Law Firm Nerf?

[♂Dungeon Master♂]

I used to charge 800+/hr on them with max staff skill and they were profitable, it seems like with new pricing metric they got nerfed, since no one is coming if I charge more than 310/hr.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by ♂Dungeon Master♂:

I used to charge 800+/hr on them with max staff skill and they were profitable, it seems like with new pricing metric they got nerfed, since no one is coming if I charge more than 310/hr.

That happened a while ago, but yes.

[PrinceNic]

None of the Office based businesses seem worth it anymore.

I have a 50 capacity law firm, with 50 lawyers, all recruited by head hunters, and trained to 100% myself. So they have the lowest wages possible. Working all on 1 shift from 8-17 M-F, maxed out Marketing and everything, yet cant seem to enough money to make it worth the effort. As that's 50 lawyers I had to recruit, train, and dedicate an HR manager for, plus you can barely move the hourly rate at all anymore.

I also still end up paying $6,500 a day worth of marketing when the office is closed on the weekends, which drags my average income down, it would be far too much of a pain to toggle this on and off for each office every weekend.

I don't think the Graphic Designers ever turn a profit, as their hourly rate ($115) is so low compared to their hourly wage (~$50). This may be a bug, as I end up paying such a high wage since the head hunter cannot recruit anyone unless I remove all criteria and set the skill level to 100%, which results in the highest wages.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by PrinceNic:

I have a 50 capacity law firm, with 50 lawyers, all recruited by head hunters, and trained to 100% myself. So they have the lowest wages possible. Working all on 1 shift from 8-17 M-F, maxed out Marketing and everything, yet cant seem to enough money to make it worth the effort.

That information sounds fine, but what is the traffic of the building? What is the Lawyer competition in that district? Those two factors are probably the most important.

What do you consider "enough money to make it worth the effort"?

Originally posted by PrinceNic:

I also still end up paying $6,500 a day worth of marketing when the office is closed on the weekends, which drags my average income down, it would be far too much of a pain to toggle this on and off for each office every weekend.

Yes, that is up to you. You can either manually toggle it, or just continue to pay it. Whichever way you prefer.

Originally posted by PrinceNic:

since the head hunter cannot recruit anyone unless I remove all criteria and set the skill level to 100%, which results in the highest wages.

This is known and will be fixed.

[Trasporti Francese]

It happened also to me, all grown up law firm offices that used to make thousand dollars, now they loose thousand dollars I have one office in garment, one in midtown, one in hell's kitchen, and the request in the market is quite good....

[jhughes]

Originally posted by Trasporti Francese:

It happened also to me, all grown up law firm offices that used to make thousand dollars, now they loose thousand dollars I have one office in garment, one in midtown, one in hell's kitchen, and the request in the market is quite good....

Because before they made way to much money.

Every business one starts in every location, especially if not researching for a location with high demand, does not work. If there are 6 other law firms in the neighborhood then that makes sense.

I get it.. everyone got 50 businesses set up in 0.1 and they all made tons of money.

What is the point of reloading a city based on unbalanced businesses now that businesses have been balanced and then complaining.

Start a new game and figure out how things work now.

[braendig]

If the store is closed (either by marking it by the day or "temporary"), that should automatically turn off marketing for that day. Fiddling around with a dozen different businesses' marketing plans over the weekends is..... not fun. Doubly so since the business list doesn't stay sorted or mark where you were last, so going through it requires tracking businesses in Excel, notepad or some mechanism outside the game.

[ZedClampet]

Originally posted by braendig:

If the store is closed (either by marking it by the day or "temporary"), that should automatically turn off marketing for that day. Fiddling around with a dozen different businesses' marketing plans over the weekends is..... not fun. Doubly so since the business list doesn't stay sorted or mark where you were last, so going through it requires tracking businesses in Excel, notepad or some mechanism outside the game.

My law firms make good money on the weekends, so I don't close them.

[ZedClampet]

Here's the deal about office businesses. No, they don't earn you enough income. But they are still viable after the nerf.

What you have to do is determine how many employees you need based on how many customers you think you will get. If you have 50 lawyers working at once, it will almost always be the case that even during the busiest times of the day, that most of them won't be doing anything, and you end up paying more salary than your lawyers fees brought in.

First of all, I wouldn't put more than 20 to 25 lawyers in the biggest buildings. Then you check your hourly traffic charts and see what is happening. If you are maxing out your workers, you can maybe add a few more. If you aren't maxing out your workers, you need to lay people off. You can't pay lawyers to sit around doing nothing.

So if you get the business fully optimized, it will make money. Also hire the cheapest lawyers you can find and just train them to 100 percent. You won't make much. Office businesses are pretty much a waste of time. But you can make some money off of them.

