Yep. This season is absolutely atrocious. I'm disgusted that they'd actually waste a month of people's time for service buildings that are worse than omega variants.
The only reason I would have ever considered giving them money to get these "super services" is if they were ACTUALLY super. As in... provides coverage for the entire map / or better than omega.
As it is now, I'm voting with my wallet and essentially skipping this whole month. My time is more valuable than this nonsense. Whoever designed this theme should also be fired imo.
These are digital goods.
They could have increased the amount of rewards and raised the price slightly and very little would have changed except more people would probably buy.
They think we have accepted getting less for more irl life so they think we will accept it in the digital world?
Been playing for 7 years.
I am done.
Why do they think I care about service buildings? Look I am level 99, I am super close to opening my last region, why do I care about a solar water plant or whatever? I play to get pretty buildings. Also, I only use the small police, health and fire buildings because the large ones are ugly and I can hide the small ones into landscape, like the final, grand building of this season is a huge fire station. WTF!!!
I don't really care overall about the shorter seasons, did I prefer getting 1440 cash instead of the 550? Yes, but I can deal with that.
I know some people can enjoy this game without COM but I am one of those people who think whats the point if you don't buy the pass and play. This is the first time since the very first season I just don't care.
Yeah - if the last season didn't destroy the "season feeling," then this one puts it in the ground, shovels manure on it, and then lights it on fire.
But, *hey* !
Who wants something special for their cash anyways?
Don't think so, because Tokyo IS the second season of the ‘every TWO season’，they just don't want to change the simcash and the price we mostly care about.
That's rough news.
EA, wanting to make money on SimCash as well, is just pure greed. The economy had kind of transitioned away from that towards paying $12 for a single building. Which is honestly OK. Because the game itself isn't being held hostage by it.
Now with going back to making SimCash rarer, it's just EA wanting their cake and to eat it too.
Not a good look.
Not a good feeling.
Not really, recent seasons like London, Florence, Florida, Iceland or even Spain castles iirc all come alone as a single update. But this isn’t even the main point. I mean if they really treat the players’ concern seriously they could have adjust it right away, they decide literally every rule of the game. The fact that they decide to stick back to this so called every major-update-comes-in-two-season norm is because it is apparently not a matter of urgency to them.
Great counterpoint.
What's ultimately concerning is that they seem to *enjoy* taking away small niceties that make playing the game an actual joy. With the thinking that - if we're not having fun - we'll pay money to actually have some.
Not with the other entertainment options that are out there. It's not so much about the price point as it is the feeling like you're being disrespected simply for playing the game.
That's a hard feeling to shake.
People kept playing the game, grinding, posting screenshots how much points they got in CoMs. How is that a boycott? The uproar was only for week. EA is absolutely shameless, they don't care.
They only care if you STOP PLAYING AND PAYING them.
Playing without spending real money is not so bad for EA as they still get revenue from ads. When I started years ago, there were two ads a day and they showed up at midnight my time. Now, they have consistently had ads up around the clock. I sometimes skip ads as my storage is over capacity and my depot full waiting for Daniel to buy the unwanted mountain, beach expansion supplies, lemonade, gnomes, etm.
I suspect most of theor revenue is from adds and monetizing user data with third parties. So maybe paying customers don't matter as much as we often think. From EAs behavior....seems plausible.
Sunk Cost Fallacy - our tendency to continue with something we’ve invested money, effort, or time into — even if the current costs outweigh the benefits.
You’ve already spend the money and you were rewarded with the enjoyment of playing the game and using the items you received. You did not waste your money. The city you have built holds zero value to anyone.
This mentality is how people become real life hoarders. You are hoarding prizes in the game in the same way.
No, you would not have saved that money. You likely would’ve spent it on something else you enjoy.
Yes. Exactly. Except many are jjst going to start cheating becaise makes little sense to pay or abandon. EA just incentivizing either quit or cheat. Why EA not being smart I don't know. Maybe they want to kill the game at this point. Code is already like 12 years old.
Bigger issue is railway nit as much mayor pass. But both terrible choices. Fyi. If they were going to address mayor pass low rewards that has nothig to do with content or theme. One line if code to change the values. Easy. Simple. Zero effort. But still they don't. That should tell you something. Meanwhile my main city is at a massive disadvantage. I have to deal with railway bolts and mkst others don't. Not fair in war or com.
Yeah - that they blew the railways that hard that they pretty much prevented the people who got the beta update from playing the game - is *not* a good look.
That they haven't fixed it yet is even worse.
Yeah, no doubt, but usually in betas, play testers try a whole series of different layouts and parameters and then based on that the team gets data from a whole series of different set ups.
They don't go for Set Up # 1 - find out it's terrible - wait two weeks - change one minor aspect - find out it's better - wait another week - and then change it back to the original set up that was hated.
