Things we need in the neighborhood

i always thught of being able to talk to my neghbors but everyone sied that was bad idea and my topic was quickly locked. why is it a good idea now that he brought it up instead me?

izabellatrix wrote:
Love it! Especially the idea of having an away message. I always feel a little bad when I have to delete someone for being inactive, because I don't know what's happening in their life to cause it. I would feel really bad if I had a family emergency or something, then I came back to find all my friends had deleted me.

I feel the same way.

wadebear wrote:
Things we need in neighbor's towns:

A message board system. At minimum with pre-selected messages like 'On Vacation', 'Sleeping', 'Back in 2 Days'. Something you could leave your own message with would be nice, but it's too open to abuse.

I'll be gone for X days would be the best to have. Anything else I see no reason to have. If a player plays daily and isn't real new to the game where they have almost nothing at all to tap; then they should have plenty of stuff for people to tap. But how would this message be delivered? I'm thinking next to where you have the last played info would work. But then what if the person doesn't start playing after the X days or any reasonable time after an on vacation scenario elapses. The reason to see such message would become void as we would still contemplate replacing a neighbor who is going to be away from the game too long.

wadebear wrote:

Move the last visit time from the handshake menu to the player's info rectangle in the town. I just dumped a player who hadn't been in for a week, and I usually cut off after 5 days during regular play (2 days in event play). Of course if we had a message board where people could say they'd be back... A couple of months ago I couldn't find anything to tap in a neighbor's town - only to discover they hadn't played in almost a month. Apparently I was their only friend...

I would like to see this info displayed where you have it as well. But I would like to add that this info needs to be specific to TSTO and not generic to logging into their origin profile. I often times run into this problem where it is obvious they are not playing TSTO but the last played message indicates a day ago or less. If they are that active then there would be stuff for me to tap.

wadebear wrote:

An indicator that shows that your neighbor has visited your town. I'm thinking like a traffic light where green = visited in the last 24 hours, yellow = in the last week, and red = more than a week. It could be put in either the info area or a separate icon.

I think I'd rather see this as visited and taps in the last 24 hours for the green light (number of taps in the green circle), yellow 2-5 days since last visit, and red 6+ days without visit. For me this would help identify if all of my friends are able to tap on stuff. Green lit up with 0 in it would let us know they visited but didn't tap anything.

wadebear wrote:

Some way of knowing how many friends you have. Maybe a number on the handshake icon. I got dumped the other day and didn't know until I counted.

A nice idea but the handshake icon already reflects a number of invites pending. So maybe this would be better shows below friendship level as Friends: xxx (where xxx is the number of friends you have).

wadebear wrote:

An 'actions remaining' counter to replace the FP remaining counter once you've maxed out your Friend Points.

Excellent idea and with this last event we had I really wanted to know that info. And when it comes to events this could begin with X actions give Y with Z actions remaining. Both pieces of info I really wanted bad this last event.

JimJ321 wrote:

Nitemare-rexx wrote:
i always thught of being able to talk to my neghbors but everyone sied that was bad idea and my topic was quickly locked. why is it a good idea now that he brought it up instead me?

I believe this would encourage trolls to say mean sprited things and perhaps reduce happy tapping.

yea but can always set it eaither as whole ingame or just certain neghbors can talk, you can log into meany online games with free chat and sometimes peaple are nice, and sometimes they destroy it but hey its an online game

Great ideas!

Suggestion: green light for 36 or even 48 hours. No one can tap for 24 hours thus time needs to be longer in order to get a tap. I try to tap all friends at once. 24+ hours apart. Due to the + time this tapping becomes later and later. Eventually being so late I'm not staying up, thus tap will be next day. So I suggest 48 for the green.

Just a suggestion.

starstrucsims wrote:

marisasari541 wrote:

I totally get what you're saying I was just pointing out that there's a way to get to a person's krustyland without searching for the bus. If the less than ten seconds it takes to exit the town and reenter their krustyland is such a problem for you then fine.

The point is that it takes a lot longer than 10 seconds to exit the friend's town and enter Krustyland. And multiply that by how many times you have to do it, and it gets monotonous.

Forgive me if I don't make much sense today, I'm on pain medication...

Precisely. It can take a minute or longer for us slow interneters (I'm on satellite) to move from town to town, or town to Krustyland - and it seems to take even longer to move from town or Krustyland to the neighborhood. When I was in the Emergency Room last night (I had a bad fall out of the back of my pickup truck unloading our new washing machine - I tripped over my own big feet) I could just boom, boom, boom from place to place. But at home it's molasses.

starstrucsimsI like the Krustyland idea. I have just started working on my Krustyland, so I like to visit neighbour's Krustylands to get tickets. But sometimes they don't have anything to tap. And I can't just click through to the next neighbour's Krustyland like I can with their regular neighbourhood. So I either have to go back to the friend screen, wait for that to load, find the friend I was on, click their regular neighbourhood (or Krustyland, depending on which I had clicked initially), wait for that to load. Then after tapping, or not finding anything to tap, if I want to visit another Krustyland, I have to go back to the friend screen again, wait for that to load again, etc. It can really take a lot of extra time when you have a lot of friends to click through. Having a way to jump from Krustyland to Krustyland quickly (like from regular neighbourhood to regular neighbourhood) would be such a time saver. [/quote wrote:

I considered adding a 'direct to Krustyland' button to my wishlist because I've had the same issue, but I couldn't think of a simple way to add it in. Splitting the buttons wouldn't work on small devices - I've tried playing on my iPod Touch and the buttons are minuscule (everything is miniscule - that's why I drag my Nexus 7 with me when I need to play outside the house).

