Thank Grog It’s Firday!!
I have to admit, that being in the epicenter of a lull (I know that sounds like an oxymoron), is no fun at all. Not only are we in the same boat as all of the players in regards to the “Come on…tell us SOMETHING” vibe, but are also the ones trying to push everyone toward the “Keep Calm, and Tap!” side of things, when we do get tidbits of info that is encouraging.
I’ll say it again. I don’t believe the game is ending anytime soon. But, we are clearly in a new phase, that at its core, is either something involving some serious changes in the game, or at worst, one of the most “EALPish” stages of the game ever.
In either case, we very much need to make it clear to EA that we aren’t going to reward their “lulliness” with investments of real dollars. This community is a voice that is heard…and we need to send a message!
And that message is, “We’re Mad As Hell And We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore!!”
Oh. Wait. That message is copyrighted by the movie, “Network.”
How about, “We’re Really Mad…and We Aren’t Going To Buy Anymore Donuts Until You Give Us An Update!!!”
It doesn’t really roll off of the tongue like the Howard Beale speech does, but it may have to do.
What seems clear as mud right now, is that on one hand, EA is keeping the game on life support, with no new content, but still allowing us to BUY (with cash) donuts. This is great for the EA coffers, but not so great for the players, who at this point, have no real idea how long their investment may stick around.
Ironically, and perhaps paradoxically, they are also making it EAsier to farm efficiently (the gift of the tennis courts), and the continuation of the Yearbook offerings (many of which carry Bonus % multipliers). They are all but begging people to get into the Donut Farming business.
As many of us have found out, even without an update, if you are adding new “old characters” (another oxymoron), and buildings to your town by way of the Yearbook, there are all sorts of “mini-event-ish” quest-lines that come with them. My task book is full of “stuff to do,” while we wait for an event with even more “stuff to do!”
What is also clear to me… is that The Great Lull of 2019, has made it obvious that TSTOAddicts is far more than just a place to whine and lament, with a bit of placation from us on what could be happening. It is a REAL COMMUNITY.
It is especially during times like this, that sharing ideas on how we can STILL make the game fun, maximize our time, and “keep hope alive” for the future of the game, that this community is at its best.
We are not the forum...thank GOD! We are not the semi-troll/hacker types that hang out in the Discord group, who are all as clueless about the real direction of the game, as they are ways to actually enjoy the game, beyond finding hacks, and boosting XP %.
The real core of this community is a group of friends who care about one another and about helping others, with bits of fun, information, and heartfelt praise when someone does something outside the box.
I’m not sure the typical game trolls get it. In fact, I think they abhor it when this community does something that is completely uncharacteristic of the typical “gamer” mentality. It is the acts of honest friendship and support, that are counter to what so many people think of those who “Play a silly little game” with a community of friends.
Making Due With What We Have Been Given…is a recurring theme these days. And I would hope that while the folks at EA sort it out, while allowing us to continue playing, building, and creating, that we all continue to share the FUN parts of what is possible with one another…and take advantage when EA offers up a chance to get something we missed… like GOLF COURSE HOLES!!
Yep. As I wrote about during the Marge At Bat “event” (rabbit ear, air quotes intended as a form of mocking the word “event”), the upside for me was the chance to get REAL golf holes for my golf course. Yes…I had to grind my posterior off to get them…because each hole came packaged with a ton of stuff I didn’t want or need, and cost 150 donuts per bundle…but it was WORTH it!
I was able to expand, improve and complete my 9 hole course…in a fashion that made it completely believable. There were some challenges to get around the fact that the holes required some dog-leg approaches to make up for the fact that the holes aren’t able to be turned 360 degrees. But, it was challenging…and FUN to do.
Here is a screenshot overhead of my newly designed course.
Click the Picture to Enlarge
It is way outside the regular TSTO box…and I love it! It bumped me right up on the Item Limit (which I’ll write about in another post next week), but it was worth it!
Call it a protest, call it common sense in the new normal of “Lulliness,” but I didn’t spend nickel one in real money to do it. Yes…I had to grind like crazy to earn the golf holes (1,350 donuts). But, during the hole time (pun intended), I remembered that if we had a new event, I’d likely be grinding every 4 hours anyway. This just gave me purpose!
And…it saved me real cash that I could use for something that matters…
Yes…it is “That Time” again. We have a new term starting at the school in Buyijja, Uganda in just 3 weeks. And once again, I am asking for support from this amazing community to help us hit our goal. I shouldn’t have to tell you how important this work has been, and that it has been funded almost entirely by TSTO Tappers around the world. But, it is a fact that is unique, amazing and wonderful!
