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The EA Unhelpful Centre
Seems they are clamping down on donut farmers. Their fault for making getting donuts so easy.
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Apparently. When the take down update for the kindle locked us out of the game for like 12 hours I politely requested a refund for the day I missed on my collider. They cheerfully refunded my 5 donuts and added an extra 5 for my troubles.
I'm only suggesting this because this isn't the first complaint about this very issue.
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear; I wasn't disagreeing with you. I'm just saying 3 weeks or so ago it wasn't an issue at all - but from the sounds of it they may have started cracking down on collider issues.
Sorry if it appears that Im nitpicking about word choice, but Im a bit uncomfortable with the use phrases like cracking down and clamping down in this thread and in others dealing with this topic. It strongly implies that the use of the collider by donut farmers is somehow cheating or a violation of the TOS. Personally, I find the idea of farming utterly baffling, but as far as Ive been given to understand, its within the rule of the game. If EA thinks that farming is a threat to thier bottom line, they are perfectly within their rights to address the issue by issuing a patch that makes it more difficult or impossible. What they absolutely should not be doing is differentially treating customers based upon their belief that they might or might not be farmers.
Then how do they know which donuts have been lost? The last donut "purchase" was back in 2015.
Remember the questline dialogue when they announced the end of traditional "levels"? What is known as a "bloodmobile Easter Egg" dialogue pops up:
after the player has purchased their 100th bloodmobile: Rex Banner says "That's a LOT of bloodmobiles you've been purchasing. Just what kind of bloody foul play are you up to?"
EA DEFINITELY knew about the level-up donut extravaganza. They obviously believe that the number of players who will even KNOW about it is miniscule. There are millions of Tapped Out players. How many would have picked up on that tactic on their own?
Exactly, they told all players with the dialogue and questline how to donut farm by buying and selling bloodmobiles. And futhermore, required you to do so in order to complete the quest.
This thread isn't directly about donut farming though - it's a bug with buying time from the XP collider.
@OP, I'd recommend reopening your case and trying to get another rep. Note that this isn't the first post I've read about not receiving the XP collider bonus when purchased.
If all fails - BBB- I know a lot of smack gets talked - but the 2 times I have been furious enough with EA- once for the threat - I went this route - and was PROMPTLY replied to by a manager @ EA- when they got my BBB complaint ---- direct email back and forth and they were Appalled by my story - Action was fixed, I was Very Satisfied with the outcome.
I reloaded yesterday without issue, but purchased the 10 day package. (on android)
ETA: also what Anna said. I'd even ask for donut compensation for how you were treated. You haven't done anything wrong at all - you're reporting a bug and asking for a refund for a purchase that wasn't received.
If it makes you feel any better, I accidentally purchased an open hand sanitizer from a well known beauty store. I loved the scent so much that I was purchasing 3 more and the matching hand cream. Returned it yesterday and was accused of trying to scam them as it wasn't marked as a tester. Yep, I only needed the one squirt and wanted my $1.25 back, and was willing to drive 10 minutes there and back to get said $1.25. They kept my receipt. Yep total scammer here.
The general consensus at the time was that EA made a mistake with the tennis courts; the craftable ones probably weren't supposed to have a multiplier on them - the fact they were eventually removed from SH crafting and replaced them with a non multiplier version backs up that theory.
There's a good chance that the wailing walls were supposed to be coded as a unique crafting item - we should have only been able to craft one - and the spooky walls (with a much lower multipler) were supposed to be crafted unlimitedly. That or they just really underestimated how much we'd take advantage of the situation. Most multiplier items they give us tend to be more at the rate of the bombs you can win launching your ship - you'll win them eventually, but not many and not quickly.
But the way I see it, it's the difference between a restaurant offering a 20% discount to loyal customers and someone figuring out how to manipulate the system and eating for free. If it goes on long enough or if someone like chicken little throws a big enough fit, they will take that reward system away and those of us who have supported the game will lose those extra benefits.
Donut farming has been widely discussed all over blogs and forums, and has been for years. It is well known and many articles list the bloodmobile as an effective and quick method to farm.
EA has shown a speedy response time in fixing beneficial glitches to players. Check out all the posts discussing how to pass on info to other players and keeping it to PMs. Once it leaks, it's patched right away.
Donut farming is not a glitch, nor an exploit. It is as designed. If it was a true exploit, they would have adjusted the XP return on the KEM, bloodmobile, rat trap, cobblestone walls etc. to be on par with the rest of the decorations or done something else to prevent it or make it harder.
What they've actually done is make it easier.
The XP Collider was released with EA knowing about donut farming, intentionally making it easier. It was also released after the tennis courts (suspected bug as it was patched fairly quickly) and while we had the ability to craft wailing walls (again something very public on forums and blogs that was never patched).
And again they actually included the bloomobile easter egg dialog in the level 60 update.
If the only communication we receive from EA calls it an "Easter Egg", they don't patch it and have on more than one occasion made it easier - it's just not exploiting the game or manipulating the system.
As for the players that have massive KEM farms and are grinding like crazy, it's very time consuming and can only last so long before they tire. It is very likely a small minority that are farming boatload after boatload of donuts.
Anyways, I probably shouldn't have posted and continued the discussion, but this little lady is getting sick of the end of the world, accusations of cheating and exploiting posts that keep coming up. Level 60 was released over a month ago. They haven't patched, they're not going to, it's as designed.
I do have to point out it's subject to change. The more something is exploited, the more likely they are to change things and, sadly, the more it hurts and detrimental it is to new players.
Case and point - house farming. At one point it was really, really easy to house farm. While it benefited lower level players, higher level players could use the house farms to make money to harvest bonuts. EA changed it. They jacked up the prices so much that it's almost impossible to create a house farm to get ahead. Each of those houses take months to pay off when you're in the lower levels.
:(And I really think that's part of the reason the game has seen a drop in popularity and fewer new players are sticking with it. Those low levels are frustrating as hell. You fly up in levels as far as xp goes, but man, earning the money to buy the next building is a hellish nightmare. It takes days to a week to scrounge up that much money. I stuck with it because I'm stubborn, but the game really didn't become fun for me until they did release the wailing walls where I could finally earn enough to buy the like dozen buildings and characters I'd been backlogged on for months.
Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't (just like just because it happened in the past doesn't necessarily mean it will happen again). It's all subject to change and they can change the xp requirements for bonus levels past 929 (which would be the best option imo). They can massively raise the prices of the KEMs or the bloodmobiles, or even change the bonus rate of the xp collider.
As long as they don't see it as a problem, it isn't. But the more negative attention it gets, the more likely it is that things will change.
Once more I'm a happy tapped out player
Neat. Thanks for reporting back.
Glad to hear it.
Updating thread title to include the word RESOLVED might go a little bit toward showing appreciation for a happy ending.
Not that kind, ****! :?