[braendig]

Originally posted by ZedClampet:

Originally posted by braendig:

If the store is closed (either by marking it by the day or "temporary"), that should automatically turn off marketing for that day. Fiddling around with a dozen different businesses' marketing plans over the weekends is..... not fun. Doubly so since the business list doesn't stay sorted or mark where you were last, so going through it requires tracking businesses in Excel, notepad or some mechanism outside the game.

My law firms make good money on the weekends, so I don't close them.

Be that as it may, that doesn't invalidate my point about automatically tying advertising to the business being open rather than forcing the player to click through several menus potentially dozens of times to handle closed businesses.

[TW-傻蛋]

Originally posted by ZedClampet:

Here's the deal about office businesses. No, they don't earn you enough income. But they are still viable after the nerf.

What you have to do is determine how many employees you need based on how many customers you think you will get. If you have 50 lawyers working at once, it will almost always be the case that even during the busiest times of the day, that most of them won't be doing anything, and you end up paying more salary than your lawyers fees brought in.

First of all, I wouldn't put more than 20 to 25 lawyers in the biggest buildings. Then you check your hourly traffic charts and see what is happening. If you are maxing out your workers, you can maybe add a few more. If you aren't maxing out your workers, you need to lay people off. You can't pay lawyers to sit around doing nothing.

So if you get the business fully optimized, it will make money. Also hire the cheapest lawyers you can find and just train them to 100 percent. You won't make much. Office businesses are pretty much a waste of time. But you can make some money off of them.

A large office employs 50 people, and the revenue generated by 50 employees is actually less than the revenue generated by 20-25 employees.
Is this design too unreasonable?

[jhughes]

Originally posted by TW-傻蛋:

Originally posted by ZedClampet:

Here's the deal about office businesses. No, they don't earn you enough income. But they are still viable after the nerf.

What you have to do is determine how many employees you need based on how many customers you think you will get. If you have 50 lawyers working at once, it will almost always be the case that even during the busiest times of the day, that most of them won't be doing anything, and you end up paying more salary than your lawyers fees brought in.

First of all, I wouldn't put more than 20 to 25 lawyers in the biggest buildings. Then you check your hourly traffic charts and see what is happening. If you are maxing out your workers, you can maybe add a few more. If you aren't maxing out your workers, you need to lay people off. You can't pay lawyers to sit around doing nothing.

So if you get the business fully optimized, it will make money. Also hire the cheapest lawyers you can find and just train them to 100 percent. You won't make much. Office businesses are pretty much a waste of time. But you can make some money off of them.

A large office employs 50 people, and the revenue generated by 50 employees is actually less than the revenue generated by 20-25 employees.
Is this design too unreasonable?

No. Not unreasonable at all.

Not all areas have a demand for a 50 person office. So you are playing 25 people to do zero work and 25 people are working and meeting all the clients' needs. The key is..staff the office with the number of people needed to meet demand and charge the customer as much as you can. Then reevaluate if you are making a profit and add more lawyers if needed. Once you start having 'extra lawyers not actually working', stop growing.

[TW-傻蛋]

Originally posted by jhughes:

Originally posted by TW-傻蛋:

A large office employs 50 people, and the revenue generated by 50 employees is actually less than the revenue generated by 20-25 employees.
Is this design too unreasonable?

No. Not unreasonable at all.

Not all areas have a demand for a 50 person office. So you are playing 25 people to do zero work and 25 people are working and meeting all the clients' needs. The key is..staff the office with the number of people needed to meet demand and charge the customer as much as you can. Then reevaluate if you are making a profit and add more lawyers if needed. Once you start having 'extra lawyers not actually working', stop growing.

i can understand your point of view
But a large office needs to be filled with 50 computers to get the maximum number of customers and reach the profit ceiling. Hiring 25 employees maximizes profits, but not when the workforce is full. Such a design is inherently unreasonable.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by braendig:

If the store is closed (either by marking it by the day or "temporary"), that should automatically turn off marketing for that day.

If you rent a marketing space, they don't know or care when you are "open". They just know you rented it.

Originally posted by TW-傻蛋:

A large office employs 50 people, and the revenue generated by 50 employees is actually less than the revenue generated by 20-25 employees.

Please show an example of this! If you have a save where this is true, please submit it as a bug report!

[Pladao]

I have a 10 customers capacity Law firm in Hell's Kitchen which traffic index is about 72, demand is 33% and marketing is about 41%. Lawyers' skill is 100%. However, there is only a maximum of 2 customers per hour.

[Metacritical]

Originally posted by Pladao:

I have a 10 customers capacity Law firm in Hell's Kitchen which traffic index is about 72, demand is 33% and marketing is about 41%. Lawyers' skill is 100%. However, there is only a maximum of 2 customers per hour.

how many lawyers do you have working there?