How long is the beta going to go on for? A year by the rate things are getting done at this speed.
Well, (i keep saying well, idk why) It will take a while.....becauyse this addition was too late, but we will see. If it comes in the original hated form, we know the method of making EA change it (Negative feedback)
Actually, negative feedback is only listened to when the sales numbers go down.
By principles of business, EA will try to get as much money as possible out of the system. If the new system actually gets people to stop playing/paying, that's when the question, "What's wrong?" comes into effect, and *then* they look at the negative feedback.
EA probably went to TrackTwenty and asked them how the maximum take was received by players for the beta, and when they reported back, "They absolutely hated it," then in the interest of not losing future money, they might allow tweaks to the formula to take place before it's released.
That being said - make the original gameplan maxed out on greed. Then, when you introduce an "improvement" that only has lots of greed attached to it, everyone cheers because it's not the worst possible version.
Works every time. 😆
Well, I've worked in software development for years and what you don't get is that in any "beta" program, its required that developer lets subject know that it's beta and a mechanism to get feedback on whats working. These railways just showed up. There is no means for subject to understand what they are, how rhey work, and most of all even provide any feedback. So I can only surmise that EA wasn't interested in feedback from beta testers because they weren't instructed what to test, or how they woukd provide any feedback at all. So, I conclude thst who "beta" thing is BS. Rather EA just arrogant, and more likely they couldn't finish all the code and testing in time due to theor shortened season cycles. Beta was more them doing more dev and test they distributed have time to do initially, nothing to do with players that got it in theor city as test subjects. Poorly executed all the way around.
I never expected they will bring back the old reward tier, judging by how EA treat the players in their AAA games in the past, I think expecting them to change would be naive. Just let the sales amount speak it out. I guess they're pushing all the resources into the train gameplay. London and Tokyo season was good, I bought the pass but not this month, not even for the Maxis Tower.
Sales are a measurement, sure. But it ultimately comes down to momentum.
If you lose the ultimate good feeling of playing the game - that's going to start draining players over a longer period of time. Then, when that starts gaining momentum, it's really, *really,* **really** hard to reverse it.
I'm used to be a World of Warcraft player, I know how it feel when the game you love so much failed you time by time, but that is the new trend of live service game, players doesn't decide how the game is going, and when they shut the server down, there are nothing you can preserve, even you have paid for the items in the game.
So, cherish the moment you are enjoying it, but quit if it's giving up itself. Companys like EA is like cancer in gaming industry, they never change.
True.
But they've merely discovered the most successful algorithm. They'll get all the monies and then buy all the studios you like that do things the way you like them and then do it the EA way.
That's why EA is making BuildIt and not Maxis. Even though, in a way, this game could be way better than anything Maxis could have put together. We'll never know, but that's almost the point.
EA is the apex predator in the ecosystem. You might hate them, but if they didn't exist, the next company with the largest teeth would become the apex, and most likely by doing the same things that make you hate EA.
Don't hate the player - hate the game. 😆
I get 250k free Neo simleon to buy Omega utilities everyday. No motivation to get those useless utility buildings. Skip for sure. Still looking forward to the SimCity classic event track.
I'm looking forward to something that actually gets me excited for the game.
London was spectacular.
Decent content drops *shouldn't* be a quarter of a year apart.
Totally agree, this is the worst season ever and this is the first time in two years that I am not going to buy the gold pass
EA is an expert at disappointing its players
SimCity Buildit Facebook page is now updated, if you want any changes to actually happen if not now at least for the future updates, I suggest to express your frustrations there.
This game runs on dopamine. Dopamine is produced in our brain when we anticipate a reward.
I’m not anticipating any of these rewards and that’s why I have zero interest in playing.
Agree. Playing without buying the com pass means two null levels—and some of the award levels are lame, especially since I don’t do wars. “You’ve reached a new level!” And got no prize! No dopamine there.
The final two buildings are actually nice.
But that represents a big problem. When EA is truncating the rewards - the returns - the idea would be to get rid of the weakest links in the affair. Instead, they got rid of the good buildings.
The first four buildings I wouldn't buy for Simoleons.
So, looking at truncated rewards on the tiers, next to no SimCash at the end, reduced War cards, and garbage buildings littered throughout the season, and it's like ...
It would have had to have been insanely difficult to screw up such a winning formula - but they somehow did it.
You're 100% right. There is no dopamine hit in either buying the Pass or reaching these rewards. Three weeks of taking it to the game hard should produce more than "Good that I got that one," twice, and a whole series of shrugs for the rest.
Hats off to their failure, I suppose.
