Game says I need to focus my team?

[AnythingQuiet]

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong in this aspect. After I release a game and do a game report it always adds that, "We should try to focus our entire team on the development of a game."

I don't assign any of my developers side-jobs, research jobs, or anything for that matter so I'm not sure how my team is unfocused during game development. Or is there an option to change how the developers focus on the games?

[AnythingQuiet]

Wait, I see now. When they have an empty bar next to them it means they need to go on vacation. I thought the bar represented their stress levels and when its full is when they go on vacation.

[Hooch]

Yeah, you got it.

Empty = bad, Full = good.

[Voyd™]

I still have this same question though. All my guys are rested and dont need vacations, and yet I get the "We should try to focus our entire team on the development of a game." every time as well. How to fix this?

[Hooch]

Well...do we need to perhaps, select each and every dev to work on the game? I wasn't doing that at first and only selected myself (manager) and the other devs were adding do the design/tech.

So I don't know.

Maybe this is just another one of the completely arbitrary issues of the game.

[M | Shakaama]

you can't "select" anyone. and they just sit there and barely work.

[Avalanche]

Well, on small games (the ones you only do until you get more employees) don't need you to place any of them to specific roles, its medium, large and AAA type games that you do and thats why when you get to level 7 or something, you get to specialize your team into RPGs, Action and so on Genre.

I went with RPGs and Adventure games, they need similar features, i think strategy and action need similar needs too, so it could be possible to focus on action or strategy and do both, just not 100% perfectly.

[M | Shakaama]

I figured out the problem, or shall i say the solution. The problem is when you first hire people, they have very little skill. So the consesus before was you hire people for high research and very poor skills in other areas. Now you have to hire / train people in tech / design so they contribute to projects. I spent a lot of time training my staff before actually getting any work out of them. I literally have to start over. Then spend a massive budget looking for a skilled person, make money to hire the next, rinse repeat.

So now you cannot hire badly skilled people, they just draw a paycheck and produce nothing.

[Elentári]

keep your dev's usage as high as possible, try to get similar percentages, as far as i know you're totally good with about 70%

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Kernyx:

keep your dev's usage as high as possible, try to get similar percentages, as far as i know you're totally good with about 70%

Could be that, I'm not aiming this but more try at least 40%. I feel it's better to use more the best employees or those that will fit better the tech/design ratio targeted. As soon as it's bellow 100% I think it's fine but yes sometimes I get anyway the message quoted by OP and it's perhaps because I target more at least 40% instead of 70%.

Originally posted by shakaama:

I figured out the problem, or shall i say the solution. The problem is when you first hire people, they have very little skill. So the consesus before was you hire people for high research and very poor skills in other areas. Now you have to hire / train people in tech / design so they contribute to projects. I spent a lot of time training my staff before actually getting any work out of them. I literally have to start over. Then spend a massive budget looking for a skilled person, make money to hire the next, rinse repeat.

So now you cannot hire badly skilled people, they just draw a paycheck and produce nothing.

About employee you hire, there's a first phase where they aren't fully operational and when you make a game the game provides a message mentioning the employee not yet fully operational. Training, make contracts or make him do reports, make games, perhaps make him research, I think all of that help get rid of this phase.

Yeah employees you hire that have lower design/tech skills produce significantly less bubbles even after the first phase. But research points are so important that I wonder if really the research skill should be ignored when you hire, I don't know, for now when I play a relatively normal game I tend try focus a lot on research. Logically it should lead to a faster growth.

But fire and hire is definitely something I need try and haven't yet experiment. With that approach that would be hire with best skills in tech/design, later when you have quite more money fire and hire high level employee with a stronger focus on research.

[Diekefirts]

focus your entire team means everyone of your employees has to do something when developing medium+ games. don't leave the idiot out :P

[Underdogger]

You guys, I have solved this problem. You need to make sure that you don't have too many employees. I had 5 employees along with myself and some people were getting upper of 90% while others were getting less than 60%. I fired one person, so that it was 4 and myself, and we were all between 85% and 110%.

Don't over-complicate this. If you need to focus your entire team on a task and have been trying but to no avail, it's because your team doesn't have enough to focus on.

For example, if you have 20 people focusing on a single project fairly, each will only focus on 5%. Whereas, if you have 2 people focusing on a single project fairly, each will focus on 50% and they will be more focused on their part because it's more important.

[M | Shakaama]

no Underdogger that's not it. You simply have to work any new people with several games and it goes away, just like in real life. your new people have to get used to working with the team.