This is the LAST TIME I WILL BE ASKING YOU TO DONATE FOR BOOKS for a FULL YEAR! We applied and received a Rotary Grant from my local club, that will pay for books for Fall, Winter and Spring terms next year. But, we need to fund Spring term now!
So…PLEASE CONSIDER TURNING YOUR DONUT MONEY INTO SOMETHING THAT MATTERS… Send EA a message, while Doing Something Amazing!
DONATE HERE
https://www.gofundme.com/books-for-buyijja-summer-term
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NOW….AS PROMISED…The Grand Opening of Springfield Hills Golf Club
Springfield Hills is a full size 9-hole course, that features three Par 4 holes, four very challenging Par 3s, and two long and challenging Par 5s. Being able to “bomb your drive” only helps on a couple of holes. The rest require pinpoint accuracy with your irons and wedges. The greens are heavily bunkered, with loads of trees and shrubs protecting errant shots from recovery.
CLICK ON PICS TO ENLARGE
Hole #1 – Par 3. Carry the water for one of the easiest holes on the course.
Hole #2- Par 4 Pretty straightforward Par 4 that is too long to be reached in a single tee shot. Narrow fairway, with out of bounds to the right.
Hole #3- Par 4 – this shot requires a perfect tee shot, down a narrow fairway, and a relatively easy pitch to the green. Big Hitters have been known to try to carve a long tee shot over the corner of the water, with many ending up bouncing their balls onto the observation deck with a slice.
Hole #4- Par 3 – This is another relatively easy shot, if you hit a high wedge off of the tee and can carry the water. If not, it can turn into a quick double or triple bogey hole.
Hole #5 – Par 4 – This is a hole that challenges many long-hitters try for the green with their drive. However, the well-placed bunkers almost always require prudence, and a nice lob shot from a landing spot in front of the bunkers. The long, narrow ally of trees, requires a straight controlled tee shot…as you could end up in the trees, or OB with too much spin on your drive.
Hole #6- Par 3- This is a deceptively difficult par 3, as you need to carry the scrub brush to the left of the green, and land your ball on a postage stamp size section. Too long, and you are in the bunker. Too far right and you hit the trees. Par is a great score on this hole. Birdies are rare.
Hole #7 – Par 3- A very short par 3, that has both water, and loads of trees surrounding the green. Miss long and you are in the trees. Short and you are in the water. This hole has more golf balls and golf clubs retrieved from the water than any other hole on the course.
Hole #8 – Par 5. This is the one hole where a “Big Hitter” can be rewarded with a long tee shot, and a well-placed wedge, to be on green in two. For the rest of the duffers, a couple of controlled shots down the fairway and a wedge to the green is safe, as going too long on the green will allow your ball to roll into the water.
Hole #9 – Par 5. Crossing the bridge from the 8th green, affords you views of landscaped beauty and fountains that make this the signature hole on the course.
Long hitters can hit the green in two with well-placed drives. But, the green is once again well protected by trees, bunkers, and shrubs. For the average golfer, staying well left on the fairway with your second shot, will afford you the best unencumbered entry to the small opening on the green.
Finally…a screen shot of what happens when you try to drive your golf cart across the bridge, with other players stacked up at the tee box…
Go ahead. Let your imagination run wild…and “Caption This!”
For me…this is a metaphor for the game right now. So much promise, but currently stacked up in a fustercluck.
Keep Tapping! Have Fun! Give Generously! (but NOT to EA!)
The tennis court has disappeared from the store in my game. Can’t find any info about it being removed from the game again tho.
Is this correct or a glitch?
Anyone out there still have it in their store?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you LelandGaunt that clears it up for me. I thought it was just me. I’ve been playing for about 5 years so I will assume that I had the majority of what was on offer. Thanks again (:
I emptied the yearbook but I didn’t have 700 items I only had 155. I expected to get more once I’d emptied it but the yearbook just disappeared. I was just wondering if everyone got all 700 items or if some players got less. I wondered if it was because I had most of the items already in my game.
The box contains a total of around 700 items. But if you already had some of those they would not be in the box. So the full 700 might only be in new players’ boxes, a more advanced player might have had 300 in it while some long-time players might have gotten zero items… I had around 150 in mine too.
