Game is too punishing for enjoyable play

[jmadsen81]

To start, I think this game shows a lot of potential. I like the graphic style, and I like that it makes you think. I do have some issues though -

1 - researching most things takes entirely too long. 500 days to research a maid or driver perk? Multiple years to be able to do medium sets and props? Multiple years to advance your film and sound quality? This means you are relegated to low-quality films for a very long time. Research should be quicker.

2 - many buildings are super expensive, but you need to build them to research the topic. This is a big outlay of cash with no benefit for years. You should be able to research prior to building, but not be able to use the benefit until you build the structure.

3 - every event is damaging. Drunk staff, broken legs, scandals, etc. I don’t mind the occasional tragedy, but most of my films had these issues early on that I could not resolve because the tech I needed was a year (or more) away. It would be nice if some events were positive. As it is, they all tanked my films.

4 - errors are punishing and compound. I had low cash, so I paid extra for good people. Issues on set postponed movies, and increased costs. Both of those movies wound up losing a bit of money, which dropped my reputation. I then went in the negative, which dropped my rep more. This meant I couldn’t use medium quality film and sound, which makes it hard to have profitable films, so I just wasted away,

5 - choosing the right advertising agency is super tricky. You build a marketing building and hire someone to work there - they should give you advice on which agency to choose. Using focus groups and pre-screening is an option in mid-game, but that takes more time than you can afford early on…..not that you even have the tech early on.

Overall, I think the game could be great, but it really needs some rebalancing.

[Kyrandos]

Kinda sounds like you are distinctly at the mercy of a malicious RNG God. Did you feel like perhaps taking a different tact or strategy might have returned better results - or were you always kind of just a tumbleweed in the wind?

[jmadsen81]

Originally posted by Kyrandos:

Kinda sounds like you are distinctly at the mercy of a malicious RNG God. Did you feel like perhaps taking a different tact or strategy might have returned better results - or were you always kind of just a tumbleweed in the wind?

Oh, I was 100% a tumbleweed! But I think I’m also partly to blame. Early on, I didn’t want to make the crummy 1.2 level scripts, so I just scrapped them. But I was still paying overhead, so that was just setting cash on fire. I think I should just make the crappy movies to get *some* money in the bank.

But also, the RNG calcs were utterly merciless!!

[Killerham]

Once I figured out how to speed up research, it isn't that bad to me tbh. You gotta have higher level department leads and crank up research speeds.

Events are pretty cool, but I agree early game you don't really have a lot of the better options available.

I agree, the advertising could do a lot more to tell the player what type of audience each is reaching.

Overall however I do like the challenge the game presents. I hope the devs can have various difficulty modes to satisfy a larger variety of players.

[That Guy Ghost]

Yeah the game can be a fair bit punishing especially earlier on and things can spiral out of control if you get a bad sequence of events, what I've seen is that it is best to constantly look at new staff members (actors, directors, cinematographers and producers), because some will be undervalued like a 7 star actor who is willing to take 20k for a movie or two which can give the movie a major boost, and you can decide if you want them for a long time or a short time and the costs from them are upfront unlike writers editors and composers who you pay every month.
Another thing is the story board is the most powerful tool for guaranteeing good scripts especially early on as you can choose the two cheapest locations (american town or city) and choose story elements that will jive together which will make the script a higher value the only downside is the process is a bit slow and repetitive.
Hope this helps wish you luck with the game!

[dmads]

Everything you said was right on the money. I love this game. I played the demo dozens of times and commented on the balancing issues, but was confident they would be resolved on release…they weren’t. My big issue is the advertising for the movie. I cannot for the life of me figure out what advertisers to use, they are so ambiguous in their descriptions. I played for 8 hours today and got to year 4 and already know that I am on a downward RNG spiral. The game is BRUTAL if you make a few bad decisions. Mostly I really believe the game has boundless possibilities.