Separate buttons would take up screen space and be confusing (darnit! I meant to go to the next town not Krustyland!)...

The only thing I can think of is an in-game setting: Next town button: Springfield (checkbox) Krustyland (checkbox). That could work though. Easy enough to change.

benb61 wrote:
So what is the big deal with someone not visiting your town when there is no event on?? As long as my friends are active in their town I don't care if they visit my town. I get the same reward whether I have a hand shake or a dollar sign above my buildings. The only issue could be the additional cash and XP you get from cleaning graffiti, but that is minimal overall.

It just irks me. Plus I'm curious.

benb61 wrote:
I can totally agree when there is an event on and you need those visits to get event currency, but between events, it does not bother me if my friends don't visit.

Of course that changes when there are Friendship points at stake.

Well, that's kinda the point. Here I was looping through my neighbor's towns trying to hit their Cannon and Elf Tunnel door as much as possible, wondering if they were visiting me...

Nitemare-rexx wrote:
i always thught of being able to talk to my neghbors but everyone sied that was bad idea and my topic was quickly locked. why is it a good idea now that he brought it up instead me?

Actually...

I didn't bring it up - someone else did (I'm too blurry to track down the post today).

My post actually started as a reply to their post, but I included so many other ideas that have been brewing around in my head that I thought it should be a post of its own.

I think the OP's ideas are really good. Hope EA read this thread. A way of indicating absences is a necessity, IMO. I have a neighbour who was a long term player but hasn't played for weeks. Because they were a good neighbour I'm hanging on for a while in case they come back. Another newer neighbour often misses several days- maybe his/her job prevents daily play. I hide him/her every so often and then have to go back to check if they're playing again. If both of these had a way of indicating their status I could decide whether to keep them or remove them.

Giving people the opportunity to write their own messages is lovely in principle but some people would write something that needs to be censored. I understand there have been some who use existing items to make offensive displays. Just give a few options. "On holiday", "Gone for good", "daily player", etc....

Fingers crossed they can utilise your good ideas.

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:
I'll be gone for X days would be the best to have. Anything else I see no reason to have.

Sometimes just for fun. Like a 'ZZZZzzzz' to indicate you're sleeping. And if people came to my town and found nothing to tap, but saw "ZZZZzzzz" they'd know that I was asleep.

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:
But how would this message be delivered? I'm thinking next to where you have the last played info would work.

I was thinking a building or decoration you could put near your landing point. If there was a message, it would have an indicator your could tap like a speech balloon. No message - no indicator.

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:
But then what if the person doesn't start playing after the X days or any reasonable time after an on vacation scenario elapses. The reason to see such message would become void as we would still contemplate replacing a neighbor who is going to be away from the game too long.

It would act as a buffer. If I knew for sure someone at least intended to return, I'd probably give them more time before dumping them for someone else.

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:

wadebear wrote:

Move the last visit time from the handshake menu to the player's info rectangle in the town. I just dumped a player who hadn't been in for a week, and I usually cut off after 5 days during regular play (2 days in event play). Of course if we had a message board where people could say they'd be back... A couple of months ago I couldn't find anything to tap in a neighbor's town - only to discover they hadn't played in almost a month. Apparently I was their only friend...

I would like to see this info displayed where you have it as well. But I would like to add that this info needs to be specific to TSTO and not generic to logging into their origin profile. I often times run into this problem where it is obvious they are not playing TSTO but the last played message indicates a day ago or less. If they are that active then there would be stuff for me to tap.

You mean it just shows if they've in ANY Origin game (or the application) and not specifically in Tapped Out? I did not know that. Hmmm, that would explain why sometimes my neighbors show that they've last played X hours ago, but there's nothing to tap in their town...

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:

wadebear wrote:

An indicator that shows that your neighbor has visited your town. I'm thinking like a traffic light where green = visited in the last 24 hours, yellow = in the last week, and red = more than a week. It could be put in either the info area or a separate icon.

I think I'd rather see this as visited and taps in the last 24 hours for the green light (number of taps in the green circle), yellow 2-5 days since last visit, and red 6+ days without visit. For me this would help identify if all of my friends are able to tap on stuff. Green lit up with 0 in it would let us know they visited but didn't tap anything.

Good point!

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:

wadebear wrote:

Some way of knowing how many friends you have. Maybe a number on the handshake icon. I got dumped the other day and didn't know until I counted.

A nice idea but the handshake icon already reflects a number of invites pending. So maybe this would be better shows below friendship level as Friends: xxx (where xxx is the number of friends you have).

Isn't the pending invites shown above the icon? (Don't have any today - can't look.) Maybe with a slash? 6/90 would mean you have 6 invites pending and 90 friends? And by the way, I hate that "New X" thing. I keep thinking it means new items in the store and tapping it...

Raven_Darkstorm wrote:

wadebear wrote:

An 'actions remaining' counter to replace the FP remaining counter once you've maxed out your Friend Points.

Excellent idea and with this last event we had I really wanted to know that info. And when it comes to events this could begin with X actions give Y with Z actions remaining. Both pieces of info I really wanted bad this last event.

Another good idea..