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### Topic

#### Slow down! Gardening is a laggy activity.

What is the purpose of the "leisure activity" message when gardening? The only time I ever get it when the game is lagging. Is it meant to punish us for experiencing lag? It's without a doubt the most frustrating thing about gardening, making it less of a "leisure activity" and more of a massive annoyance that isn't fun at all.

Posted 4 months ago by Toksyuryel | Permalink

### Replies

- I'd rather have the little pop-up say "working..." rather than an indication that the action has already taken place (which happens immediately), which leads me to think I can hit the key for the NEXT action.
  Which is too fast.
  Grrr.
  Posted 4 months ago by Pascale | Permalink
- right now they are updating things on the back-end so any gardening will really suck.
  I am gardening at the moment too, so its very laggy and if you are really intent on doing it, it will suck.
  they are adding some new stuff to the game (small things, type /house to go IN your house) and rebooting the servers. this means that we see a ton of lag, but it wont last for very long. maybe 45 minutes at worst (my guess only).
  dont let it bother you.
  Posted 4 months ago by ☣ elf ☣ | Permalink
- Thanks for the info elf.
  Posted 4 months ago by Anya Karenya | Permalink
- QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  Oh boy, seeds! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! Watering, finally! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! Oh, screw this. QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK! QUACK!
  I guess it wouldn't be so bad if it had some kind of danceable beat or something.
  Posted 4 months ago by girlthulhu | Permalink
- I hope the gardening is fixed soon or I may have to give it up...takes forever to harvest, clear, plant and water. sighhhhhhhhhh
  Posted 4 months ago by GarthBnut | Permalink
- I get that it sucks but thanks for posting this - I can't be the only one relieved that it's Not Just Me, Then, and that I don't have to spend the next half hour trying to troubleshoot computer/flash/wireless/etc.
  Posted 4 months ago by Batsgirl | Permalink
- @elf: I'm not complaining about the lag, I understand lag and I accept it as a fact of life in online games. I'm complaining about the message it causes. The game used to be perfectly content queuing up the actions during periods of lag and getting them all done once the server caught up. But then they added that message and gardening has just been getting more and more frustrating ever since. The recent lag problems that have been happening has simply made this long-standing problem far more apparent and it is seriously beginning to try my patience.
  My point with this post is the explain that when the server isn't lagging, I *NEVER* see this message. Not once. It's only when it lags that I get the message, which leads me to conclude that its purpose is to cause me inconvenience and punish me because the server happens to be experiencing lag.
  If the game could go back to the old behavior of queuing actions up during periods of lag, that would solve the problem perfectly and end the complaints.
  Posted 4 months ago by Toksyuryel | Permalink
- I seriously hope they're updating gardening so you can one click "Harvest all", "Water all" and "Tend all". Having to click a single plot four time to harvest, tend, water and plant is just agonizing.
  Posted 4 months ago by Yohgi | Permalink
- For how much I profit from my herb garden I'd click it a bunch more.
  Posted 4 months ago by diaveborn ♥ | Permalink
- Gardening is probably one of the quicker actions I can do in my /home. It does take me about ten minutes in lag to even reach the gardens tucked at the back of my yard, though, so I don't get around to it much :0
  Posted 4 months ago by N2ZOrtolanaBlue | Permalink
- the "leisure activity" message drives me crazy. with 90 herb plots to tend... well you can imaging the frustration. I have the 1 second watering and the 1 second hoeing upgrades. Why offer speed gardening if you will not allow us to speed through our gardening?
  Using guano is another issue all together. I would love a fertilizing upgrade to 1 sec.
  It seems to me that this slow down on the leisure tip is meant to keep large scale farming from being a viable option as it takes soooo long to tend and fertilize 90 plots. I believe that some of this should be automated... Helperbots anybody? Big farms automate. I want automation. I want to farm productively and quickly.
  Thank you
  Posted 4 months ago by Jope | Permalink
- The upgrades have made gardening more tolerable, but it still gets frustrating... especially if not on a fast connection >_<
  Planting and harvesting are (mostly) fine, but a helper bot to at least tend the gardens would be awesome. Tend and water? Even better!
  Posted 4 months ago by Genkicoll | Permalink
- @ girlthulhu thanks to you, I'm going to be smiling the next time I'm gardening.
  Posted 4 months ago by Aleph Zero | Permalink
- For me, too - I get in a rhythm, and then there's a moment of lag, and "slow down! gardening is a leisure activity!" And then I miss watering something, or I end up waiting an extra four seconds for the animation to show up after I've finished clicking for an action, or etc. I wouldn't mind the messages if they responded to times when I actually move too fast, but mostly they only happen when I'm waiting for animation foreeeeeever. I wish the 1 second upgrades actually meant it would be 1 second, and not 4 seconds waiting for a 1 second animation!
  Posted 4 months ago by eruthros | Permalink
- Per other post, please don't use the term lag. Use a word like choppy instead. (said with a huge amount of sarcasm)
  Posted 4 months ago by Rennie | Permalink
- What Toksyuryel said.
  What girlthulhu said.
  Posted 4 months ago by Impspindle | Permalink
- Rotervator. That is all.
  Posted 4 months ago by jiva | Permalink
- Toksyuryel, re "What is the purpose of the "leisure activity" message when gardening? The only time I ever get it when the game is lagging. Is it meant to punish us for experiencing lag?"
  The purpose is to let you know that the client has not yet heard back from the server regarding your previous action and can't proceed to the next one until it does (because the garden or plot or you or your tool or one of many other things might have changed state in the meantime). It is not meant to punish you. The alternatives are for it to just silently fail (which I guarantee you would find more frustrating) or display some other message.
