Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
So over the last two days we’ve seen two updates for our pocket-sized Springfields. The first happened on Tuesday (March 7th), which was an app store update to remove the Destination Springfield event from our games. The second happened yesterday (March 8th), which brought some new content into Springfield in the form of an episode tie-in for Sunday’s “22 for 30” episode of The Simpsons.
Both updates brought changes to Springfield, many of which you’ve all noticed. However, a few changes were made that you may not have noticed. So let’s take a look at what you might have missed….
So most of the major changes for both updates were covered here for the App Store and here for the episode tie-in but here’s what you may have missed:
First, the tourists still aren’t in the stores. They were removed shortly after the App Store update hit because they had some visual bugs. Hopefully EA restores them to the store soon. There are some players who managed to purchase them (I’m not one of them), but those players have noted a lot of their quest boxes are blacked out. So they still have errors.
If/when they return to the store they are supposed to be full characters, each of whom will have a task to dress in the outfit similar to the other tourists that visited Springfield (French, Japan and yes…Brazil).
We don’t know when (or if) they’re coming back, so for now we’ll all just have to be patient.
It appears that the item limit has been increased. It now sits at around 9,500 items as the max you can have in your game (this does NOT include items in storage).
Over the last year we’ve seen EA increase this limit slowly, but regularly. Like we said at the time, we think this has a lot to do with EA phasing out older devices. Newer devices allow for a more stable TSTO game play, which allows them to increase capacity allowed in Springfield.
Of course that being said, I’ve been playing TSTO for 4+ years and I’ve never experienced a building warning….
Bonus % added…
Homerclese Statue now has a 2% bonus on all cash and XP
Dead Lobster now has a 2.5% bonus on all cash and XP
Uncle Norbert’s Plane…Supposedly (and I can’t verify this because I have it) if you’ve started the Norbert Van Wow-ton Pt. 2 questline (which triggered AFTER you’ve collected the 7 lost luggage prizes during Act 3..i.e. cleaned out the Lost Luggage prize box (containing Runways, Terminals and planes)), you’ll be given Norbert’s Bi-Plane. This is suppose to fix the glitch many of you experienced not getting the plane.
If you didn’t clear the Lost Luggage Box in time you will not currently be able to get the plane…
And that’s it my friends…just some random changes you may have missed in your game with the last two updates.
What are your thoughts on the changes? How many Dead Lobsters did you get when they were available? Did you pull your Homerclese statue from storage? Sound off in the comments below, you know we love hearing from you!
I got a congratulations message maxing out at 10k items (buildings they say but they count walls and trees too, not sure why), hoping they raise the limit because I had to subtract a bunch of things and its affected my creativity.
I’m now experiencing these problems lately I’ve been catching up on fixing up my Springfield adding trees here and there and buildings I had stored away and suddenly it said I had 7400 items or decorations in my Springfield and it’s recommended to stay under 7100 so I won’t have any connectivity issues I’ve never had this problem before and I’ve been playing for 4 years now off and on , know I need to start removing items just to add the new stuff from the update hope they fixed this issue in the future because what’s the point in having so much land but nothing to put in it lol I still have a bunch of land that I haven’t added anything to it and the message popped up.
Thank you Alissa! I really wanted to purchase the tourists, but figured I ended up suffering from the same glitch as Duff Gardens (still wish I could get it). Happy they raised the limit, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it come up in my SF. 😊
Just to ask-my item limit is still 6500. I read your article and was so exited i can put more items. Started adding fances and…. Baaaang-the message came that i’ve reached my item limit! How come my item limit is not 9500? I have a good phone with lots of memory. Thank you for your replies.
It’s really random. Not solid. I have more than 9200.
It’s a pity exactly my game is the one with less limit
🙁
I am inclined to think that the message you see is a warning message. You can try to continue to just add more items? At certain milestones the warning message will appear
What’s up with the airport? I see you can still send people on trips. Is there any real reason to do so? Do you earn anything like runway pieces? Thanks in advance.
The airport is now just a 4hr job for your characters…I don’t see any advantage compared to other tasks, it pays the same amount (game currency, no runway tiles…that would be preferable, but doesn’t seem to be the plan). I guess if you want to use the airport, it is simply a preference…I haven’t used it since the event ended.
Note to EA…why can’t the airport function like the Squidport entrance and generate runway tiles? Or change the jobs to 24 hrs (or more, if necessary) and pay out airport items…different people could produce different items…straight runway, corner pieces, terminals, hangers, planes….
