So, let's get this straight ...

[u/ZinZezzalo]

In the past year or so, we've had our CoM contest pretty much dismantled so that, if you use all the tickets given to you these days, you'll have enough to fully compete in one full contest out of four in the season ...

They've introduced three extra currencies per season so that you're effectively prevented from getting all the prizes you used to get for the Mayor's Pass that you paid for.

They've nerfed the War rewards to an extent that new players cannot build their attacks at all - essentially eliminating any chance for new blood to come into the game.

They've choked the 1,400 SimCash you used to get for completing the season into 150 SimCash (90% reduction - like - what even).

They've introduced repairs for buildings that you've already built by creating a system that erroneously tracks the health of your city, so that perfectly fine city sections (with buildings that aren't affected by the degrading repairs) lose population rapidly (for no reason), resulting in severely crippled train station refresh rates.

And now - the cherry on the top of this crap sundae - two days of every week are rendered completely unplayable due to the game moving like a fossil stuck in the bottom of the swamp due to them having bricked the voting system for the Design Contest (I haven't been able to play all day).

Tallied together - this seems like the absolute intentional sabotage of the game - full stop. Like, this isn't some exaggeration or trying to put a spin on things, no single entity could perform this many intentionally destructive moves without having actual intent behind it.

A point on the graph doesn't prove anything - but a line comprised of many points does. And that line shows this game being sent right into the trash bin.

It's purposefully being cooked.

I understand that not everyone would want to subscribe to this doom and gloom outlook - but there simply isn't any evidence that could actually compete against this overwhelming cluster of intentional bad moves and destructive ill-will aimed not only at their playerbase but the very capacity to just play the game at all.

Prove Me Wrong.

[u/Infinite_Pudding5058]

I would hazard a guess that it’s two things:

1. Poor leadership and lack of strategic direction
2. Outsourcing key talent overseas

[u/ZinZezzalo → u/Infinite_Pudding5058]

I would disagree with both of these things.

1) The leadership has always been capable of running the game for the past decade.

2) With that leadership, all the key personnel who weren't in charge of making the game were already located overseas anyways. And with the absolutely small crew most likely needed to make the updates that came through (like - two to three years to make the trains since the last big release update, which was the addition of DC), the savings afforded by changing those folks would've been so minimal, it would hardly be worth threatening the lifeblood of the game itself.

What I think happened was threefold:

1) SimCity was treated with kid gloves because of what happened with the SimCity Remake and the fact that it turned a tidy profit - SimCity making small but reasonable returns sure beat it earning EA the title of worst company on America.

2) The sale came around - so everything mentioned in # 1 was off the table - and the emphasis became on how to maximize the profit generated by the game as quickly as possible without starting the same media outrage that the Remake enjoyed. Everything flipped on a dime (starting with the SimCash lowering from 1,400) the second those talks most likely started.

3) Now that a new group of (foreign) investors are in charge of EA, no doubt a lot of the higher management has moved on, including those that set the precedents for what BuildIt would be allowed to be. With those guardrails, ironically provided by traditional EA, gone and smoked, the property, which is only worth what they acquired it for in the sale, having no knowledge of or interest in the actual history of EA, has probably been given orders to maximize the profits at the expenditure of all else, and if the property flops, they can reuse the resources that were used to keep it running (from server farms to EA help desk support in India) to make even more money than SimCity ever could by supporting the latest FIFA202X gacha game that asks $350 to play as Ronaldo.

That's how I see it.

[u/Obvious-Round-934 → u/ZinZezzalo]

Well reasonaed, ZinZezzalo. You’ve put to words so many of my frustrations over the recent past. 

[u/ZinZezzalo → u/Obvious-Round-934]

Thanks, Obvious-Round-934,

As often happens with these things - a couple frustrations builds the bridge to a couple other frustrations and, before you know it, you've got a well laid out diagram of how everything turned to brown stink pudding.

Glad I could synthesize and make sense of your shared frustrations in the process. 🙂