Contest of Mayors is a joke

[bettysadog]

For those of you who feel people are cheating, then I suppose you think the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl  by cheating. Could it be that these players beating you are better than you or at least luckier? In a perfect non-cheating world, would we all come in tied for 1st place?

How could they not be cheating and have so many more points than me (you)? When I cut a piece of wood the other day and it was too short, it was of course the saw's fault. How could it be my fault?

Whats that old expression "Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the amount of fight in the dog"?

Get it?

[Arcadia0426]

With all the questions about how tasks get allocated, I wish EA would weigh in and shed a bit more light. Maybe they're still making adjustments; who knows?

Maybe it is just a luck thing and some weeks you decide to just do a bare minimum (to keep from sliding down a  league, if that's what you want), and wait for a better list of tasks in the next contest.

Hard to see how the lowest scorers would slide down a league. For me, in every contest so far, there have been at least 25 towns with a score of zero. Now what league might be below Neighborhood...

[JennBarnes09]

Yes! I believe that isn't right. It gives an unfair advantage to those who don't have money to buy the cash!

[TroyParry74]

If you're doing all the highest possible valued tasks, and other people are scoring way higher (like 50% higher), then of course that arouses a lot of suspicion for some.

I don't think there's anyone cheating (although it may be possible), I came to the conclusion that people are just having a lot more luck with task allocation.

You could role a die 6x in a row and be lucky enough to role a 6 all 6 times. Someone else might not get a single 6 at all. I believe that's exactly what's happening here, but I strongly feel that the format doesn't belong in such a contest. Most of the luck needs to be removed so these contests can be based on skill and effort. If you put in just as much effort, you should have a competitive score.

For me, I put in the maximum effort and still came 56th. NO PRIZE! My score is so far short of top10...

EDIT: at the end of the League I finished #61... 

The Leagues at this level has become a lucky draw dip, they might as well just randomly place us on the final leaderboard.

[SomeSimGuy]

What league is that?  I just may want to stay lower on purpose for a bit.  As people go higher, I would expect the lower tiers to become easier too as everyone putting in maximum effort would be in an upper tier.

[esch5995]

For the third week in a row I was not given the opportunity to earn enough points to win my league. Although I was much more competitive this week, top 10 finish, the top 2 finishers were ~10k & 9k ahead of me the third place was 8k above me in 8th. If I total all the uncompleted tasks their point values don't add up to 8,000 points, so again I never had a chance to win.

My latest theory on this is the first week everyone seemed to have a similar assignment pool and a equal chance to win and I felt the contest was enjoyable, but I also think it unbalanced the Trade Market terribly with everyone looking to buy and sell the same items in the same time frame. EA's quick and dirty fix to this was to randomize the assignments, thereby fixing the Trade Market problem while making the contest totally unbalanced.

The right way to do this without breaking the Trade Market would be to have pools of assignments at each point value, then randomly assign each player an equal number of assignments from each point level pool. This would result in every player having the same point total potential while giving them varied tasks to complete to keep from breaking the Trade Market.

Again, only my theory and possible solution, but I would love to hear what other think.

[mbrown2626]

The constant "they are cheating" is getting old. It is possible to score big really fast. It's been talked about over and over. you can to multiple tasks at once just dont collect the items you produce until you have that task selected. I moved up a league every week until this week. In my city league you have to have over 60K to advance. I ended up with 42K and finished 48th! So should I be crying that 47 others were cheaters? 

They only thing that does suck is the random tasks and how others can get more points than you even if you do all the highest point tasks. At one point I had a task of produce 12 cheese, I completed it and got the exact same task, so I didn't it again as it was my highest option, then I got it again for the third straight time. If someone else had that happen but it was produce 5 keys for 5000 then of course they will crush everyone.

[josepootler]

I may have to bail on the Contest of Mayors as well. 

I completely understand how certain tasks can be completed quickly. For instance getting a Vu task or a Gold Token task can be completed quickly and easily by doing Easy disasters and having some simple components stored and ready for use. Any common sense strategy would be then to go after those tasks first. On the other hand produce assignments are very slow. To speed these up you have to use Cheetah tokens or SimCash to produce and collect items faster. I have no problem with folks using whatever means available to them to gain points as quickly as possible. More power to them and I don't believe anyone is cheating to do this.

What I am frustrated with is the fact that assignments are totally random and point totals at the end of the 5 days really have nothing to do with skill, cash, or time commitment. The last two weeks I've been in the Town League and both times I finished with roughly 35,000 points which was good enough to barely crack the top 30. Whereas the top point getters where well over 50,000 points. Which means they would need to average at least 2,000 points per assignment vs. my 1400 points per assignment. That is a huge statistical divide. I'm also lucky when I get a rare chance at more than 2000 points on an assignment and in the 4 weeks I've been playing I've had less than (10) 3000 point assignments. I'm seeing here that people have had 5000 point assignment whereas I've not seen a single one. This makes no sense.

If there's a game mechanic determining assignments I would love to know what it is, because then at least there might be a component of skill of commitment involved. Do you stay on the same assignment track to unlock better assignment? Do you need more high end specialization buildings? A Maxis Manor? a higher number of Epic buildings? I don't think anyone is cheating but it sure sounds like there are other mechanics in play. 

If anyone has any ideas please share!

[Goldacres]

In the last round I only did one assignment that wasn't Top Dollar.  I made it to 9th place only to be demoted by others who finished after me.  My final place was 18th.  I did not get promoted to Metropolis League.  I will play again in the City League in the next round.  I didn't get any Platinum keys, but I did get to Cheetah tokens which will be nice for the next contest.

So now I am wondering if this means that if I get above the Promotion line I will get a chance at the next higher up league.

[Goldacres]

My problem is that we don't all start each league at zero points.  Some are already maxed out before you do your first task.  That can't be by luck!