The airport is personally really useful for me, as I have Uter and Squeaky Voiced Teenager, and neither of them have standalone 4-hour tasks. You need the Aztec Theater and Otto’s school bus in order to assign them 4-hour tasks. The airport essentially lets me do so without having to spend on either premium item. And unlike the Moonbounce or Nightmare Pile, you can fast complete tasks that have 10% time or less remaining for free.
Also, I find Norbert’s 4 hour task REALLY irritating, as every time he’s flying across the screen, you can accidentally tap on him and be sent back to his biplane. It’s very disruptive when I’m trying to clear my town. So I prefer to send him to the airport instead.
I guess we agree to disagree. Love seeing him fly by. Way more than the news helicopter.
Oh, love the flying animation. I just wish that you can’t actually tap on Norbert when he’s flying by, as it’s very disruptive when I’m just trying to collect income across my town, and I keep getting sent back to the airport.
Essentially, Norbert’s 4-hour animation is bugged. You’re not supposed to be able to tap on him when he’s flying past, but for some reason, you can do so when flown less than half the screen distance. Once he’s more than 50% past the screen, tapping on his plane does nothing.
For me, Sophia K. does not have a 4 hour task. So sending her on a flight gives her one.
Is anyone else having a huge in app update tonight? My game is updating as though I deleted and reinstalled (but I didn’t). It’s got 600+MB to go… I even checked under my storage settings and saw that its size has gone from around 800MB to only 100MB (I closed out once I saw it had 600+MB to download, my internet is sloooow and that would take hours). Kind of not happy about it… Is this as bizarre as it seems, or is anyone else having the same thing happen?
No update here…if you are running out of space on your device, this may happen more often to you.
I have reached my items limit. So I am starting to remove things likes fences that contribute to vanity.
You are at 9500 pieces? That is the current limit (so EA says when they bug me about adding more items)…if you are just getting warnings, don’t sweat it, we all get them after our towns reach a certain size…
Hi ir just says I am maxed out without telling me the total. I cannot lay out anymore items. I have since even stored duplicated 0.5 % items
Wow…only had that happen once when the max was 8500…I thinned a bunch of trees and got rid of a lot of fencing. I think when I get to the max again (probably soon, I am over 9200 pieces), I will say Sayonara to the Monorail, or at least radically reduce the size and area it covers…
Have to admit getting slighty worried just over the 8000 limit mark. Luckily ive no more land to build upon.
Is there a way to find out how many items one has placed in their town? I haven’t got the pop up message warning but I am curious to know how many items I have placed. Thank you.
I play on an older device and got a warning message around 6400 items. My game started getting glitchy and neighbor visits increased from 45min to 2hrs with a minimum of five crashes before I could complete all neighbor visits. So following the wonderful advice from the addicts I stored a bunch of decos, turned off my monorail, and only assigned tasks that were indoors. It was better but would still crash at least 3 times during neighbor visits. Since the travel update, I removed a lot of neighbors that have high level towns full of building farms and decos. I’ve added newbie players and lower level neighbors. Neighbor visits are now done in 45min again. I’ve also turned my monorail back on but I still assign the majority of my characters to indoor tasks. I’ve added some decos to the new areas but I’m trying to keep it to a minimum. Hopefully I’ll get a newer device this year and won’t have to worry about game lag by getting close to the max number of buildings.
Also, are the mountains getting shorter or is it just me?
When I first logged in after the update my game bugged and I was able to zoom much further out than usual. Thought it’s a neat new feature and didn’t take screenshots, but I didn’t get it a second time… :-/
I really want to buy some straight runway to finish my airport. Any chance EA will pop tunway strip in the store – even for a limited time?
I mapped out a nice big airport with lots of landing lights but I seem to be around 5 or 6 strips shy of completing it. Bit peeved TBH.
The sound in my game is gone after update. Does anyone else have this glitch?
If you’re on an iPad or iPhone go to settings > General > Language & Region > Other Languages… and change the language to something else (I use one of the other English options so I can still read everything), save and then change it back to your original language. That should fix it.
I do not already own dead lobster but it also isn’t offering it. When was this offered and for how long?
End of the Superheroes event…2015 one.
What do you mean by “how many dead lobsters did you get”? It was possible to buy multiples of the building or what?
Yea, there was a bug that allowed you to get multiples. Some people took advantage and got a whole bunch before they fixed it. I only grabbed 1, because really how many lobster restaurants does one need?
Thanks for the reminder to dig Homerclese out of storage. Just need to figure where to hide it.
