"mightysprite;c-18357312" wrote:
@EA_Cade Thank you for compiling all of our feedback from multiple places and passing it on to EA, it must be a huge job, and thank you also for continuing to communicate with honesty and courtesy in both directions.
TS4 was a game for purchase for a long time and then it became essentially free-with-ads.
I use some free-with-ads services and listen to some free-with-ads podcasts. The ads are annoying but I get it about why they're there and accept that my attention to the ads is the cost of using the service.
I can see why EA wants to adjust to a free-with-ads model now that the game is free to download.
However:
1. The game wasn't made free because of being a free-with-ads game. It was made free largely because of its age. Kinda like the way I bought TS2 with lots of expansions from the Apple store in the early days of the pandemic for like $34.99. It cost me way less than it would have if I'd bought TS2 and the expansions at release. In the land of software, an older product is a less valuable product.
2. Many many players already paid for the game before it became free. Those free-with-ads services often come with a purchase option, where you can pay money to eliminate the ads. At the very least, the shopping cart button should be completely eliminated for those players. Buying the game should buy the ability to remove the cart.
I was thinking this morning of exactly these points myself, @mightysprite, but you've expressed them so much better than I ever could.
So for new players who download the base game for free, fine - let them have the shopping trolley button in their game. They're getting a basic but good game for free. We had to spend money for that experience, so those players can't really complain about having this form of in-game ad in their game.
But as soon as any player starts spending money on the game (so, for all of us who bought the game originally, and for anyone who gets the base game for free but then buys any form of DLC), that button should be removed for them. As you say, that's what happens with every other free-to-play game: as soon as you spend money, you get the 'privilege' of having in-game ads removed.
