The New Farmers Faire
By: Lauren “Budgeford” Salk
What is this “Farmers Faire?”
The Farmers Faire is a seasonal festival mixed with a Farmers Market and it celebrates the bountiful late-summer harvest in the Shire.
It begins in Bywater (Hobbiton’s neighboring town, home of the Cottons and the Green Dragon Inn). All of the quests have to do with food… lots and lots of food, and insatiably hungry hobbits. Vastin made the two mini-games associated with the Farmers Faire: The Egg Scramble and the Mushroom Hunt. (His mad-scientist design skills were a perfect fit for this.)
It was my task to make engaging daily quests and try to tie this festival together to be a neatly packaged seasonal feature. Arrival in Bywater opens up a wide array of food-related quests….
For example, Mayor Whitfoot is said to be the fattest hobbit in the Westfarthing. He wouldn’t miss the Farmers Faire – in fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s his favorite festival, seeing how he gets to stand at the head of a feast-table and eat all day long. He eats without discrimination, so be ready to help him amend the delicate balance of taste when a dish is too bland, too dry, or too salty.
Bounder Boffin seems to have bad luck with his job as a keeper of the peace. The Black Rider he encountered on the road not too long ago was a piece of cake compared with the trials of maintaining order at the Farmers Faire. Many hobbits have had too much to drink, and must be reprimanded before their behavior gets out of hand. (This may resemble a certain Lothlórien quest…) After being reprimanded for their bad behavior, some hobbits (probably lacking judgment after having too much to drink) want to wreak revenge on Bounders who told them off.
There is even fishing to be done at the Fishing Hole in Bywater, conveniently located just north of the party area. There’s quite a lot to do, and naturally a limited time in which to try it all. I hope you have fun!
The Long-term Impact of Festivals on a Human Brain
I’ve been the main festival designer for over three years now, working on them intermittently along with region work and other tasks. Like all content, festivals are touched by many, but generally I was always the only official babysitter for them.
My other work doesn’t often give me time to implement new features in festivals that are as big as the Hedge Maze, Haunted Burrow, Winter-home, etc, but I am always tasked with at least giving them a shoe-shine and a trim every time they go live. Those polish passes involve requesting and implementing new rewards, clean-up, added incentives, and trying to get returning players to come back and hopefully have fun again.
Whenever I finish work on one festival, two more are around the corner and need to be adjusted as well! Plus, in the meantime, that last one that just went live has a few things that need to be fixed! As a result, the festivals are always on my mind, and it’s a juggling act. The forums have been valuable for giving us insight on which festivals were received well and which had room for improvement. Due to these events often being rather different from typical MMO content, strange bugs often get missed and vex us all very much when they go live. All of these factors contribute to my growing mental database of “ Definition of a GOOD Festival.”
Three years into fairly constant immersion in this content, the opportunity to make this new Farmers Faire presented itself. As I began working on it, I noticed some big changes in my approach compared to when I was working on the Hedge Maze, my first piece of content. For one, I was able to write the short, simple design document for the Farmers Faire with speed and confidence. That was pretty great! I was also able to react very quickly to feedback from my lead and come up with a huge number of ideas for the quests I would be working on, something I can do with much more ease now than when I was a new designer. My brain seems to have a very solid grasp on LOTRO-Festivals-as-a-Whole as a result of my years of working on them and growing with them.
But as I started to actually make the quests, I began to lose all of that great early momentum. I noticed that as I sketched out a design for a quest, it reminded me of 3 other quests I’d already made for previous festivals. I looked at several other quests I had planned out and realized that they all involved the exact same gameplay mechanic. That was a very discouraging revelation, and I slowed down for a couple of days, sinking into self-doubt about what I was trying to make.
When stumped in the past, my lead encouraged me to sit down with other members of my team and poke them for ideas. We all stare down our own solitary tunnels so much that it’s easy to forget how helpful it can be to talk to each other about what we’re doing. Heeding that advice, I nagged my fellow festival-makers quite frequently for brainstorming sessions, and I feel that their contributions to my thought process have made me a better designer during this update.
My panel included Vastin, Sleepy, and Pinion (and also JWBarry, who helped me solve some of the more complicated logic I was trying to figure out). I already know what level of helpful input to expect from senior designers, but I was amazed and impressed by how our two brand-new (at the time) associates added so much value to the brainstorming process. I love what came out of this milestone for Festivals – the work done in this phase brought you the 2011 Winter Festival, the 2012 Anniversary, and the Farmers Faire. The challenge is always increasing, and I’m very lucky to have these wonderful resources available as I continue my work.
That’s it! I hope you have fun at the Farmers Faire.