I spent donuts on the fireworks and everyone got them free anyway.

erik319 wrote:
It's interesting to see that most of the challenges that EA has with this game are related to user expectation caused by a lack of communication 8)

Basically they don't think through "cause and effect" well enough. They should do a little bit more about (short term) scenario planning, I think :wink:

Perhaps they have touched on a new game genre, with undiscovered and very specific dynamics and dependencies.

If not then I'm interested to know what other games are comparable and how corresponding user communities respond to them!

I whole heartedly agree :) On the lighter side... no game gives directions to hidden levels. That's why so many Hints & Tips sites have become so popular. Before the www was invented, people had to play Atari and Nintendo games over and over to discover everything. Even though EA should communicate a lot of things, they don't...for whatever reason. When I purchase a console game, I never see exact directions. Maybe that's just a flaw with all games. Just my opinion :)