We agree with you totally. We are being lead like sheep to the paying booth. With EA it is my way or the highway. There are so many things wrong with this game now its a wonder anyone plays anymore.
Not only should they go back to a six week COM, but they should take this game back several years. or more, to remove everything that does not have a purpose in building and maintaining a city. Too many ideas that do not focus on the main theme, in that this only distracts a player - to perform all of these levels of tasks, it has become a full time job.
EA's thinking - lets just add it to SCBI, we already have a platform why create a new one? And players wonder why there are bugs, game crashes, game freezing, many things that simply do not work correctly.
This game has become a catch-22 for all ideas. A bloated mass of confusion.
And this forum, what a joke. EA has put up this forum for players to vent their feelings and in some way EA hopes that this will make a player feel better about EA's misguided direction. This forum is nothing more than a "brick wall" between this company and the end users.
We agree with the player above that has stated: "they are not doing their jobs properly" but we think that they are being told how and when to respond to a post. With; obviously, more than not - ignoring most of these post.
It's just you and me and the brick wall.