Is the monster feature EA’s biggest rip off to date?

Revisiting a SIX YEAR OLD thread here! And nothing has changed. My club drifted away from the commitments of wars a while ago and I didn't really want to look for a new club (I'm pres anyway) and don't have the time anymore myself, so I took up trying to defeat the monster instead. I've probably attacked 100 monsters over the years and I've never been able to defeat a single one. 6 hours is nowhere near enough unless you're willing to pour a massive amount of cash into speed ups, and even then you're limited to 4 disasters and no boosters. Why not at least make it an enticing prospect to try instead of the pointless waste of resources that it is? And why do they appear at random intervals so half the time you miss them anyway? So irritating.

I only like the monster because of war deliveries, but it pretty much always appears from about 9pm onwards for me and is gone again in the morning. ☹️

The main problem that I find with this monster is that it is too unbalanced. 

You need to launch many attacks where you will not have any help, because this monster does not attack you or at least I haven't interacted with him enough to believe it.

To attack it you must do many deliveries. The better score I can see in my club is 80 or 120 deliveries per war, but war last 2 days, so you have plenty of time to do deliveries. Those really active player who makes more than 120 deliveries per war, still can't launch many attacks to this monster, because you only can attack this with 4 types of disaster, that means for those 120 items probably only 50-70 are useful for those attacks, so you need to change some deliveries, and wait 5 minutes everytime you do that, then, this monster leaves in hours, not days! you only have some hours to reach 120 deliveries? not achieveable.

This without naming the lousy prize at the end which is like a bucket of cold water to the face.

The statistics they used to create this new feature is far enough from reality, as a real player you can't do much, even if I wanted to (this is the other problem, we don't even try because we know rewards are really bad), it is too difficult for me to defeat this monster unless I ask my clubmates for all the war items they have, or compete in an '' open war '' with another club just to kill the monster of my city, too much for so little.

but yes, it has a solution, fixing the numbers a little: 

1. The monster may attack you from time to time, to give you some items that you can start with.

2. Something more entertaining, beyond getting the chests, another thing that excites the players a little more, having their own season or tiers per month, so you can try to defeat many monster to unlock tiers and get better rewards.

3. Even that, improve the chests they give, 5 gold keys is laughable, or 1 rock monster card, come on... 

4. The time needs to be fixed, those monster leaves too fast. 

5. Heatlh is still to high, It is boring to beat such a tough monster individually, where there is no team club or you don't receive items because he attacks you again.

6. I have to say this: remove those COM tasks about war, stop overwhelming the COM.

@robotechnology80  Mac as always well presented and very much on target...the solution to address CoM focused mayor’s clubs not creating boring wars is simply remove war assignments from CoM (never belonged there anyway) - the monster is no solution. I agree the hackers and cheaters are in no small part the reason many clubs quit participating in war games but there are also 2 other major factors - 1st was what I simply refer to as “the strategy” where the run and hide boys would race to the bubble and simply stay there creating great frustration and boredom for folks that just wanted to blow something up like Del. Many folks walked away from the game completely frustrated...the cheaters were there but somewhat masked by the bubble. The 2nd event was the introduction of the shield buster which I believe was a great thing...once the “strategy” boys realized they actually had to adapt and quite frankly many were too inept and could not and simply walked away and from my personal perspective that’s not a bad thing.
Send my warmest regards to the guys and stay safe. 

@BlazinsZ I see your point. I also initially thought this was a way for CoM-only players to get the war tasks done, but turns out it isn't, as you explained. I honestly think that as more players left club wars behind, due in no small part to the increased level of cheating by hackers, this is EA's answer to the loss in revenue from honest players not buying war card packs anymore (since, what's the point in spending your hard-earned money to buy packs when you know the hackers just tap keystrokes to get their attack to LvL 15?) I received a "Monster Card Offer 3" shortly after the first monster appeared in my city back in January and I know of others who have also been baited with the tempting cards/keys/war sims monster packs. 

