Donut farmers are cheaters

Honestly i think your lucky you even get to talk to a customer service rep.

Its like Google, most people are users meaning you use there free programs like gmail, google search etc you dont actually pay Google anything so you are a user and you have no real direct way of contacting them outside of emailing. Yeah i know you get ads but thats a different can of worms and adblock takes care of that pretty nicely

Paying customers for Google products are called customers and they have access to customer support helplines etc.

I got nothing against what your doing, your playing well within the way the game is set up to play but considering youve never contributed to the game I think the last thing you can expect is some form of customer service. Your a user not a customer. Your already costing them server money and now you want live customer support for something youve never paid for. Its like a Gmail spammer calling Google with issues for there spambot program running through Gmail, not gonna happen.

Now people that do things way outside the scope of game play should be punished. Whatever this double bonut box thing on level up is way outside how the game is designed to play and people taking advantage of it are obviously exploiting a hack.

BlackFloppyDisk wrote:

4junk3000 wrote:
So you have become an expert at gaming this game...

You have an extremely high bonus rate, you earn an extremely large amount of in game cash and premium currency, and have done so by playing the game expertly.

But you've also played this game that many people built with the intention of earning income from it, and you admit to not paying them a dime.

Suddenly during your surreptitious playing method, you suffer a loss, so you contact them for remedy?

YOU HAVE SOME LARGE COJONES DUDE.

You're not cheating but to expect support or sympathy from the people who easily would feel you're ripping them off, is stupid.

You earn 150 donuts free daily, and you actually contacted them to cry over 25 donut loss?

No sympathies here either.

Maybe if you would read carefully, you will see that this thread was not about asking for sympathy, but rather a warning to freemium players that farm donuts. This has been discussed many times times already, this is a freemium game, so there will be some non paying members, it is to be expected. Although I did not buy donuts for my game, I have bought iTunes and Google Play cards and given them as gifts to other players. If EA said they only provide support to paying accounts, I could live with that, but I resent being called a cheater because I am farming donuts instead of buying them.

You remind me of that poster that said people that got locked out of their accounts when level 60 was released deserved it because they got 1000 donuts, played the game the "wrong" way, took advantage of a glitch, and deprived EA of money. Maybe you should apply for a job in the casino gaming industry, since you probably think that blackjack card counters are cheaters, because they used their brains and figured out how to beat the casino. Going by your logic, those card counters probably deserve to get beaten and robbed of their winnings in the parking lot, and casino security should not even bother to look at the surveillance footage to catch the perpetrators.

Uh, NO.

Let's change your example just a tiny bit.

I wouldn't say blackjack card counters are cheaters. But if they count cards AND LOSE, THEN COMPLAIN TO THE DEALER THEY WANT THEIR BET BACK, then they are STUPID, and deserve be ejected from the casino.

See the difference now?? Be careful using that word, logic, if you don't know what it means. ;-)

If you never paid a cent you shouldn't be farming donuts. And then have the audacity to complain to the company for whom your STEALING FROM. How is it fair that someone who's spent jack on this game have a higher % then someone who's been paying? As I've said...how you haven't been banned yet is beyond.

josebot533 wrote:
If you never paid a cent you shouldn't be farming donuts. And then have the audacity to complain to the company for whom your STEALING FROM. How is it fair that someone who's spent jack on this game have a higher % then someone who's been paying? As I've said...how you haven't been banned yet is beyond.

As I’ve noted before in other contexts, I’m neither a donut farmer nor a freemium player, but I nevertheless strongly disagree with just about everything you’ve said here. A certain style of game play is either legal or it’s not legal; I find morally dubious the implied notion that paying players are somehow entitled to perform actions that should be denied to freemium players. Or that EA help reps are entitled to treat freemium players like second-class citizens. Let’s be clear — donut farming is not stealing and there is no reasonable justification for the idea that one should be banned for practicing it. As I’ve said elsewhere, if EA wants to stop or limit the practice via changes to the software, more power to ’em.

I don't believe that EA's position here would be that donut farming in this sense violates the Terms of Service agreement. It is, quite simply, using the elements of the game almost exactly as they were intended. You pay to use the XP multiplier so that you can level up faster. Buying items of any sort with game money to produce XP is obviously fair play as it is an intrinsic part of the game.

I believe that where EA would find evidence of abuse is the fact the the OP has a multiplier of 1100% without EVER having purchased donuts. I'm pretty sure that this would be impossible to do without having at least once violated the TOS agreement. That is not to say that the OP's game was hacked, but rather that one or more of the past glitches was probably taken advantage of in order to get enough multiplier items. I'm not going to condemn anyone for using glitches in this way, but I'd say it's a stretch to then expect EA to give you much in the way of support at this point. It's not like you can't play the game or your items are disappearing, you just lost a few of the donuts that you've farmed and it's, quite frankly, not worth their time.

KrustyBrand wrote:
Let’s be clear — donut farming is not stealing and there is no reasonable justification for the idea that one should be banned for practicing it. As I’ve said elsewhere, if EA wants to stop or limit the practice via changes to the software, more power to ’em.

Precisely. This is why they made limits/increases on the prices of houses. It took forever for them to do so, but they did it. It was done to discourage "farming".

If they really wanted to nip this in the behind, they'd have put a 10 house limit of each color, and manually deleted items on everyone's account to match this item limit.

