Hey Howdy Hey Tappers!
Another TSTO Thursday and as usual I have some thoughts for you. This time I’m musing about the long lost Road to Riches and Friendship points. I’ve got a bunch of thoughts so let’s get to ‘em…
It feels great to have new stuff in TSTO, but how about EA goes back and updates some of the old stuff they promised to update years ago?!
It seems to me like EA has this history of having a great idea and every intention of letting the great idea build upon itself…and then just forgetting all about it. Letting the great ideas fall to the TSTO scrapheap with Quimby’s mistress’ underpants.
It’s like they have TSTO ADD and get distracted every time a squirrel runs across the yard.
Take Friendship points for example. They launched back in 2014, and were great. For those not familiar, or struggling to remember Friendship points this post explains them. Every time you collected a certain number of points you unlocked a special Friendship Prize.
This was great for a couple of reasons: 1. You got unique prizes to the game (and classic Simpson item, like Homer’s Car, the Olmec Head, Stampy etc.) and 2. It gave you a reason to go into your game daily AND visit your neighbors. And let’s be honest, without them was there ever really a point to visiting neighboring Springfields?
Friendship Points (and prizes) lasted up through Level 19, just about a year and a half after they started and then just abruptly stopped coming. No news that FPs were finished. They just stopped updating the Friendship Prize Track, making neighbor visits utterly useless. (especially when combined with no neighbor interactions during events)
Another example is the long lost Road to Riches…which is more like Road to Nowhere.
Launched in the summer of 2017, the Road to Riches showed so much promise initially. The basic premise was…spend a ton of money to unlock prizes. For those not familiar, or struggling to remember Road to Riches this post explains it.
With 3 prizes on the initial launch, this was a long-awaited way for players to spend in-game cash that had been accumulating since the end of level updates. With nothing new to spend cash on, this was a chance for Tappers to have a purpose to earning cash (besides donut farming). Basically, Road to Riches became the new Aspirational items (speaking of Aspirational Items, where they heck is my giant toilet EA?!)…fun items for a ridiculous amount of cash, with the promise of more coming soon, remember this?
After its initial launch Road to Riches was never updated. The same 3 initial prizes at launch became the only prizes in the Road to Riches track, with nothing more to do.
It’s like they have these ideas and they’re phenomenal, and then they fire (or relocate) the person in charge of them before they’re completed.
If EA had no intention of updating Road to Riches they shouldn’t have added the “Coming Soon????” box. No one would care, or wonder what was going on with it if it didn’t have that promise of something more. They need to either go or get off the giant toilet…
And Friendship Prizes? Who the heck ends a level on Level 19? It’s not even a round number! 19 is a freakin’ prime number for crying out loud! You could have at least stopped on Level 20. A nice round number. Folks probably wouldn’t question a level 20. (And yes, before you correct me, I realize you can go to Level 20, but there are only 19 prizes. Level 20 appears because you don’t start at Level 0. The point still stands, with 19 actual prizes)
I just wish the TSTO design team would finish what they started. Great ideas, they just never fully see them through.
Thoughts? Care to share your own musings? What topic do you think I should tackle in my next musings post? Sound off below, you know we love hearing from you!