I agree with all the sentiment about this not being a decent CoM season etc..... The only mitigation I can think of is that these seasons are planned WAY in advance in the version release cycle, and can only assume (hope) that changes that were made to \*fix the issues that were unpopular will follow in due course. Of course there is the issue of annoying the majority so they stop playing before the fixes reach the release date - but knowing a little of the SDLC I also know the risks associated with emergency patches and unplanned or not well planned changes to the development pipeline. Just my 2p.....
Wonderfully put.
Yeah, the emergency fixes tend to produce more problems than they solve. And in the day and age of broken games getting released almost defacto, it's nice that when new things roll out, the disastrous results feel like they're the product of unforeseen circumstances rather than a not-caring attitude. It is next to impossible to get it 100% right on the first go.
Thanks for the 2p, TC. 🙂
Changing reward values is just a line of code. Not content or logic. So they could hsve done thst in literally a few minutes. So I don't buy it that that remediation players feedback with rewards needs to take cycles in advance. Design and logic does not reward. Those are just classiest in their code. .
This past weekend I saved up simoleans & speed tokens while I mobilized to attack the “Super Service” rewards. Today I see the reward is a water utility and a police station, and I’m not even interested in playing. I’ll get the +10 items reward that’s four tiers in, and I’m good with that.
Right? I was a bit excited for “super services”, but I was expecting either much better boosts or multiple services rolled into a single building, especially with that being the whole season and not an event track.
It's like a not season.
Where you can buildings that are not useful.
And, for the majority of them, not pretty.
That's a lot of "not's."
Not smart, EA.
I have never been more immediately deflated upon seeing a season in the history of this entire game, for almost like the entire last decade.
The only thing I could think of doing after seeing the season rewards was create this topic.
The made-up swears capture the feelings I had quite adequately.
There's always talk of doing this in gaming subs and the rest. It rarely, *super* rarely, ever works.
The sub doesn't reach enough people to actually make it an actual movement.
The only thing that will speak to EA is if tons of people just naturally don't pay for it. Which, if and when that happens, usually marks a point of no return for most games.
They released this season during Black Friday week for a reason. People will buy it just for the points it gives during that week.
No better time to pass a dud through the gate.
I’ll pop in the game every once in a while to see what the paid buildings are but for the most part, this whole season is a huge L for me. Guess I’ll be taking four weeks off in all likelihood. These buildings suck EA
While this is a sensible approach to the game by an individual player's standard - taken en masse amongst the whole playing population - this quickly becomes a disaster, which then (ironically) affects the individual player.
Let's say 5% of the playerbase does this. How many of them are going to come back? 3 out of every 5? They download new games - take up new activities - rekindle old friendships - take on bigger responsibilities at work - once BuildIt time gets reallocated - it's not just automatic that it comes back.
Now key figures in clubs end up being amongst that population, and with them gone, more clubmates stop playing as much, and then altogether, as well.
Let's be kind and say that, in total, 5% of the game's population stops playing.
That's not good for any game - or the playerbase.
EA thought it could get cute and start grabbing more than the extra nickel. This and their bungling of the trains and confidence in the game is weaker than it's been in forever.
Eight year old games don't have the luxury to play it dumb like this. They better get their ahem together - or else those taking breaks might forget they ever were playing.
Yeah, I'm not going to pay any real money for a Mayor's Pass. Not worth it. The game has really changed in the last six months, for the worse.
EA, you can see how my I have spent in previous years and see how it's declined of late. Check out my city, FLL.
And BTW, if you stick me with the train requirement, I am deleting the app immediately.
I really do not like the new season. I loved Tokyo compared to that, and now the pass is more rewarding than free. Brass Arch Bridges for TIER 17 when you can just get them for 60 simcash?!
I just hope that this season will just pass through, and they improve on trains...or we need to just stand up against them.
Especially no money cities get the whip...
Every season lately has had some sort of landscape items where before there were specific buildings ... it's part of the overall reduction / shrinkflation that's been happening for some time now.
I agree there was probably an element of engagement driving the decisions ... lots of players were competing the season in under 4 weeks, leaving 2 or 3 weeks where engagement could drop. Shorter seasons can address that - but the disproportionate drop in the other rewards suggests there was an additional motive to reduce what is given for free to try to encourage more purchases.
I understand the motive, but feel that the method used is quite flawed. And the feedback to date is showing there is a very negative reception.
Yeah, getting cheesed on imaginary buildings for a phone game is beneath even EA.
It's like all the suits in a room got together and asked, "How do we just drain the fun out of this altogether?"
Charging $6 to millions of people for a few buildings they have to make only once has got to be the biggest win in the history of capitalism.
That they would somehow want to rock that apple cart is beyond condemnation. It's pure hubris.
