Global Trade Market...questions...concerns...complants!!!

[opbob77]

I can live with items being sold, but a)let us refresh immediately instead of waiting 30 seconds, b) let us search just for the item we need. Constantly opening and closing the trade depot is both time consuming and tiresome. I wind up closing the game. It seems to me that this is an easy fix that won't hurt the integrity of the game.

[sanerplace]

Unbelievably poor implementation of GTHQ. One can only conclude that this is by design to frustrate players into spending cash.  Especially after each update made it WORSE! Stupid part of all this is that if players could find what they need first try, the load on servers would drop dramatically. Instead we have to return 100-200 times just to get the one item we need.       This kind of stupidity or manipulation, whichever it is, will prevent me from buying EA products in the future. Why risk ending up with cripple-ware or $ extraction, frustrating headaches. No wonder EA earned 'worst company' rating.

[sanerplace]

Clearly EA does not care about their players concerns, judging by the lack of acknowledgement that this is an issue. Terrible customer relations IMO.

[ttttai]

Still nothing change on the issues!!!!! Waste of my time!! Deleted!!

[mycalls]

Ditto to most of the above complaints. Market is a scam to frustrate us into paying to advance in this game. Going back to tapped out...an EA game where I do spend money because I've enjoyed playing and give back a bit happily to get bonus content. Most importantly, money isn't required to move forward in that game. Better business model EA - wish you'd stuck with it here instead of ruining one of my favorite franchises.

[sanerplace]

Well, it is getting worse. I just tried to buy three dozer blades. As usual the coins were taken, little wheel thing spins, moronic sorry message blaming llamas for EA incompetence is displayed. However, upon returning to my city, unlike times before, my coins were NOT refunded. Went to another seller and still missing 2400 coins.   Anyone else had this happen?

[SpotzEA]

Yes!  Same happens to me on a regular basis.

I have been hunting for 3 dozer exhaust for the past 3 days and so far have not been able to buy a single one.  Always gone or none show up when I refresh GTHQ

[LeilaDawson]

I've stopped playing this game for days at a time. I mean really? The only "update" they made is that instead of clicking on an item to see it's not there, when you get there it already says "SOLD" like why are you even listing it on the Global trade if it's already sold? How are people getting there so fast? In any case I need what? 8 of each item now to upgrade storage and they are impossible to get AND they take up inventory space. So that's 24 slots in order to just upgrade inventory. Then if I want to upgrade any sort of space (like buy land) that's more inventory taken up because you need at least 24-40 more slots in order to "save" to purchase land. I thought that this game was a cash grabbing scam before but now it's more clear than ever all they want is money.

[gotheframe]

This 30 sec timed rotation is ridiculous. Before update, I could zip through the marketplace finding items needed by exiting & refreshing. Now, everything is sold & on top of that disappointment I have to wait the next 20sec out to have the opportunity to refresh & be disappointed again. No reason to venture through the marketplace after first success/failed attempt, remaing items of value will certainly be sold on entering new city.

Why can I not just make dozer and storage parts? It would be much quicker (rewarding) to accomplish aspects of the game on my time rather than the lottery that is marketplace. I actually deleted and started from scratch rebuilding my city so as not to grow so quickly that I can't find items needed to expand. Months in, I'm level 12 searching for dozer pieces every chance I get. I'm proud to have expanded my storage to max without sending you portions of my paycheck for simcash. Yeah, I'll hold out because there's nothing you offer worth real money to me in expanding the gameplay.

[etamni103]

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@LeilaDawson wrote:
I've stopped playing this game for days at a time. I mean really? The only "update" they made is that instead of clicking on an item to see it's not there, when you get there it already says "SOLD" like why are you even listing it on the Global trade if it's already sold? How are people getting there so fast? In any case I need what? 8 of each item now to upgrade storage and they are impossible to get AND they take up inventory space. So that's 24 slots in order to just upgrade inventory. Then if I want to upgrade any sort of space (like buy land) that's more inventory taken up because you need at least 24-40 more slots in order to "save" to purchase land. I thought that this game was a cash grabbing scam before but now it's more clear than ever all they want is money.

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@LeilaDawson -- I'm not going to defend EA on this issue because I've been complaining about it myself, including much earlier in this thread, but I will say that you only see an ad in the Global HQ if the item is available the moment it populates the list.  In another thread, an EA rep stated that about 8 million transactions are being completed each day -- that's about 5500 per minute -- which is why an advertised item can be sold after it populates in your Global HQ but before you manage to get to the player's city and purchase it.  In other words, it appeared in someone else's Global HQ a moment before it showed up in yours, and they got to it first.  For high-demand items, this almost always happens to me, too.  Displaying "Sold" just tells you that yes, it was there but someone beat you to it.  Previously, we just found empty Trade Depot slots when this happened, which was also frustrating.