I don’t know whether this has been covered previously but when the yearbook appeared in the game I had approx 155 items in there not 700. I have had all of these and now the yearbook has disappeared. Has this happened to anyone else and is there an explanation for it. I’d love to know if this has affected anyone else. If I had the yearbook to work on perhaps I wouldn’t be quite so bored. In the meantime please EA give us something or is this the lead up to something magnificent (we can only hope)
Are you saying you emptied out the yearbook?
It is entirely possible to empty out the yearbook. It took me several weeks, but I emptied mine. Near the end, every time I bought something I swore I didn’t want anything else from the book….But the next day, there I was buying a few more things, next thing I knew it was empty and disappeared!
~MIB👤
Man… Now I want go to hit 18 at Laurelwood, but I’m broke.
And the weather has been so nice…
Wait…Laurelwood? You are in Eugene?
Very awesome Patric!
“And that message is, “We’re Mad As Hell And We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore!!”
Thanks Patric now I have twisted sister we’re not gonna take it song stuck in my head. Perhaps you, allisa and safi could record your own version of it to send to EA headquarters.
Not sure if my comment posted, so sorry if this gets in twice. Love your Golf course Patric 👍. How is Terri?
She is in a rehab unit currently…still trying to get back the use of her legs. But her spirits remain high. She is a trooper!
I’m glad her spirits are high. I’ve been keeping her in my thoughts, so that’s great to hear. My one uncle with cancer is actually in your neck of the woods geocaching early this week. By that I mean Oregon. Not sure exactly where, but considering he lives in Ontario it’s worth noting that he’s doing his best to live life as much as his doctors will allow. He wants to look for the Star Wars cache near Seattle but it’s apparently quite a hike. He said he’s going to try, but he won’t push himself. He’s got another surgery planned for mid May. I just hope he’s having a nice trip. They’re gonna try to pop up to BC before they head east again. Fingers crossed.
Getting the most out of life…
Hey Patric, I just found some “proof” regarding your The Simpsons’ Springfield is Springfield, Oregon theory: in S17E11 “We’re on the road to D’ohwhere” Homer takes Bart to the Camp “Upward Bound” in Oregon. In the car, driving there from Springfield, he even says “Stupid Bart makes me drive to Oregon”. Looks like our yellow town must be located in some other state 😉
It’s all subterfuge. Again…whenyiu hear it from the creator’s mouth…in person…any other speculation goes away.
But didn’t he just say it was “inspired by Springfield, Oregon” (with Groening coming from Oregon and all) and not “it WAS Springfield, Oregon”?
I prefer to keep thinking it’s located in the state of “South Tacoma” 😉
thanks for another interesting post Cranky! Although I prefer to ‘make do’ rather than ‘make due’
LOL! Lock me up! I’ll change it immediately, wrote this at 4:30AM…down a couple of cups of coffee.
Now…if you’ll tell me where it is…I’ll fix it. I looked…but it’s hard to proof your own stuff!
To be honest I feel like it’s the end od kem farming. They give us do many great things (goose, yearbook, photo) so we won’t be mad.
The end of KEM farming? I don’t really see that. If that would have been EAs plan, they wouldn’t have made the yearbook so cheap, they wouldn’t have re-released the tennis courts (even cheaper) or they could have taken real cash for stuff like the Golden Goose…
To me it rather looks like they have more or less given up all the farmers and long-time players, but instead they solely focus on re-releasing old stuff to get the newer players’ money…
But they still let us farm and rack up high bonus%. Why?
It would be so easy to prevent farming, but they never do. That says a lot right there.
Including a few that made farming easier. So…no. Wierdly, the yearbook actually motivates you to farm more.
Yep. But yearbook also motivates you to spend almost all you’ve farmed so many will be out of dounats. And xp bounus they gave us is just a little compensation for lack of kem farming. After all if Kem is gone they dont really care if we get a little extra xp now.
That’s my consipracy theory. ! 🙂
But the yearbook is permanent for now, so there’s no real rush to get it all asap. The XP bonus provided by the tennis courts is way more than a LITTLE compensation (for lack of nothing by the way). About 2-3 years ago, it took me more than a year to get from around 100% to 600%. Now you could increase your bonus by 500% pretty easily within 2 weeks with the courts, some players even reported increasing it by way more than 1.000% through heavy grinding. And last but not least, all the XP (and thus donuts) you get NOW EA most definitely will not take away from you IF or WHEN they perhaps maybe possibly might decide that one day or another they end farming (how ever they might be planning to do this).
