Solving the Easy, Unlimited Money Making Problem in These Games

[Whiskiz]

The whole just wait and make millions, or once you start turning a profit it just gets bigger and bigger and all difficulty goes out the window whether you wait around or not, before long.

Add to that a lack of sense of purpose besides just "feed town make go bigger" as in no other set challenges or dynamics to the gameplay - and it's easy to see how games like these can become mediocre in terms of challenge and therefore immersion/enjoyment before long.

Someone suggested RNG events where you gain/lose stuff randomly, maybe say a bad wheat harvest here or there or a fuel explosion - i don't know about you guys but i hate RNG especially in my strategy games.

So i started thinking about it and one solution to the problem would be to have the money that's going out rising, as well as your money coming in. Then you can't sit and wait and become a millionaire due to your profits going down over time and if you continue playing normally it still provides challenge as you need to make more and more as you go just to keep up and stay on top - from justified costs/expenditures preferably.

I started thinking maybe they could add some kind of simulated public trading where "other people" buy shares in your company over time so you earn less and less for your stake and you need to keep the board happy, but then i figured it's a little messy and kind of fake because there isn't really a simulated public or even other AI players (here specifically anyway)

I then came up with a way to make it alot more simple and realistic.

The whole maintenance thing - of buildings, vehicles etc combats this somewhat, but the problem is those costs are static so once you start making a good profit on each thing, it's all going to exponentially increase and before you know it - after the starting bump of the game on Hard it's going to go back to the same problem, so:

Why not increase maintenance over time? maybe 10% increase every year to everything (subject to balancing) because things especially vehicles and roads require more maintenance the older they are, to keep them in top condition after all.

If it ends up being too much in the longer term (subject to testing) you could easily reset this rising maint cost each new era/upgrade, with the better/best technology staying in much better condition for much longer (say down to 2% rise each year but higher initial cost for the technology and/or higher initial maint, or the durability could even become a stat and another thing to take into account when choosing which model of vehicle you go with..) and/or maybe be able to replace things once maint gets too high - enabling the gold sink still with an upfront replacement cost while then receiving the benefit of resetting the ongoing costs over time to a more manageable level.

We've all experienced brand new roads vs roads that have more potholes in them than road haha and the difference of work/maintenance required to stay on top of them. So it makes sense from both a realistic and gameplay point of view.

That way there's no run-away excess once you get over the starting hurdle, there's none of that sit and wait and become a millionaire etc and most importantly there's no fake or otherwise arbitrary limiter absorbing your profits just for gameplay, and i'm pretty sure it'd actually do the job that devs initially intended by implementing the maintenance mechanic in these games in the first place. That mechanic would be fine if it wasn't static, if it scaled with the rest of the game and its mechanics.

For those that don't like to be challenged and just like to win or play peacefully, this could be made to become a settings toggle that you have to actively toggle yourself at game start, something like "Realistic Simulation" or "Simulated Maintenance" or even just lore unfriendly straight "Veteran Mode" etc.

Because without an ever increasing "gold sink" there's always going to be this balance problem of once you start making an income that's it's then basically game from there.

Lore friendly, gameplay friendly, lots of different options for balancing and solves one of the biggest issues in these types of games.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

Solving the Easy, Unlimited Money Making Problem in These Games

Add to that a lack of sense of purpose besides just "feed town make go bigger" as in no other set challenges or dynamics to the gameplay - and it's easy to see how games like these can become mediocre in terms of challenge and therefore immersion/enjoyment before long.

I agree, there isn't much of a challenge if you have experience, but I don't find that my immersion or enjoyment of the game has suffered because of that in any way.
If you accept that challenge isn't a factor, then you need a different motivation to play. In my case, it has been to enjoy the evolution of the cities and transportation as well as simply enjoying everything this beautiful game offers to the eye.
So far I have enjoyed playing this for 196 hours already and as you can see, I'm having a whale of a time ;)
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1066780/discussions/0/1740012252806248163/

[Whiskiz]

Any comments on the idea to solve that problem still, for everybody else it does affect? :p

Also maybe i didn't it word it properly, replace "immersion/enjoyment" for "longevity" which still affect those things too.

[neldot]

The idea of raising maintenance costs of old vehicles and structures was already suggested various times on this forum, and it's not new, it was already (only for old vehicles) in the previous games, TF and TPF1.

Of course I agree, but I think that the Devs did on purpose this game so easy to meet the needs of a larger base of less harcdore players, the ones that usually complained about TPF1 economy being too hard and unforgiving.

However, I wonder if the old dynamic of raising vehicles maintenance costs could be re-introduced at least as an optional super-hard level of difficulty for veteran players already tired of the lack of challenge in the game economy.

[Whiskiz]

Yeah i think they also did it not to just aggressively appeal only to the massive mainstream casual market like the poster above (no offence) for max profits, as they're also the easiest to please - but that it was also to cut corners and save even more money: saving on developing extra mechanics, extra time on QA balancing etc.

