Thank Grog It’s Firday!
I’m writing this early (Thursday) because I’m going to be on the road Today (not actually today, but Friday…which is when you are reading this…so it’s still today, kinda…). I am heading out to a golf tournament/college reunion with a bunch of my old football team buddies (those who still remember playing before they started diagnosing CTE). It should be a wonderful chance to roll out the traditional greeting for reunions, “You’re OLD! No…YOU’RE Old!!”
I’m old. I don’t mind admitting it. My white hair and creaky body (did I mention I played college football, and then rugby until I was 35?), reminds me every day. But, that doesn’t stop me from being active mentally…right?
And, as it pertains to TSTO…that means being active in the game…active in design…and resolving to keep powering through, no matter what the game throws our way! Unless it makes us grind to a dead halt…which I’ll talk about later.
This whole “KrustyItchyScratchyLand (or KISLand as one of our community suggested) Post Nuke Era,” has people clearly divided into two camps. Those who have attacked the opportunity to put on their Uber-Design-Hats, and those who seemingly have been rendered immobile by the overwhelming possibilities.
It has created a reality of “Designers – vs – Ploppers.” And there is a Whole Lotta Ploppin’ Goin’ On!
I spent the better half of an hour (OK…half an hour), going through all of my neighbor’s towns, and looking to see what they had done with their KISLand designs. As it turns out…the vast majority (as in 76 of my 92 neighbors), had either done almost nothing…or simply plopped items into the new land, with no real design in mind.
I admit it. I was surprised. And yet…I think in some ways, it makes sense. They forced us to blow up something that may have taken many of us weeks to “perfect,” and then put it all in a box, and said, “Here ya go! Rebuild it all nice an new!”
But the added challenge of designing, once you realized that you could now use all sorts of elements from your Regular Springfield Design Pallet, may simply have become overwhelming for some.
I don’t know the full answer. But, I’m curious…because there seems to be only a small percentage of folks who have immediately looked upon this opportunity as a way to “Get the Creative Juices Flowing” again, after some very long lulls in both land, and freedom to design, when it comes to KrustyLand.
But, for those of us in the “Super Designer” category…there is an ever-present throttle on what you can and can’t do. And I’ll go ahead and say it again…
EA F’d UP!!!!!!!!!!
Whoo… That felt good. And of course,,,I meant foweled up.
It’s all fine and good to give us a TON of new land and allow us to store our old designs to make rebuilding EAsy. However…it is NOT COOL AT ALL to not increase the ITEM LIMITS to match what we stored. Once again…EA is penalizing us for creativity.
This is what I STILL have in my storage…after I have hit the hard wall…
That is 766 items that I USED to have in KL and can no longer use in my KISLand. That blows…
I am happy with what I have done in my KISLand so far…
And I would love to do more… MUCH MORE…
But, I can’t. WHY? Because I am stuck now, as I have once again, hit the HARD ITEM LIMIT.
Many of my neighbors have hit the same issues…but when you look at their KISLand’s, you can see that they are using the same design elements. Some really creative use of plants, water, decorations…to MAKE IT LOOK REAL!
If You Want to See EA’s Vision of what a town should look like…Go to your “Other Springfield.” Talk about bland…underwhelming…and boring! It’s clear that the EA programmers are bereft of actual creative talent. No wonder they don’t worry about item limits…there’s nothing memorable there!
EA is once again, making us decide between settling for BLAND Designs, with few details or decorations…or needing to find ways to sacrifice old designs, to be able to create new designs. It. Just. Plain. Sucks.
It’s like making an artist use the same canvas, over and over again…
Remember Ebron’s GORGEOUS England/Italy Section, and her amazing row of decorated mansions?
This is what it looks like now…
That’s Right…She had to simply go “Scorched Earth” on her creations…so she had enough space before Hitting Her Item Limit…to do this.
Very nice… but sad at the same time. Why should anyone have to choose?? It’s the like every event has turned into “Sophie’s Choice!”
And While I’m On my Rant Wagon…
What the heck is up with the stupid new Highway tiles??? With no curves…they can only go one place…NOWHERE!!!!
Once again…I find myself asking the very same question…with no logical answer…
WHY DO WE HAVE ITEM LIMITS???????
Yes… I get it…it can create Performance Issues!
But, I’d rather have “performance issues” than not be able to perform at all!!! (Yes…I’m still talking about TSTO. My hydraulics are fine…thanks).
In fact…I think some of the “performance issues” that happen near the item limits are hilarious!
Seeing ghosts in my town? No problem…I’m old…I hear and see weird things all of time.
But, not being able to design is a deal-breaker. Why should I continue to play? Why should I continue to care about the plethora of “new stuff” when I can’t place it anywhere?
