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I have done this on several occasions to many different tree farms. What this comes down to is, trees were never meant to be used in this fashion. If they were, you would be able to mark the fruit itself for sale. That is plain as day.
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When the game first started nothing could be marked for sale. Simmies were non transferable and non sellable. Many lost their original simmies due to this when recreating sims - back then there was no option to move between cities.
With the introduction of the store category, so came the ability to sell anniversary gifts - you'll note they are still non tradeable - the only way to pass them to a different sim is via setting them for sale.
The first anniversary gift was a pet statue - nice but it did nothing. For a while we had promotional gnomes - again nice, but did nothing. When the tree came along it was seen by many as
the best addition to the game ever. For many it still is (personally I still prefer the canon as the best addition
) and is still the most prized possession given to long term players by EA.
The only reason I'm going a little off topic here and explaining some of the history is that the comment "if you were supposed to sell fruit, it would have been made possible" doesn't really wash with the previous history of development on the game.
The tree was no doubt intended to give a skill point to the owner of said tree - or for the owner to offer the fruit to friends and guests (it used to be a nice trivia prize when trees were first introduced). It took about an hour after the first few trees ripened in game to realise that if you wanted to prevent unsavoury sorts running in and stealing the fruit that you just spent 20 + plus hours waiting to ripen then you had to protect your tree - sad but true.
Since day one, players have found ways to capitalise on what the game gives, create shortcuts, cheat others and find loopholes to optimise their gameplay. Some also found a way to make a living (of sorts) off the game, the only reason they were able to do so, was because someone somewhere was always willing to pay to take the shortcut - be it to receive money in game without working for it, to start up a new lot, buy a rare pet, or in recent years to buy fruit.
Making trees only work in skill lots will not prevent any of the above.
If the intention of making trees only work on skilll lots is to put the tree farmers out of business then it will not work. At first no-one will be able to afford fruit, but as more money is made - (or perhaps bought from EA?) then the fruit farmers will still keep their fruit farms on skill lots. They will either use pay doors or they'll use code doors with an out of game exchange.
For me, EA selling skills and locks is still one of the best solutions to counter the apparent problem with the tree farms, particularly as the transaction would be far more secure if its done directly with EA.
Polly