It's hard to understand why others can't see this. I understand the way the FA was before was unfavorable but this is just plain torturous, I don't even want to play FA anymore. I wasn't a big fan of it before but I absolutely detest it now and now as soon as I know one is coming it ruins my whole game experience for the whole week before and the week of FA.
If you find it horrible do as many do, take the short route grab the prices and forget it.
nobody is forcing you to spend all your recouces at it, and for the shortest route you don't even need to spend any resources and just play the game with a level 1 factory and workshop wherever you have room.
Your issue only exist if you want to go all out. you cannot expect a car to drive 200 miles and hour and be fuel efficient.
If you hate using CC for an FA become a nice a honda civic instead of a Ford GT
I have looked you up, and I noticed you are in chapter 6.
This is a stage in game where I understand very well the old format might have been more to your liking, but as you advance in game, chapters become longer and it becomes harder and harder to make room. the total annihalation that the old system required also become an enourmous burden. it becomes harder and harder to make space for it.
Also each FA starts to look more like the same, the prizes becomes less interesting and the effort more boring.
I wonder if this new badge is the real issue, or the fact that this is your x FA and this badge is the scape goat of an ever increasing burden the FA has for a tiny prize.
People at my stage of the game rarely play FA's now nor in the past. the word FA is almost foul language.
We did not have teleport spells in the past, so to them FA sounds like I need to destroy my city after which it takes many many months to recover.
This new format is slowly returning the interest for us, because we can now play the game instead of destroy our game.
The combination of new badges and teleport spells makes the new FA much much less of a burden to most players who play it without the competitive part of it.
Players who enjoyed the old format have the opposith response. they had optimised for the old format and enjoyed it, this new format is alien, needs reajustment and that will create opposition.
I think in the end the look how the participation grade is, and I wanna bet that it's a lot higher these days than in the old days.
I also want to bet the return of competition has created more revenue.
and to an extend it forces players to explore parts of the game they might have ignored before, creating again better participation and revenue.
Both of those factors are for them very important measurements of success.
If the FA was introduced in this format and the old never existed we would look completely different at the subject.