I can see the improvement of the game since the economy/skill decay update. Game has now motivated a lot of people to play differently instead of just old boring grind, and it has also attracted a lot of interesting and fun players. I must say that there are less players when there was no skill decay/economy changes, but I say that it's good. Better less interesting players than many bots and jam thiefs
I must say, Rhys has really found the best solution to this.
what? publicity about the game doesn't mean suddenly become more fun. that's nonsense.
id say its become much less energetic, not perfect, but many fewer people are doing jams than before. jams already being one of the lowest paying single job objects, i never understood the obsession with jams. but lets admit, doing jams is popular because it 'seems' interactive and is more relatable to real world tasks than bashing pinatas or telemarketing. its unfortunate the single job objects took such a hit when they were never that popular in TSO, and chalkboards were enhanced in TSO to make logic a more popular skill, which now it is, thanks to some publicity we gave it.
that all has pretty much ended now. jams were the starting point of peoples money making experience, and shouldnt have been treated as if only people wanted to do is jams. jams were supporting a entire industry of single job objects and the community was not ready for these changes. people are still trying to do other money making lots, and they are not having much success.
it was nice to see people doing things at scale, which is what people doing these objects seemed to enjoy.
anyways, back to this topic. other category lots will only become popular by riding on the popularity of money and skill houses. now that money houses have been hit hard, why not just delete all the single job objects and rip out 50% of the game? except that's what happened, and nothing is there to fill the void other than bottom feeding store owners like myself, except we were here before the changes, and have noticed a sharp decline in sales across everything.
popular group activities will lend themselves to the other property categories. right now i see 2 romance lots that are public, and about 50 skill and money houses, but sadly the most consistently online houses tend to be stores, and many more people have started stores than before the change to jams.
this might sound dystopian, but letting money and skill houses have free reign would have grown the game faster than whatever else could be done short term. we can think that making one or two activities less popular will make the game more diverse, there are just too few reasons to do it.
now there are problems for both of money and skill houses, as skill houses were never in that strong of a position before, and money houses now are scraping by in terms of popularity.
anything worse than a criticizing of this miracle, of being able to play this game online again, is not offering solutions- so here is a couple
*poll people, ask them what they want to see in large changes
*make maximum skill points be 100 or even 1000
*do away with skill decay and skill locks
*increase maximum skill speed between 236%-354% with 6, 12, 18, people, etc with mini bursts upto 1000%. noobs will love that.
*scale all payouts to be higher to reflect the higher skill points
*create a way to off-set the huge economic boom and player participation this will create by raising some prices, mostly to do with food and objects. players in skill houses shouldn't be able to get free food unless the property bonus for visitors is raised.
*allow more roomys, probably 3 into each house for a total of 10-11 roomys
if your interested, here is the reason behind these suggestions
- higher maximum skills will encourage people to open more skill lots, as everyone will want max skills, the demand for skill lots will increase substantially
as will the demand for skill and greening objects and more people in the game means more people in different category lots
- do away with skill decay and skill locks. they are designed to reward older sims and punish high skill sims. its a haphazard approach.
- increasing maximum skill speed substantially will give the appearance that there is less space between 0 and 100 or 1000 skill points, while 0-20 takes about 10-20 hours, 100 or 1000 skill points should be very hard to attain, however, it would give those interested in that goal something to do, and would benefit lower skill players by allowing higher skill sims to participate in helping skill speed and still getting progress. no more skilling at 20.99 and getting no benefit, because you live there and want to help the players speed. that's a horrible sacrifice for skill house roomys to have to do. and this will benefit from players preference for doing things at large scale
the problem with the game right now is not competition, its demand. addressing demand by allowing more roomys into a house will help the game grow and be more fun. how? everyone will have reasons to be a roomy at a skill house, right now its a bad deal.
if these changes are thought about or implemented, all the other properties will benefit from this increase in demand. money houses will benefit from players with higher skill points, as the demand to use money houses will increase. stores will benefit from more customers. the increase player base will increase the role of service and romance lots. in the mean time, other things can be done for the lesser properties, such as combining them or coming up with other ideas. but lets stick to the core issue of demand, and increasing demand will greatly benefit the fun and activity of the community.
