Re: Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

by PinnacleValley
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Original Post

Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

[ Edited ]
★★ Novice

Dear EA,

 

As a long-time player of SimCity BuildIt (and other SimCity games), I have some suggestions/improvements for the game I would like to express:

 

General improvements

  • Increase storage to 1000 to store more items (especially for war deliveries)
  • Increase the number of sales slots in the Trade Depot seeing as you have decreased the ability to list multiple war item at a time. Items that cannot be used by players who don’t have the required disasters can be sold however listing them individually is extremely tedious and takes up a lot of slots in the Trade Depot
  • Turn off sales advertising by default – let us choose what/when we want to advertise
  • When listing items for sale, make it so that you don’t have to scroll through your entire depot from the top to reach something located at the very bottom, start where you left off from the previous sale with the previous item already selected
  • When you increase the price, it jumps up rapidly but when you try to decrease the price to sell at the lowest, you have to hold the minus button for ages. Please make it really fast in both directions or implement a slider to increase/decrease the price of items
  • Make earning gold keys easier e.g. earning multiple keys from making cargo ship deliveries or finding them in gift boxes. So many keys are needed to buy specialized buildings or upgrade war disasters (especially when you get to higher level cards)
  • Add some kind of marker that the Cargo ship is available for a delivery (whether you have all the items or not) similar to Export HQ
  • Also add a marker to the airport to indicate that London/Paris/Tokyo deliveries are available
  • Make it easier to upgrade buildings. Requiring 7 or 8 items for an upgrade is a bit much
  • Opening a final region by reaching a regional population of 10000000 is a bit farfetched and unrealistic. Please reconsider and lower the required population amount

Contest of Mayors

  • CoM tasks are so very repetitive and could do with a facelift and some new ideas
  • Allow more war-related tasks and add more overall tasks to compensate for the fact that not everyone goes to war
  • Make CoM tasks more interesting – no one wants to produce 50+ electrical components or 50+ Animal Feed because they take hours and there aren’t that many slots in factories to produce the required amount in one go
  • Make it more worthwhile – 600 points for a cargo ship delivery or 940 points for 31 bottles of chemicals hardly seems worth the effort
  • Give us more CoM related rewards such as earning 3 gold chests from a war not just 1 bronze. Almost everyone that plays wars strives and succeeds in obtaining all 9 chests
  • With Mayor’s pass, instead of giving us 60 Hissy Fit cards for example, allow us to choose which 60 cards we want. I have been hunting Mellow Bellow cards for 7 months and it has taken me that that long to upgrade to level 13. They hardly ever appear in the war store and at 320 cards plus 464 gold keys required for level 14, it will take me another year to upgrade that disaster

Club Wars

  • Make war deliveries easier and less costly by needing fewer ordinary items for more war items, e.g. 1 hammer, 1 ice-cream sandwich and 1 animal feed for 3 x hydrants
  • Allow players to disable/close cards they don’t use to allow for more directed war deliveries
  • Give players better war delivery results by making each delivery a multiple i.e. 2, 3 or ever 4 items per delivery not just 1
  • Show what is upcoming so we can plan and buy ahead instead of showing us a ‘?’
  • Why are so many repair items needed? Make it a bit easier to rebuild once a city has been attacked
  • Implement better boosters like even faster energy regeneration
  • Bring back the ability to list 5 war items not just 1 – this is particularly helpful when playing more than one city, which many people do or when selling war items that cannot be used due to missing disasters
  • Make wars shorter – 24 hours for an attack phase is enough time to get chests and rewards across all arenas and remove the knockout feature – we all need sleep
  • P.S. Really loving using only 3 energy for 16 Tons – great idea even though it’s temporary. Please do this more often.

Login issues

  • PLEASE fix the issue with logging into Facebook via the game. One of my Facebook accounts has recently been disabled due to multiple browser crashes when trying to log in, with absolutely no way for me to retrieve it and now I’m unable to log in. I can’t see my friends list and if my device dies, I won’t be able to ever retrieve my game account as I can’t log in. This is simply not good enough and an ongoing issue over the last 5 years. Surely, it’s not that hard to come up with a solution. Perhaps an EA account would serve better where you can link all your cities??

These positive changes will encourage player to be more active and even spend more cash on the game as it gives people real return on investment and value for money. As a dedicated long-term player, I’m happy to be your ideas bank. I realize not all ideas will be implemented but at least please consider these suggestions.

 

Thanks in advance,

AB

Message 1 of 5 (1,371 Views)