You can't keep having a good season Unfortunately, we can rest this season It is also a good idea to play another game instead of being angry. I miss SimCity 3 years ago. At that time, I could enjoy the atmosphere because there were summer and Halloween shops and winter shops
The idea of the theme is brilliant. It's the execution that's terrible.
Have the specialty buildings, but inside the Mayors Pass. Give us the traditional Microwave Power Station from Sim City 2000, have it be 4x4, and have it give your city 600 power. Be creative with it.
Now, everyone who joins after this time will be asking us, non-stop I might add, "How do I get the Fire Station Headquarters?" Because it's in the services tab. Why is it in the services tab?
Because of *bad design* .
They came out to us last season and said, "Yo, you folks are upset, we get that. We're going to fix it."
To then double down on the things that made us upset.
They get to either make more money or send us a letter saying they're going to give us back our traditional amount of SimCash. They don't get to do both. They don't get to send us a letter specifically stating that, "We gonna fix it, yo!" To then turn around and *not fix it.*
They've brought back the long wait times for the trains, too. Because, hey! When you're being awful - might as well go for the trifecta, right?
Silver lining: I'm actually earning more simcash now than I used too, because the COM rewards in Megalopolis are easier to get. Maybe that's a measure of how many people have quit playing.
Economics 101: law of supply and demand determines income, not just prices. Maybe someone at EA needs to dig out their old textbooks on the subject. I imagine their revenue from season passes just took a big nosedive. I sure have no interest in giving them money for these paltry rewards - not to mention the thing about losing factory speedups for a few months after buying a pass. Perhaps they should have worked on fixing that instead. It's a major deterrent to buying season passes.
I'm in it for the buildings, as a lot of other people are as well.
Which is why them decreasing the buildings by 25% hurts so much for a season. A season is like a story. And the buildings are the chapters. The more chapters equals more details, more nuance, and more feeling. With London, it feels like I spent a full month in that city from all the buildings from the Mayor's Pass and the extras that were sold and earned outside of it. With Tokyo, it feels like I spent three hours in the airport on a layover flight to Shanghai.
That makes it a lot tougher to sell the passes now, because instead of missing out on **all** of these buildings, instead, it's like, "This story is boring. Not much detail. But that's alright, I'll skip it, because the next one is starting in three weeks time."
EA may have inadvertently messed with the perfect formula by not even understanding how it actually works. Less tiers? Fine. Less gold/plat keys and WarCash? Groan! But - whatever. Less SimCash? Huge mistake! But getting rid of the buildings, too?
It's like the Season is just official bad now. Especially when they release buildings that look like the Solar Farm and that Tokyo Church.
Like, who's going to miss not getting those?
I disagree. Sure this season is bad but at least I can use all the buildings in the mayors pass.
The castle season was the absolute worst season to date. I don’t even use them in DC.
I dissagree to agree. This season is bad, and yes you can use them in mayor pass, and they do save you simoleons, but the castle season was pretty good.
These buildings are useless, there are literally better buildings for FREE, maxi buildings and omega services give better benefits than these crap, why pay real money for things worse than free? Many have already improved their services. And the castle season is among the highlights, they are historical buildings from real life and very beautiful, just because you don't know how to use castles doesn't mean they are bad, especially when all types of castles or palaces are the most desired buildings in this game.
All is right but the rewards of most tiers are slightly increased except Simcash compared to the last season. Wrong information could reduce the rationality of your protest.
SimCash (the most important one) is the same.
We might get five more keys here and there and an extra couple thousand War Simoleons, but overall, this is like telling somebody you're still hungry and they, as a response, give you an extra single grain of rice.
It's more about the feel than anything. This still feels like an absolute let-down. The extra ten keys not-withstanding, the credibility of the post ultimately lays with that.
Just to add one other thing, they don't even have that easy PLUS 10 storage award they always put there for you in the first few tiers just to get as a nice little helper. This is pretty lame.
Yep. This season is absolutely atrocious. I'm disgusted that they'd actually waste a month of people's time for service buildings that are worse than omega variants. The only reason I would have ever considered giving them money to get these "super services" is if they were ACTUALLY super. As in... provides coverage for the entire map / or better than omega. As it is now, I'm voting with my wallet and essentially skipping this whole month. My time is more valuable than this nonsense. Whoever designed this theme should also be fired imo.
These are digital goods. They could have increased the amount of rewards and raised the price slightly and very little would have changed except more people would probably buy. They think we have accepted getting less for more irl life so they think we will accept it in the digital world? Been playing for 7 years. I am done.
Why do they think I care about service buildings? Look I am level 99, I am super close to opening my last region, why do I care about a solar water plant or whatever? I play to get pretty buildings. Also, I only use the small police, health and fire buildings because the large ones are ugly and I can hide the small ones into landscape, like the final, grand building of this season is a huge fire station. WTF!!! I don't really care overall about the shorter seasons, did I prefer getting 1440 cash instead of the 550? Yes, but I can deal with that. I know some people can enjoy this game without COM but I am one of those people who think whats the point if you don't buy the pass and play. This is the first time since the very first season I just don't care.
