A Path Forward (in regards to lag)

Farm RPG sure has grown in the last 6 months.  This week, with the Thanksgiving event taking place, it became apparent at just how many people are on the game at the same time clicking madly, crafting, exploring and more.  We have been seeing close to 2,000 concurrent at once with 40-50,000 database calls per second.  Some of that is poor optimization on my part (which I have been frantically fixing) and some of it is just due to the design of the game (lots of clicking/tapping).

So, I think after the event ends I'm going to adjust my plans for the rest of the year and going into 2022 with a new focus on reducing some clicks for everybody playing.  The first major revision here will be the Workshop itself.

Workshop + Auto-Crafting + Crafting Effectiveness

• The Workshop UI will change to having quantity boxes by each item you want to craft, with a default value being the max possible you could craft, based on your available resources and inventory cap.
• Auto-Crafting will be ended.  Players that invested in the system will get a refund of their Silver.
• Crafting Effectiveness will be scrapped.  Players that invested in the system will get a refund of their Silver.
• Crafting XP amounts will be increased to offset the loss of the Auto-Crafting XP boosts.
• Apple Cider will be kept and used for some other kind of boost / effect.
• Gold used to purchase Farm Supply perks that affect Crafting will either be reworked or refunded.

The benefits of doing this will mean that each player will only have to click a few times to craft out maximum of an item with no waiting.  I was always afraid this would be OP, but the lag caused by crafting is becoming a bigger issue.   You'll have greater control of your crafting without having to wait or tap your screen 100+ times.

In addition, it will reduce a ton of load on the server, both in terms of the Workshop UI, but also with Auto-Crafting no longer running in the background processing 20,000+ jobs at once.

Would love to have your feedback on this. I hope you have enjoyed the event even with all of the issues!