Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
I’m working on a post all about Norbert, but it likely won’t be up until later tonight. (later than usual) My apologies… it ended up being a crazy day at work. In the meantime I can confirm…
YES, the Airplane ticket spawn rate has changed. It’s now 20 minutes, instead of 2 minutes. Those seeing various times, it’s because the timer is running in your town already (so you’ll see 8m, 6m, 12m etc). (shout out to LPN for showing me what I was completely missing…)
And YES, the “multi traveler” glitch is still working. As of now. Although with this long of a wait time it’s not really worth running…
I’ll be back later tonight with a rundown on Norbet.
P=plane ticket
Pi=pins
Hour=H
Minutes=m
Days=D
I did the math and I know how to solve the problem. Ok here is how I look at it. So you have 3P tickets and they spawn every 20m 3Px34pi=102pi now that is not even waiting 40m for more plane tickets to spawn. 102pix4=408pi. When I used 4 I was using it as doing that 4 times a day. Now you earn 1280pi ever day for tourist (use the information center). Now for norberts daily tasks. 500pi+750pi+250pi=1500. So in total 408pi+1280pi+1500pi=3188pi. We are short 177pix11D=1947pi. because we need to get 3365pi every day but today and yesterday we got a daily challenge that when completed you got 1025pi.1025pix2= 2050pi. Now everything works out because if you fall short 177pi every day which is 1947pi over the span of 11 days. The daily challenges can reimburse you the pins. We will probably have more daily challenges so they should also be able to reimburse you depending on how many pins you have. This is based on 4 sets of 4H cycles. This was excluding Neighbor’s towns but if you are running short do those too or just do them to be nice. Comment if anything is this math problem was wrong. Comment if this was helpful.
Makes sense to me, but I’m weird (differential calculus made sense to me). I just bought the passport, so I get 900pi/day for neighbor visits = problem solved.
I’m a freemium farmer…so free donuts…might as well use them…
It makes sense to bank 3 tickets (3 chances for the correct answer) and have to wait 20 minutes for additional attempts. I understand simple coding mistakes occur and after reading some of the comments here I question whether it was a wise decision of EA to correct the mistake. It’s a fun event and this correction is ruining it for some.
I hope the players who timers aren’t resetting get it resolved soon. Definitely contact EA if that’s happening to you.
Tickets won’t generate if you have all characters doing tasks. As soon as you have free characters tickets would start generate again.
I don’t necessarily mind the 20 min per ticket but it would be really nice if I was actually generating tickets. The ticket clock just keeps resetting to 20 min. I really hope they fix it soon because now no one can fly.
Send your 3 on a plane ride. With the two that are left, go and send one of them on a regular job. Then go back and take a look at your airport again, should see more in your list.
i accidentally sent one of my 5 on a regular job, but when i stored the building to shake him loose again, he wasn’t on the list any more. it didn’t add anyone else either. it was just 4 people on flights, yet another way the 20-minute timer is ruining it. before, i’d have just waited the 4 minutes to get the last two tickets. now i have to leave everyone standing around for 40 minutes or risk accidentally sending the last two on regular jobs. there doesn’t seem to be a lot of consistency in the way we’re all experiencing this update.
That was always the case; if you send any of the 5 on other jobs then the flight list is replaced with 5 new random selections.
Yeah, does seem to be very inconsistent. Too bad they can’t get this right. I have been really enjoying this event other than the plane ticket glitch.
This is working for me again. I place my 3 on the plane. Then when I have two left and waiting, I send one of those two on a regular job. Try to pick one with a 30 sec or 10 minute job, then my list refreshes. I’ve been sending 3 on the plane every hour. I’m way ahead now, and should get the two characters (forget their names) today sometime.
Everyone, when doing neighbor taps, keep note of how many event items you get. I am glitching out right now, stuck at 11791, and yes the icon for the event item comes out of the building, but isn’t counting toward my total.
Scratch that, the event items must be what was glitching, they are no longer appearing. Guess I have to wait for the day reset.
Not sure if you’ve already noticed this… but there is a little question mark on the event currency counter; click on it while you’re visiting friends, and it should give you a running tally of how many friend actions will earn event currency. When you’re down to zero, it’ll tell you to come back tomorrow.
Knew about that from previous events, but keep forgetting about it. Thanks for the reminder 😀
I’m having the same glitch where it’s 19 minutes and 59 seconds until I get a ticket. Two hours later it’s still 19 minutes and 59 seconds until I get my first ticket. Please send help. Sanity is at all time low.