(They've proven they can delete items - that's how extra SVT and Fabricate egg were removed from people's inventory)

KrustyBrand wrote:

josebot533 wrote:
If you never paid a cent you shouldn't be farming donuts. And then have the audacity to complain to the company for whom your STEALING FROM. How is it fair that someone who's spent jack on this game have a higher % then someone who's been paying? As I've said...how you haven't been banned yet is beyond.

As I’ve noted before in other contexts, I’m neither a donut farmer nor a freemium player, but I nevertheless strongly disagree with just about everything you’ve said here. A certain style of game play is either legal or it’s not legal; I find morally dubious the implied notion that paying players are somehow entitled to perform actions that should be denied to freemium players. Or that EA help reps are entitled to treat freemium players like second-class citizens. Let’s be clear — donut farming is not stealing and there is no reasonable justification for the idea that one should be banned for practicing it. As I’ve said elsewhere, if EA wants to stop or limit the practice via changes to the software, more power to ’em.

The OP said he never spent a dollar on this game. And now has a 1100% bonus and makes 150 donuts a day. I'm premium (every item and fully decorated town) and have a 527.35% bonus. There is no way he could've gotten that many donuts to raise his bonus from a hundred (not sure what the standard freemium %) or so to 1100%.

Look:
1 whale is 300 donuts & 7%
He would need 157 whales to be close to 1100%

300×157=47,100 donuts.

How can a freemium player get almost 50,000 donuts honestly?

The simplest fix would be for EA to disable selling or storing KEMS, blood mobiles and rat traps. You could farm up to a point and then you're outhe of room.

josebot533 wrote:

KrustyBrand wrote:

josebot533 wrote:
If you never paid a cent you shouldn't be farming donuts. And then have the audacity to complain to the company for whom your STEALING FROM. How is it fair that someone who's spent jack on this game have a higher % then someone who's been paying? As I've said...how you haven't been banned yet is beyond.

As I’ve noted before in other contexts, I’m neither a donut farmer nor a freemium player, but I nevertheless strongly disagree with just about everything you’ve said here. A certain style of game play is either legal or it’s not legal; I find morally dubious the implied notion that paying players are somehow entitled to perform actions that should be denied to freemium players. Or that EA help reps are entitled to treat freemium players like second-class citizens. Let’s be clear — donut farming is not stealing and there is no reasonable justification for the idea that one should be banned for practicing it. As I’ve said elsewhere, if EA wants to stop or limit the practice via changes to the software, more power to ’em.

The OP said he never spent a dollar on this game. And now has a 1100% bonus and makes 150 donuts a day. I'm premium (every item and fully decorated town) and have a 527.35% bonus. There is no way he could've gotten that many donuts to raise his bonus from a hundred (not sure what the standard freemium %) or so to 1100%.

Look:
1 whale is 300 donuts & 7%
He would need 157 whales to be close to 1100%

300×157=47,100 donuts.

How can a freemium player get almost 50,000 donuts honestly?

Now you’re talking about specific numbers related to claims made by the OP. I’m not the least bit interested in whether the OP is being honest in his tale or whether it’s fabricated. I was responding solely to the general statements you made in your follow-up post about the relative merits and rights of paying versus freemium players and about the legality of donut farming.

josebot533 wrote:

KrustyBrand wrote:

josebot533 wrote:
If you never paid a cent you shouldn't be farming donuts. And then have the audacity to complain to the company for whom your STEALING FROM. How is it fair that someone who's spent jack on this game have a higher % then someone who's been paying? As I've said...how you haven't been banned yet is beyond.

As I’ve noted before in other contexts, I’m neither a donut farmer nor a freemium player, but I nevertheless strongly disagree with just about everything you’ve said here. A certain style of game play is either legal or it’s not legal; I find morally dubious the implied notion that paying players are somehow entitled to perform actions that should be denied to freemium players. Or that EA help reps are entitled to treat freemium players like second-class citizens. Let’s be clear — donut farming is not stealing and there is no reasonable justification for the idea that one should be banned for practicing it. As I’ve said elsewhere, if EA wants to stop or limit the practice via changes to the software, more power to ’em.

The OP said he never spent a dollar on this game. And now has a 1100% bonus and makes 150 donuts a day. I'm premium (every item and fully decorated town) and have a 527.35% bonus. There is no way he could've gotten that many donuts to raise his bonus from a hundred (not sure what the standard freemium %) or so to 1100%.

Look:
1 whale is 300 donuts & 7%
He would need 157 whales to be close to 1100%

300×157=47,100 donuts.

How can a freemium player get almost 50,000 donuts honestly?

I'll tell you how. The majority of my 1100% multiplier comes from tennis courts and wailing walls. Tennis courts were available for crafting last year in exchange for SH statues. The tennis courts were out in the open and available for everybody for 2 weeks. The wailing walls were available for crafting in the Halloween event last year for over a month, again, out in the open, available for everybody. Neither of those multiplier items were "fight club" specials. As for the other multiplier items, like news vans and billboards, I got them from mystery boxes. It has also been discussed multiple times on these forums that you can get 3% of multiplier for 20 donuts instead of the standard 1% for 20 donuts if you buy multiple mystery boxes. While your math is correct about the 300 donut whale for 7%, it is mathematically a bad deal compared to buying mystery boxes if your goal is to increase your multiplier. For 300 donuts worth of mystery boxes, you can get 45% of news vans and billboards.

Your stats show that you have 300 messages posted, how did you not see any of the information I just posted? Again, the threads were out in the open, openly discussed, no fight clubs. If I was a cheater, I would not even bother contacting technical support, I would just give myself more donuts instead of grinding them out every 4 hours.