Game is ruined by these cheaters abusing the money exploit.

I had to re-layout my city (level 27, 200k population) and ended up bulldozing all buildings. It was just too difficult to keep moving things around.  While I didn't do the "money exploit" I did obtain about $100k just by rebuilding back up to a 100k population.

I don't think it's necessarily cheating to bulldoze and rebuild to collect the building profit.  It is allowed "exploit" and does take time to eventually rebuild.  If you really want to sit there looping rebuilding the same building you can but that's certainly not any fun and I think a lot of work just to make some fake dough.  You are welcome to do the same if you so desire.

You can still buy out the expansion items with a small amount of cash ($20k).  I've always used the GTC to buy expansion items low and resell at max value since I started.  You shouldn't have any problem buying expansion items at max cost.  The trade center implementation has room for improvement, I don't think rebuilding to collect simoleons is the problem.

While im not denying there are probably cheaters in the game I'm not sure the validity of blame of cheaters being the problem described. There are millions of people playing the game. We are shown a very small amount of stuff sold in the trade HQ at one time. Even if what is shown is random; at any given moment you and possibly thousands maybe more people are looking at the items you are. And expantion items being the highest demand due to their relative limited drop rate along with the total randomness of what one is dropped. You are competing with possibly hundreds if not more like 1,000 people to buy the exact same persons item. So the one person out of those who was lucky to load and tap to buy first bought it. I dare say half the posts and the ads on the forum here are complaining about the horrible nature of the state of the HQ currently. And unfortunately the only solution is a completely new system design with a new UI front end in game for that system. The bottom line is if it happens to get coded it is going to take quite some time before we would see it implemented. This unfortunately means we probably have to deal with the mess until then if we want to buy stuff through it. I gave up yesterday after spending a full hour trying to but tw/o expansion items and coming away empty handed after tapping on more than 100 of the item in the HQ.

I don't think it's the 'cheaters' that are ruining the market, it's rather how the global market is setup that is creating the problem.

The price cap is to prevent the cheaters from benefiting from the exploit. even if they have a lot of money they still have to fight for it like you're doing why not try finding a faster internet connection and trying again i do believe these cheaters are those with a faster internet connection =/ 

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@CJDoom_81 wrote:
Im defending the money exploit and in no way do I consider it cheating. Its a lot of work and takes a very dedicated player to make it beneficial. Ive been using it for the past three days and I can guarantee it gives no advantage when trying to accumulate expansion items..its still painful trying to find them at market and the amount of simoleons you have has nothing to with it. I agree with takumi, I think internet speed is the main factor. EA just needs to fix the market.

CJ

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CHEATER!!!!!  What are you a Patriots fan???  🙂

j/k

All EA has to do is allow you to buy an item you see in the Global HQ even if it has already been sold to someone first, maybe one time out of 5 attempts.  The software just needs to conjure up the item for you as if no one else bought it.  You wouldn't even know if you bought it from the gamer or the game.  There are an infinite number of everything available, they aren't tangible items, they're really just zeros and ones in cyberspace.  The seller is not harmed because another gamer did buy the item they sold the nanosecond before you got there.  EA likely will never do this because they care more about their profits than your fun; they hope you will buy game cash with your real cash so you can pay for the needed item immediately without searching endlessly in the HQ.

Here is another thought, instead of complicated new code to conjure up an item that someone beat you to, after 5 failed attempts to buy the item at the HQ, the game could put the item in your "Daniel's City" stock for sale.  That is just for you, no one else.  That wouldn't be hard.  EA could also add an option for the gamer to "Request" a particular item so other gamers could advertise their items directly to you.  This is great for the seller too, for times when you have your Trade Depot full of items that you're trying to sell, but no one is buying them.  I've had things for sale for days without anyone buying them.

The money "exploit" can't affect you in any way. If someone who has low amount of money can't buy anything in trade HQ, also the one with huge amount of money can't buy anything, it's the same for all. Or do you think that rich players have some privilege to buy the items first? No, they don't. When i was trying to buy expansion items, i was not looking for the price and expensive items where impossible to buy as well as cheap ones (dozer blades). So the problem is that trade HQ does not work for all and money can't help you. 

Also i think the money "exploit"  is the worst one i ever seen.. You have to buldoze your whole city, then do the buldoze cycle all over again like a dron for hours.. This will raise your level and rebuild of your city will be veeery hard and slow, because on high level you will have all items unlocked and you will need the worst materials to upgrade your buildings..   Well, feel free to start "exploiting" if you think you will get any advantage over other players 🙂