I love it when they add a bonus to items that previously didn’t have bonuses, such as the soccer goals. I jumped 8.3% when they added the bonuses this time
I had 6 soccer goals in storage, but sadly they didn’t give me any bonus when placed. I don’t know if it’s because I obtained them via cloning (when the copying glitch was discovered) or what. I got the original ones for free anyway (not doughnuts)
Long time player with a rather expansive and detailed forest selection and lots of small greenery and fences so I am always bumping up against the maximum item limit. About a year ago I had to get rid of my hidden fences and whatnot. Last week I expanded my park region and a lot of backyards to give more empty green space. Happy to see they are upping the limit.
Maybe I’m mistaken and this has been a feature before but I’ve just noticed tonight that when you click on the character that’s finished a task to collect rubbish (or garbage you say over there 😜) it directly sends you to springfield dump.. whereas previously, I would have to scroll through my town looking for the dump, or opening the screen on the top right, this is a small update with big improvement in my book, makes it alot easier! Because sometimes they like to wonder.
Player since 2013, premium since 2014.
This has always been like that.
btw I think it’s trash… 😉
It has always being that way. Just hit on the character twice and you will be back at the trash mountain.
Alissa did something change with the employment task manage only half of my characters seem to go on 4 hour jobs even though it says all 177. Also what good are the flight tickets from sending people on flights?
It’s likely the airport conflicting with it. Flight tickets can still send people on flights, just earning cash and xp instead of event currency.
thanks Alissa I kinda figured it was something left over from that event just wasn’t sure. Thanks again.
airport also help characters who haven’t a 4h job(like Üter whithout Otto’s bus)
You forgot to mention about the sparkle animation that now pops up every time you finish a quest line! 😉✨
Covered that in Kumiko’s questline post…lol
I wonder why there’s a building/item limit? I would guess it puts a strain on the game’s performance. The more items the game has the slower the Frame Rate of the game. Each item, building, decoration and characters each have there own code. Too many codes at one time would compromise the game operating well. I doubt we’ll ever have an feature where we can zoom out to see our entire Springfield at once. I think it would be too much for the game to handle regardless of your device or connection.
The fireworks at the end of a finished quest line/storyline is also a neat change – but I think everyone noticed it :p
I just got that item warning a couple of days ago. I think it said 6400 items.
Wanting to add that I got this warning too, that more than 6400 items might cause my game to run slowly. I attribute it to my iPhone 5, and frustratingly removed all those nice shrubs and trees that I added to initially reach my tree hugger 5 star rating. Also removed a few hundred Bonzai plants.
I want to add that after you get to this point, it would be nice to get more nice items to spend my Simpson Dollars on. I have over $180 million with nothing to spend on, and with the limit on items buying a few hundred trees is out of the question. A few million dollar buildings or monuments would be appreciated.
Also want to add a thanks to EA for the airport as it made a great addition to my Springfield.
You can turn that money into donuts by buying and selling Rat Trap Trucks (you get an XP boost every time) and then cashing in on donuts with the “level ups”…or are you already doing that? Lots of things to spend donuts on…
PS…be sure to turn on your XP Collider before you buy and sell…
(Or buy it if you don’t have it)
Yeah, I blew past that warning a year ago… I’m over 8000 items now, and still have a few areas I want to decorate more thoroughly
I’m at 9600… so…”I don’t see no stinkin’ warning!”
Hello Patric, how can I find out how many items I have placed in my town?
Channel 6 now has a 7 day task too.
Yup. that was covered in the rundown post from yesterday.
Strange, a Gill Deal popped up with no Gill. I don’t recall him making an offer anyway.
The offer is for Duff Gardens and the Lizard Queen (145 donuts)
Did you recently finish the Level 60 questline?
Thaaaat makes sense. Yup, It’s my B game and I totally forgot about that being a thing.
I love my lizard queen, but the Duff Gardens was a huge disappointment.
Another change seems to be logging us out of Facebook each time we exit and close the app. Now, every time I go to visit my neighbors, I have to log in to Facebook before starting my neighbor run or else those neighbors are gone. And, of course, when you do, even though they have been your neighbors for a while, they show up as new.
Quite annoying.
Already had the Homerclese statute and Dead Lobster. No problem getting Norbert’s plane.
Funny to watch Norbert’s plane and the News Helicopter dive bomb each other as the follow my movements around the game.
I’m so glad that I got Norbert’s Plane.
I can’t stop pronouncing it “Nawbitt” in my head.
Cool, I noticed a boost in my bonus % but couldn’t figure out where it came from.