This just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been playing 3 years and this is the FIRST time I’ve ever thought that what EA was doing is dumb and doesn’t make any sense. Ok. Here’s how I see it. Say what you will about the programming on the timer being 2 mins, that doesn’t matter to me. This figures two ways for me. Either make the cap for the tickets 5 OR make the amount of characters able to go 3. Basically make the cap and amount of people I can send the same. I am not looking to exploit this glitch. I like things a certain way and I already loathe waiting 2 mins to send the extra two characters on flights. So now I have to wait 20 mins to do it?? If you make the cap and amount of people able to fly the same and keep the timer at 20 mins, it will still make it harder on people trying to exploit the glitch. That’s my ulitmate point here. Cos they would send 4, skip one, send skipped character on task, come back to new batch of characters and then be able to send one of them on flight. They would still have to wait 20 mins to send the others. Doing it this way hurts the “exploiter” and now the player who only wants to play every 4 hours. Which is already asking A LOT of some people. Now they have to send only 3 people and hopefully they can get back in in 20 mins to send the other 2? Come on EA. This is not right. Just please make the cap and amount of sendable characters the same. Or even make the timer increase per ticket. I don’t know there has to be some way to do it so people don’t have to get in every 4 hrs and then 20 mins or so later. This event was absolute perfection but now EA went and did this and it’s just crummy to me. 🙁 I hope they figure this out. I said earlier I’ve played 3 years and they’ve always righted wrongs when something seemed off. Maybe I’m just over reacting and will figure out this this is actually not silly once I post this diatribe.
Yes! They need to match one way or the other!
Except that you actually have to wait 40 minutes to send another 2.
You get one (1), that’s ONE new ticket at 20 minutes.
So – you send 3, wait 20 minutes, send 1, wait 20, send another 1.
jeeze loo-eeze !’
…d
iPhone users if you force close tapped out it restarts your timer when you reopen the app. Just hit the home button and keep the app open in the background and you should be able to keep getting tickets.
THe problem with that is I play on both my iPad and my iPhone so I have to close the app on one in case I want to play the next time on the other and I don’t have the first device handy to close it so it saves :-/
Really bummed about this change. This was a really fun event, and starting to remember what I used to love about this game. I never figured out whatever this cheat thing everyone was doing. I was just sending my 5 people out and getting them back. Now 20 minutes per ticket coupled with the fact that the game clock on producing the tickets resets if I don’t leave it running in the background basically means that I won’t be getting any tickets at all on workdays unless I figure out how to plug in my phone all day (crummy iPhone). I have completed every event after stonecutters and I think if this sticks, this will be the first I won’t be able to complete. So much for being excited about the new event.
PS – sorry to any of my neighbors I tagged by accident before I figured out I was tagging you.
BLASPHEME !!!! How dare you call what players were doing a “CHEAT.”
(insert the Internets biggest sarc tag and a giant BWAHAHAHA here)
I completed my Norbert tasks for the day and now I have 3 people on flights. I don’t see a timer anymore nor does it show how many tickets I have. No one is available for a flight.
My status bar? Where it shows my donuts and cash etc. looks like I have 1 ticket.
I’m confused.
I am also having the same issue with the plan ticket counter. If I am in the game the counter will count down and I will be given my ticket. But if during the count down I exit the game and then log back in, the counter will reset to 20 minutes with no tickets.
My timer isn’t counting down while I’m away. So it time for the next task and I have no tickets to use.
I’m having the exact same issue. Every time I go back into my game, the 20 minute clock has gone back to 20 minutes and I have not earned any tickets.
Me too. Two hours ago I had 17 minutes to wait for another ticket. I just logged on now and it’s 19 minutes for another ticket. At this rate I will never get to open another suitcase for more airport accessories.
I meant to say I also had zero tickets
I keep getting the disconnection error which resets the timer!
In a way, I’m happy. I was spending way too much time sending characters on flights every 2 minutes. Will be nice to see the family again.
Good for you !!!
Mine also never resets. I’ve been waiting for a ticket since 1100 this morning (central US)
Makes more sense to me because then guessing right actually has value.
Before it took maybe 6 minutes extra to guess all choices and get it right every time.
Now, wait 20 min to guess again if you got it wrong first 3 times.
Loved it the other way but this makes more sense.
Makes sense if it was supposed to be 20 min. all along. I had a daily task for two tickets, which seemed worthless, so i skipped it. Now with 20 min. spawn time for one ticket, this would appear to be more valuable.
That glitch helped me out this morning because I was way behind. I got caught up with that two min. timer. But was maxed at 23 people to take flights, How did you, Curious, get over 65?