  (This is a rare case where "lag" (slow syncing between client and server) is actually the cause of the problem — usually the problem is that Glitch/Flash/your browser are colluding to melt your CPU and it just can't keep up displaying everything on screen at the same time, regardless of the client-server latency.)
  Gardening performance will improve (I hope!). But, automation is the future for high level gardeners. The upcoming skills Master Gardener and Potionmaking III will make your suffering a thing of the past.
  Posted 4 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- New skills?! *rushes for brain upgrades*
  Posted 4 months ago by awesome sauce01 | Permalink
- I understand that that's what the message is for--but I still support it changing, even if *just the wording* changes. As it's phrased right now, it sounds like the player has done something wrong--that's why it's so infuriating! It's telling *us* to slow down as if our hurrying has caused it to stall, when it's just the net connection. If it said something like "One moment, still watering another patch ..." instead, that small change would make it much less frustrating.
  Posted 4 months ago by Relsqui | Permalink
- Also, how about a "harvest/water/clear all"? :)
  Posted 4 months ago by awesome sauce01 | Permalink
- Thank you for the information, Stoot! :)
  I heartily support changing the message.
  Posted 4 months ago by Impspindle | Permalink
- how can a card or a skill take care of "lag"? I don't have a math or philosophy or computer science degree, but I don't see how this translates. New skills are cool, but is this an opiate? I guess "soon" we will see.
  Posted 4 months ago by Rennie | Permalink
- Wooo new skills!
  I'm a little concerned about the possibility of Harvest/Water/Tend/Plant all, myself; Crops might leave vendors, permanently as a consequence.
  Posted 4 months ago by Stuv | Permalink
- +1 Stoot
  Posted 4 months ago by Toksyuryel | Permalink
- New skills woot! Going to take me forever to learn though since I don't want to unlearn anything. :P
  Posted 4 months ago by Serra | Permalink
- "I understand that that's what the message is for--but I still support it changing, even if *just the wording* changes. As it's phrased right now, it sounds like the player has done something wrong--that's why it's so infuriating! It's telling *us* to slow down as if our hurrying has caused it to stall, when it's just the net connection. If it said something like "One moment, still watering another patch ..." instead, that small change would make it much less frustrating." @Reslqui
  Perhaps Master Gardener will allow us to use/craft 'sprinklers'/'bots' or some other kind of automated gardening machines. These would allow us possibly to harvest, hoe, and water our plots in exchange for some kind of 'fuel', so we do not have to suffer the tedious laggful manual hoeing of the past.
  And possibly Potionmaking 3 will allow us to make a Potion with similar results (longlasting water potion? :D)
  Posted 4 months ago by Palindrome | Permalink
- The quack and the wording of the message both feel punitive. A more neutral "working..." (like we get for every other such delay) would be much more palatable, in my opinion.
  Posted 4 months ago by Pascale | Permalink
- It's the quack that most annoys, I usually just click two dozen times really fast till the buffer fills up then move the pointer as the tasks complete. Even some indication that the next command could be executed rather than a warning that you CAN'T would be nicer - like the ring when your meditation ends which I presumed was more to do with being a replacement for the jingle overrun that started turning up when the longer spans turned up with the new skills/cards.
  Posted 4 months ago by Miss Punny Many | Permalink
- I agree that changing the wording might be nice. It is very frustrating to be in the middle of trying to garden - which, by the way, is not a leisure activity, but rather a horribly tedious one that most of us just want to get done asap - and then, due to some problem which is out of our control, get the *QUACK* and the "Slow down!" as though we've done something wrong. It seems silly, but it does feel punitive, and takes away from the charm of the game.
  Posted 4 months ago by Aurora Dellaterra | Permalink
- +1 girlthulhu lolololol
  Posted 4 months ago by crème | Permalink
- Good to hear stoot :) I think new skills are necessary to dispel all that 'But I don't NEEEEEED brain capacity' talk ;) People don't believe you guys will add new stuff! Crazy.
  Can't wait ;)
  Posted 4 months ago by Liza Throttlebottom | Permalink
- Well, I wouldn't call it horribly tedious. Horribly tedious is needing to reap, tend, water, and sow tens of millions of plots in the space of about a month--that would be a chore equal to harvesting resources in some other games (*cough*Istaria*cough*).
  Posted 4 months ago by Impspindle | Permalink
- We can spam the Enter key for hens and pigs pretty quickly without penalty...I ass/u/me there's some technical reason why gardening is worse.
  If it's just the gardening animations, a card to make them go away would be delightful.
  Posted 4 months ago by Biff Beefbat | Permalink
- No, it's actually due to making a server round-trip for each interaction. Since there are four interactions involved in cycling each patch (15 per plot), that means many more chances to hit a problem contacting the server.
  When the server is slow in most other interactions you get a spinner, but in gardening you get a message suggesting the player is doing something wrong.
  This "lag" has been happening a lot more lately (when gardening and other interactions), so I think TS needs to take a look at the server provisioning and/or load balancing. It seems to me that those servers are under capacity (or misconfigured).
  Posted 4 months ago by Janitch | Permalink
- It still says "Slow down! Gardening is a leisure activity."
  Posted 95 days ago by Impspindle | Permalink
- did anyone say it would change?
  Posted 95 days ago by shhexy corin | Permalink
- No, but the wording should be changed.
  Maybe something like "One moment, synchronizing your imagination with your garden's imagination!"
  Posted 94 days ago by Impspindle | Permalink
- The potions provide an expensive workaround, not a fix.
  Particularly when there are no other glitchen on the street, there is not requirement that the process have synchronous, atomic commits for e v e r y s i n g l e step.
  Posted 94 days ago by Sturminator IX | Permalink