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

@Mahler1989  I agree, a lot of effort with little reward...maybe it’s just me but that notification that there’s a monster off the coast is always in the way and lingers way too long. 

I felt I needed to chime in regarding monster off coast.

I agree, In my main City I have never sunk the monster! I found it a curiosity at first then dispensed with the task as it was a time waster and robbed me of product to gain deliveries and time better spent making epic builds.

However in my feeder city which is level 8 . I do if time permits bomb the monster.

I am in Total agreement with you, only the enthusiastic COM player would bother with it.

I should also say, that I have been President of clubs for 1 year and at times 2 clubs , one for advancing players and one for beginners or raw novices.

Some of the problems, I experience like getting players to not by war supplies (toys) from war store and to actually make deliveries are developed early even before being introduced to COM at level 17

The benefits of the Monster event from my perspective are....

1/.Teaches players about the war supplies delivery system

2/ Teaches players to launch disasters

3/ Teaches players about reward chests

4/ Teaches players about War rank

5/ Gets players to consider stocking and building a base line stock of toys, which in turn puts pressure early on City Storage.  Its been a huge issue with Level 18 players arriving in a club and expecting them to perform with city storage at 65/600. So with monster, it shifts focus to the lack of city storage early. Fantastic!

6/ Gets players to open disaster sets

7/ Gets players to score in war and achieve Cards.

Wow like a presidents dream, to get players at level 18 into a club who are interested in war not just COM
This will help greatly in achieving more active war clubs.

Many clubs in all arenas are hitting go for a few COM tasks and they simply don't fight . This makes war often so boring.  Boredom with game means players quit SimCity Buildit 

If the octopus solves these problems outlined here and gives the community more active war players and improves City Storage early , the whole Game improves for all of us. 

Players who regularly achieve Positions 1st to 6th in COM , please I encourage you to comment about the monster Octopus Task.

 Benefit 8 / The war supplies can open when clubs are not at war.  This allows players with out of club feeder cities at high enough city level to gather war toys and deliver to clubs during rest periods. I don't see this as a problem as lots of players drop a city elsewhere to gather large amounts of toys ( war supplies ) anyway.

So for me Monster is a love hate relationship .. when I hate it I ignore it . lol.

Cheers 

@LikeMindedHope Do you work for EA? Monster is awful. Total waste of time and energy. Only good thing is war deliveries period. Tell all my mayors avoid like the plague President for 2 years lvl 28 war 48 CoM

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

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. 

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

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. 

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. 

@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.