These Epic Projects Are A Bit Ridiculous
I like the idea of the epic projects. It's nice to be able to get an extra tier in the residential upgrades, and I like being able to earn the tokens that will speed up the creation of commercial goods.
I'm all about making the game challenging, too. I don't want to get bored with it because everything comes too easily or too quickly, and I find myself with nothing to do. But I have to wonder about these epic projects.
- You have only 24 hours to complete enough item requests to get the token level you want.
- Bronze is easy, it takes 10 points. That's an average of 5 item requests in 24 hours. The silver tier shoots up to 80 points, or average 40 item requests. Gold tier is insane at 160 points or 80 item requests. To put that in perspective, 80 item requests is an average of 5 completed requests per hour not including an 8 hour sleep schedule. Some of these requests are for things like smoothies, which take several hours each and you need more than one of them.
- If that's not bad enough, completing the required tier doesn't get you the "1 token per day" that is suggested in-game. I don't know about the other two tokens, but I completed an epic project at the silver tier, and I get 1 token part per day. But I need SIX of these to get one token. So you can only get a token every six days, assuming you're always there to collect your token part each day. If you want to get one token per day, I suppose you need to upgrade 6 buildings to the silver tier.
- Attempting to complete an epic project at anything above the bronze tier is an all-day affair. Items take a long time to create. You can buy them if you can find them but it's a massive drain on your resources.
- If you haven't fully upgraded your commercial buildings yet, there may be some items unavailable to you. However, the item requests can still include those items.
- You cannot cancel an item request to get a new one. I recently had two different simultaneous item requests for popcorn, but I haven't upgraded that building yet, so I can't make popcorn. I can't upgrade the building because my finances are completely shot by attempting to move up to the next tier. That's two item request slots that I can't use for the rest of the day.
- Oh, and you'll probably need to be next to an outlet all day, since this game eats battery like nobody's business. You need to be checking it constantly. My phone was down to 30% by lunchtime when I started my first epic project.
I don't mind things taking a while to complete, but reaching the top tier needs to be possible. This could be done a number of ways. Obviously, the point requirement could be reduced to a level where normal human people can complete them in time. Or the time limit could be extended. Or the items that take 8 hours to make could result in more than 2 or 3 points.
In the meantime, my suggestion if you're just getting started with Epic Projects is this: don't start them right away. Stop everything you're doing and build a couple of everything, especially the items that take a couple of hours or more. Fill your storage to the brim with the hardest to create items, as well as the items used to build some of them (like flour, watermelons, etc). Don't buy things that are all over the HQ though, so skip things like TV's, burgers, refrigerators and light bulbs. Once your storage is full, save a ton of simoleons, because you'll probably need them to try to buy whatever you can't make in time. Also use the simoleons to buy the items I just mentioned in the HQ. Save up a good 100k before starting the clock on that epic project. And make sure you're near an outlet for most of the day.
