FFS is fun because everyone have to use strategy.. not by skills or spending extra time on mini games..
Another idea I wish to add is, instead of wishlisting people, why don't make a buddy list? As I know, a lot of people use the wishlist as buddy list.. IMO, a "buddy list" will serves the purpose better.
Just my 2 cents. peace! =)
Posibility of delete gifts received ??
I would like to see a more filters for buying pets by i.e. by network/country. When I am buying pets I might have an international week or a dreek week..... so it would be nice.... I am tsking this to seriously right? just please tell me Stefen was joking about the sales tax..... it is not real ...is it?
I would also like an advertising budget ;D if you put a pet up for sale everyone knows that you cannot sell it....Why would you buy a pet that someone else cannot get rid of? but advertising it...cool
I think it would be more fun, if we were allowed to type in custom pokes. the pokes we have are so limited and being able to type in our own actions would be fun.
Another possibility to add would be Name Changes on the mini feed, so if a person recieves multiple name changes, everyone buying the pet would know what nickname they had before
heres another idea, have a section of past pets a person has bought available on the dashboard so if the person wants to buy that pet back a long while later, it wont be so hard to search for that person
Also, it would be nice if we could know who's added us to thier wishlist
Are you planning on doing anything more to help educate newbies as to how the game works and prevent people from abusing others who buy their pets or themselves?
When a pet uninstall FFS, the owner should get at least 50% of the value returned.
What about loaning some money, with interest of course, like a bank. And You should get bonuses for playing a lot. The more you play, more bonuses you should get.....
Hi, thanks for the great app and all the help. I am unable to edit my comment or nickname, I can see the link, but cannot acces it. Is this a common problem? Thanks and keep up the good work.
Hello,
I mean no offense, but I have run into a two bugs that are getting very annoying.
1) The app says a user is uninstalled, but then I did a bid war with three people (who did not have this pet as a friend on their main FFS profile, nor did I) of that very same pet ... each time, she was "uninstalled" when I bought her.
2) I have run into a situation twice (perhaps 3 times) now where I got into a quick bidiing war, and the pother person had the pet in their collection, but I had control over the pet's nickname, "put on sale" and "set free". It then takes a third person to buy the pet to 'free them' from this scenario.
I know enough about database servers and coding to surmise that this is not a coding issue (well, about 99% sure), but some sort of relational table corruption, probably due to the popularity of the game (it's a h3ll of a game, kudos!).
So my question is when will better DB servers / new clustering be coming to resolve this issue?
@ tan: If the wishlist was turned into a list of people you tagged to see who now owns them, (aka a buddy list/wishlist/keeping tabs on people list) this might be a helpful tool.
@ SandyAJ: Name changes? Perhaps a list of previous nicknames but if someone's name was literally changed, it might become harder to find favorite pets/friends. Perhaps under your idea for who owned the pet before: When they owned them, what their nicknames (or final nickname) was. Finally, I disagree about knowing who wishlisted you. I feel that many people would take this the wrong way, and it would create more trouble than help!
@ SkynyrdMan : This would be a nice feature, but would probably get abused often!
@Greg & Andrew: When exactly are you going to be talking to them; when is our last opportunity to give you questions?
Is FFS ever going to do something about ppl who uninstall the app for an extended period of time? I have several pets who uninstalled and i cant get rid of them after i have invested my FFS coins in them.
Hi,
Is it possible if the developers added these features? Its kinda useful I guess.
- Total pets owned worth (so people with lots of pets can actually brag who has more pets worth of money and people don't feel bad if their pets aren't bought)
- Gifts should increase a pet's value by a very small fraction; this way people spend more on gifts (there should be a way to prevent people from abusing it tho)
How can i make my buying private..
hi:
- i think it would be better if we have the option to make the wall private or not visible for some ppl, maybe visible for the owned pets only or something, cuz most of the deals r made thru the wall and sometimes its a trouble maker when a third party checks the wall out and see all the deals..
- another idea is to add an option to exchange cash money between players, it would be nice if u can give cash money from ur own credit to another player, with some tax deducted maybe..
- is there away to give away my gifts? like for example, instead of buying a gift to someone, i can just give a way one of the gifts i received,, it sounds cheap i know but when u get too many gifts even expensive ones that u cant even profit from and the page shows up to 8 gifts only, so the rest of received gifts become useless so its better to take advantage of.
- about the wishlist, i think it would be more usefull if u give points for someone for reaching a certain number of wishes (like how many players wishlisted him), and those points can be exchanged later with cash or something else,, cuz so far there's no point of the wishlist.
- about the "put to sale" and the "set free" , the other day i bought someone that i hate, and put on sale thee times then set free and his/her price reduced to the ground, i was happy i did so, but scared at the same time, that its so easy to do so that i did the whole thing in less than a minute, buying, putting in sale and setting free.. so my suggestion is to make a limitation per day for putting on sale,, like once per day allowed for each pet or something, just put some rules for it cuz its scary!!
thanx
I would like to see a way that you could give friends and pets money.