I think I might still be missing something here but time will tell. If this 20 min. wait is the standard now, I’ll probably fall behind…I just can’t tap more then three times ( every four hours) or wait 20 mins. for new tickets. I’d be at the tablet all day.
EA always finds a way to make it hard on some.
Am grateful for all my new neighbors! When I went through my 100 there was 32 that had to go bye, bye. Some hadn’t played in over twenty weeks. If I didn’t ” friend” all that requested me…sorry, but I’ll keep you on my list.
I basically sent 5/6 people on a flight then the 6th person I would send on a 1 hr task, my game would refresh a new random set of 6 new characters to send on flights. I repeated this until the Airport stopped refreshing a new group of characters. I have around 130 people in my town but 65 is where it stopped. I think this activity is bugged in some way because some people are reporting their timer doesn’t start or they don’t receive any plane tickets. I read one post where someone logged out, returned to the game and the timer kept returning Barack to 20:00. My 65 happened once so I doubt iI could repeat it.. Either way it did take me a long time waiting 2 mins per Airplane ticket.
I was once able to send 10 characters to go an a flight but now its just 5. I hope EA realizes that the 20m plane tickets are ridiculous and changes back to 2m. I would be OK if they fixed the glitch and then changed the time for a ticket to spawn to 2m.
The point is that they only intended people to send 5… changing it to 20 is to slow us down, as apparently restricting it to a max of 5 would require more complicated programming work
Apologies if I’ve missed something (like I missed the 2min respawn thing…Doh!), but if the tickets at the airport respawn every 20min and I can only send up to 5 Springfieldians (never more than this, how do peeps send 65?), why aren’t the number of tickets building up? I am always short a couple of tickets when I come back after 4, 5, 6 (8 this morning) hours?
These events with multiple currencies each with different earning methods always do my head in…
Angry am I… Sending characters accross the world I liked… But no sense the 2 min timer did. To stop talking backward and go to bed I must now (11pm where I am).
I can’t figure out a good strategy for sending characters on non-event tasks to earn some cash. I’m afraid if I send them all to do something via the unemployment office, then I won’t have anyone to do the airport when I get a new ticket every 20 minutes. Any other option than churning through them one by one and leaving a handful of folks free waiting for tickets?
Oh nooo
I still don’t understand it. Let’s say all my characters are currently free and nobody is flying right now.
When I tap on the airport, I see that I have 3 tickets and usually about 5 people in the list who can be sent on trips. If I send all 3 of them, I see the ticket timer start counting down. If I send the other 2 people on a one hour task and come back when they are done, I can’t send them on any flights at all. Tapping on the airport shows that there are 3 people flying and that’s it. It doesn’t give me the option to send anyone else.
When the timer was 2 minutes, I would just wait it out and be able to send them once it reset, but with the new timer, I don’t get the option to send anybody else until the original 3 are done with their 4 hour flight.
Is this how it’s supposed to work? I feel like I’m missing something.
I don’t see how people are sending more than 5.
I send 4 characters (send 3, wait, send another) then store the 5th character (or send on a short task). It immediately refreshes the airport with 5 new characters/flights. Previously I would have to wait a total of 8 minutes to get 4 more tickets, rinse and repeat. But now I have to wait 20 minutes per ticket, so it’s a lot slower. I can definitely still see 5 new flights each time – and still with all the other flights in progress. I capped out at 65 flights in progress last night, but I won’t bother trying that today (as it’s not possible)
Since the change, now my timer never resets to 0. No tickets are being generated, every time I log in, countdown starts at 19.59 mins … not happy.
I’m having the same problem. Timer never at zero. Can’t send anyone away for the daily challenge. 😩
The same thing is happening to me. If I log out it resets the clock. This is very annoying.
Same here. I reported to EA
I can send a max of 65 people at the airport. So with 3 tickets per hour (20 min spawn) it would take 21 hrs to generate enough tickets (granted my math is right and I’m terrible at math) to send out 65 characters. So EA has squashed any attempts at this glitch.
65 wow… I was able to send 10 at one time now I can only send a max of 6 and the counter and ticket number vanishes until the 4 hours is up and I can claim.
