trade depot OVERWHELMED with Vu Tower items!?

davej6655 -

Like you I was hoping and waiting for EA to come around. There are a couple of things I would like to discuss including the "incidents" that have occurred in my two cities the last couple of weeks.

1) Mysterious concept of lost Simcash. Has anyone else experienced this?

I started a new city on my Android Tablet just to see if I had "learned" anything with my experiences in my larger city; Beryl Point. That task is going well except that the servers are now losing track of my Simcash in this new city. Like all of you; we are power players. Well I have not "mistakenly" pressed a wrong key or "shutdown????" the game in a wrong way to cause the use of the Simcash units. I was so furious about this that I contacted EA and asked them why they were stealing my Simcash. They told me: "I was shutting the game down incorrectly or there was a hiccup with the servers”.

There is a small silver lining here: EA credited my Simcash account with the "lost 78 units" of Simcash and gave me $2,000 Simoleans as well. But they did not give me an explanation as to why this was happening.

Their customer service reps; online chat and via email, told me that EA wants to have the players “enjoy the game” and “want the players to have a pleasant user experience”. Have we somehow gotten the attention of EA? Don’t hold your breath. ." HA HA HA HA HA LMAO, now.

2) A while back Dave you commented on how the tax dollars fell to $.02 per person when you get upwards of a million Sims. Like you I was already tracking this stat. And that got me to thinking about tracking “experience points”. I did not do this in my larger city but now have tracked these stats for 7 levels in my new city; CraftBrewers Village. There is a trend here and what I have suspected has come true.

a) The experience points required to get to the next level increases by 105-115%.

b) The experience points given per person decreases by 5-11%.

What does this mean to all of us? More time spent on a level, more resources spent to obtain the next level and certainly more important is: the new plan of having to spend exponentially higher dollars to upgrade the roads. It does not make me happy that this outcome has become the truth but I probably was not thinking otherwise anyway given EA’s attitude towards this “freemium game” and their concept of perpetual pay to play.

3) In my larger city; not as large as yours Dave and BTW kudos to you for reaching that plateau, levels 1-32 - I have spent $105,300 on "Road Upgrades". Now that the "new plan" (EA's greed has been further supplanted in the game), levels 33-35-1/2 - I have spent $265,400 on road upgrades.

This is around $3,290 Simoleans per level prior to this new plan - to $106,160 Simoleans per level in the 2-1/2 levels of 33-35-1/2. An increase of over 4,700%.

Again this is no surprise. What confuses me however is how can the player who does not have the Simoleans continue to pay this amount of Simoleans for roads. We are doing this just to sustain our current levels of play; it’s obstructing our ability to move the city forward. I have spent the last 10 days just barely making enough new Simoleans to raise my amount from $1,271,496 to $1,340,276 while paying for this absurdity. But I am however paying another price: population is stagnant.

4) Ea has now; as you say Dave, shut out the “higher levels of players” ability to sell on the GTHQ. This is where we all can make up needed Simoleans for city advancement. I might have to sit and wait for 12-18 hours now just to sell on this market. The only thing left going for us (this is no consolation prize) is to collect what tax dollars we can. Like you say Dave it’s become boring. Making what little Simoleans we can just to pay for roads.

Maybe EA can answer this question: my population before the “new plan” was 341,234 Sims and the roads were sufficient for the then population. My population has increased only 46,748; roughly 13.6%, Sims in the last ten days but have had to spend 4,700% more on roads. What’s up EA?

Food for thought: we did some research on the original Simcity, (please excuse the length)

Micropolis, The Sims, SimCity

All of the above games were developed by Will Wright who eventually co-partnered with Jeff Braun’s company called Maxis in and around 1987. They formed this partnership in order to help distribute the game to the waiting public. The first version known as Micropolis was coded for a Commodore 64 system in 1985. The Simcity version did not come out until 1989 and that could run on Amiga, Macintosh and IBM PC computers. In 1988 Maxis finally convinced Borderbund that these games would sell and soon after that went to market. Today Simcity is one of the best selling computer games of all time.

Will Wright’s inspiration to develop these games was brilliant. “Wright cultivated a real love of the intricacies and theories of urban planning”. That is where the attraction is; self gratification of building a successful city where happiness is based on Sim approval that reflect a players decision making process. Mr. Wright’s philosophies in creating the original game were/are in contradiction of most city and state planners, back then and today.

As 1997 rolled around EA was eager to acquire Maxis into its portfolio of profitable companies. Once there, Maxis operated on its own but as a subsidiary of EA. Will Wright stayed on with the company and his leadership paved the wave to many subsequent versions of the game. Will Wright left EA in 2009 to work on: “The Stupid Fan Club”. EA has shut down the Maxis division early this year, the article stated March 2015.

EA has a long history of swallowing up viable “gaming” companies. From what the information says; since the early 1990’s they have spent well over 3 billion dollars acquiring other gaming companies. So okay, we know that companies are started and run as “for profit corporations”, we do not deny this. But EA profits this year are projected at $875,000,000. Monopolizing is not a for profit strategy, it’s a deceitful way of doing business.

Why am I posting this information? Which BTW, these are not my own thoughts: this information is posted on various web sites for everyone to read.

One could say that EA’s interjection of a money making format into the game; a twist on the “freemuim business model”, has tainted Simcity Buildit. Most who have played it can tell you about their frustration, about the difficulty of advancement, the bugs. It’s kind of like Simcity: with its one time purchase fee and you play without regards to company profits but if you look close: it’s more like a perpetual price to play. From reading the online forums about Simcity Buildit – this game does not get any better even of you pay.

So why then is the burden of “making money” placed onto this game by EA? If in fact the results are the same if you pay or not: why the complicatedness, the hassle, the aggravation presented on their part.

My personal thoughts are – we would be better off paying a minimum charge of say: $0.99 cents for the game. But then EA would have to take out the demands of other money making ideas out of the game. Could they do it and are they willing to keep their hands off at that point? Could they make this a better game? I could be in fact dead wrong….. But it’s more than just my opinion, there are many who think this way. Remember we are just playing a game… something one does for entertainment.