What do most people advertise, and why?
Typically Items in low demand, often hamburgers, beach parts, metal/wood. Why? Because they are slow to sell, it keeps people coming into their shop to buy other unlisted items.
Whilst this is good for the seller, it's bad for the buyer. Buyers often get a GTHQ full of items they aren't after, and have to resort to city hopping to find what they do need. This is by far the biggest issue, Ain't nobody got time for that!
1 Solution? The GTHQ could show more than just the 1 item. I would suggest the 1 item + 3 more. Sure there's space constraints on mobile devices, but there are solutions such as holding your finger down on the advertised item to reveal more items.
Another solution, which is probably the better choice: The game could take initiative and self-promote high demand items that the seller didn't advertise (providing they already have opted in for advertising an item first).
It's most annoying for a high level player to see a GTHQ populated with 50% Metal/wood. It would be good if the game could give a better spread of listed items from different industrial/commercial.
EA can't blame the players for the current state of the GTHQ, there's many solutions that could be implemented to solve the issues.
I'm sure EA is hoping that people will get frustrated enough with the GTHQ and buy simcash to get items needed for expansions or upgrades instead of doing dozens of searches in the GTHQ. Of course another alternative is that people will uninstall the game out of frustration.
If EA thinks they've implemented the trade system that brings in the most revenue, they're probably not going to want to change that system.
