User blog comment:Oioiaussie/Buy playgrounds? A common misconception!/@comment-5039776-20120531010817

Dear Baristan,

Thank you very much for your comment but I am not sure that I agree.

In my view, land is a sunk cost. Once it is bought, it's what you do with it that matters. The cost of a pixel is the same whether you buy fly traps, playgrounds, scooter stores (which is most certainly the current highest and best use of land for stores that can be bought for coin, not crystals) or other stores/decorations.

We buy stuff with poor returns because they look nice to us - well, I do anyway - the worst being the clover patch, which returns just 7.5 coins per pixel per day but has a fast payback of just 8.3 days. Compare that to the land cost of 2,000 coins+ per pixel at the higher levels. It'll take months and months just to get your money back.

I think many people confuse short payback periods (like the playground) with good return. As my example clearly shows, 9 venus fly traps beat a playground by 75% after just 30 days and more as time goes by (after 60 days, the 9 VFTs return 144,000 coins vs net 86,200 for the playground etc). In fact, the 9 VFTs surpasses the playground after just 23 days.

As it turns out, I like the look of the playground and have one and a few venus fly traps too, but I am certain that for players wanting to cash up quickly, the VFT is best.