A 10-Year Perspective: Why Current Monetization Are Ending Player Retention
As a player since launch and a Club President for over five years, I’ve seen this game evolve through many cycles. However, I am writing today to report a significant decline in morale and participation within the veteran community. As a retired Navy veteran, I look at the game through the lens of logistics and sustainability. Currently, the "Total Cost of Ownership" for a city has reached a tipping point where it is no longer sustainable for the average player. Key Issues for Review: Service 2.0 Impact: While the intent may have been to provide higher-tier infrastructure, the rollout has functioned as a massive real-estate and resource "tax" that has left many long-term players depleted. Mandatory Ad Integration: Transitioning ads from optional rewards to functional requirements for CoM tasks and Daily Assignments has fundamentally changed the "vibe" of the game from entertainment to a chore. Reward Shrinkflation & Gambling: We are seeing a "pay more, get less" trend across all prize tracks (Mayor’s Pass, Train, and Vu). Reward tiers that previously offered guaranteed high-value buildings or SimCash are being replaced with smaller quantities of low-value items. Even worse, guaranteed rewards are being replaced by "Mystery Boxes," which introduces a gambling mechanic into a game that should be based on effort and strategy. The Household Budget Reality: We are currently in an inflationary period where the cost of living (including $4–$6/gallon gas) is at a record high. When a game demands more financial and time investment during such a period, it becomes the first thing households cut. My Observation: I am seeing a drastic drop in War participation and a "quiet quitting" trend among my most dedicated members. Veterans are the "institutional memory" of your game; if we lose the veteran base because the game feels like an "Economic Pressure Cooker," the social fabric of the Clubs will dissolve. We are looking for a return to a balance where spending is an option for aesthetics, not a requirement for basic progression.Broken Ad Loop - Forge of Empires - Tab S9 FE / Android 16
Im currently experiencing a frustrating issue with a specific advertisement: 'Forge of Empires'. The ad plays until the end, and the 'X' to close it appears after 'Reward Granted'. However, the 'X' is completely unresponsive. I have to use the Android 'Back' button to return to the game, but then I don't receive my reward. The worst part is that this specific ad keeps reappearing in a loop, making it impossible to collect any bonuses. Since the Service 2.0 rollout on my SamsungTab S9 FE (SM-X510), the game has been struggling with performance anyway, and this broken ad loop makes it even harder to participate in COM or the Design Challenge. Is anyone else having trouble with this specific spot or similar unresponsive UI elements in ads after the update? It’s very disruptive. Thanks for any help!"Game is Very "Sluggish" - Freezes 4 times every few minutes
VERY frustrated with SimCity Buildit! The game "freezes" or locks up 4 times every few minutes, making the game very difficult to play. This has happened since the last update to Services 2.0. Am playing on a Amazon Kindle Fire (Android), which I have been for years. Was hoping that this was temporary and would be fixed soon, but it has not yet been resolved.Subject: Extreme Ticket Inflation: 50% Cost Increase & The 45-Ticket Ad-Paywall
Hi everyone, I need to report a massive inflation of Golden Ticket costs in this week's COM. EA has essentially devalued our saved tickets by 50% overnight. Here is the breakdown of the new 'price list' in my COM: Building Upgrades: 45 tickets (was 30) – 50% increase! Standard Tasks: 35 tickets (was 30). Simple Tasks (Simoleons): 15 tickets (was 10) – 50% increase! The most absurd part: The Ad-Paywall Task I currently have a task in my list that requires me to PAY 45 Golden TickIets just to 1watch 2 ads. This is not a reward; it’s a paywall. We are being forced to spend our devalued resources to watch ads that—on top of everything—are still technically broken. Temu (Waia), Vinted, and June’s Journey continue to freeze the UI, forcing game restarts. This level of inflation, combined with the technical instability, makes the COM feel like a 'resource sink' rather than a competition. Is anyone else seeing this 50% price hike, or is EA testing how much inflatiIA NECESSARY STATEMENT... #stitchincoming
Hello EA_Lanna and everyone, First of all, this post may sound a bit controversial, but since I’ve been quite critical before — including on this forum — I think it’s only fair to share this reflection as well. Today, after roughly two months of the Services 2.0 rollout, I’ve finally managed to complete the structural redesign I originally had in mind. Back then, because time was short during the grace period (before population happiness would be affected), I chose to do an emergency setup, mainly to sort out infrastructure and utility services first. Now, though, I’ve been able to rework everything into something much closer to what I believed was possible from the start. And here’s the fair criticism: it was far more difficult and labour-intensive than it probably should have been. That’s where the structural criticism comes in. EA got the implementation badly wrong, and quite possibly the communication strategy too. Even if updates and notices were recurring, they didn’t really make clear just how much work would be needed to adapt cities to this new model. That said, after all this time (and after using a temporary in-between layout just to avoid wrecking my cities’ happiness and ruining gameplay) I’ve now managed to convert all infrastructure services into smart services. To give one example: in Frosty Fjords alone, I reduced my electricity, water, sewage and waste services to roughly a single 4x10 block, plus three extra tiles for water, by relying on Omega services — which are honestly the real masterstroke here, the key to making the whole system work. That reduction was so significant that I ended up freeing 26 new residential plots, where I built Omega homes as well, without sacrificing landscaping areas. And that matters to me, because I’m one of those players who believes that, before anything else, a city should be beautiful — not just a grim pile-up of buildings with no design or charm whatsoever. In my case, with the Capital City plus four fully expanded regions, this was a massive gain. It felt like a kind of endogenous expansion — internal growth rather than external expansion. And that was exactly the clever upside I hoped for. It also feels far more believable, more realistic, and more coherent for a city-building simulator. It never made sense that a residential plot would consume the same amount of electricity at level 1 as it would at level 7 after becoming an Epic building. That simply doesn’t add up. There are still a few little issues that seem like bugs. Services tied to coverage area and population density — such as police, fire, health, and regional services — sometimes suddenly show as insufficient even though nothing has changed. But, to be fair, that’s fairly manageable now. What I’d say overall is this: after a huge amount of work — honestly, perhaps more than necessary, and work that EA could have reduced significantly — I’ve ended up with a city that is far better balanced, far better designed, and much more satisfying to run. That’s why I thought it was worth sharing. The big strategy is simple: convert your infrastructure services into Omega services. They are vastly more efficient in both land use and service output. Their upgrade steps are also much more coherent and achievable compared with the amount of NeoSimoleons generated by buildings. So I’d say it’s a genuinely useful tip for anyone still going through this transition. And one final note: at no point during the entire process did I lose my 100% happiness. I never dropped below it, and I still maintain 100% happiness today while using the minimum necessary footprint for service buildings — which feels like a very solid result.