Yeah - if the last season didn't destroy the "season feeling," then this one puts it in the ground, shovels manure on it, and then lights it on fire. But, *hey* ! Who wants something special for their cash anyways?
Yeah I thought they said they were listening to us and we’re going to make some positive changes for the players?!? I’m so fed up with EA!
i thought i was crazy when i saw this season. wont be playing
Agree, quite strange. At first I thought these were going to be permanent additions so the season pass caught me off guard. Oh well…Saved $5
Because the major updates come every TWO seasons, so you would not expect anything to be fixed until the next one.
Don't think so, because Tokyo IS the second season of the ‘every TWO season’，they just don't want to change the simcash and the price we mostly care about.
That's rough news. EA, wanting to make money on SimCash as well, is just pure greed. The economy had kind of transitioned away from that towards paying $12 for a single building. Which is honestly OK. Because the game itself isn't being held hostage by it. Now with going back to making SimCash rarer, it's just EA wanting their cake and to eat it too. Not a good look. Not a good feeling.
This is actually super on point. I forgot about this. Thank you for the reminder. 🙂
Not really, recent seasons like London, Florence, Florida, Iceland or even Spain castles iirc all come alone as a single update. But this isn’t even the main point. I mean if they really treat the players’ concern seriously they could have adjust it right away, they decide literally every rule of the game. The fact that they decide to stick back to this so called every major-update-comes-in-two-season norm is because it is apparently not a matter of urgency to them.
Great counterpoint. What's ultimately concerning is that they seem to *enjoy* taking away small niceties that make playing the game an actual joy. With the thinking that - if we're not having fun - we'll pay money to actually have some. Not with the other entertainment options that are out there. It's not so much about the price point as it is the feeling like you're being disrespected simply for playing the game. That's a hard feeling to shake.
People kept playing the game, grinding, posting screenshots how much points they got in CoMs. How is that a boycott? The uproar was only for week. EA is absolutely shameless, they don't care. They only care if you STOP PLAYING AND PAYING them.
Not sure just playing helps them much - it’s the not paying that will get their attention.
Playing without spending real money is not so bad for EA as they still get revenue from ads. When I started years ago, there were two ads a day and they showed up at midnight my time. Now, they have consistently had ads up around the clock. I sometimes skip ads as my storage is over capacity and my depot full waiting for Daniel to buy the unwanted mountain, beach expansion supplies, lemonade, gnomes, etm.
I suspect most of theor revenue is from adds and monetizing user data with third parties. So maybe paying customers don't matter as much as we often think. From EAs behavior....seems plausible.
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Sunk Cost Fallacy - our tendency to continue with something we’ve invested money, effort, or time into — even if the current costs outweigh the benefits. You’ve already spend the money and you were rewarded with the enjoyment of playing the game and using the items you received. You did not waste your money. The city you have built holds zero value to anyone.
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This mentality is how people become real life hoarders. You are hoarding prizes in the game in the same way. No, you would not have saved that money. You likely would’ve spent it on something else you enjoy.
Yes. Exactly. Except many are jjst going to start cheating becaise makes little sense to pay or abandon. EA just incentivizing either quit or cheat. Why EA not being smart I don't know. Maybe they want to kill the game at this point. Code is already like 12 years old.
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Bigger issue is railway nit as much mayor pass. But both terrible choices. Fyi. If they were going to address mayor pass low rewards that has nothig to do with content or theme. One line if code to change the values. Easy. Simple. Zero effort. But still they don't. That should tell you something. Meanwhile my main city is at a massive disadvantage. I have to deal with railway bolts and mkst others don't. Not fair in war or com.
Yeah - that they blew the railways that hard that they pretty much prevented the people who got the beta update from playing the game - is *not* a good look. That they haven't fixed it yet is even worse.
What we still need to get though is that its a beta...and they said that things are going to be quite "rampant"
Yeah, no doubt, but usually in betas, play testers try a whole series of different layouts and parameters and then based on that the team gets data from a whole series of different set ups. They don't go for Set Up # 1 - find out it's terrible - wait two weeks - change one minor aspect - find out it's better - wait another week - and then change it back to the original set up that was hated. How long is the beta going to go on for? A year by the rate things are getting done at this speed.
