Monopoly Secrets

Is anybody else noticing a significant decrease in chance cards?

It seems that I’m hardly getting any these days, especially when compared with before the restart. This makes it a lot harder to get bonus buildings, which makes the game a lot more risky for me.

I’m curious what the chance is you’ll get a chance card for each move you make–1%? 2%? 5%? No official word yet on that.

At the same time, any chance card I discard, I’m still getting the option to use it again the next time a sign in. Sometimes it’s annoying, but it can also be helpful when I decide I really DO want to use that demolition card!

I’ve been reading reports that players paying hackers real world $$ for Monopoly City Streets cash.

Apparently, hackers have found a way to hack their computer’s communication with Monopoly’s servers to trick them into giving certain players enormous sums of cash.

Can anyone confirm this? Have you seen it happen?

If this is happening, the developers should be able to put some simple safeguards in place real quick to prevent it. Oh, I don’t know, maybe they could flag accounts for review that somehow earn $1 trillion in the middle of the day?

The storm seems to have passed, but some players are still upset about the announced change in rent rules.

Personally, I think I lost a few million due to the large purchases I made right before the rules changed. If I knew that rent was going to go down so far so soon, I would have put those big purchases off.

Some players are suggesting there should be another rent change, however. For instance, increasing the  multiplier when a street is 50% built, or finding other ways to bring the rent value of expensive properties back up.

What do you think? If Hasbro was to change the rent rules again to give more value to expensive streets, how should they do it?

The official blog update today promises system maintenance, starting this morning, to deal with multiple account cheaters.

The game will be down for 3 hours starting sometime between 10 and 11 AM Eastern. During that time, systems will be put in place to eliminate the multiple accounts many cheaters are using.

And the official word on multiple accounts? One account per player, please. But we’ll let you have up to 5 per computer, just in case you’re sharing it with your family.

In other words, cheaters can now only use 5 accounts per IP address… A good change but still probably too easy to work around. I expect to still see plenty of multiple account abusers until more stringent measures are put into place. A good additional step would be to allow users to report abuse within the game.

Lots of players are still very angry with the unannounced drop in rent values yesterday. Some have even quit the game.

What do you think the developers should do to get rid of multiple account cheaters, for good?

What about families? Is anybody playing with their kids? In spite of all the setbacks, it is a very family-friendly game.

It’s confirmed. Rent values on large properties has completely changed.

It looks like the old cap of $1 MIL property values has return, except only as it applies to rent values.

You see, rent is calculated in part by the property’s value. (Building Rent = Street Purchase Price x Building Purchase Price x Rent Multiplier — details here.) When a lot more expensive streets appeared after the restart, they were very attractive for this reason.

Then, yesterday, without warning, the developers changed the rules. It looks like the “Street Purchase Price” when it comes to calculating rent has been capped at $1 MIL. In other words, even if your property cost $30 MIL, your building rent calculations will only “see” $1 MIL of that value.

Anyone that made sacrifices to purchase these more expensive streets, expecting greater returns, are now left out in the cold.

And the official Twitter and blog has been silent for almost 24 hours. Hmm…

So what’s the new strategy?

Some users are reporting that their rent earnings are dropping for no apparent reason.

Are the developers changing the rules, unannounced?

Have you noticed a change?

UPDATE: It’s confirmed. Rent values to have dropped across the board for all properties. The change seems to be tied to a change in the upper limit of one of the values that determines building rent.

There’s an interesting discussion brewing of cheating on Monopoly City Streets. If you create multiple accounts, for any reason, should that be considered cheating?

A small number of people have made an art out of creating multiple user accounts. Just take a look at the Global Leader Boards. They must have spent the last few days doing nothing but creating new accounts and transferring the startup money to their main user. (Sounds incredibly boring to me.)

But what about creating another account or two as a back up plan? Or to help out in rough times? Should this still be considered cheating?

I think so. If the game was designed for you to have 2 or more characters, it would have given them to you with one login.

What about alliances? These groups of players are working together and actively sharing resources for a variety of purposes. Some are just trying to help each other out, while others are actively attacking “any bad players.” (Some are just out to steal, kill and destroy. Shame on you.)

I think alliances are great, as long as it’s for noble purposes. They can bring a whole new dimension to the game.

Are you part of an alliance? Which one? How big is it?

Something has to be done about the cheaters in Monopoly City Streets.

After only a couple days of live gameplay, the leader boards are filled with people that have cheated to amass enormous unrealistic fortunes.

Hasbro and the programmers behind this game need to find ways to crack down on these guys, and quick. If they don’t, they risk loosing the ability to have real competition in the game. Not to mention, all the serious players are getting annoyed.

How do you think the cheaters are getting away with this?

The addition of taxes throws a pretty big wrench into every Monopoly City Streets strategy. Here are the details we’ve been given on the official blog:

There is only one certainty in MONOPOLY City Streets. Tax. Just like in real life, tax now plays an integral part of the game. The first 5 streets that you own are tax-free. The current tax rate is 3% per street. For example, if you own 15 streets your tax will be 30% of your total rent collected every day. If you own 25 streets your tax will be 60%, etc.

How does this affect your gameplay?

You Must Make Your First Five Streets Count
With your “first five streets” (presumably the first five streets you buy) tax-free, that means they have to count. Get the biggest, longest, most expensive streets you can, and build as many high-value buildings as possible on them.

For long-term success, this will make the biggest difference for you. I still stand by my previous advice to maximize your return on day 1 and get off to a good start. However, after that, it’s time to build big.

More to come as we learn more details from the MCS staff.

How has taxes changed your strategy? Discussion in the comments below.

The new game is now live!

I’ve only noticed a couple changes so far that weren’t announced in the official blog.

Property prices aren’t as well rounded as used to be (instead of $1 mil they’re $1.039 mil, $1.216 mil, etc.). And more properties are all the way up in the $2 million range and beyond.

What changes do you see?