I don’t say you’re wrong, but I do say this specific conspiracy theory doesn’t sound really well thought out or based on any facts given by the game, no offense. It just doesn’t make any sense to basically FORCE players to farm with stuff like tennis courts and yearbook boxes just to shortly afterwards “end” farming. At this point in the story even completely “ending” the game would make for a more logical conclusion 😀
You need to the Parson on the course. Either practicing his chip shot or golf cart task.
Your golf course is truly TEEriffic. It makes me wanna like golf. Looks awesome! I feel like im in a design rut. Take my chances every now and again in the yearbook to kill some time with a new/old character event-ish task-line. Otherwise I’m playing how i play….making game cash to buy rat trap trucks to earn donuts that im not really spending on anything….lol
Creature of habit am I.
Wow! Now that’s a Golf Course better then anything you will find on the Las Vegas Strip (or adjacent to it)! 👍
I’m not spending any real 💰 in this Game App in 2019! I think the loss of Tappers should already send a signal to EA that it’s long overdue for an announcement, for an update, for anything but the deafening silence on their part! 🤷🏼♂️
I ♥️ the fact I don’t have to grind for anything, I can take my time earning 🍩’s , I can get things from the Mystery Box (hasn’t been anything worthwhile from the Vault in weeks!) and just as important? I can take weekends off from TSTO and not worry about missing out on anything!
Would I like that to change? Absolutely! But I’m not holding my breath and it’s Friday …. so that means no tapping until Monday! 😁👍
I feel like if you were a genuinely nice community, you wouldn’t constantly insult others. I’m new here, but it doesn’t really seem like somewhere to stay if this is how “nice” people talk.
Without a little grit wouldn’t be a real community B town. Not always filled with rainbows and lollipops such as life. If it was it would be boring..
Who is insulting others? Any examples?
But more importantly, welcome to the community. I am relatively new here too.
Thank you Rusty. I was referring to the not infrequent comments I see on posts insulting other groups “not the forum, thank God!” and calling the Discord people semi-hackers or whatnot and referring to people who gain enjoyment from the game by boosting XP with advantages that are allowed by the game, as trolls and so on. I’ve checked out most places available and find that by and large, the majority of players and commenters are polite, wonderful people. But for some reason, the leaders of most of these groups seem to feel the need to puff their chests out and poke digs at one another constantly. It’s like politics, and I have no interest in that. If this site is better than the others, then they should refrain from participating in that kind of foolishness, and I would challenge the other people to do the same. I personally have no interest in ancient history or silly beefs that go back as far as 2013 it seems. I just want to talk about the game.
Same here. I play to escape from the real world, for just a bit.
Uhm….. maybe it’s due to getting trolled by said groups for the better part of five years.
If you need us to, we can pull out some of the nasty crap they write about us. But, I get it…when the wound is close to your team, you’re gonna get defensive.
I read both. And know that most of the nasty stuff is just silly whining. And yes…it is almost ONLY the leadership…not the members. But, if you took a look at our trash box, you’d be appalled…and perhaps understand my intention to call them out.
But please don’t remove posts from people who think you and Alissa are EA support. Those posts are great. Such raw, unthinking, emotional rants….something Homer would do.
We only remove posts that are offensive and void of any content worth discussing…
But, I personally find it hilarious that anyone would think we have ties to EA. Trust me…it is clearly a love/hate relationship at best.
Welcome to the Community B Town 😊👏. I am sorry you have found that. I have belonged to many forums and this is the first forum I have ever been on where people are so nice and respectful. Most of us would probably really like to know who has been disrespectful to you 😔. We are really all just a bunch of fans and yes, not all rainbows and unicorns, sometimes we vent a bit about EA.
Jeez, Patric, your golf course is awesome! I never played golf myself, but I look at the screenshots and it’s like i’m there, with an iron in my hands 😄
Thanks! Never too late to start!
I love your golf course!
I have been buying a ton of stuff from the yearbook and have gradually been trying to design it all into my town. I am also very close to the item limit so there are pretty much no decorations to go with all the new buildings at the moment.
Like you I have not spent real cash to get all the “new” stuff and as always continue to spend my real money on helping out with your Buyijja project when I can.
As an avid golfer myself, I have to give you praise when it’s due Patric…. not a bad effort at all.
Well… we have that in common! Hit ‘em straight!
My course is now a full 18, but I kept the “old” holes, the faked/improvised ones…. I got enough of the Golf Holes that I could replace them all with that style, but for now I’m keeping it “old school”…
I saw that. Pretty Cool!