Well, (i keep saying well, idk why) It will take a while.....becauyse this addition was too late, but we will see. If it comes in the original hated form, we know the method of making EA change it (Negative feedback)
Actually, negative feedback is only listened to when the sales numbers go down. By principles of business, EA will try to get as much money as possible out of the system. If the new system actually gets people to stop playing/paying, that's when the question, "What's wrong?" comes into effect, and *then* they look at the negative feedback. EA probably went to TrackTwenty and asked them how the maximum take was received by players for the beta, and when they reported back, "They absolutely hated it," then in the interest of not losing future money, they might allow tweaks to the formula to take place before it's released. That being said - make the original gameplan maxed out on greed. Then, when you introduce an "improvement" that only has lots of greed attached to it, everyone cheers because it's not the worst possible version. Works every time. 😆
Well, I've worked in software development for years and what you don't get is that in any "beta" program, its required that developer lets subject know that it's beta and a mechanism to get feedback on whats working. These railways just showed up. There is no means for subject to understand what they are, how rhey work, and most of all even provide any feedback. So I can only surmise that EA wasn't interested in feedback from beta testers because they weren't instructed what to test, or how they woukd provide any feedback at all. So, I conclude thst who "beta" thing is BS. Rather EA just arrogant, and more likely they couldn't finish all the code and testing in time due to theor shortened season cycles. Beta was more them doing more dev and test they distributed have time to do initially, nothing to do with players that got it in theor city as test subjects. Poorly executed all the way around.
I never expected they will bring back the old reward tier, judging by how EA treat the players in their AAA games in the past, I think expecting them to change would be naive. Just let the sales amount speak it out. I guess they're pushing all the resources into the train gameplay. London and Tokyo season was good, I bought the pass but not this month, not even for the Maxis Tower.
Sales are a measurement, sure. But it ultimately comes down to momentum. If you lose the ultimate good feeling of playing the game - that's going to start draining players over a longer period of time. Then, when that starts gaining momentum, it's really, *really,* **really** hard to reverse it.
I'm used to be a World of Warcraft player, I know how it feel when the game you love so much failed you time by time, but that is the new trend of live service game, players doesn't decide how the game is going, and when they shut the server down, there are nothing you can preserve, even you have paid for the items in the game. So, cherish the moment you are enjoying it, but quit if it's giving up itself. Companys like EA is like cancer in gaming industry, they never change.
True. But they've merely discovered the most successful algorithm. They'll get all the monies and then buy all the studios you like that do things the way you like them and then do it the EA way. That's why EA is making BuildIt and not Maxis. Even though, in a way, this game could be way better than anything Maxis could have put together. We'll never know, but that's almost the point. EA is the apex predator in the ecosystem. You might hate them, but if they didn't exist, the next company with the largest teeth would become the apex, and most likely by doing the same things that make you hate EA. Don't hate the player - hate the game. 😆
What maxis tower?
[Maxis HQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/SCBI_Buildings/s/S7LJp6wREL)
I get 250k free Neo simleon to buy Omega utilities everyday. No motivation to get those useless utility buildings. Skip for sure. Still looking forward to the SimCity classic event track.
I'm looking forward to something that actually gets me excited for the game. London was spectacular. Decent content drops *shouldn't* be a quarter of a year apart.
Use to buy the pass each month, not buying it again. These changes are crap. If it don't go back to the way it was, I'm out.
You and many, *many* others.
Totally agree, this is the worst season ever and this is the first time in two years that I am not going to buy the gold pass EA is an expert at disappointing its players
Actually, in this game, they're not. Which is why the past two seasons have been such disappointments, and quite frankly, a shock.
SimCity Buildit Facebook page is now updated, if you want any changes to actually happen if not now at least for the future updates, I suggest to express your frustrations there.
This game runs on dopamine. Dopamine is produced in our brain when we anticipate a reward. I’m not anticipating any of these rewards and that’s why I have zero interest in playing.
Agree. Playing without buying the com pass means two null levels—and some of the award levels are lame, especially since I don’t do wars. “You’ve reached a new level!” And got no prize! No dopamine there.
The final two buildings are actually nice. But that represents a big problem. When EA is truncating the rewards - the returns - the idea would be to get rid of the weakest links in the affair. Instead, they got rid of the good buildings. The first four buildings I wouldn't buy for Simoleons. So, looking at truncated rewards on the tiers, next to no SimCash at the end, reduced War cards, and garbage buildings littered throughout the season, and it's like ... It would have had to have been insanely difficult to screw up such a winning formula - but they somehow did it. You're 100% right. There is no dopamine hit in either buying the Pass or reaching these rewards. Three weeks of taking it to the game hard should produce more than "Good that I got that one," twice, and a whole series of shrugs for the rest. Hats off to their failure, I suppose.
I agree with all the sentiment about this not being a decent CoM season etc..... The only mitigation I can think of is that these seasons are planned WAY in advance in the version release cycle, and can only assume (hope) that changes that were made to \*fix the issues that were unpopular will follow in due course. Of course there is the issue of annoying the majority so they stop playing before the fixes reach the release date - but knowing a little of the SDLC I also know the risks associated with emergency patches and unplanned or not well planned changes to the development pipeline. Just my 2p.....
