Late game tips

[ESDP]

anyone willing to share late-game tips?

I play as far as 2000s, and its starts way too micro-managing to my liking.
and it seems to me the threshold point for each game release increased.

thus can anyone tell me how they "enjoy" late game?
like how many employees in a single room effectively. or any kind of tips.
for example : does it better to have multiple teams of devs(3,4 or more) or focused team(1,2 teams)?

cheers.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

I only do one team (I don't even use the "groups" feature at all,) since I despise micromanagement in any types of game. I go with either 5-people rooms or 10-people rooms, and I don't make rooms bigger than they need to be to fit that many employees - you don't ever need any decorative furniture other than rugs in a room, if you figure out how to combine the rugs' AoE.

Why do I only use one team? Because I make games one at a time, I make them as close to perfection as possible, and having one single team enables me to speed up the process for each game I make. Another advantage is that I can fire one employee when needed (when one with more skill appears, for example) and since my team will be in the triple digits, the "bad mood" debuff that may happen from firing employees will only slightly decrease work speed.

One tip I can give that makes the whole game more enjoyable: Don't oversize games. Even after this latest batch of patches (or actually because of them) AAA games are never needed, they take too long and require too many points, and you can still get a lot of profit out of A or AA games which will take you a fraction of the time to make. If your chosen genre(s) have too many gameplay features to choose from, here's what you do: Go with the ones that give the most gameplay points - adding the required ones, like console/arcade/keyboard support - and get rid of "realistically needed" yet worthless features like pause or high scores. That way, you can be in 2020+ and still making A-sized games that get 90%+ scores - yes, even after the last few updates, you can still do this, but now it takes you longer to make those games.

For someone who, like me, was making one game every four months at one point, with those four months being entirely occupied with game development and polishing, games taking more time to make does not increase difficulty, but if they take too long (AAA, even before these latest patches,) then what it does is decrease enjoyment. If I wanted to watch pretty animations without having to click on anything for fifteen minutes, I would go re-watch Lyrical Nanoha.

Also, if you hate micromanagement, don't produce your own games or arcades manually. That method requires so much pausing and clicking things, it can make Very Fast speed feel like Marathon.

I'm not telling you my method is "better" than methods others use, but I prefer efficiency over either "realism" or "fashion" in management games, and it's what works for me, and I personally find a lot of fun in playing this way. I don't do interior decoration in this "genre" of game (business management) unless the game itself makes it a huge part of gameplay (which makes me eventually dislike and uninstall that game,) and I don't care if an action game not having a "pause function" is "unrealistic," I'm not sacrificing one gameplay feature slot for an 8-0-0-8 points feature, when I could be using a 40-0-0-40 one instead.

[soldyne]

well, micro management is the genre this game is in. if you aren't managing your team then there is nothing else to do. so if micro management bores you then this game is not your thing and thats ok.

for late game I have 1 team; a design room, QA room, graphics room and sound room, etc. you only need one of each. yes, those rooms get rather large with 50+ employees each. If you are on a map with smaller buildings then you will need separate rooms but you can set up a room to "support" other rooms. but I would still only work on one project at time.

What I like to do is to create a "lead office" room with a single employee of each type and have the larger rooms with all the other employees set to support the "lead office". Then I can have all my "lead offices" for dev, graphics, sounds, etc all on the screen at once and it gets much faster to manage new projects.

but, yeah, that is the entire loop. make a game, sell it, make another game, sell it, make another game sell it. maybe once in a while make a console and sell it. if you are feeling crazy re-release an old game and re-sell it. If you are lazy then buy another company so they can make games and sell them...money is the only resource that matters in this game so its not very deep (honestly its only a few steps away from being an idle clicker game). but, some people like the grind; Diablo is a very grindy game and people love it. MMOs get grindy in the late game with raids and people love it. even games like HOI4 and Crusader Kings get grindy at some point once you have become the ultimate super power and need to do clean up to finish conquering the world. If the late game bores you then take a break and move on to something else for a bit.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Originally posted by soldyne:

well, micro management is the genre this game is in. if you aren't managing your team then there is nothing else to do. so if micro management bores you then this game is not your thing and thats ok.

Actually the "genre" would be "business management," many of which can have very, very automated gameplay loops and be praised for it. If micro management bores a player, they can find ways to bypass it and/or minimize it - for example, making games at a quick enough pace to stay "entertained" but not quick enough to be overwhelming... Or perhaps not playing in Slow or Marathon speed if they don't want to wait for things to happen.

[FTSTrooper]

I think that a way of managing the rooms could be improved when creating the new game, as soon as we can rename the rooms, I believe there could be an additional tab for this configuration, in the end game it is tiring to click on each room to select the options for development, if this mechanic already exists, please tell me

[ESDP]

So as I gather from this post is, it is viable to have 1 giant devs team.

I still trying to get past year 85 on Legendary(always bankrupt coz game not really selling). Since the best rating i could get is ~70%, turns out I need to get more firepower on my devs team despite all experience is 5 stars.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Last update made it so just having a "two-digits headcount" doesn't cut it anymore after a while - unless you manage to start getting some 50+ skill employees by 1985 (possible, but barely, unless you go for a "suicide run" with marketing->Employee search and pray to RNGesus.)

Of course, you "can" hire Legendary ones, but I love calling them "newbie traps" because they only get twice/two-and-a-half times the work done than a 30-skill employee, but cost at least five times more than a 30-skill employee. The extra money wasted per month on Legendary employees will kill you faster than "games not selling" will.

[ESDP]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Last update made it so just having a "two-digits headcount" doesn't cut it anymore after a while - unless you manage to start getting some 50+ skill employees by 1985 (possible, but barely, unless you go for a "suicide run" with marketing->Employee search and pray to RNGesus.)