Look at how poorly the "earnings" are calculated (see my thread i've just made about it), look at the removal of needs of cities and so development complexity, as well as apparently appropriately made balance mechanics like scaling maintenance and it's easy now to see this company has apparently gone full scummy corporation/capitalism wannabes.

I'm glad i didn't pay for this game then before trying it.

Hope the extra bit of $$ was worth sacrificing their reputation, morals and what looked like a great series of games.

Let's hope the mods can save the day like the devs are obviously relying on them to do, for free.

Thanks for the insight.

[michaelc_80]

This game isn’t deep enough to be a management game.. it’s a really pretty puzzle game with trains. And we love trains.. so we are happy.
It straddles the line of a builder with puzzle elements.
I like your idea.

[Whiskiz]

That's an unfortunate line of thinking, that specific genres can't have appropriate challenge and/or balance.

Puzzle games are also challenging, usually pretty puzzling :p

And it's possible - maintenance is already a thing, it just needs to scale (They just need to spend a little more money on development is the real, clear problem.)

Easy and fun just-play-with-trains should be relegated to a mode within the game, not an entire game and especially not an entire genre.

Like Minecraft and the fly-around cant-die unlimited-material creation mode and then your balanced, objective driven challenging survival mode as well as perma-death supa fancy Hardcore mode.

And lastly that it's content the first game had and has just been cut saving time and money?

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

Yeah i think they also did it not to just aggressively appeal only to the massive mainstream casual market like the poster above (no offence) for max profits, as they're also the easiest to please - but that it was also to cut corners and save even more money: saving on developing extra mechanics, extra time on QA balancing etc.

The reason they made it the way it is couldn't have been to save any money on developing new mechanics since the opposite is what took place. They already had the scaling maintenance mechanic in place and had to invest time and money into removing it and replacing it with the new maintenance adjustment mechanic.

It would seem the summary of your original post is that you would like them to change the maintenance mechanic back to how it was in the previous game. It is impressive that you managed to make such a long post just to say that.

[Whiskiz]

They didn't have it already in place in the new game.

In fact, they didnt have anything in place in the new version because it's a new version and it's not like they could just copy/paste code from the old game into the new, with even slight variations in vehicles, balance, features, gameplay etc that would make that impossible.

what is this new "maintenance adjustment" mechanic exactly? Just a fancy way of saying the base maintenance? That also apparently took time and money to "develop"?

My apologies for not knowing what they did or didn't do last game. It's funny cause that thought would never have entered my mind anyway - that an idea to fix a major balance problem was in the previous game, but not bothered to be developed fully/properly for the next one, in fact multiple features having been simplified/not fully fleshed out from the last title.

I guess that's on me though, seems to be the way of the majority of the gaming industry these days.

[Vimpster]

The development of the game does not work quite how you imagine. They did not make a new game engine for this version so unless they were incredibly stupid, they would have made this new game from simply redeveloping the previous one. This is standard practice for game development. They aren't going to needlessly reinvent the wheel by redeveloping everything they already had. They simply remove things and introduce new things into the game they already have and then label it a new game. So yes, they already had scaling maintenance in the game and they had to actually do work to remove it for this version.

The new mechanic introduced in this game is the ability to adjust the maintenance between normal, high, and very high. Very high completely restores any vehicle's condition back to brand new. In the previous game the scaling maintenance made it so you eventually had to replace your vehicles in order to make your lines profitable again. We now no longer have any reason to replace vehicles, except to replace with a newer type of vehicle, because we can restore them to brand new with the maintenance adjustment and no longer have increasing maintenance costs anyways.

[Whiskiz]

I doubt time and money would have been spent to remove content from the game.

Either way maybe the system in the last game had the right idea but wrong execution, maybe the act of being able and needing to replace vehicles got too tedious for people, maybe the gold sink needs to be more automated and you just have to deal with it by making more money and making it more efficiently.

Sure there'll no longer be an option to reduce the current gold sink level if/as needed, but you could then have other options like vehicle durability stat part of the strategy to deal with it, say if outgoing money (maintenance) gets too high compared to incoming you could purchase a few vehicles that are more known for their durability than say power or speed.

So you get the mainstream set and forget, not having to replace things every so often yet still get a functioning scaling gold sink.

Or maybe your lines just plain aren't as efficient as they could/would/should be for that difficulty level.

Having a lose state is not a bad thing, especially for players that like more of a challenge on harder difficulties and especially in build'em up games like this where half the fun is starting again halfway through and doing things better.

Whether they gutted it or didn't bother fleshing it out, without a suitable replacement like the above idea - it's still lazy and dodgy.

[Vimpster]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

I doubt time and money would have been spent to remove content from the game.