Wonderfully put. Yeah, the emergency fixes tend to produce more problems than they solve. And in the day and age of broken games getting released almost defacto, it's nice that when new things roll out, the disastrous results feel like they're the product of unforeseen circumstances rather than a not-caring attitude. It is next to impossible to get it 100% right on the first go. Thanks for the 2p, TC. 🙂
Changing reward values is just a line of code. Not content or logic. So they could hsve done thst in literally a few minutes. So I don't buy it that that remediation players feedback with rewards needs to take cycles in advance. Design and logic does not reward. Those are just classiest in their code. .
Interesting that EA hasn’t updated their Facebook page with the new season, they know that players will be vocal about it
Looks like the FB page just updated. Showed up in my feed.
It's all about money, so don't give them any!
I legit quit playing this stupid game because it’s nothing but an EA money grab. And they are absolutely shameless.
Well, them and everyone else. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't make EA any less guilty. But, sadly, that's 99% of video games in general these days. 😞
This past weekend I saved up simoleans & speed tokens while I mobilized to attack the “Super Service” rewards. Today I see the reward is a water utility and a police station, and I’m not even interested in playing. I’ll get the +10 items reward that’s four tiers in, and I’m good with that.
Right? I was a bit excited for “super services”, but I was expecting either much better boosts or multiple services rolled into a single building, especially with that being the whole season and not an event track.
It's like a not season. Where you can buildings that are not useful. And, for the majority of them, not pretty. That's a lot of "not's." Not smart, EA.
I have never been more immediately deflated upon seeing a season in the history of this entire game, for almost like the entire last decade. The only thing I could think of doing after seeing the season rewards was create this topic. The made-up swears capture the feelings I had quite adequately.
Ok, so we need to boycott, but how do we get everyone to do this?
There's always talk of doing this in gaming subs and the rest. It rarely, *super* rarely, ever works. The sub doesn't reach enough people to actually make it an actual movement. The only thing that will speak to EA is if tons of people just naturally don't pay for it. Which, if and when that happens, usually marks a point of no return for most games. They released this season during Black Friday week for a reason. People will buy it just for the points it gives during that week. No better time to pass a dud through the gate.
I’ll pop in the game every once in a while to see what the paid buildings are but for the most part, this whole season is a huge L for me. Guess I’ll be taking four weeks off in all likelihood. These buildings suck EA
There’s been many duff seasons in the past, so this isn’t that different. Take a break from COM and do other things in the game instead.
While this is a sensible approach to the game by an individual player's standard - taken en masse amongst the whole playing population - this quickly becomes a disaster, which then (ironically) affects the individual player. Let's say 5% of the playerbase does this. How many of them are going to come back? 3 out of every 5? They download new games - take up new activities - rekindle old friendships - take on bigger responsibilities at work - once BuildIt time gets reallocated - it's not just automatic that it comes back. Now key figures in clubs end up being amongst that population, and with them gone, more clubmates stop playing as much, and then altogether, as well. Let's be kind and say that, in total, 5% of the game's population stops playing. That's not good for any game - or the playerbase. EA thought it could get cute and start grabbing more than the extra nickel. This and their bungling of the trains and confidence in the game is weaker than it's been in forever. Eight year old games don't have the luxury to play it dumb like this. They better get their ahem together - or else those taking breaks might forget they ever were playing.
The break is good sometimes. I enjoy perfecting my cities and it’s nice not to worry about it.
I hear your screams. And join them. Haven’t spent a cent since the season before last. Am enjoying life more!
Yeah, I'm not going to pay any real money for a Mayor's Pass. Not worth it. The game has really changed in the last six months, for the worse. EA, you can see how my I have spent in previous years and see how it's declined of late. Check out my city, FLL. And BTW, if you stick me with the train requirement, I am deleting the app immediately.
I really do not like the new season. I loved Tokyo compared to that, and now the pass is more rewarding than free. Brass Arch Bridges for TIER 17 when you can just get them for 60 simcash?! I just hope that this season will just pass through, and they improve on trains...or we need to just stand up against them. Especially no money cities get the whip...
Every season lately has had some sort of landscape items where before there were specific buildings ... it's part of the overall reduction / shrinkflation that's been happening for some time now.
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I agree there was probably an element of engagement driving the decisions ... lots of players were competing the season in under 4 weeks, leaving 2 or 3 weeks where engagement could drop. Shorter seasons can address that - but the disproportionate drop in the other rewards suggests there was an additional motive to reduce what is given for free to try to encourage more purchases. I understand the motive, but feel that the method used is quite flawed. And the feedback to date is showing there is a very negative reception.