My partner and I started playing FFS together, and quickly found out that no one was going to just let us 'own' eachother without a fight. This turned into a battle of us two against everyone else.
Do you have any strategies for people in similiar situations?
I have also been earning more money than my partner, and he is finding it diffifcult to keep up with my price. Would it be possible to add in a way for me to give my partner some of my money so he can continue playing?
I would like to see more ways of earning money - besides buying/selling and inviting my friends that didn't involve me signing up for something or spending my own actual $$
I think it would be funnier if pets with gifts were more expensive... For example a pet who cost £50.000, should cost $1.050.000 with a flower ($1.000.000)...
I'm french, i probably have a bad english... Excuse me...
i agree w/ oignonfrit, i gave a gift thinking it would increase my pets value, making it harder for somebody to buy my pet from me, but it didn't change anything.
Why not having a bot or something similar going around buying uninstalled pets at random? That way it is possible to get your money back for that pet... Oh and it should only buy uninstalled pets that is not the owners friend. My friends and I seem to trade our uninstalled friends just like they where installed...
Pets that go private because the member left facebook is a pain, you can lose a lot of money this way, developpers, can you think of a way to reimburse pets that went private?
is there any way to delete gift?
Also i suggest that the person who receive the gift receive some % of the gift value (maybe 50%) maybe by this way than more people are willing to buy gift for pet and is also serve as a way to pass money to people.
Like a bouquet of dollar bills......
I think the game works very well. The wishlist is great to keep tabs on pets that you bought before that got bought back, as at some point you can go buy them again without searching for them.
I think the four hour bonus of $2000 needs to be more or maybe if you have done some trading that day you can have an extra bonus accordingly to how many pets you have bought or sold.
I agree with MINA_HENRY that if you buy a pet that you shouldnt be able to set them free or put them on sale for at least 7 days.
Thanks and great app guys. ;oP
I would like to know why does the number of people to invite changes so frequently. Yesterday I was able to invite 12. Today I can only invite 8. A couple weeks ago it was 16.
Love playing this app.
A few suggestions that would dramatically increase my fun factor:
1) Not only displaying a user's cash, but total pet value (this was mentioned previously, but would give an added prestige to those who have spent a lot on pets, and also give you an idea of how "powerful" a particular owner was).
2) Some way of organizing your Wishlist. Even ordering by pet price would be useful (also mentioned previously).
3) Recently, the owner of a pet that wanted me to stop purchasing the pet away from him sent me some pretty nasty comments on my wall. He himself was private, tho, and it took some work to discover his name (which was a fairly common one), and I therefore had to ban all instances of his name in order to stop receiving the hatorade.
4) A longer Newsfeed? I haven't been playing that long, and even I need to look back a while, especially when I'm in a back-and-forth buying war with someone (which can oftentimes eat up the entire feed). I'm sure some of veterans would appreciate a longer one.
Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with this app. Keep up the good work!
So I would like to know: how is it possible that a person showing up as "Private" is able to buy me and repeatedly buy my pets.
Either you play the game fairly or you don't play at all. They shouldn't be able to stay private from their own pets... That prevents me from buying them back or otherwise retaliating.
Dear Devs...
would it be possible to make it so that 1) people are able to delete gifts, and 2) people whom you've blocked can no longer send you gifts?
It was VERY annoying that someone spammed me with the Mr Crabs gift, even after I blocked them, so now none of my other gifts show up and if I get new gifts they will probably be spammed onto the next page with crabs again.
why i can only invite 8 friends every day not 18 like b4 ?
When you add new friends to facebook, you can invite up to 16 friends (i was never able to invite 18)
but when you dont add new friends and u keep inviting the old ones, u end up inviting only 8.
So in a way, you're gonna end up adding random people as friends to be able to invite 16 friends.
That's a drawback for me, cuz i want my friends list to be my real friends and not just a list of people i barely know.
Here are a few suggestions for the game.
1) Net worth. I'd like to see the total value of me, my cash and pets I own. It'd be great to see that over time as well.
2) Some way of selling back uninstalled pets, even at a loss.
3) Limiting or blocking the purchase of unisntalled pets.
4) An ability to up my bid on a pet. If I want to pay $10,000 for someone who's only $571, I should be able to waste my money if I want.
5) Team ups - I'd like to ally myself with other players to create a corporation of sorts to buy pets. In a simpler sense having the ability to loan/give money to another player would be nice.
6) A photo history.
7) A sliding scale for earning money. If I log in at 4 hours I'd like to get a boost. If I log in again at 4 hours, double that boost, etc. If you don't log in for a couple days reset back to normal. This will reward the hard core players.
8) Something that tells newcomers to the game that strangers will buy them, and that it is a good thing.
I'd like to see an option to choose to auto-repurchase a pet if it is bought from you. If you have the money to repurchase the pet the game would automatically repurchase it for you until you didnt have any money left. This would add some interesting aspects to the game. It would let those who want to try and hold onto their favorite pets set some sort of defense and would allow hunters make some quick profit.
In the money section, To get the FFS points by using surveys or various offer, u have to reside in the United States. what about residents outside the US ?