Of course, the monster's reception has been anything but warm, considering how ridiculously difficult it was to beat the 60-hit cephalopod in four-six hours when your shot options were things like NiK and Ancient Curse, and even if your shot options didn't blow, you still needed to have the attack leveled somewhere north of 12 in order to get 15,000 pts before defeating the monster to get that gold chest. Once I did the math on the monster's gold chest, that's when I figured out this was really just an alternative cash grab to drive pack micro transactions, and didn't really have anything to do with trying to accommodate players who'd lost interest in war.

Curiously, they're still trying to cajole us into accepting and liking Steve & Friends (as evidenced by the recent "community event" and tweaking the reappearance of the monster to every 2 days rather than "random" time frames that could span as much as a week or more). The monster feature could be fixed, but it would require EA to relinquish more of the one-sided benefit of its existence. For instance, allowing players to pay sim cash to expedite the monster's appearance so that it's available when a CoM task appears. Also, they really just need to decrease the difficulty in attaining that gold chest and defeating the 60-health monster. I know they want us to spend money on upgrading our attacks, so that would be something they are reluctant to do, but in making these changes, I think it would draw more players to actually engaging in this part of the game, rather than ignoring it altogether. 

Four days ago, my monster was coming in two days.

Three days ago, my monster was coming in two days.

Two days ago, my monster was coming in two days.

Yesterday, my monster was coming in two days.

Today, my monster is coming in one day.

This is so frustrating! I'm sitting on 5,000 points worth of CoM assignments and I have no faith the monster will even show up in time. 

Way to go, EA. Just another way you've ruined a "city building" game. 

I honestly don't know what to say about this monster, I don't know what the purpose is.

At first I thought it was something to solve the problem of COM and its war-related tasks, but these ugly colored octopuses leave very fast and don't even let you attack them with all the disasters.

so a green octopus appears and it turns out that he asks me to attack him with only 4 attacks, and my tasks in COM ask me to attack with other different disasters. 

So me: ????????????????????????????????????????

Also you still receive launch this booster, collect war reward, upgrade a disaster, so being a solution for COM is a completely wrong assumption.

in his best chest I got 1 (yes, one) card of Flying Vu attack, I can't understand how this can help a new player? so I don't understand what @LikeMindedHope  says at all. XD sorry

it seems that octopuses are an individual way of playing without being in war, because we assume that dragging your finger to a target and launching a imaginary disaster is the fun? ... 

I hope that sarcasm is noticed, but the exciting thing for me in wars is the team, planning together, using strategies, thinking about what to do. The part of delivering and dragging my finger is actually the annoying part of all this, at least for me

I understand that it is precisely bad because if it is as good as wars, many will prefer to kill that bug than play in wars, so EA does not want the players to entertain themselves with the octopus and leave the wars, the wars must continue, then the octopus also isn't made for COM, so is ... is ... is what? What is the purpose, I don't get it. 

Agreed - it seems that the main intent was an appeal to players either not in a club or not in warring clubs.  My club wars weekly, usually coinciding with the monster appearing.  After the first monster or two, the newness wore off and the underwhelming rewards meant most or my club simply ignores it.

Mike

”Astro”

VP of USMC Semper Fi group

At first, I was excited about the monster aspect. My club stopped warring because of all cheaters and hackers, so I thought the monster would at least allow me to do some CoM assignments like war deliveries. But the monster doesn't show up nearly enough and then for such a short time.

For example, my monster is showing up at 1 a.m. when I'll be in bed sleeping. And then, it's gone in six hours, so unless I set my alarm for 6 a.m. ON MY DAY OFF, I will miss out on the monster and being able to do CoM assignments. I've got 5K worth of assignments that I'm going to have to dump because my monster's timing stinks. Boo. 

Monster works well with high level war cards. Other wise worth nothing.  Though it can help people get war items out of war too.  Decent bonus