My 0.5 update experience/feedback

[DKaze]

I have roughly 177hrs into the game, I took a small Hiatus during the 0.4 update. Thanks again to the devs for their hard work on the updates, it's been fun thus far.

Now onto the topic. Currently I am on day 41 on hard mode, I am making 1.2mil per day with 14 businesses. I have yet to make a book store, I am playing the game solely on market demand like Fred told me to. You can currently set the prices in many places 20-80% higher than market value. (I like higher customer service level seems to let you up-sell customers now) I am targeting districts with 1-2 competitors at most. In order my large Midtown electronic store alone brings in 300-400k daily; my large Murray Hill electronic store (monopoly) is bringing in 250-300k and my Murray Hill Medium clothing store (monopoly) (40 cap 1 checkout) is bringing in 150-220k (it is also selling jewelry and all types of clothing as a monopoly at 50% markup). I have 2 lawyer firms and they are chugging along with 8 staff each serving 4 clients a day making 4-6k each. (much better than 0.4 where I could barely get 2 customers per office)

Needless to say you make money hand over fist, honestly I don't think the game needs to be super hard to turn a profit. But, the profit margin on some stuff is so wide, idk how a factory will move the needle when you can buy stuff so cheap as is with 100% agents. Outside events like shipping embargos or rivals barring u from using the wholessalers/shippers. That may make the factory mandatory, but that would be very un-fun for all but the most prepared/hardcore players. (time to horde)

I buy a phone for $250 and sell it for close to $2000 (8x markup). I buy flowers at $3.66 each and sell them for 33.50 each (9x markup). So the issue is the amount of items under each shop type along with Max price since volume only goes so high. Typically it seems the more item types you sell the more profit is driven. That being said I am not looking for a perfectly balanced game, it would be boring to play a game where everything is equal. I think having a baseline Skew of items for each shop type would be good though. (more love to flower shops , it's strictly worse than gift shops for example) Having more things to do with the profit would be a focus I would work on. The investment system just sucks (why can't you withdraw "some" ; not all your investments for example?) A system like software inc or Game dev tycoon, where you can invest in companies or buy out competitors or speculate on goods prices(like raw materials) would be much more interesting down the line. The real estate system will have more of a point now, to bully and protect yourself from rivals, but as a profit vehicle they suck, the payoff is 60+ in game years at best, but they have NO LIQUIDITY at all, and make no sense, your not gonna tell me when I buy a skyscraper you only have 1 tenant giving you 2k a day... seriously, the full building should give you rent and a payoff closer to 10 in game years minimum for all the tenants contained. That or add cryo sleep at the hospital so I don't need to sleep in my car for 10 hours irl.

Back on track the only interaction i've had with the rivals is them getting mad at me and not letting me rent anything from them. I am worried Mr. Gua will evict me from my Murray Hill electronic store if I push him harder, but outside that worry, it's a been fairly tame experience. I have not had any bugs to speak of...the only annoyance is the radio commercials happen a tad too much for my liking and not being able to swap stations from my phone in the house/store stereo is kinda annoying. I like the new shops and the updates to the old shops. Now you have one for the fast foods related stuff, one for the retail, one for the office, and one for security related stuff. I will give an update around 300 days and let you know how it progresses.

[David Estes Creations]

Thank you for the feedback!! Good points overall.

The massive profits will be looked at for sure - it seems like some factor is being missed!

[Ippi]

Hello!
That sounds totally right.

You seem to be really good with prices and stuff. I have a M1 electronic store in midtown. The demand in midtown is 33 procent for most of the products and there are 6 providers. I know it doesn't sound like a perfect setup to get sales :D
What do you think that I should price my products at? How much markup from the lowest price you are able to get on the market? Because my other electronic store has got the lowest prices you get in midtown. And I wanted to start another one to experiment with prices, what do you recommend?
Also, all of my CS's are trained to 100 procent!

[Lightning1961]

I have 0.5 on my old rig, and I ignored Fred, other than working until I made $300.
I rented the small apartment with a shop directly across the street, and started a book store, with only the 4 least expensive types of books.
I went to school on my day off and hired a CS and Cleaner, then quit the job.
That gives time to get the other school finished, while still generating income.
I won't take out the loan, or start the gift shop, until i have a few medium sized businesses in HK, pulling from a warehouse.

I know this isn't optimal play, or min-max.

I'm only mentioning it, to expose a potential exploit, of delaying the happiness mechanic's effect on play.

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by Lightning1961:

I'm only mentioning it, to expose a potential exploit, of delaying the happiness mechanic's effect on play.

If you choose to play that way, the happiness boost will wear off after a while!

[DKaze]

Originally posted by Ippi:

Hello!
That sounds totally right.

You seem to be really good with prices and stuff. I have a M1 electronic store in midtown. The demand in midtown is 33 procent for most of the products and there are 6 providers. I know it doesn't sound like a perfect setup to get sales :D
What do you think that I should price my products at? How much markup from the lowest price you are able to get on the market? Because my other electronic store has got the lowest prices you get in midtown. And I wanted to start another one to experiment with prices, what do you recommend?
Also, all of my CS's are trained to 100 procent!