Well I wouldn't describe it as content. It was a game mechanic that they decided they didn't want to use any more. There were many such mechanics that they took out of the game, and in some cases replaced with a new mechanic. In fact a considerable portion of what separates this game from the last are the mechanics that they changed or straight up removed. But there is no getting around the fact that they had to spend time to remove what was there, other wise it would still be there. Although I suppose it could still be there but nothing in the programming calls on it anymore so it is essentially buried in the code, but that too would have required some work on their part to remove such calls to that piece of code.

[Tarazed]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

Because without an ever increasing "gold sink" there's always going to be this balance problem of once you start making an income that's it's then basically game from there.

This is a feature of all 'long-term' economic games though. You start with an amount of money which you must be able to spend to make more money back. You then can spend that money to expand to make even more money allowing you to spend more to make more. Provided you understand enough to spend the money wisely, the money available to you will grow exponentially, until you've fulfilled the entire map. This is fine as long as there are bigger, better and more expensive things to spend your money on to improve your network. But this is only worthwhile (and hence fun) if those improvements allow you to make even more money.
However, all games will eventually run out of such content. The point is that this isn't specific to Transport Fever 2.

Having an increasing "gold sink" doesn't change this fact, it only changes how long it takes for your bank balance to take off. As long as you keep ahead of your costs, your balance will eventually skyrocket, because the growth is exponential. The effect of the current difficulty settings is the same; shortening or extending how long this takes.

Expanding the idea and making the gold sink adaptive doesn't work either. Say that the rate of increase adapts to how successful (or not) you are at making money. In other words instead of the developers balancing the game with a fixed value, have the game balance itself.
This will do one of two things depending on how strongly this auto-balancing effect is:-
- removes any reward for building and running your lines efficiently, (i.e. not fun).
- or if you tone the effect down even a tiny bit, your bank balance will still eventually take off.

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

Lore friendly, gameplay friendly, lots of different options for balancing and solves one of the biggest issues in these types of games.

Another option for difficulty balancing is that once you're no longer treating it as a challenge, then make it one yourself. Remember the strongest parts of video gaming is that you, the player, have control over your gameplay experience. The developers provide a world/framework, but when you play a map, however it was created, its your map and nobody else's. So set your own rules and restrictions; some of them may be less fun to you, but some may be more. If it's not fun, change it, otherwise run with it. Remember it's your game, your time and your fun, you just have to own it.

For example, here are some ideas that I've used:-

• The terrain generation does have a strong effect on the difficulty of a map, so ramp up those hills & canyons.
  
• Run a map only using Trams, because why not?
  
• Add a rule where you can only build stations in a town or at its industries if it is or was the smallest town on the map. To get to new towns you must grow the others until they are larger
  
• If you feel you have too much money, bulldoze a line between two towns, spend all your money building an impassable mountain in between, then use your loans to re-connect by going around or over your new terrain challenge. No tunnels allowed!

I'm sure you can come up with your own ideas as you play.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Tarazed:

Having an increasing "gold sink" doesn't change this fact, it only changes how long it takes for your bank balance to take off. As long as you keep ahead of your costs, your balance will eventually skyrocket, because the growth is exponential. The effect of the current difficulty settings is the same; shortening or extending how long this takes.

Precisely. I haven't found either either TF1 or TF2 to be challenging and the only thing the difficulty level changes is the amount of time you have to spend on it.

Another option for difficulty balancing is that once you're no longer treating it as a challenge, then make it one yourself...
I'm sure you can come up with your own ideas as you play.

True. One can always find different ways to challenge yourself and all of your suggestions are fine, but In my case, I chose another motivation for playing since there is no challenge and that was to simply enjoy the aesthetics this game offers ;)

[gc]

This is for me the central problem of transport fever 2.

I loved Train Fever and Transport Fever. In these games I rolled in huge amounts of money, but it was slower and you always had incentives to pay some attention to optimize things like replacing vehicles, adjusting capacity to rising demand, pay attention to provide a minimum quality of service (i.e. frequency) otherwise lines shut down or people would not take your transportation and generate more traffic.

I really cannot get to like Transport Fever 2. It really feels as a setback and not an improvement. It has prettier graphics but it's less fun.

A simple mechanic like rising maintenance costs would be an improvement. Of course it would not resolve the problem, but it would be so easy to implement...

The poster saying that this is a problem with all management games is somewhat right, but one could also make customers (industries too) increase their needs (in terms of frequency, speed, lower prices etc.) over time to make quality of servce and line optimization matter. There could be many counters to the boredom effect of having nothing to do once the system is set up and make us feel that every era (steam, diesel, electric, high speed) is somewhat different.

Would someone know if it would be possible to mod something such as a rising running cost based on the age of the vehicle or is it buried in the source code?

[Martin]

Not sure if you folks are playing the same game as me.. but every year I spend over a billion replacing all my vehicles in my current game..

Over a billion.. now ok, I make around 150 million per year. Have 9 billion in the bank.. but life isn't cheap.

Or easy.

Why penalise people for putting in the work?