Thank Grog It’s Firday!
Holyfreakinshirt! What day is it anyway? I know I’ve complained about this before, during this “interesting new version of normal.” But dammit…nothing is normal right now…except for TSTO. It is sooooooo normal, that it is making me insane.
There is little doubt that we are stuck in a rut…and the people who are “coming back to the game,” after layoffs of year, or even two (especially those who have been gone less than two years) have GOT to notice. If you are paying attention, you will notice that almost nothing has changed in format in months, and months and months. This isn’t a new observation…but, it really is like seeing an “Under Construction” sign on a new building…leaving for a year or two, and coming back to see that only the sign has been repainted.
And I’ve had enough. I’m going to get answers. I’m going to call “EA Bob” and find out what the hell is going on, (besides very little.)
Here’s my list of things I’m going to ask, when I grab him between pizza runs on his side hustle, from his clearly part-time job at EA.
1. WHY CAN’T YOU CHANGE THINGS UP???? As I have mentioned before, EA is using the same basic programming, over, and over, and over again…they are just messing with the dates, and the “prizes.” Even the pattern of how many prizes in ratio to basic decorations to Premium items and characters hasn’t changed. HOW HARD WOULD IT BE TO DUPLICATE ONE OF THE MORE INTERESTING OLD EVENT??? Not hard. Just switch a few things around…and you could have “Stonecutters II,” or “Springfield Casino II.” I mean… they made something 15 of the Ocean’s 11 movies. There’s no shame in repeating a GOOD format!
2. Item limits. Dude. You are losing loads of longtime players because you won’t change one number in the algorithm. ONE NUMBER. Just freakin’ do it!! How hard is it to change one stinkin’ number..EAsy!!! Right??? Give us some room to play. I’m tired of decimating my town to place the lackluster crap we get with the new format.
3. If you think that Donut Farming is killing the profits…and therefore killing the rate of users, because you don’t want to put more money into programming…CHANGE ONE NUMBER in the algorithm. Add a zero to the incremental cost of Kwik-E-Marts. Or limit the number you can place at one time. You are pretty damn good at sending warnings when we reach our item limits…so the code exists. Just attach it to a different item algorithm.
4. The dialogue is the best part of the game right now. Give us MORE…and stop making us tap a ton of cycles to get “the rest of the story.” It’s not that hard. The writers can churn out a few more lines. So WRITE…RIGHT?
5. No more damn skins. Safi has given us a huge list of characters that still haven’t appeared. If skins were like clothes, there would be a HUGE closet somewhere with Homer version, hanging unused. We use them during the event…and then forget them. Give us more characters…far less skins.
And this...is a GENERAL COMPLAINT that comes along with the “How Hard Is It to Do The Easy Stuff?” category. Wear your damn masks when you go out. I’m tired of reading about “the curve.” The places that did it right aren’t seeing huge surges . Wear a mask. Don’t give me the “Freedom to Do What I Want,” line. It’s not just you that is put in danger when you contract and spread. Just Do It…you big, entitled, thoughtless moron. And for the record, I’m talking about Bob again. I saw him out delivering pizzas, with his mask tucked under his chin, so he could smoke a clove cigarette as he drove. Bob is a dufus.
I’m going to hunt that guy down…and get answers. WATCH THIS SPACE FOR REAL ANSWERS…I’m not going to rest until I get them.
Peace. Be Safe. Don’t be a Bob.
First of all… THANK YOU! Great piece!
Second of all… the ‘second of all’ in your list:
“2. Item limits”
Look, I get it. They want the game to be available/playable on a large number of platforms/devices, so they program it so that even the oldest, most minimalist, under-resourced devices can run the software.
But they don’t *have* to implement it the way they are, currently. Open it up (like you said, just ‘change one number’) so those of us with more modern/powerful devices can utilize more items.
And people with older, less-powerful devices… can have ‘natural consequences’ for having too many items. Their devices will crash, or slow down, or… whatever. And if they want that to get better, they should try putting some items in storage.
This is really little-to-no different than when peoples’ devices are running low on storage, performance suffers, and the advice from those of us in the community is to keep at least 1GB free (I actually try to keep at least 10GB free on my iPad).
One thing I found despite the game being about 60 mb it needs a 1.5 gb update which you have to stay on the screen to download the full thing to actually play the game.
It means you need to free up more space on your device.
We are in total agreement. I’d even pay more to get it increased. I’d pay as much as $49 a year.
And here I was thinking I was the only one to come back to the game. I was just checking, it’s been 3 years to the month that I stopped playing (June 2017 during the Egyptian Era event). At the time I was tired of the lame prizes with so much stuff that I don’t want in my springfield! But… there are no other games like this (and I’ve been searching). So I got back and alas, the prizes for the current even are again pretty ‘meh’. But Other stuff has changed. Loving the town portrait, and found out my Krustyland had been bombed. Much better to have it in the main town, and gave me the weekend to puzzle it back together, sorta, as it used to be. I can now just dump all the odd stuff in Krustyland and make it an attraction! So ups and downs, ups and downs. But it’s good to be back!
And good to have you back. Most of those changes happened two years ago. We’ve been in this rut for over a year.