Player Reviews

When I'm searching google with the keyword "game pokemon farming" what I had in mind was a game where I could grow berries and taking care of pokemon. Then I found this game, the top result of my Google search. I was happy, thinking I could find the perfect game I want, only to be disappointed. Sure we do that here, taking care of pokemon and growing berries. But taking care means just one click a day, and growing berries doesn't even have a significant impact in the game. "But we take care of them more than clicking". Yeah, we also need to put them into the correct field and that's it. Maybe it's because I'm a newbie and the other "taking care" feature is not unlocked by me yet, but if the main theme your game implying is only unlocked after weeks of playing, you're already wrong in the first place. "But the berries can be used to make poke blocks, which can improve the contest stats". For a contest that's not even hosted by the staff, only by players. Maybe my ideas of a "farm-like" experience is different from the game creator and other users, but im certain that it's not to far from the truth. Based on this game, the closest thing we do is not farm, but meat processing factory. Lastly, I want to give the biggest thumb-up for the community this game has. This community is easily the best I've encountered in all my years of playing game and surfing the internet. They're very helpful and supportive to a ridiculous degree, doing things that 100% will get them scammed in every other community for helping people. I can confidently say that I'm not playing this game for the game itself, but to be a part of this wonderful community

I'll start by saying that I didn't want to make a review so soon as I am a relatively new user, but the recent 'ban debacle' has prompted me to at least put down some thoughts. For those unaware the tl;dr is that over 40 accounts were banned for suspected botting because they were using CSS of some kind which caused the site to overload and look like it was under a DDoS attack. The banned users were sent e-mails saying they had been banned for botting and encouraged to contact support if they felt this was an error. It took hours for many to get their accounts back, and the vast majority were innocent users who had done nothing wrong and rightly panicked when they felt their progress and irl money spent were just gone with no proper explanation. In trying to address this the staff were exceptionally harsh. This stems from the fact that they were not as clear as they should have been from the start about what was happening, and users were responding with their own frustrations around the issue. Were this an uncommon thing I'd be inclined to let it go and say nothing but...well, it's clear from doing a little digging around the forums and reading other reviews [especially the 1/2 star ones] that this is a consistent issue going back years. Something will go wrong, and rather than being as clear as possible the staff [and especially the site owner] will try to fix the issue and not address it publicly in most cases, and the above loop happens. Users don't understand and are understandably frustrated, the staff/site owner lash out, and it's just a cycle. I know a bit about code, and how hard it is to maintain older code while trying to build new things and keep a site like this running but also full of enough stuff/events to keep people engaged. But I saw in several other reviews as well as on the forums that the owner is working on another game and while that's all well and good as it seems they are also intent on being the only one doing code on this site...well, let's just say if I were doing that I know I'd be stretched thin and stressed and prone to lashing out to. Which still doesn't make that behavior okay, especially without proper apologies in the aftermath, but I do kinda understand it at least. And what this all boils down to is a site that has issues due to how old the code is and that it was never meant to handle what's happening now, an owner who won't get help with the code [to the best of my knowledge] while also trying to code an entirely separate thing, and now users that are scared. They're scared that just using the site normally might get them banned - which isn't the case, but because it was explained so poorly at the start it's now the perpetuating sentiment. I saw a few people say they were scared to leave negative reviews and talk about their time on the site in a less than totally positive way. I've seen users attacking people for suggesting the staff [and especially the server owner] could be at fault in any way, shape, or form. I'm also scared to leave this review. But I feel it needs to be said because now I've witnessed first hand in real time how bad the staff are at communicating properly with users and then dealing with the aftermath when people are confused and trying to get answers, or saying that things weren't handled properly. Hopefully it can serve as a warning to people in the future too, if nothing else.

In the interest of transparency, I must note the following: - Affected users were using custom CSS injections that are not part of the intended game experience. While such modifications are generally permitted, in this particular case their use led to excessive server load that appeared to be a DDoS attack. DDoS attacks are extremely serious and it was treated as such, until the server load went back to normal and I was able to investigate further and figure out why these users looked like they were malicious. - Affected users were unlocked as quickly as 30 minutes after their initial lock, and compensated for the disruption. As far as I am aware, most of the "hours-long" responses were a combination of waiting for the user to respond, and ongoing monitoring of the situation, but for the most part every effort was made to resolve things as fast as possible. - This reviewer was not impacted by the situation, did not get caught by the anti-cheat that triggered the incident, has never been in contact with any moderator for any reason, has never contacted Support, and has never participated in any forum thread where a moderator was involved (except for one PSA where they expressed gratitude for the way it was handled). This reviewer has effectively zero first-hand experience with the moderation team, and it appears their review is almost entirely based on other people's views and not their own. While the review is of course appreciated, these factors should be kept in mind when determining its weight.

