All posts by Jamie2doyen

@Neighbor Jane "What many players object to is the focus on match 3"

Oddly enough, they likely could have simplified the game by instead removing match-3, and tying 'energy' to task completion and town-building. (same for regatta) Many games make 'matching' an integral part of the game, and the reality is that it's not something township really needs to make the game work.

In fact, one could suggest match-3 is a 'foreign' element. Completing tasks in-game with respect to farming, mining, building and such is intuitive. But match-3 isn't. It's really the only thing that doesn't fit into the game at all. (Reminds me of the song, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not the same...") lol

What will be interesting is how the players react to this. Methinks the developers only rolled this out in 'select' regions so they could see if there was a negative impact on income. If so, they could potentially undo it (or pause it) before more damage was done. That may be why this wasn't mentioned in the last news update.

Anyway, the nice thing is that there are so many games out there, that a person certainly won't have a problem finding something new.

As someone who has worked in game development, I've seen this pattern before.

Has anyone noticed that they no longer give the 5 t-buck 'mini-game' tasks anymore?! They also have made expedition rewards to be only profile pictures and town signs instead of animated properties. Now they are removing the zoo.

What happens in games that are declining is that revenues drop, and they can no longer pay for the staff who were making and/or maintaining these things. When those staff leave, the remaining staff trim down the game so they can manage it with reduced staff.

However, the trimmed down game ends up being less desirable, and so fewer people play. That in turn reduces revenue, which in turn requires more 'trimming'. In the end the game will reach a point where only the core player base remains and the game becomes only a shell of what it was. (Which seems to be fast approaching.)

But why remove the zoo? My speculation is so they can attract new players to the 'simplified' game.

However, if they were wise, what they *should* have done was simply move the zoo availability up to level 120. (existing players wouldn't lose anything, but if they were below level 120 they wouldn't be able to change their zoos.) If they moved the zoo up to level 120, then players who max out the town part of the game would then be able to continue the game with fresh content. Put simply, it would give people something new to strive for.

Unfortunately, the developers are missing out on opportunities, and they are likely overwhelmed in a game that is huge and hard to code. They try to do things to raise more cash, but they miss out on things that could help them. For example, they could be selling old regatta awards for t-cash, which would likely bring in more revenue.

Anyway, like most games, they usually don't age well after a decade, so this isn't really that big of a surprise to me...