<blockquote><hr>
Have you thought about trying custom content?
Here is a tutorial link:
http://www.geocities.com/ealandtutorials/
It's a good way to make simple things and earn simoleans on the side...
[/ QUOTE ]
While I agree with you that making and selling custom content is a good way to make money in this game. I don't agree that it is an answer to the problems we are facing with the low payouts.
If we all have to rely on money made from cc to progress in this game where are the simoleans going to come from for our customers to purchase our products.
The payouts are being lowered because the economy is blowing out, no other reason. It is not to make us buy simoleans from the ATMs but rather to be able to establish the buyback of simoleans. If simoleans are too easily made with money objects and jobs they will not be able to implement the buybacks. Buybacks are very important to the direction EA wants to take this game.
The only reason they would be constantly lowering the payouts is that too many simoleans are being made buy players. As the economy blows out they are bringing things down further in an effort to control it. I am sure they thought from trials in TC3 that they had things under control or could control things with dynamic payouts and pricing. I tried to tell Lee a few months ago in a debate over this that this would happen “payouts would have to be far to low”. Now that we have an environment where making simoleans is worth something a huge amount more effort is going into making them. Their strategy for controlling it is not working. They blame it on bots and think if they can control them the problem will go away. Well I made 65k in 4 hours yesterday without using any bots. Having said that I don’t believe payouts are anywhere near high enough for the game to succeed. Some of us know how to make simoleans fast in this game, the majority don’t. For EA to be able to stop those who do, from virtually printing real money in this game when the buybacks come in, payouts will have to be so low that the majority of players will find it far to hard to get anywhere in the game. I am also sure once its realized how I was able to make the 65k the way I did that it will be stopped as well. I was able to do so because I anticipated things correctly. I can see others making adjustments to their game to do the same so I am sure it will be fairly short lived. I would guess it would go down to around half that. 32k for 4 hours work is not enough to justify the time spent for the returns available. Although I have to say here that I am not fully set up yet and can still do better. Here many of you are likely to think that people like me are spoiling the game for you. I have posted this so you can all see what is going on so we can all do something about finding a resolve to the issue. Keep in mind that if I can do this, lots of others are as well. Also if I am able to do this using 1 computer manually, imagine what botters will be making. I think that stopping botters is one of the most important things that EA needs to do. If they don’t, the game is doomed.
I have spent the last few months weighing up where this game is going. I have also put a lot of effort into ways of fixing problems I could see arising.
EA have stated they have a new combatant for bots. From history their attempts have been complete failures and I would be surprised to see a decent method come from the ranks in EA. I really do hope they have succeeded this time. If they haven’t I do know a way to stop them in their tracks. My way would involve no policing, no detection programs running in the back of our systems, no typing and except for a few people who grumble over everything and anything would be excepted happily by players. I have also developed a system where buybacks can be established and EA would not have to worry about any losses from buying simoleans. Players could enjoy the game as it has been with higher payouts. Payouts could go back up straight off and the all important capabilities of making real money from the sales of things like custom content could go ahead.