"ohhh we can't put in a forum search!! it'd be so hard to code" everyone has a search feature it came with your damned forums. skill issue even. in general a good few of the rejected site suggestions just seem to be "we don't feel like it lol". the site itself is fun (albeit very grindy) but good god

have to pay for almost everything tbh and theres limits on stuff like breeding to push you to buy hypermode. also not to mention this game's horrible history with niet and the other admins, theres multiple sites and posts archiving the things theyve said and done, such as a post on r/hobbydrama, pokefarm-q on tumblr and the lulzyfarm wordpress blog. (which tbh is why ill be quitting after writing this) tldr: the game is fun, the exclusive fakemon and albino/melan forms are cute, but the people running it are terrible (wont be surprised if this gets taken down or something)

PFQ has many good aspects, such as the great designs at spritework, and the concepts of breeding and hatching eggs and such. However, it is plagued by the fact that, unless you sink all your money and/or time into the game, it is almost impossible to get anything special yourself. For example, I've been playing for about half a year now, pretty much constantly, and have made a couple transactions in that time, yet have still only managed to hatch a few shinies/albinos (I can count them on my hands) and have only completed half of the pokedex. Most of my special pokemon come from raffles held by the community, who are very nice and are honestly the only reason I can be bothered to keep playing. From what I've seen, updates on this game come only in the form of new pokemon (thus making arceus rank, and the only way to reasonably get melans, even more difficult to obtain) and sudden policy changes. Also, I've seen Niet get into very petty arguments with users, and overall they don't seem to have a great attitude, which doesn't help my confidence in this site either. I myself will continue to play, so long as I have nothing better to do, however I do not recommend it to anyone with a job, or real life friends. If the site makes some positive changes, my opinion would likely be subject to change, however that currently seems very unlikely.

...GPX+ has all the gameplay elements I like in pokefarm, without the grind. Theres also a lot of history between pokefarm and it, that you might find an interesting read ;) Pokefarm itself is fine. if you like paying money you’ll have a lot of fun. but nothing about the free to play experience makes me feel like pokefarm is worth my money, beyond “money would make X substantially more convinient”. I know that these sites rely on donations. Thats fine, you gotta do what you need to keep the servers up.I don’t think the f2p experience needs to be this rough to do that, but I don’t know the financial situation enough for my feelings there to carry much weight. Its just that objectively, as a free to play game pokefarm is only fun for people who like spending multiple hours a day to even *try* and keep pace with paying members. There are other similar games in this genre that are (subjectively) more fun. For me, pokefarm isn’t worth it. maybe it is for you, though. Each have their pros and cons, and you really should look into it beyond the reviews section here before making your mind up. pokefarm and especially its devs have a lot of history, and by looking into it you can make an informed decision yourself. Its just that for me, GPX+ is the superior game with devs I have more faith in. I can only talk about my impressions in a review, and that’s what they are. :P

I really want to love this game. I want to love that its easy and fun, and I love to collect things. However with the mount of time I've been on this game, it is becoming ridiculously pay to win. Yea, it's "beatable" without paying, and the cretors are going to say time and time again that it's beatable without paying because you can trade but, let's be honest. No one is going to pay money for a pokemon and then give it away for free. You have to drop money on this game for it to be enjoyable to it's fullest extent. However if you post this, the administration will make excuses. I get ads arent the prettiest, but if you're stuggling to pay for the site so badly that your game is suffering from pay to win, then add some ads. I would rather have ads than never be able to beat the game. There is a major issue with admins being snarky and rude, especially in the reviews alone. You want people to post honest reviews, but you respond with hostility, and skew the ratings. I dont understand that. I know you're a small team, but I really think you all suffer from unprofessionality. One last note: no one wants to leave a review that's honest with the way y'all respond to these, especially if you have no option to make it anonymous. I know you have to moderate it, but with the way reviews are handled, its hard to make legitimate suggestions when there is so much malice in responses from admins.

when i first quit pfq, i spent a good couple hours drafting up a college essay type review. it clocked in at about 2000 words before i was half way through, and was a thorough review of Every mechanic of the site, how it worked and how it felt to play with. i had an entire second half of the paper dedicated to how the site was run i lost steam on that review after quitting, as thinking about pfq was stressful. i think i can now boil that review down to a few sentences. pokfearmq is an incredibly fun and unique game. its mechanics and art are interesting and high quality. however, it is not run well in terms of pushing new features and handling community feedback. this is a great game held back by it's management.

Well, I loved playing the game in the beginning, because hatching new eggs was a lot of fun, but in the end I ended up quitting because there isn't much else to do besides that. One of my biggest issues with the site is that whatever you want to sell (incl. currency swaps), you must wait for someone to buy it. This wasn't a big problem in the beginning since I was online a lot while hatching, but in the end (after the "nothing to do anymore") I figured I'd spend my Credits on Boxes for some fun, but... well, while I pretty much got the worth back, I'd have to wait for people to actually buy the things, which I personally find extremely annoying. Also... I really don't like the idea of the "bonus days", because then I'd have to adjust my day's plan to what the site tells me and I simply can't do that. And scour missions are timed, making you check back every hour... Well, at least there's the EXP share (and Lucky Eggs) that gives your Party some EXP for the interactions you make, so you can play a little more independently. By the way, my final Egg-/Pokédex was 381/622 and 766/1437, respectively. Yes, I said "nothing to do anymore". After a while, you mostly get your new eggs from the shelter (instead of the Lab), but the Shelter is... not done very conveniently. Firstly, you can only pick one Pokémon/Egg to adopt on each refresh; secondly, if you already have a lot of entries, finding new Pokémon/Eggs becomes a pain because the shelter is flooded with very common ones. Also very interesting: this time was actually my second time playing the game from the start; the first time was two years ago. Well, I was surprised to see what was added to the site: pretty much nothing. Btw, the reason I quit is also the exact same as two years ago, as I realized in the last few days/hours of playing. So well, I'm outta here.

i was absolutely OBESSESED with pokefarm for 2019-2020 its literally the perfect collecting/adopt game for me and it absolutely tore my heart to shreds when i looked back and seen how the staff are behind the scenes its honestly crazy bizarre how disrespectful and passive aggressive the ones running this silly sprite collecting are, both in view and even off-site. it would crush me back then to know my feelings for the site now im just happy i got out before i spent even more money on a site where the creators clearly dont care about you in the slightest