WHAT 65??? I can send only 4-5… And Kumiko new outfit is not available too :/ Good event EA… 🙁
I couldn’t get the glitch to work but even if I could I don’t think I’d have been bothered waiting around to send that many, even at 2 minute intervals.
well, it was nice while it lasted 🙂
Thanks for the update – although the time change does make me upset. 2 minutes I could dawdle. 20 minutes not so much
Yep, looks like the power players just made it more difficult for the people that tap less
Pfffftttt… no. It was as simple a a programmer missing a “Zero” on the timer. The 2 minutes never made any sense…
I could agree, if the maximum ticket count was 5 instead of 3. EA programmers may not be Einsteins, but I can’t see how that could have got through quality control
The error was in the timer. 2 instead of 20. That is an easy digit miss in a countdown code.
To me the timer change seems like an easy work around to stop us from easily using the glitch. To use the glitch we still have to make sure to put one character on a task instead of sending them on an airport task; right? I would t think they programmed the character tasks to work that way on purpose to start. That part seems like the actual glitch to me. So instead of fixing that they just added a O to the timer. That is my logic. I’m okay with being super wrong though so I don’t mind you setting me straight Patric 🙂
Easy to miss in CODE, sure. But less easy to miss during QA.
Again, if the ticket count was 5
In my opinion, the primary issue was that sending the last passenger to do *something else* was never anticipated by the developers, and so they didn’t fully test for exploits related to that use case. My guess is that they didn’t want to frustrate people who accidentally sent the necessary people on the wrong task — but they probably should have just let that be a natural consequence of not prioritizing, as it is with any number of other in-game tasks. (Homer’s on a 24 hour task, and you need him? Oh well… pay donuts or wait.)
That said… I have to agree in part with Patric, that the timer doesn’t make much sense — but I don’t necessarily think that setting it for two minutes was an accident; I think it was a simple case of over-engineering and lack of foresight.
I’m a software engineer myself, and I’ve seen that happen countless times, to both my own code and to other developers’ code. One of our former end users was incredibly good at poking around in our software and making it break during beta testing, because he would intentionally do things that simply didn’t make any sense. Some immature developers *hate* when end users do that… but personally, I think he was the most valuable beta tester we ever had. He helped us to make our code better, before other end users could become frustrated with the bugs; that invariably improved our product, as well as our overall image as a development team. He was actually doing us a favor! (Clearly, EA doesn’t have that kind of tester on staff… but then again, they aren’t exactly common.) —That my friend, is an understatement! – PM
That said: if this bug were set in front of me, I’d probably just eliminate that timer entirely and adjust the ticket system to have a simple hard limit on the number of passengers who could fly simultaneously, possibly with an exception for select premium characters. I think that would be much easier to manage, and less likely to be exploitable. And if the plan is for the number of available tickets to increase over the course of the event… then just tweak that hard limit at the appropriate time, via a timed variable update.
But, ya know… maybe that’s just me.
Pity though I only managed a run of about 20 characters before they fixed this. Still better than nowt. Thought the 2 minutes was a bit weird ?
The 2 minute counter never made sense. If you miss the first 3 guesses for Norbert’s destination, you just wait 2 minutes and try again (although I’d be impressed if someone got the question wrong with 3 guesses). At least now you have to wait 20 minutes which incentives you to get it correct early.
zarmanto | February 2, 2017 at 6:43 pm |;
That’s pretty much spot on.
What, NOBODY tested this before release? Remind me never to trust EA programmers setting concrete for a bridge…
I’m sure that the developers tested it themselves… but that’s not good enough, because they’re too close to the development process. Likely, they also have a small group of alpha testers, that is to say, first tier testers that often are either other developers or are otherwise involved in the development process in some fashion… but that’s not good enough either, for the same reason. So the real question is, how deep into their user base do they dig for beta testers?
My opinion — which I’m sure others here likely share: not deep enough.
Do you think sending 1 character in the travel group on some other task so more characters could travel was/is a glitch or an intentional part of the event “surprise” for us to discover.
Some things you cannot test unless it goes live…doesn’t mean they do not test things, it’s all in the way they set things up…
Missed a zero? But they only deal with ones and zeroes. He should be docked half his pay.
So you’re complaining that people who play the game a lot have it easier than those that don’t play as much?
How would you organise the game?
Ah, no, not at all.
My A town gets tapped 5 times a day on weekdays. The difference is that I don’t go looking for ways to get more,more,more,more,more etc.
I’m the same, and I don’t and won’t take advantage of bugs or glitches. I might try them once just out of curiosity but that’s it.
I have, and will again, taken advantage of EA’s stupid mistakes – I see them as completely different to glitches.
When you’re releasing updates as frequently as they are, it must be impossible to test everything so I give them some slack there, but when they get prices or multipliers wrong that’s just not paying attention and not checking your work. Ineptitude deserves to be taken advantage of!
Is my moral code off to distinguish between the two?