[Gunnery_SGT_Highway]

it's nearly impossible to make any kind money to stay afloat...everything seems to be designed to halt production of a movie or add to the cost,has to be balanced better.

[goldberg80]

I'm always at over $20m in the bank by end of year 3, and I make about $10m every year after that - paying about $2m in taxes per year.

I think you need to learn to limit your costs. A 5 star movie with a 4 star lead can make you more than a million in profit if you manage your cost well - repeat that 10 times and boom, $10m in profit - stop spending for the big movie stars and the big directors, you can get those when you have too much money but not in the first few years as you build your bank account.

[jmadsen81]

Originally posted by goldberg80:

I'm always at over $20m in the bank by end of year 3, and I make about $10m every year after that - paying about $2m in taxes per year.

I think you need to learn to limit your costs. A 5 star movie with a 4 star lead can make you more than a million in profit if you manage your cost well - repeat that 10 times and boom, $10m in profit - stop spending for the big movie stars and the big directors, you can get those when you have too much money but not in the first few years as you build your bank account.

Maybe that’s my issue - I was trying to bump up my money by releasing quality movies with quality staff. And I paid for it lol. On my next play through, I’ll try just pumping out trash in the beginning so I don’t go broke,

[Silent_GIFer]

When it comes to the cost of buildings you don't have to build them at full price. It was a common strategy for the demo version to just build all of the buildings at half quality because it was much cheaper. Don't know how viable this strategy is now, though.

[Voice From Beyond]

I wish the advertising options were more clear, like Velvet Gloss. Is that something that only teenage females read or do adult females? I have Spark as questionable young men and women and Nat Sparrow as a questionable all?

How about just stating the audience: adult men, adult women, young men, young women. Even better would be adult men 20%, adult women, 0%, young men 100%, young women 40%. You do know that you can call media and get some kind of information on audience right?

[fatfish89]

Originally posted by Voice From Beyond:

I wish the advertising options were more clear, like Velvet Gloss. Is that something that only teenage females read or do adult females? I have Spark as questionable young men and women and Nat Sparrow as a questionable all?

How about just stating the audience: adult men, adult women, young men, young women. Even better would be adult men 20%, adult women, 0%, young men 100%, young women 40%. You do know that you can call media and get some kind of information on audience right?

If my current file had not bugged and time keeps stopping I was hoping the analytics and research office would help clear that up

[Dreamsurfer]

Running a Movie Production Company was everything but easy. Many went bust so it should be hard. It would be unrealistic to make it too easy.

[Voice From Beyond]

Originally posted by fatfish89:

Originally posted by Voice From Beyond:

I wish the advertising options were more clear, like Velvet Gloss. Is that something that only teenage females read or do adult females? I have Spark as questionable young men and women and Nat Sparrow as a questionable all?

How about just stating the audience: adult men, adult women, young men, young women. Even better would be adult men 20%, adult women, 0%, young men 100%, young women 40%. You do know that you can call media and get some kind of information on audience right?

If my current file had not bugged and time keeps stopping I was hoping the analytics and research office would help clear that up

Yeah, it takes too long to research. It's like 4 years.

[Hamburguejas al vapor]

My personal tip to save money is to do movie contracts only until you get a good footing money-wise.

It's just better on the long term to focus on hiring good actors just for one movie and compensating the hiring cost with services like medical insurance and car + driver.

[Dumeka]

What I find VERY annoying is that even you are friends with the police they will hit you with raids like every few months and even they don't find anything criminal, they always grab some of your money because they look "suspicious" (using it as excuse to steal money from you) and on their way out they always injure 1 - 2 of your actors or other employees shutting down your productions or departments for a while just because they can.

Then you do tons of favors for the mayor that gives you like 30 to 100 but god forbid you say no once, he immediately hits you with -1000 and the friendship is over.

One thing that I think might be even a bug is that I hire actors for 1 movie, yet after a while they say their contract is expired and either want a payment again or they entirely leave which doesn't make sense since I didn't hired them on time, I hired them for ONE movie!