Re: Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

★ Expert

@AshleyBase  Welcome to the forum. It’s obvious you put a lot of time and energy into your first post and I strongly agree with 3 points you offered...the first making reducing the cost as simple as increasing because it takes too long to reduce to gift price (1 simoleon) for club members (excellent suggestion and the first time I’ve read it, well done). The second being related to the redundancy of CoM tasks (which has been raised a couple times before)...at least don’t repeat the same task within the next 5 assignments - preferably 10. The third point being reduce the length of the war games to 24 hours (this suggestion has been raised multiple times over the last couple of years) which only makes sense. 
Beyond these three suggestions and the Facebook issue that I’ve not seen the balance seems to boil down to is “it’s too hard”...guess what, it’s suppose to be - after all it’s a competition. I enthusiastically take exception to your proposal of increasing war assignments in CoM...in fact I honestly believe that all war assignments should be excluded from CoM as each is a stand alone contest. Quite frankly the lion share of cheating in CoM stems from war games (currently I’m seeing a city 4 levels above everyone else 70k ahead of 2nd place that was not in the top 50 yesterday with a 150k average in war games...seems a little unusual). With the current condition the war game assignments are very much overvalued and the ones that take planning, coordination and management to achieve are very much undervalued such as the electronics, animal feed and chemicals you mentioned.
I’ve been here since the beginning (guess that makes me a long-term player as well) and from the very start of the war games I stated war assignments do not belong in CoM...if you were around at that time you clearly understand why. I’m not an opponent of the war games, actually I really enjoyed the competition and camaraderie until the bubble “strategy” sucked the life out of the contest and once addressed (2 years too late) the hackers and cheaters came out of the shadows and darkened the horizon. I’m hearing a few positive comments but only time will tell.

This is simply a city building game at it’s core that requires planning, organization and development skills and should always remain true to the SimCity model that clearly separates it from all others. The Buildit part is what causes the issues.

I hope you take my comments In the spirit they are intended - you made some good points (which I gave you an xp for) and some that in my opinion are misguided. I wish you the best and look forward to your future posts.

Message 2 of 5 (1,268 Views)

Re: Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

★★ Novice

Hi there and thanks or your response. I’ve been reading you posts here for a long time now, so I appreciate your opinion. I agree with a lot of what you have said especially in relation to CoM…I see your very valid point and after reading your comments, agree that all war related activities should be excluded from CoM and players should have other ways of making points in Mayor’s challenges with, as said before, a greater variety of tasks.

 

However, I don’t agree with some of your comments about it boiling down to being too hard. I don’t think it’s too much to ask not to have to scroll through your entire depot to list several instances of items for sale located at the very bottom. Nor is it too much to ask to make earning gold keys a little easier or adding a marker to Cargo ship and airport. However, I do think that it is unfair on legitimate players to have to list every non-usable war item individually…this change (though I understand the reason for it) makes it really hard on every legit player. 32 sales slots in Trade Depot is hardly sufficient when you have 40+ ammo boxes to sell and no one except Daniel’s City buys them once every 72 hours. It’s a bit unreasonable and not too much to ask to increase the number of sales slots as EA won’t restore the selling of war items back to 5.

 

Ever since this change, I have seen a staggering rise in hacker clubs. We are in a war against one now and so far, I have not come across a club that is so maxed out on disasters and supplies. All but a few are like that and definitely all have their storage hacked judging by their individual scores. Besides, what’s the point and where’s the fun when you have absolutely everything? I’ve worked really hard to get to war rank 60 and it’s taken me a long time and a lot of real money to get there, but at the same time I feel like I’m also being ‘punished’ for what hackers do. The problem here is that such drastic changes breed more hackers and for every hacked city that gets banner, 3 or 4 new ones are made. I see this every day sitting in Arena 6 with war ranks 1 and cards maxed to level 15.

 

Let’s face it…this might be a city building games, however if it wasn’t for the war component, SCBI would have half the players it has today. Most of us are only in it for wars and that includes me.

 

Again, thanks for your time and for your response Standard smile

 

Take care,

AB

Message 3 of 5 (1,245 Views)

Re: Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

★ Expert

@AshleyBase I’m glad you understand the intended spirit of my response and appreciate your perspective. I have a clearer understanding of where you’re coming from and it’s consistent with what I assumed...your focus is on the war games, which is perfectly fine and I have no issue with at all.

It appears that there are four items you take exception with to my generic classification of too hard. The 1st & 4th item appear to be related so I will save for last. The 2nd item refers to making gold keys easier to earn (perhaps may be reworded as they are difficult to earn or even too hard) which I don’t disagree with but with careful planning and coordination the can be obtained, just not at the rate some desire. The 3rd item is related to adding a marker to Cargo and airport shipments...perhaps I’m missing something but there’s always a boat or airplane in front of my terminals (yes, you have to look to see where the plane is going...but I already know - gets back to planning factor).

The 1st and 4th items appear to be related to the inability to put 5 war items up for sale in one slot...being a long time player you know exactly where everything is located and doesn’t take but a second to get there...I know it must be frustrating having to go to get war items 32 times but any change to accessing your depot won’t change that. The issue appears to boil down to the fact that EA’s corrective action has made it more difficult to pass along items legitimately which somewhat offsets the unique and unusual advantage gained from feeders (cities & clubs) supplying their primary city. In the process it has made it more difficult for legitimate players (too hard) but it certainly helps level the playing field and increases visibility to hackers...which is a very good thing. As related to your 40 ammo boxes, I’m guessing you didn’t acquire all of those in one war and were simply remiss in putting them up timely...back to planning.

I completely agree with you the war game element brought in a large number of f

Message 4 of 5 (1,219 Views)

Re: Suggestions for SimCity BuildIt

★ Expert

I completely agree with you the war game element brought in a large number of folks and has been an economic windfall for EA...in spite of themselves. It has also brought with it feeders & feeder clubs and cheaters and hackers that were not prevalent prior to the war games. In the beginning it was a lot of fun and hopefully soon it will be again. I’m glad you enjoy the war games. Take care.

 

(I apologize, there was a glitch in the upload)

Message 5 of 5 (1,211 Views)