How does "realistic development time" work?

[John Sangrós]

I guess it will be slower than the "standard"

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Yes, it's the longest of the three options in that setting.

[Panda]

There likely needs to be a tool tip explaining this, but yes realistic is the longest, intended to reflect how long real development times take.

[Kyle_Gates]

So then Realistic Dev matched with say Slow Game Speed (And "adjust" unchecked), might mean dev time is indeed longer but not as "slow" as it would seem with game speed at Standard?

[Panda]

A little confusing but I think you would still notice the difference. I don't remember the exact numbers now, but realistic dev time is significantly slower (it was changed some because it was too slow) than standard dev times.

[Kyle_Gates]

Ok got it. I do still want a difference just maybe not as "pronounced" as realistic dev time with normal game speed with adjust working speed checked.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

From what I observed: "Realistic" plus "Marathon" with unchecked work speed is almost the same as "Short" plus "Normal."

I don't like realistic development time at all, so I don't use it, but I reached that conclusion after trying it several times under several settings. I don't feel "everything takes ages to do" equals more challenge, just more time.

[animatiV]

Originally posted by Panda:

A little confusing but I think you would still notice the difference. I don't remember the exact numbers now, but realistic dev time is significantly slower (it was changed some because it was too slow) than standard dev times.

Exactly, each of the game customization options should be described in more detail what it does. For example, those from random concepts (design) of games or themes. What exactly do they change? Does enabling the random option of game concepts completely randomize optimal "sliders" and they can be completely illogical (e.g. a FPS game that should have a game length of 10 points), or only 1-2 points compared to normal mode? Can turning on random game themes cause non-logical combinations like Racing and Detective? Does it work any other way? I've been thinking about it for over a year and still haven't tried it because I don't want to have weird things.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

To explain random options:

Sliders are 100% tied to genres - if you change one genre, the sliders for that genre, and all its "hybrid" sliders (when used with a subgenre) will change.

The game does not care about "logic" when it comes to randomness because true randomness doesn't care about logic, either. Also, I don't believe there's such a thing as bad genre/topic combinations, one of my favorite game franchises is a Sports RPG.

Random options do not always mean "more challenge." The worst offender here is the "random platform popularity" which simply shuffles platform active users. This will, nine times out of ten, cause scenarios where you end up with platforms that have ten times the active users they normally would, and that makes the game a lot easier.

Having sliders changed around doesn't make the game harder either, if you like the "slider hunting" minigame you would already not be memorizing the sliders to 'cheat' around it, so them being normal or random doesn't change a thing there.

One thing that may make the game slightly harder is that with random genre combinations, things aren't (IMO) optimized. You may have the starter genres have no fitting sub-genre anytime before 1985, and having no sub-genre will give you a penalty to review score. This penalty is bigger the higher the difficulty you choose, so for Legendary runs, random genre combos may be the most difficulty-enhancing one.

Random events themselves are silly, I tested them a lot, and on average, they make the game easier by giving you free stat points for your games, making the needed development time shorter. And things like getting bugs after release are pointless - your potential sales will be crippled by bugs your game releases with but those random event bugs will only slightly affect your ongoing sales, so they're more of a "waste five seconds making a patch" thing than actual difficulty.

And heck, when playing in maps where I need to buy more building area, the game keeps giving me the random event that makes buildings cheaper. That definitely makes the game a lot easier in those maps.

[animatiV]

Thanks for the explanation.
Looks like these random options aren't for me. I agree that there are no bad combinations of game genres, but the game thinks otherwise anyway.
I can also play "slider hunting" in the standard mode because I take long breaks and don't remember everything.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

One extra thing: Bad combinations of genres and topics will only slightly affect review scores, so they can actually be ignored. And it's better to have a bad combo than no combo at all. Not having a sub-genre/subtopic weighs against review score more as the game progresses.

[Kyle_Gates]

Interesting. Well I can certainly play around with settings. myself, just looking for "longer" than normal Dev times without it being really bad so I figured if dev was "realistic, but game was set to Slow, would be somewhere in between.