Of course, you "can" hire Legendary ones, but I love calling them "newbie traps" because they only get twice/two-and-a-half times the work done than a 30-skill employee, but cost at least five times more than a 30-skill employee. The extra money wasted per month on Legendary employees will kill you faster than "games not selling" will.

what ? for real?

I just abaout to retry legendary, and try to squeze 20ish employe until 90s.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

If you can somehow get 20 or so skill 75 people (only possible via hiring, and the chances to get even one without flaws is laughably low) then it may be "possible" but be ready to, at best, be owing the bank a lot all the way to the nineties.

This isn't Game Dev Tycoon, where you have a maximum of twelve employees (or was it eight? Been many years since I last touched that thing,) per "room" your studio has. In this game, the more employees you have, the faster you'll get points, the better your games will be. Even with the current increase in points needed, twenty employees "per room" (actually 20/20/15/10 for Dev, QA, Graphics and Sound) can let you tank through the first decade of the game, and start getting good games. Getting that many employees is the tricky part, to the point I've started hiring flawed employees (even employees with the annoying "loves plant" fake perk,) because the need for manpower is higher. But the more employees you have, the better your games will be, which will bring in more money, and increase your studio reputation so you can have more skilled employees appearing in the job listing. It's a snowball effect, but the good kind of snowball.

[ESDP]

so I just bump my dev team to 30 on 1979. and still barely manage to get 70% rating despite 5 star experience looping game. what the hell?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Are you using subgenre, subtopic, perfect sliders (jury's still out on whether those are possible right now, check some of the recent threads) and have managed to unlock at least graphics? QA can be bypassed by remembering sliders, which at the moment is harder since they've changed from what guides (or in my case, memory) would tell you are the perfect points for them.

Anyhow, I mostly play in the "Giant Warehouse" map, the others make things much, much tougher via prohibitive land pricing (in Legendary, specially.) Also the GW is the biggest map, by a lot, which helps in the late game as running out of space is hard unless you're trying to "do ALL the things." I sacrifice console making (space-consuming and broken,) MMOs, (space-consuming and too easy to profit on,) and support (space-consuming... You get the idea.)

The "European Manor" map, at the moment, is hellish in mid-late game, due to how little space you have.

[ESDP]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Are you using subgenre, subtopic, perfect sliders (jury's still out on whether those are possible right now, check some of the recent threads) and have managed to unlock at least graphics? QA can be bypassed by remembering sliders, which at the moment is harder since they've changed from what guides (or in my case, memory) would tell you are the perfect points for them.

no, everything is as vanilla as possible. perfect sliders with 5stars experience. 30 devs team (12/12/3/3)
I'm not trying to unlock any research, due to money.
Was it necessary?

I played on giant warehouse so I don't have to be troubled by space.

Is it really possible to have 3digits dev team before 1985? My 30ish devs team barely made any profit from sale and just surviving on short contract.

was it intended by the dev?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

The developer intended to increase difficulty, due to, to say it nicely, "hardcore" players who insisted the game was too easy/too unrealistic/too much of a toy - because either of those are bad things in a game, say the weirdos. ;)

The problem right now is, you need a lot more graphics/sound points than before, but putting sound/graphics artists in the development room does nothing (never did, really, but placebo effect made people think it did,) and it even lowers your review score because your tech/control points will be generated less, since sound/graphic artists are terrible at those. You'll still be getting crap-level graphics/sound but will also be getting lower scores on the other two stats.

Easiest way to get through the start of the game right now, from what I've tested: Make either Skill or Puzzle your main genre. Develop games that are skill/puzzle or puzzle/skill, depending on which your main is, that way you won't be triggering the "bored fans" debuff, which at the start can be quite harmful. Try to find a few topics that overlap (are good for both skill and puzzle) so you can use two of them until they're five stars, then switch one around to lessen the effects of "saturated" topics (less sales.)

The problem with contracts right now is, they're no longer a source of actual profit, at least not in Very Hard and Legendary. You have to start making games as soon as possible, and as fast as possible, to be able to unlock graphics, sound and QA before you get to the late eighties.

Again, when I speak of a "dev team" in the development room, I mean developers and programmers. The other "suitable" employees for that room are actually a liability, unless their rating is one per every ten developers/programmers in the development room(s.) I always try to have 50%/50% devs and programmers, with other professions serving as "slow researchers" until I manage to hire actual researchers.

The main issue right now is the compound changes. I suspect they would have been way less of a stone wall for many players if they had been gradually introduced. The combo of "10000% more development time because REALISM!" plus "more points needed because git gud casuals omg wut!" and "different sliders for X/Y and Y/X because it makes sense" (the only one I don't mind at all, despite its buggy status right now, if you can't tell,) was simply too much for a lot of players, from what I'm seeing.

And heck, to me the game's become a chore right now - mostly due to having to find out all the sliders again, a part of the game I never enjoyed - so I'm tempted to "downdate" to an older version (keeping older versions of games is a habit I got from modding,) to be able to enjoy the game until the mess gets fixed.

[maturker50]

Here are the things I did in late game:
1 - make mmo game. and a new game development outside of the mmo expansion pack.
2 - Form 3 teams of 10 game designers only, and create 3 developer rooms to constantly update your mmo game.
3 - If the red bar starts getting too big in the mmo bar, release the mmo expansion pack.
4 - make sure you make your mmo game in such a way that you can only distribute it yourself. Likewise, only publish mmo expansion packs yourself.
5 - if the mmo expansions are selling low, release updates to the mmo expansions as well.
Here are a few things to watch out for regarding updates. Do not select all 8 updates at once. This will lose you a lot of money. Only select from the left in updates. Although they give the same bonus, the updates on the right cost much more money.