For nearly the past two years I have played a game called SuperCity on Facebook.  It’s a game developed by the Russian company Playkot where you start with a few buildings and a street and create a central city with adjacent areas that each have their own unique properties.  There is the Snow Plateau, the Highlands, the Enchanted Valley and the Sands.  Still yet to be developed by Playkot is the Harbor.  A player’s success with the game is dependent in large part on assisting, and being assisted by, other players of the game.  Large buildings are generally added to the city via a multi-step quest to gather certain objects.  The objects are either collected from specific buildings or from other players.  A select few buildings can be bought outright either using one of the game’s currencies or real money.

The game also has an official app page on Facebook which alerts players to current activities including quests, updates to how the city functions, and giveaways.  While the general public cannot initiate new posts on this page, they have the ability to make comments on the announcements posted by Playkot.  Some of the posts are truly sincere and ask for assistance regarding a function of the game, however, the majority of the posts are complaints and could be considered borderline hostile.  The majority of the complaints stem around the quests being too hard to complete.  I hate to break it to those players, but you have to work your way up to getting these bigger buildings for your city.  When you were born, did you immediately start running down the sidewalk? No.  You first learned to scoot on your belly, then crawl, walk and only then did you learn how to run.  The same thing applies to playing SuperCity.  You have to work up to it and you need to stop complaining about it. It just makes you look like a bunch of sniveling cry-babies who don’t get your way.  You didn’t complete this week’s quest; then take a step back, figure out what you might have done differently and when that quest comes back around next year–and it most likely will come back next year–you’ll be better prepared.  It took me six months of playing the game every day before I was able to complete nearly every quest without breaking a sweat.  I have spent very little in real money on the game.  Granted, there are several buildings I don’t have and I probably won’t ever get because they cost real money.  I’m okay with that.  I’m slowly running out of land to put these buildings on anyway.

This past weekend, the quest presented to the players was for the Puppet Theater.  The first time this building was released to the players, it was a team activity which on paper worked great.  In reality, not so much.  Players were assigned to teams more or less randomly in groups of ten.  This would have worked great except that in most groups of ten, only three or four people actually participated while everyone in the group reaped the benefits.  This time, a player could earn the Puppet Theater by collecting puppets that were given when opening a red magic chest.  The red chests could be opened with ten keys which were obtained, for the most part, by dropping from a select few buildings or from opening the blue chest (blue chests opened with 40 candies). This turned out to be nearly impossible for the average player and only those who had stockpiles of candies and SuperBucks were able to obtain the theater.  The frustration stemming from this quest became rather ugly rather quickly.  As always, Playkot was accused of being greedy.  Thing is, they are a business and someone has to pay the developers to continue to create new stuff for the game.  It’s ironic, though, because those same players who label Playkot as greedy are just as greedy themselves.

Quarterly, the game rotates its seasonal currency.  In the fall players can collect candies from certain buildings to spend on various items for the city.  In the winter, this changes to baubles (Christmas ornaments).  Today was the day of the switch from autumn to winter currency.  We went from having over a dozen buildings that pay out the candies to only three that drop the baubles.  This will change as the next three months proceed and more buildings are activated to drop baubles, but the number of people who demanded that their autumn buildings drop the winter currency was astounding.  Now who is being greedy?

Helpful Hints to Successful SuperCity Play

1. New players really should read the game FAQ as soon as possible after starting the game.  It explains a lot of the issues they complain about incessantly.
2. Join a SuperCity group on Facebook.  There are many.  They are led by seasoned players who want to help.  They can answer questions you have and many times they have access to the quest requirements before the quest becomes available.  You can also find other players that you can add that will help you build a successful city.
3. Concentrate on doing the quests for your infrastructure buildings and try to ignore the harder quests that come out every week, at least for a few months.
4. Log into your game each day.  You don’t have to sit and play for hours, but just check in.  This will give you your daily bonus which on day 5 equals 7 SuperBucks.  SuperBucks are used to buy premium businesses needed to do the bigger quests.  For the first couple months concentrate on collecting SuperBucks, not the coins to build casinos.
5. After a couple months, collect the casino coins each week until you are rewarded the casino.  It takes 20 days of playing to earn a casino and it will pay you 1 SuperBuck every 72 hours.  I found it useful to collect SuperBucks for about a month, then collect casino coins.  I alternated until I had the number of casinos I desired.  If you place them correctly, you can fit 7 casinos in your Central City.  They cannot be placed in other areas at this time.
6. As you acquire more land, build up the number of each building you have.  A reasonable number might be a dozen of each that cost coins and five of each that cost Superbucks.  The more you have, the faster you can complete the steps of the quests when you are ready to attempt them.
7. Start building up your “savings”.  As the infrastructure quests get more difficult, they will require more resources to complete.  Don’t allow yourself to get so strapped that you don’t have enough coin or goods to start your businesses working.  Take a small break from your quests to build your savings from time to time.  Start by maintaining a coin balance of 1000, then slowly work that up until it never drops below 10 million.  Start your stockpile of goods at 100 and work up to maintaining an inventory of say 40 or 50 thousand.  Save your SuperBucks and spend them wisely.  Try not to let the balance drop below 50 or even 100 SB once you get it built up.
8. Above all, have fun.  It’s a game.  It’s not real life.  If you don’t complete a quest this time, chances are it will be back in some way shape or form next year.  Case in point:  I didn’t have enough SuperBucks to buy the Hawaiian Restaurant until my third summer playing.  Did the world come to an end because I couldn’t buy it the first year?  No.  I moved on to other things and it was still available to me later.

So, if you play SuperCity, remember that it is just a game and it is meant to be fun.  If you are getting so worked up about it that you are stressed out and angry, maybe you need to take a step back.  If you are not paying for buildings or game currency, Playkot owes you nothing.  For the most part the game is free to everyone and you only have to pay for stuff if you want to. Don’t be an ungrateful cry-baby.  It doesn’t suit you.