I WANT AN ANSWER EA!!!
Fix this. There is no good reason to keep throttling us. You continue to move the bar…slowly…like eeking out rewards while training someone using the Stockholm Syndrome. It makes no sense whatsoever… it does not compute or correlate to anything reasonable in storage code. And it can’t be as hard on the servers as your “greatest new idea” that is causing lag like crazy…
I’m waiting for an answer… you know where to reach me. You and I are “friends,” right? Please don’t leave me hanging…
**UPDATE ON LAND SELECT TOOL LAG**
So,,, as more than a few have pointed out… I you want to avoid the huge lag times I wrote about in my last post… you can/should de-select Land/Water on the selection tool to the right. I tested it…and yes…it makes a HUGE difference. Doesn’t seem to work as well when moving things…but, at least it speeds up KEM farming. Yay…
OH… and I forgot to do this a couple of weeks ago, when I saw it… BUT CONGRATS to Wantcoffee99! Very cool!!
OK. Back to the weekend…and doing my best to shoot low…while having a good time!
Peace. Out.
GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS ON ITEM LIMITS… OR KISLAND DESIGNS… Are you plopping or producing? Are you overwhelmed or in “MehVille” (not to be confused with Herman).
I’ve done nothing with my old Krustyland because I’m a terrible designer. My Springfield has always been Plopperville, but this takes it too far for me and it’s now too much trouble (when I actually put in some effort in my old Krustyland) to try again.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/or1zzn70xwqttp3/Screenshot_2018-06-11-18-54-46.png?dl=0
Thank you Patrick for a great article. You really hit the nail on the head regarding all of the issues to do with this event. EA really need to listen to us. Like others have said, I would happily pay to have no cap on items. Also wanted to say congratulations to Wantcoffee99 (who is one of my neighboreenos)!
I have to admit, apart from all the annoying elements that Patrick talked about, I really changed my mind on this event. At first I was meh about it. I never really liked Krustyland and I felt that having an amusement park in my town really didn’t go with the design. I love the design aspect of this game the most and spend a lot of time adjusting things so that they are perfect. Then I thought about it and thought – doesn’t really go…like other things don’t fit either…BUT they would fit really well and make a LOT more sense in a theme park! So that was inspiration I needed. I have made a huge theme park with an amusement park, a Wild West Park, a haunted area, a Prehistoric area, a World of Tomorrow area, a Space park…you get the idea. It’s not finished as I will incorporate some Itchy and Scratchy items, not all as I don’t actually like the Indy 500, it’s ugly and the smoke doesn’t blow in the same direction which just annoys me! It will take weeks to perfect, maybe even months if those land tokens don’t become more common. I’m keeping the Itchy and scratchy stuff separate for now and I admit I’m just ‘plopping’ at the moment but I will add them to my design when the event is over. I could really do with some more land tokens though, it would be nice if we could win these occasionally outside of events. So yeah overall, I ended up being completely inspired by this event and am happy that all those areas I was never very happy with, now work really well in my town.
I find it annoying that the new items for Itchy Scratchy land can not be placed on the paths from Krusty land.
I asked this before, but forgot what I asked it on, and didn’t turn on notifications…. oops.
How do you know when you hit your item limit?
You’re told in game
The Real Krustyland
https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1758/41820945655_1c2b2873ef_b.jpg
EA FAILED !
(on sooooo many levels)
Count me in as a Plopper until certain issues are dealt with –
Item Limits
(there goes trying to recreate a festive Krustyland)
Game Lag / Freeze
(now having to store Active Decor)
Characters in Krustyland
(200 Springfielders, only 12 have K-Land Tasks)
Krustyland Tasks
(scrolling thru Character Tasks to find ’em is a pain in the 🐴 )
This lack of “fixing it” permanently has sucked the fun out and this should be a great Event (I am making the most of it, even taking a break from the Game App when frustrated, but after 5.5 years you’d think EA would actively solve known problems!)
No wonder there is lag and performance issues. Back on the “good old days” (yes, I’m getting old too), buildings were only animated when in use. Now all the KL stuff is spinning fast enough to give you an epileptic attack. So even when I was eager to plop every item in inventory just because it gives bonus/tickets I realized I preferred my sanity better, so back to inventory they went.
Anyhow, I get more tickets with the few attractions left than I got with the full display in KL but never visited it.
I haven’t really started any big plans on designing Krustyland and Itchy & Scratchy Land yet because of the lags of moving items but it might be more stable after the event. I do intend to include Tavern on the Scream (it is an I&S Land building not K Land building), Eyeballs of Death, Scratchy’s Flea Dipper and any other I&S items for I&S Land. I still have my K Land in storage because I’m unsure if the buildings would make the lags worse or if it wouldn’t change a thing. I am curious about the premium items (like the I&S Billboards) that could be placed in both K Land and Springfield, do they increase the cash and xp bonus on the Conform-O-Meter in Springfield or the cash and xp bonus on the Krust-O-Meter in K Land or do they both increase?
