Saturday, March 14, 2015

FarmVille's Frustrating Flower Fiasco

Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.  ~William Arthur Ward


How is everyone doing on FarmVille's Funtastical Flower Fiasco of Fabulosity?  I'm reading many complaints from other players on various forums that their goals are unattainable.  Many who attempted the monumental feat of pointlessly growing millions of crappy flowers over a 10 day period confess they gave up early on.  Still others claim to have completely abstained from the ridiculous quest.

As for me, I'm never one to shrink away from a difficult challenge, or to shirk my duties as FarmVille's preeminent superfarmer extraordinaire.  Oh no siree, Bob.  I have a reputation to uphold and an example to set, gosh darnit!  Embrace adversity and test your mettle, I say.  Call it stupidity.  Call it hubris.  Call it stubbornness, or just plain insanity, but I said:



And so now I find myself with two days remaining, and a shortfall of  38,016 flower points!

 
With my 155,000 flower point goal, I figured I would need to earn 15,500 points per day over the 10 day period. But it seems that I've gone a bit off pace, having to earn 19,008 flower points per day over the next couple days in order to prevail.

But who should I point the finger of blame at for this unfortunate situation?



My first thought was that I must blame Zynga like everyone else does everytime something goes wrong with their game.  But that is just so silly and unoriginal I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Yes they set the goals pretty high, but I'm sure it was just to give hardcore farmers like myself a good challenge.  Of course the conspiracy theorists say it was designed to make players spend money, and heck, maybe it was.  But players often forget that Zynga isn't a charity - they're a corporation which needs to earn money so their developers can feed their families.  As an American capitalist pig myself, I cannot really fault them for this.



Looking for another scapegoat I decided that I should blame all the worthless neighbors I have who failed to visit me and tend my sunflower fields.  Who the hell did they think they are, not visiting me and helping me with my flower fiasco?  But of course I realized that I haven't visited any of them recently either, so who could blame them for simply reciprocating my non-neighborliness?  



Then I thought I should blame all the worthless neighbors I have who DID visit me, yet ignored my conspicuously placed "Sunflowers Please! --->" signage, opting instead to feed my animals, raid my sprinklers, water my trees, rake my barn and/or mindlessly speed-grow some random 2 hour flower crops with 23 minutes left to go on them, instead of speed-growing the freshly planted 24 hour sunflower fields adjacent the sign pleading desperately for their assistance in doing just that.  What the hell is wrong with you people?

But then I realized that I cannot blame neighbors who visited me out of the kindness of their heart, even when I had not visited their farms in a month of Sundays.  These are all good people, and even where they failed to heed my sunflower sign, their selfless assistance benefited my farm in myriad ways.


Nay, if anyone is to blame, I realized that I can only blame myself.

But where did I go wrong?  Had I not planted vigorously enough?  Did I fail to use my water supply judiciously?  Should I have harvested more fertilizer from my animals?  Were my prayers and sacrifices to The Almighty Cornfish God found lacking?  Would I have been better off planting shorter term crops than longer ones?  Perhaps buying more crop packets would have helped me to succeed?  Maybe I should have availed myself of my neighbor's sprinklers more often to augment my water supply?  Why am I resigning to defeat and writing this stupid blog post instead of working towards reaching my flower points goal with two whole days left in the quest?

Good question.

I guess the answer is two-fold.  For one, we're three and a half months into 2015, and I've only made about five lackluster blog posts.  Disappointing my three or four loyal blog fans makes me feel very guilty, so I had to write about something.  I realize I'm risking not reaching my Flower Festival goal by spending time writing this, but I must put you, my faithful readers, first.  It's just the kind of totally awesome dude I am!

Secondly, that vindictive wench, Marie stopped by my farm today just to rub it in that the Flower Festival is almost over and I'm not even close to reaching my goal.


Can you believe the nerve of this little termagant troublemaker mercilessly taunting me?  Just look at her in her stupid little mayor hat.  Everyone knows that she ran a dirty campaign and Carlos should have been elected the true mayor of FarmVille!

Oh well, I'm getting myself worked up over trivial matters.  I have a trick or two up my sleeve of which Marie is unaware...



Heh, heh, heh.  As an inveterate packrat I seem to have amassed a rather substantial collection of Speed-Grow that will serve me well in this quest, should the need arise.  Touché, Marie, but ultimate victory shall be mine!

P.S. A humble and heartfelt thank you to all of my neighbors who have visited my farm and tended my sunflower fields to help me in this endeavor.  I could not have come this far without your help; thanks so much!

Flowers!



UPDATE: Midnight, March 16, 2015

Yay, I did it with 12 hours to spare!



Thanks again to all my visitors!