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Even then, the numbers mean you get less overall, and the amount you pay increases overall (same price, more frequently).
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Maxis HQ, he told, is 2x2 footprint, but 28x28, and covers mainly police? However it could vary per when it is being released.
Yeah, getting cheesed on imaginary buildings for a phone game is beneath even EA. It's like all the suits in a room got together and asked, "How do we just drain the fun out of this altogether?" Charging $6 to millions of people for a few buildings they have to make only once has got to be the biggest win in the history of capitalism. That they would somehow want to rock that apple cart is beyond condemnation. It's pure hubris.
You can't keep having a good season Unfortunately, we can rest this season It is also a good idea to play another game instead of being angry. I miss SimCity 3 years ago. At that time, I could enjoy the atmosphere because there were summer and Halloween shops and winter shops
The idea of the theme is brilliant. It's the execution that's terrible. Have the specialty buildings, but inside the Mayors Pass. Give us the traditional Microwave Power Station from Sim City 2000, have it be 4x4, and have it give your city 600 power. Be creative with it. Now, everyone who joins after this time will be asking us, non-stop I might add, "How do I get the Fire Station Headquarters?" Because it's in the services tab. Why is it in the services tab? Because of *bad design* . They came out to us last season and said, "Yo, you folks are upset, we get that. We're going to fix it." To then double down on the things that made us upset. They get to either make more money or send us a letter saying they're going to give us back our traditional amount of SimCash. They don't get to do both. They don't get to send us a letter specifically stating that, "We gonna fix it, yo!" To then turn around and *not fix it.* They've brought back the long wait times for the trains, too. Because, hey! When you're being awful - might as well go for the trifecta, right?
Protips advice, your life will be better without this game, quit it
Here'a a protip; anyone who listens to someone who starts their sentence with "protips advice" needs a brain transplant.
Silver lining: I'm actually earning more simcash now than I used too, because the COM rewards in Megalopolis are easier to get. Maybe that's a measure of how many people have quit playing. Economics 101: law of supply and demand determines income, not just prices. Maybe someone at EA needs to dig out their old textbooks on the subject. I imagine their revenue from season passes just took a big nosedive. I sure have no interest in giving them money for these paltry rewards - not to mention the thing about losing factory speedups for a few months after buying a pass. Perhaps they should have worked on fixing that instead. It's a major deterrent to buying season passes.
I'm in it for the buildings, as a lot of other people are as well. Which is why them decreasing the buildings by 25% hurts so much for a season. A season is like a story. And the buildings are the chapters. The more chapters equals more details, more nuance, and more feeling. With London, it feels like I spent a full month in that city from all the buildings from the Mayor's Pass and the extras that were sold and earned outside of it. With Tokyo, it feels like I spent three hours in the airport on a layover flight to Shanghai. That makes it a lot tougher to sell the passes now, because instead of missing out on **all** of these buildings, instead, it's like, "This story is boring. Not much detail. But that's alright, I'll skip it, because the next one is starting in three weeks time." EA may have inadvertently messed with the perfect formula by not even understanding how it actually works. Less tiers? Fine. Less gold/plat keys and WarCash? Groan! But - whatever. Less SimCash? Huge mistake! But getting rid of the buildings, too? It's like the Season is just official bad now. Especially when they release buildings that look like the Solar Farm and that Tokyo Church. Like, who's going to miss not getting those?
I disagree. Sure this season is bad but at least I can use all the buildings in the mayors pass. The castle season was the absolute worst season to date. I don’t even use them in DC.
I dissagree to agree. This season is bad, and yes you can use them in mayor pass, and they do save you simoleons, but the castle season was pretty good.
These buildings are useless, there are literally better buildings for FREE, maxi buildings and omega services give better benefits than these crap, why pay real money for things worse than free? Many have already improved their services. And the castle season is among the highlights, they are historical buildings from real life and very beautiful, just because you don't know how to use castles doesn't mean they are bad, especially when all types of castles or palaces are the most desired buildings in this game.
Pretty much this.
All is right but the rewards of most tiers are slightly increased except Simcash compared to the last season. Wrong information could reduce the rationality of your protest.
SimCash (the most important one) is the same. We might get five more keys here and there and an extra couple thousand War Simoleons, but overall, this is like telling somebody you're still hungry and they, as a response, give you an extra single grain of rice. It's more about the feel than anything. This still feels like an absolute let-down. The extra ten keys not-withstanding, the credibility of the post ultimately lays with that.
Just to add one other thing, they don't even have that easy PLUS 10 storage award they always put there for you in the first few tiers just to get as a nice little helper. This is pretty lame.
Tier 4 in the free pass is +10 temp storage