Question: Are feeder towns killing the game?

Stupid question, but what is the difference between a feeder town and a friend town? Ok, you may time thing a little bit better with another account (like constantly tapping the cannon for handshake bells) and maybe get an advantage with placing feds, aliens and such in your prime town, but what else?

NarraMine88 wrote:

Zozobras wrote:
NarraMine88
"I personally don't bother with feeder towns as it just doesn't seem worth the effort. It's also basically cheating."
Everybody has a different way of playing the game and I can't see how "feeder towns" would be cheating. Just because you have a different style?

Mild cheating, but cheating nonetheless. Using 10 feeder towns to bump up event currency is cheating in my book.

My son's a teacher. He tutors on the weekends to "bump up" his supply of currency. He and his wife just bought a new dining room set. I never thought of it as cheating until you said that. I'm ashamed of him now. ;)

NarraMine88 wrote:

AJtheboss1 wrote:

annettemarc wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:

imdreaming691 wrote:
Dead towns take up disk space, the cheapest part of computing infrastructure. It would be my guess that a town's layout only takes up 1 Mb at absolute max.

But when you multiply that by.. 70 million?

That's seventy terabytes. My home computer's got two.

EA currently boasts thatTSTO has been downloaded 10 million times. Lots of those are the same person installing it on multiple devices. Wonder how many of those were reinstallz after uninstalls to try to fix it when it crashes for good. Wouldnt it be a hoot if they also reported how many uninstalls there were.

It IS frustrating that we can never actually delete a town. I'd think EA would be happy to take them off their servers. Those are just dead weight.
:)

I really don't think that towns take up that much space once everything is coded. Think about it. The game is only about a 1gb. If one server has 100TB, all it needs is one copy of everything which is 1gb. and everything else is just placement information just telling where each thing goes in a grid. That shouldn't take more then a few megabytes at most.

You're probably right... It's just there's no way to know how many millions of dead towns there are... It probably doesn't really make a dent. Bhjt someone mentioned land... Would deleting dead towns make more "room" for land? Or does it just not work that way?

It doesn't really work that way, since land isn't server end issue, but a device issue. The problem with adding more land is that most older devices wouldn't be able to run the game well enough for them to implement it. It's the stability that's causing land release delays.

EvaMohlin wrote:
Stupid question, but what is the difference between a feeder town and a friend town? Ok, you may time thing a little bit better with another account (like constantly tapping the cannon for handshake bells) and maybe get an advantage with placing feds, aliens and such in your prime town, but what else?

Feeder towns were only usuful and became popular during an event a couple of years ago. During the Whacking day event, the way you'd get event currency is by placing eggs in other peoples towns and they'd hatch them and kill the snakes. During that event there was no limit as to how many eggs can be placed in one town and how many can be collected.

Now for the important part. The reason why people decided to create feeder towns was because the amount of currency needed to finish the event was so absurdly high that there was a very slim chance of finishing the event without this workaround. Even with feeder towns a lot of people barely made it with a one week extension of the event. I was one of those people that barely made it.

After that event they started limiting how much things can be given to another town so that people wouldn't cheat with feeder towns again. Though now people have extra towns to stay busy with the game.

NarraMine88 wrote:
Using 10 feeder towns to bump up event currency is cheating in my book.

No, it isn't. A feeder town gives the exact same benefit as having a really good neighbor. (Which is why I haven't bothered, tbh, I have plenty of really good neighbors.)

AJtheboss1 wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:

AJtheboss1 wrote:

annettemarc wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:

imdreaming691 wrote:
Dead towns take up disk space, the cheapest part of computing infrastructure. It would be my guess that a town's layout only takes up 1 Mb at absolute max.

But when you multiply that by.. 70 million?

That's seventy terabytes. My home computer's got two.

EA currently boasts thatTSTO has been downloaded 10 million times. Lots of those are the same person installing it on multiple devices. Wonder how many of those were reinstallz after uninstalls to try to fix it when it crashes for good. Wouldnt it be a hoot if they also reported how many uninstalls there were.