Great post Patric! Spot on! I’m starting to gradually do some design work. The only thing is finding myself hesitant to do any real “decorating”, knowing once this event is over I’ll be moving things around to combine both. It’s still frustrating and painfully slow doing group moving, it helps to hum the theme from Jeopardy while waiting for it to finish 😂
I hope you’re enjoying your reunion, surprised there are enough of you old codgers left to play 😂 Your post reminded me I never said anything about my grandson being born (fine, I suffer from CRS sometimes). My grandson was born on 5-2 (his aunties bd!) & was 8lbs 12oz and a whopping 22” long! Almost as big as his dad (still traumatized by that one 33yrs later 😂).
Well anyway, (insert begging & pleading for EA to raise item limits), I’ve started looking at storing many duplicates as far as buildings. Would LOVE a post from you guys (I know, I can do a site search), on which of the more noteable (& boring lol), ones to store that don’t affect bonus, or character requirements. Maybe start us off, & let we the adoring fans of this site (yes, sucking up 😉), add to the list with our comments. If EA would allow us to sell items in our inventory that we are currently unable to sell, wouldn’t it lighten the load? I know I’d dump a ton of stuff. Just a hint, I’m I mean thought EA 😁
Everyone have a great Sunday, I’m going back to sleep 😴😴😴
*”Just a hint, um”, not “I’m” lol.
Also, in my ramblings I forgot to say congrats to wantcoffee, and to Alissa & family on the new Addict to be 😃😃
Is this an ok place to ask do you think a ‘praise land’ event would be more interesting than nuking Krusty Land and building an Itchy and Scratchy Land?
I’d love more Maude character stuff myself and Dr Nick!
Hi Alissa and/or Patric,
Apologies for the 2 previous failed link attempts. 😟
Please delete my failed link attempt posts..
Please see my below link..
My little park within my KL park.
Designing my KL, Wendell is even there too 😃
https://i.imgur.com/fImsaNr.jpg
🐱🌟🌸
My little park within my KL park, Wendell is playing on the monkey bars, he found his way to KL. 😃
https://i.imgur.com/FjWKzHL
But… In order to be able to make my KL bigger, I had to sacrifice my other Springfield designs though and place items away 😕
https://i.imgur.com/DZSlX55_d.jpg
Please increase the item limit EA, and more land that can be bought with play money again please.
🐱🌟🌸
https://i.imgur.com/DZSlX55_d.jpg
I have a tiny carnival on a section of squidport, so a lot of stands and a couple rides have gone there. A couple of the food stands have gone by my drive-in (yay for finally being able to put food stands on the land) and the haunted condo has gone next to the “spooky forest” area. It may or may not stay there.
Basically, I’ve only placed things I feel can be integrated with what I already have. Most of the large rides will probably languish in storage for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t stoked on most of them when KL was a separate area, so I’m definitely not going out of my way to put the money in my town.
I get similar preformancs issues, and I’m no where near the item limit
Here’s the original map for inspiration
https://www.flickr.com/gp/165126795@N07/Ab24L6
I’m just loosely placing things as I wait to see what will be released for I&S in the next two acts. I’m also relating to what a lot of other people are saying: the fun is being sucked out by how slow things are now, the events are so continuous that I’m fatigued and fall a little farther behind with each event. Psychology has shown people actually get less happy when they are presented with too much choice. It becomes paralyzing for most people.
I’m hopeful that some Halloween content will relate to the theme parks so I want an up and running KIS land by then but I’m going to be gentle with myself about my timeline. Better to take care of business IRL.
I hope this link works, (Apologies for the previous link that may not ha e worked) a possible way to place cars on the road… 😀
I’m still working on different ideas… 🐱🌟🌸
https://i.imgur.com/hbmg1pJ.jpg
Yay it worked.
For anyone who would like to know how I did it.
I placed the highway that was part of the former KL, (I placed 2 pieces on each side then I placed the parking lot (also from KL) then I placed more highway, then another parking lot.
I just tapped the parking lot until it showed the option of the 4 cars facing the same way. And I placed the concrete walls from ( from the decoration section)
An even better idea would be if EA would allow all cars to be placed on any road. 😐
🐱🌟🌸
I hope this link works… (If it doesn’t, please delete my post and I will retry) 😀
A way to possibly place cars on the road, 🐱🌟🌸
https://i.imgur.com/BDz37bS_d.jpg