For the electronics store you can get away with almost 100% markup on some items. Normally I just round to the closest $100 after 20% to start. The crazy thing is that the large store only avgs 30 people at a time, imagine if it gets closer to the 75 cap. Cashiers 100% trained, it seems to allow you to jack up those prices. Market demands are around 40-30% for all items currently in midtown. Day 55. The prices have not moved for weeks, I am making 2mil a day now I don't sweat the micro as much anymore.

22 2nd avenue (large) Midtown (only 20 Traffic; 100% marketing) Daily Profit ~500-550k

Rhythm by Tre 825
Noize Boss Earbuds 413
Arty Fish SmartWatch 825
Zana Smartwatch 930
ZanaMan phone 2105
ArtyFish phone 1805

100% price satisfaction.

It's worth noting the Zana Smartwatch is the "cheapest in midtown" in my game so I can get almost double the Arty's price. Below I will post my Lower Manhattan prices for context, same duplicated layout still a M1 store. Demands are closer to 60-70% in lower mat for all items.

21 8th street (large) Lower Mat (37 traffic: 82% marketing) Daily profit ~450-500K

Rhythm by Tre 675
Noize Boss Earbuds 300
Arty Fish SmartWatch 625
Zana Smartwatch 725
ZanaMan phone 1800
ArtyFish phone 1600

82% price satisfaction

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by DKaze:

It's worth noting the Zana Smartwatch is the "cheapest in midtown" in my game so I can get almost double the Arty's price.

New in EA 0.5 - if you are the only one selling a product, you can sell for slightly more than normal, but otherwise, this actually sounds correct as long as your employees are at 100% skill. I think many people just were not aware previously of what the acceptable price margins were!

[^6!Slasken^6]

When starting a new custom game, the maximum amount of starting money I can set is 2 dollars. My only options are 1 dollar or 2 dollars.
Does anyone else experience this?

EDIT: Experimental ver 0.5

[David Estes Creations]

Originally posted by ^6!Slasken^6:

When starting a new custom game, the maximum amount of starting money I can set is 2 dollars. My only options are 1 dollar or 2 dollars.
Does anyone else experience this?

EDIT: Experimental ver 0.5

This will be fixed next week!

But to get around that, start a custom game in EA 0.4 and save it - then go into EA 0.5, click "Load" and update your save, and you can play on that custom game with money!

[^6!Slasken^6]

Originally posted by David Estes Creations:

Originally posted by ^6!Slasken^6:

When starting a new custom game, the maximum amount of starting money I can set is 2 dollars. My only options are 1 dollar or 2 dollars.
Does anyone else experience this?

EDIT: Experimental ver 0.5

This will be fixed next week!

But to get around that, start a custom game in EA 0.4 and save it - then go into EA 0.5, click "Load" and update your save, and you can play on that custom game with money!

Thanks for the quick reply :)

[DKaze]

Alright I am currently on Day 162 doing my sleeping in the car grindset. I crashed the game trying to put 200 graphics designers in the same building at once. I also reported a pretty major bug as well, the update changed how you can put numbers into the game so you can now make prices for items down to the thousandth like a gift being $30.00234; also you can do negative numbers and that's a disaster waiting to happen, ask Starwars Galaxies what negative bids on a AH does to your MMORPG economy.

Needless to say I stopped expanding the empire, since this will be wiped once it goes into live, but I am up to 3-4 million per day on under 30 businesses. So below I will post some thoughts on my last 100 days in game roughly with the rivals.

There's been 4 events, rivals jacking up whole-sale prices (jacking up price on 1 or 2 goods at NY distro) ; rivals buying up all stock on a good ( same as above but affected shipping prices at jet cargo) ; One rival got pissed and setup 6 electronic businesses to try to mess up my 1 electronics business in his zone. Needless to say I undercut him, barely noticed a dent in my store profits. The funny thing though is his weekly profit shot up almost 6x by doing this. (Guess him closing down his nightclub worked in his favor replacing it with actual good businesses). The last event was the same guy sharply undercutting me on gifts all the way down to almost base cost. That was the most painful luckily he only targeted expensive gifts and no big ticket items. Not being able to rent from your rivals is also a pain specially when they own over half the warehouses. You can buy them still though or just grab a few further from garment, nothing too scary.

The biggest affect on gameplay is forcing me to build taller earlier(1 higher quality big business per district) and be strategic with each business allotted per district thereafter. As soon as you build 2-3 businesses in a district you start getting the above stuff done to you so there is no reason to waste 1 of your freebies on a small floor space. Once you are making a few 100k a day you can start building wider as long as you have 1 business per district to distribute risk and the new business isn't a business with few offerings. (for example flowers since if they hike 1 of the 2 products it will cripple you) Another reason to never make a flower shop. (not that we needed another one)

Again the system strictly punishes you for not expanding all over the city and will punish you for having just 1 type business if that's your cup of tea. I think if you have an option to have this disabled in sandbox it will be good; in the context of story mode it is fine to have always imo. I do enjoy the VO work and the flavor they provide. I think the system would be more interesting if you had some push and pull. For example one angry rival offers you $$ or ceasefire if you make X store in the other rival's area so you can gain rep or at least go back to neutral so you can rent from them again. That would be more interesting and give you a risk/reward and an event to look forward to on the day to day. In the current state this is just waiting to cross the line and weathering a storm after you take the dive. I am only on day 162 though I will try to finish my last 140 days in the next 2 RL days.