EA has been dropping new content at an amazing pace lately and I’m grateful. I’ve been playing The Simpsons Tapped Out (TSTO) for around five months and I’m just as exited about it now as I was when I first started to get hooked.
However there are some new features that would be both cool and add much needed functionality to the game. Here’s my wish list…
My first wish is more about entertainment value than functionally. It would be so cool to be able to move characters around while they are doing stationary outside tasks. It’s loads of fun to “stage” them. I do this now by waiting for the desired characters to wander into position before starting their task(s). This is also very tedious and time consuming. Here’s one of my favorite ‘staged’ scene screenshots to date with Frink and Milhouse flying their RC’s at Frink’s Lab with Nelson playing guitar with Santa’s Little Helper in the foreground. Binky the 3-Eyed Fish popping up was the icing on the cake! You can see the full-res version on my Flickr page.
Actually, moving some characters is already possible on a limited basis. I routinely move characters that are doing tasks attached to items. My favorite (since Squidport Expansion) are to move Homer lounging in his pool & Brockman relaxing in a chair to various spots on my water front; especially Wolfcastle’s mansion – also Grandpa and Agnes on their bench tasks. It takes a little finesse. You just have to keep tapping around the item (Brockman in a chair for instance) until it selects the chair (not Brockman). Then you can move it almost anywhere. Once the chair is selected you can move them both pretty much anywhere. 😀
Being able to move any stationary tasked character would also be very useful for placing characters needed for upcoming quests together in an easy to access location.
My second wish is much more serious. It’s for a ‘Master Character & Task List’. This would free up a tons of playing time that could better be used for optimizing your town, and hint-hint EA 😉 buying more premium content. A popup menu that lists all characters that a player currently has in their town, with their location (Springfield or Krustyland) and task status with time remaining – plus the ability to rush with donuts. This list should be storable by either character name or time remaining. Tap on a character in this list for a submenu where you can either zoom directly to that character (like it sometimes does when Sideshow Bob appears) or if a character is not currently tasked – it could also popup that character’s task selection list so you can choose one without having to literally chase them down all over town. No, make that two towns with the addition of Krustyland. I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spend (more like waste) every day scanning/panning back and forth across my town (now Krustyland), trying to find all my characters and make sure they are all optimally tasked-out. I’m starting to get a callus on the tip of my tapping finger from all this excessive panning for crying out loud. I’ve commented on this all over the dang Internet in hopes EA would take note. What would have been a mere luxury a few levels ago is fast becoming a necessity. Without something like this, any further expansions to the game will begin to risk making it unmanageable and hence not as much fun anymore 😦
It would also be awesome to able to set (and change) the “start screen” (or “landing zone” as I like to call it). It’s the part of town that first comes into view when your town loads. As it is now, the start screen seems to be the geographic center of town. Being able to manually set it would allow you to move it to your latest-greatest part of town – so that’s the first thing your friends see when they visit. 😀
Finally, more paving textures would be sweet. For example: brick pavers, pebblecrete, dirt-road, etc. — anything new will do!
DrewDabble Black 