Tiny Tower

Especially during events, players now have to log on every hour or two in order not to miss out on prizes that only come once you've collected the others, which only reappear once you've collected those, and have a cap.

There are levels of benefit for getting more and more friends hooked (to a point, I think; I've never done it).

Used to be you could log on once in 24 hours, but now there are reasons to log on every hour or at least quite a number of times per day.

There seems to be a lot of angst among players to visit their 256 friends each and every day (and send them as many "gifts" as you can). It used to be 100, which I found impossible to keep up with, and now at least a few players are asking for even more.

This is the bulk of the game --- tap tap tap tap tap tap --- sometimes to the point of physical pain.

In some ways, though it's not really an "advantage against other players", almost everything in the game can be purchased so you can have a leg up on others, and there is a lot of competition, no matter how friendly. I've seen at least one person get mad because he hadn't won the hourly raffle more than any other player (and yes, you can purchase 24 hours' worth of raffle entries now).

There seems to be no longer a sense that one must have a taller tower than others, but definitely a competition for most "Bux", most "Legendary Bitizens" (long-term and/or expensive), and most "Golden Tickets", which are all either an incentive to play constantly or spend real money.

Just yesterday (Oct 19/23) they added even more advertisements to the already overwhelming number of possible "rewards".

I've been playing for years -- these dark patterns have only increased in the last three years -- but my long-term investment in time and energy, as well as money and "buddies", keeps me thinking I'll lose a lot if I stop playing.

There is no end to this game, and you feel like you're wasting resources and missing out if you don't use up the resources you have "earned".