It IS frustrating that we can never actually delete a town. I'd think EA would be happy to take them off their servers. Those are just dead weight.
:)

I really don't think that towns take up that much space once everything is coded. Think about it. The game is only about a 1gb. If one server has 100TB, all it needs is one copy of everything which is 1gb. and everything else is just placement information just telling where each thing goes in a grid. That shouldn't take more then a few megabytes at most.

You're probably right... It's just there's no way to know how many millions of dead towns there are... It probably doesn't really make a dent. Bhjt someone mentioned land... Would deleting dead towns make more "room" for land? Or does it just not work that way?

It doesn't really work that way, since land isn't server end issue, but a device issue. The problem with adding more land is that most older devices wouldn't be able to run the game well enough for them to implement it. It's the stability that's causing land release delays.

In that case then there needs to be a cut off point for old devices... I know some older mobile devices cannot play certain games anymore and sooner or later they are going to have to bite the bullet. I don't expect to be able to play on this tab forever... Sooner or later, I'm gonna have to upgrade...

NarraMine88 wrote:

AJtheboss1 wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:

AJtheboss1 wrote:

annettemarc wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:

imdreaming691 wrote:
Dead towns take up disk space, the cheapest part of computing infrastructure. It would be my guess that a town's layout only takes up 1 Mb at absolute max.

But when you multiply that by.. 70 million?

That's seventy terabytes. My home computer's got two.

EA currently boasts thatTSTO has been downloaded 10 million times. Lots of those are the same person installing it on multiple devices. Wonder how many of those were reinstallz after uninstalls to try to fix it when it crashes for good. Wouldnt it be a hoot if they also reported how many uninstalls there were.

It IS frustrating that we can never actually delete a town. I'd think EA would be happy to take them off their servers. Those are just dead weight.
:)

I really don't think that towns take up that much space once everything is coded. Think about it. The game is only about a 1gb. If one server has 100TB, all it needs is one copy of everything which is 1gb. and everything else is just placement information just telling where each thing goes in a grid. That shouldn't take more then a few megabytes at most.

You're probably right... It's just there's no way to know how many millions of dead towns there are... It probably doesn't really make a dent. Bhjt someone mentioned land... Would deleting dead towns make more "room" for land? Or does it just not work that way?

It doesn't really work that way, since land isn't server end issue, but a device issue. The problem with adding more land is that most older devices wouldn't be able to run the game well enough for them to implement it. It's the stability that's causing land release delays.

In that case then there needs to be a cut off point for old devices... I know some older mobile devices cannot play certain games anymore and sooner or later they are going to have to bite the bullet. I don't expect to be able to play on this tab forever... Sooner or later, I'm gonna have to upgrade...

I'm sure there's some cutoff point, but I highly doubt they'll make it "new device" exclusive since that'll cost them a ton of costumers. Some people are still stuck in contracts and only upgrade every 2 years. I mean it's really a balancing act in EAs side. Right now I think they're pushing it with the land but hopefully that'll change soon.

EvaMohlin wrote:
Stupid question, but what is the difference between a feeder town and a friend town? Ok, you may time thing a little bit better with another account (like constantly tapping the cannon for handshake bells) and maybe get an advantage with placing feds, aliens and such in your prime town, but what else?

A feeder town is like an apple tree. If I want an apple, I go get one. If not, I don't bother. The tree doesn't mind. Its there to feed me. If I need an apple at 4am, it's ready for me.

A friend town has a person on the other end. They need you as much as you need them. You need to be loyal enough to be around when it helps them.

If you're not able to be a devoted neighbor, in my opinion its not fair to take up another person's slots. For someone with a frenetic schedule, who doesn't know day-to-day whether they can visit (e.g. help) friends, feeders are the best option. It gives them at least a chance. Nobody loses.

neuroheart wrote:

NarraMine88 wrote:
Using 10 feeder towns to bump up event currency is cheating in my book.

No, it isn't. A feeder town gives the exact same benefit as having a really good neighbor. (Which is why I haven't bothered, tbh, I have plenty of really good neighbors.)

It's just not cricket, though. I know it's not against any official rules but EA hardly encourages this, do they? Imagine..

Christmas 2014
1. Put Elves in jars by tapping in your town and fire them from the cannon to earn bells!
2. Earn bells by visiting friends!
3. Make yourself 15 feeder towns for "easier" bells! Hell, why not make 20?

Thanks AJtheboss!