Owning cinemas need to be limited or more expensive

[s-style]

I am in 1934 and have a 100 mio+, decent movies make good profit and very good ones around 30-50 million. I got lucky at the start and besides having Services and Advertising as soon as possible i took a gamble and went into red for a short while by buying as many cinemas as i could.

Now i own more than half of all cinemas. There are no independent cinemas left.

I'd suggest to make them either more expensive , limit the amount that can be bought (goes for AI studios as well) or have the market grow organically over time. Or a mixture of those. Overall there should always be a certain portion independent though.

I have no use for the money, don't need to figure out the best amount for renting screens as i have 24k screens and that's just that for all my movies now.

[Graf_Eisen]

I see it the same way.
Apart from the few "traps" at the start of the game,
I can't understand all the whining about the game being too difficult.

It's like Game Tycoon; you have to understand the mechanics first and not complain right from the start.

Yes, there are bugs, but the game itself isn't challenging once you've gotten through the first 2-3 years. Unfortunately!

Unfortunately, the devs gave in to the whining children and made some things easier.

There isn't even a difficulty selector to increase the difficulty again.

I think I'll have to make my own house rules to make it harder after I've finished Act 1.

[Graf_Eisen]

I must add that the first apartment and the other two options are completely overpowered.

First of all, the villa and penthouse only take 200 days to build, which is ridiculous, and I get superstars for a salary of around 10,000.

As a Demo 1 and Demo 2 veteran, I really wonder if the developers even played their own game thoroughly for a few days.

There are some completely unbalanced economic issues that anyone should have noticed on their first playthrough.

[Pl3xus]

the game provide more cinemas once u hit 1940 but then ud buy them all before ur competitors do anyway LOL.. imo make the competitor vote for limited cinema and just go crazy protective over the code, i feel like they're not coded enough past 1931 is just dead until a new char introduces themselves.. also no main story?

[s-style]

Exactly. What's the point if it's not challenging at all. As you said the traps aren't hard to figure out and the main problem i see now is to keep the game challenging over a longer period. Same goes for the complaints about research time. People can't seem to fathom the time span they're involved in. How much new tech and stuff do you think got invented and implemented in a couple of years.

I absolutely applaud the route the devs are going and the ideas they used. Huge thumbs up for that already. The game can become an absolute marvel if they don't cave to people who need everything spoon fed on a platter made of gummy bears. Yes it might not take only 5 min to figure everything out but think long term. I already spent 15h on an early access for only the first 5 game years. And i enjoyed them. I'd certainly like to see that potential reached.

[Graf_Eisen]

I've already played 40 hours in the last few days, which is crazy. This is the best tycoon game of the last three years. (Apart from all the problems.)

I'm addicted. And the fact that the developers have such balls, that you can really let your creativity run wild on the dark side, is simply brilliant.

I can already see several different approaches to playing the game.

[Goralim]

This discussion is so funny because in 1948, the Supreme Court banned studio ownership of theaters. I haven't made it that far in the game, so I don't know if that event happens in game... but studio ownership of theaters was also OP in real life, so it makes sense that it's OP in the game haha.

[Blu]

Originally posted by Graf_Eisen:

I see it the same way.
Apart from the few "traps" at the start of the game,
I can't understand all the whining about the game being too difficult.

It's like Game Tycoon; you have to understand the mechanics first and not complain right from the start.

Yes, there are bugs, but the game itself isn't challenging once you've gotten through the first 2-3 years. Unfortunately!

Unfortunately, the devs gave in to the whining children and made some things easier.

There isn't even a difficulty selector to increase the difficulty again.

I think I'll have to make my own house rules to make it harder after I've finished Act 1.

I'd say the complaint about difficulty is more about how you need to figure out the exact successful path and not that you can carve it out yourselve. Game gives you illusion of a choice in few places, but if you choose wrong, you are cooked. At least that's my take. I think tycoon enjoyers mostly appreciate "breaking down" games like that, looking for that ideal path. But not everyone. And cinema is a very universal topic, pretty much no games in that genre out on the market, so a lot of non-heavy tycoon games enjoyer are giving it a try and they don't like the way it's done.

[samuel]

They need to make them much more expensive to buy. Game is super easy now with the starting at $7.5 million and lower costs. Them making it easier is not a path they should take. Need dificulty settings if they want an "easy" version for the complainers

[Baelyn]

Do you guys just beeline the building to buy cinemas? I've tried playing through twice and I've never gotten past 1932 without going bankrupt. Its almost always an immediate nose dive in terms of being able to stay afloat

[DuDu]

Originally posted by Baelyn:

Do you guys just beeline the building to buy cinemas? I've tried playing through twice and I've never gotten past 1932 without going bankrupt. Its almost always an immediate nose dive in terms of being able to stay afloat

I'm playing mega slow, currently I'm on year 1935 with about 60 hours of active playing. It's not about B-lining more about stuff you can optimize in the beginning of the game + getting the meta stuff that are OP or a must (like Marketing is for example). They fixed some things but some other things are still exploitable like gaining money from the free marketing in the start instead of losing it (a bug) or using entirely Asian composition to lower the costs, firing all expensive staff and replacing them with mega cheap ones, investing into theaters, researching and prioritizing commodities which can result in you being able to sign ridiculously low long-term contracts with people, rerolling for new story elements, etc. :)

I played a lot of demo too... Like a lot, probably not like guys above, the real enthusiasts but I had about 125-130 active hours on the demo itself and I think I went thru game around 10 times losing only 2 or 3 games in total. I personally think they did good when they made game easier -- now it's more suitable and enjoyable for a lot more people in general even tho it feels very easy for us who played a bunch. I do like chill easy games where I can just click around and not think much about, just you know, have fun... IMHO this shouldn't be a try-hard game, for that you have all the PvP games out there.

HOWEVER, all that being said I do want to see them introducing some kind of difficulty options as in you can adjust different stuff when starting like money, max theaters, longer researches, higher pays and so on... That would definitely give opportunity for challenging games to ones who seek it (but I personally don't think that will be available before full version comes out).

Cheers! :)

[Baelyn]

Idk I need to find a video to watch or something cuz I have no idea what im doing wrong. Had 2 movies back to back that were in the 7 to 8 range and even after buying a bunch of theatres to save cost, barely half a mil was made by the end even with marketing. OP saying they're sitting at 100+ mil by 1934, i have zero clue how you're even coming close to that.

[druzilsupreme]

Originally posted by Baelyn:

Idk I need to find a video to watch or something cuz I have no idea what im doing wrong. Had 2 movies back to back that were in the 7 to 8 range and even after buying a bunch of theatres to save cost, barely half a mil was made by the end even with marketing. OP saying they're sitting at 100+ mil by 1934, i have zero clue how you're even coming close to that.

I generally market for 4-6 weeks prior to release. In the early game I rent 10-12k cinemas for the first week; ongoing weeks reduce 10-20% each week.

Make sure you're only buying marketing for the audience segments that are interested in your themes.

Make sure to schedule your release where its not competing with loads of other releases, and try to release on holidays to maximise audience size.

[druzilsupreme]

Right now I feel like owning a bunch of cinemas is slam dunk decision that makes profits go wild, so I'd like to see this limited somehow (either through increased upkeep, randomised negative events related to number of owned theatres, or possibly just a gated amount of available theatres over time)

[JordanIsaacSmith]

I love owning cinemas. I want more! I was saying that new independent cinemas aren't being built quick enough! But now studios owning cinemas is about to be outlawed! Say it ain't so, supreme court!

I wonder if you can secretly buy/own them in act 2? Or if it's just a free for all in terms of rented theatres? Probably. Damn it.