These days I'm doing a lot of software development for work, and it got me thinking about things called 'pips'.
Pips, like pips in a watermelon, are essentially small issues that are no deal breaker on their own, but that can result in an unpleasant experience when many of them are stacked together.
And this morning, I realized that many of the Hive Games we play have these pips. And some of them are (I think!), really easy to solve whilst also being hugely annoying!
I am going to list a few pips here that I can readily think of. But if you have a second, please add in yours below this post as well!
In advance, I apologise for the potentially negative tone of these things, but I am concerning pips here, which are annoyances that could/should have been solved quite a while ago. Hopefully by exposing them so clearly I'm encouraging developers to resolve them this time around! :)
The pips!
First of, 
I've been playing this game on and off for many months, and my main gameplay experience has now deteriorated to repeatedly scouting players due to lack of time. Scouting is time-intensive because it can only be done one player at a time, and it requires Hive blockchain interactions every time.
This is a pip because the scouting takes so much time that I don't actually have time left to use any of the other game features, like training, shopping etc. And it's easily solved, simply by allowing people to scout an arbitrary number of players in one go (it would reduce burden on the Hive network as well).
Second, 
This is a great game that is seeing lots of development, but for some reason the cards on the market are still not sorted by price! So if I want to buy a card, I often have to evade the main platform and visit an external site (e.g. nftm.art) to do so, which is hugely annoying.
Also, the screaming red warning box about bots is understandable from a developers perspective, but is that really going to be your main onboarding feature when new players visit the website? ;)
Third, 
Similarly to Rabona, I spent much of my time selecting individual crops to harvest in this game. I don't think it makes for an appealing main gameplay feature, so perhaps a 'select all harvestable crops' button is in order here?
And last, 
This game is solid in many areas, but anyone checking the web page will think it's utterly dead. Could it be possible to do an official development update at least once a month? Also, what happened to the new combined buildings that were supposed to be released monthly?
Next to that, we have a situation where cards have a huge SIM base income, which is then taxed by nearly 100%, making for a very annoying player experience. Would it not just be possible to drop the base incomes on the SIM cards (e.g. restaurants go from 10 to 1 SIM income), and then have the tax adjust to more reasonable rate? The game mechanics itself shouldn't change much, but the player experience surely will be more pleasant!
Closing thoughts
Here is my little exposition of pips. I strongly encourage you to post your own in the comments, because I think that by bringing these annoyances to the developer's attentions, we can all help to make the Hive gaming ecosystem better! :)
