While the time limits are often subject to debate, the Community Events add a controversial feature which is charging Social Points instead of Lifestyle Points to speed up tasks or do things that would require LP (Getting Required Resources).
The problem is SP is not easy to earn since the only ways of earning SP without spending real money is doing Social Tasks (which requires Neighbors), opening a Mystery Gift with a Premium Prize (which requires Keys from the Weekly Tasks), watching Ads, or using the Social Point Flower. The requirement to spend SP was made worse when the Doctor, Doctor Update
nerfed the Social Point Flower to cost 20 LPs per spin instead of 5.
I'm probably guessing Firemonkeys might have been aware of how easy it is to farm LPs. One can easily use the Cooking Hobby since there's a meal that requires only 1 minute so getting the collectibles is easy, and the prize is 5 LPs once all the previous prizes are collected so it's easy to earn the prize with several Sims. Plus you get 1 LP when a Sim reaches level 6 so with 10 Sims, you get 10 LPs, and you can demote the Sims (using another Hobby like Fashion Designer and switch back to Cooking) to reset their level and build back to level 6 for 1 LP per Sim.
However, two Events have an exception to the SP rule. The SimTown Market Event still allows players to use LP to speed up tasks on a Workstation or do actions like Double Shifts (if they are VIP) but actions/tasks specific to the Event (such as Orders and Couriers) still charge SP. Similarity, the chapters of the The Prince & The Pocket-Sized Princess Quest also allows LP to be used to complete the goals in the chapters but the resource objects, getting requirements, and building tasks in the Magical Rainforest still charge SP.
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Comments
I have 3 sims who cook all the time (20 minutes at the time) in daytime and work on their orbs instead in the nights. My other sims are working on all the other hobbies such that I usually have a lvl 6/6 sim for the current competition. Except now where a lot of my sims are collecting flowers instead of doing their hobbies.
Besides that I have 6 sims working on their careers in the markets. My police station finally became 100% two days ago with all the workstations on lvl 20. But I still need to build 2 more workstations in each of the other markets.
I'm thinking the reason Firemonkeys raised the cost of Social Point Flowers from 5 LPs to 20 LPs is in response to people using Hobbies to farm LPs and using the LP on the Social Point flowers. The Girl Who Games was famous for using the Cooking Hobby and she used the 1 minute option over and over again to earn collectibles to quickly complete the collection, and the prize from Cooking was 5 LPs which offset the cost for Social Point Flower spins. Now Firemonkeys decided to nerf the cost of the Social Point Flower to 20 LPs in the Doctor, Doctor Update which added fuel to the fire to Events using SP.
The SP instead of LP requirement makes it jarring since everything else in the game uses LP with SP being reserved for the Nightclub, the Houseboats, two of the homes (Renovator's Dream and Scandinavian House), and select clothes and objects.
There are plenty of people who want everything straight away, first time round on events and are willing to pay money to get it, however, they wouldn't pay if they didn't have to and then the game would go because there would be not enough income.
Social points can be very hard to get, e.g. the woodwork task requiring you to make a weird ornament for 1 sp, and at 5 hours for every 'quick practice' this can take a week unless you get lucky or use 10 lp to skip it. To make it harder, you can only have one sim working on social tasks and you need to have a good neighbour who has everything.
And absolutely right that farming lp is easy but it is tedious. I tend to do it whilst sitting watching telly so I don't get bored silly and use diving rather than cooking as I don't like to have to clean up all those messy piles of plates.
I do buy some things for my game e.g. the automatic pool cleaner, which is great and not expensive, but I don't buy things I don't really want.
Some things are just silly, take for instance the designer rugs in the store right now, not cheap and if you read the print you pay to unlock 1 random set, so you might pay and really not like the set you get. If you pay money you should at least be able to choose which you want.