You earned $10,000 for logging in. a minute ago
Since when is that?
hi there.great application.
i would like to see more options for blocking users.
twice recently some people i had an argument with,bought me,then repeatedly put me on sale from 800k to 500,before setting me free.
they then change all there settings and go private,wiping there account clean so you cant trace them.
they then tried the very same again this week but with my wife as well....so i would like to see some form of ip block,as there are lots of people with multiple accounts,and use them for various reasons,but if the ip address was blocked it would make it difficult for them to be so malicious.
also would like to see some form of bid system.if a pet is worth 4k,would like to be able to put in a reserve price so that if someone buys her back,you get first choice upto the price you have set in reserve....cheers
Dear evelopers,
It would be cool and add some more strategy to the game if:
1. When you give someone a gift their value goes up.
and/or
2. If you are given a gift that you be able to sell that gift to get money.
With number 1 you could give expensive gifts and/or a large number of gifts to friends that you don't want bought from you... their value would increase and therefore make them harder to buy.
With number 2 you could team up with your poorer friends... by giving them a gift then they could turn around and sell it and get more money.
Are there any plans to add more "goals" or "stats" for the average FFS player?
Right now, at a glimpse, you can only really tell a person's 'value' and 'cash'. Are there any plans to expand upon this? Perhaps adding stats like or "Total value of pets" or maybe worded as "Total Assets" to include things like the value of presents.
Right now, You could own $1,000,000 worth of pets (which is quite an achievement!) or have indulged in millions of gifts, yet no one would notice, because your total cash would be quite low, and your own value does not necessarily need to be high either.
Or like someone else mentioned earlier it would be nice if you could give money to your friends.
When I buy someone who hasn't installed the app, do I get $1,000 for inviting them?
I hope there was simply a problem with the database because as I attempt to purchase pets the following error message pops up:
Out of requests
Sorry, you have run out of requests to send with this application. Please try again tomorrow.
Hopefully this is rectified soon so that I can be a FFS millionaire once again.
I've been bidding on a very gorgeous pet for a few days, I last bought her for nearly 400.000 $ and the day after she turned...private............
Half of my bankroll that I've been building up in a long time is now showing up in the top of my pets list and worth nothing at all since...It's so unfair ! Very unlucky players like me should be reimboursed in some way.
I had a lot of fun in making very profitable investments and now I don't feel playing the game anymore...I really hope the FFS developers will handle this kind of very embarrasing game issues...
I knkow I posted something like this earlier but... being in a buying war and having trying to beat one of my competitors it emphasizes it more... It would be super cool (and useful) if you could give money to your friends... like you could transfer some of your funds to a friend.
Ask them if they care to make a vista gadget to check your MiniFeed !!
it would be cool if u can change the picture of ur pet :)
and the option of a place like a pet pound where u can sell pets that are not being sold for half the price.
Hi..!! nice game..!!
just one question,
I need block a User, what can I do??
i think there's a bug in the app. it says i can send invitations to 12 or 16 friends but i only get money from the first 8 invitations i send out.
hi, is it possible to gift money or pets to another member? i think this would be a great idea and add another huge element of strategy to "the game", unfortunately too many people don't know it's a game and think it's real money, and toss insults as such, and some pets are purchased just to give them a purely crude or expletive nickname. any thoughts?
mark
How do I remove someone from my Wishlist????
hi Greg and Andres!
I have an idea, perhaps you guys can try this out with the moderators.
Why not develop a interests earning system which is like when ever our pets ( which is under us ) made any purchasing or selling of pets, the owner of the pet will receive a small percentage of money from the sales the pets made?
For example, when 1 of my pet's pet are sold. I will receive a percentage of the profit the pet receive. It might not be very much, perhaps like 1 or 2% of the sales profit? and maybe creating a chain of multiple downline of pets in the money earning system, the more the pets a person have, and the more active they are, the ownner will be earning more cash soon enuf. I think this will be quite fun and on the other hand motivating people buying more expensive pets since the higher the value of the pet, the more earnings we receive. And the FFS users may go much more active in the game. =)
hi , great game, but i not receive my money for invites, 6 times in the last week , what happen?, thank you, i need my money for my pets
How do you block people that are not friends that you don't want accessing your page?
Is it possible to block somebody fron purchasing me? I have already blocked this person on my personal page because of the constant messaging, but they continue to be able to buy me. Another thing why do people have more than 1 FFS account under the same name? Are you allowed to do this, by registering in different countries with different e-mail addresses? Is this kosher?
Can I increase the price of one of my pets?
Example.. The value is $1,356, but I want to sell it for $23,000.
So I find the new economics interesting... by adding more money you basically devalued all of the pets. You've reduced the number of rapid transactions for low value pets, and made the game more "thoughtful" more of a hunter gatherer, rather than a predator mode. I bet it has lessened your server load, but IMO it has also lessened the overall fun of the game. Please consider taking out all of the easy money... it doesn't work for the US government and it also doesn't work for FFS. Easy money = reduced value = less fun. Thanks for a blast of a game though!
Hmm, what happened to the interview? Still happening?
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