Schedule 1's endgame is unreasonable

[「AMOEBA」]

As I finally achieve my first million in this game, I think I've reached a valid point in this game where I can say from experience that Schedule 1's endgame is atrocious. I get that Tyler probably wasn't expecting this game to get nearly as big as it has, but considering the achievements he willingly put into the game, he clearly expected his players to play this game for some amount of time which is why I feel somewhat justified in making this post.

Now this isn't a "waah I can't get my achievement" post, but I think the fact that a 10 million net worth achievement exists shines a big light on how poorly thought out this game's endgame is and I'd like to highlight some of the biggest issues I've faced and hopefully offer some solutions on how they can be resolved. In my opinion these are in order of importance so if Tyler graces this thread, he can have some idea on what to improve upon or put in his development cycle. I'd like to offer both an easy to implement solution as well as a harder, more long term solution to each problem so this doesn't seem like a long rant and again produce some direction to Tyler who I'm sure has ideas on how to move forward already.

Overall we all want the same things, we want this game to be better and I don't want Tyler to feel like he did a bad job, he didn't. I would just like this game to have a fulfilling progression from beginning to end and here are my suggestions on how to do so. The following suggestions in my opinion are in order of importance:

1. Schedule 1's endgame is a delivery simulator - Once you're able to justify building and producing enough product to support 3-6 dealers as well as your own personal clients, you quickly start to realize that maintaining this level of production is not fun in the slightest. Rather than exploring and making deals, you're constantly ordering deliveries or doing them yourself and driving them to where they need to go. This is extremely time-consuming, monotonous, and overall a stark contrast to the enjoyment Schedule 1's early game offers.

Solution: Improve the delivery app - this is one of the easiest things to do and it's so essential I would recommend anybody who hates this portion of the game to download any of the delivery mods available. I promise it is gamechanging. I'm talking about saving favorite deliveries so you don't have to reenter the same order, over and over again, setting up recurring deliveries. Another change I'd recommend is:

Add an unloader/delivery worker - Even though the delivery system is now improved, you still have to be physically be there to unload the product and organize it for your employees to use. Hire someone to do it for you! That's what I'm paying them for after all. Heck you can ever tack it onto the cleaner worker's duties, hardly anybody uses them anyway so now they'll have more of a use in the game.


2. Schedule 1's endgame has next to no scaling - What do I mean by this? Let's say you're at coke, you're making good money but you realize there's nothing left to go for. You say okay, and experiment or look up to eventually find the most optimal $735 mixture to maximize your profits. Now what? Well... nothing. There's nothing left. You've unlocked all the dealers, you've maximized all of your locations productions. There's nothing left. You want to keep playing the game, so you look up the achievements and you see 2 standouts. Achieve $1 million networth and Achieve $10 million networth. How the hell are you supposed to do that in any reasonable amount of time?

Solution, there's a few: Give customers more money to spend - It's dumb, but realistically this is the easiest thing to do. You can even add a condition so that for example once you unlock the last couple of areas, everybody starts getting more money to spend so it doesn't ruin earlier portions of the game.

Let the player list products for more than $999 - Same as the previous, it's dumb, but come on I know these guys have more money, let me get it.

Add a better money-sink than the Casino - The Casino's purpose, outside of giving fun minigames, is to be a money-sink. The problem is it does a bad job of it once you're at even a medium networth. You can only bet $500 which will hardly make any sort of a dent in your cashflow when you're selling coke for upwards of $1500 a pop to your highspending customers. Adding a higher limit to the casino, adding new games like horse racing, or even adding a stock market option could alleviate some of the woes players are feeling at this stage of the game

Add another product beyond coke - It sounds simple, I get it though, this one is hard. I'm not expecting it any time soon tbh.

3. Schedule 1's endgame doesn't have anything to do - It seems like Tyler already has plans for this like Police Raids being the most up to date example which is why this problem is at the bottom of the list. Even if the endgame is fixed, you're still doing the same thing over and over again, it gets boring ya know?

Solution: Make the police stronger - Right now the police have checkpoints setup but nothing feels like it's justifying it. Maybe make it so the more outrageous your products' effects are, the more police walk around? Maybe the more you get caught out of curfew, more checkpoints pop up or police are on patrol making deals harder? Maybe even your suppliers refuse to show up if there's too much heat?

Add cartel/gang wars - There's the mysterious cartel that we hear about in the beginning of the game that never once comes up again. Maybe in the future Tyler can take some time to expand on this? Maybe make a territory system where some customers won't buy from you if the cartel have control over a certain area?

Just some thoughts, I really enjoy this game and honestly Tyler don't let the pressure get to you, if you need help from other developers or have to take a break, by all means do it. It's just a game after all and you've made your well deserved bag.

[ChickenMan]

can someone gift me the game

[ChromaticTurtle]

have you never touched an "early access" game before kid?

[codezz]

TLDR: I’m concerned with the lack of a final goal as well. The game is still being developed, but should it be in early access right now if there isn’t a logical conclusion or complete concept/story? Probably not…



Both OP and most opposing commenters make some valid points here. There isn't really a final goal here and the guided "story" appears to drop off completely at a seemingly random milestone. I'm still only about mid-way through the game, so maybe it will pick back up as I make more progress. It's possible that I simply created a bug that is preventing the objectives from triggering since I started making significant progress on my own.

Without those guided objectives, this feels more like a sandbox game. And if Tyler is looking to make this more of an open-world freestyle game, that really wasn't clear from the start. This reminds me of MGSV or many FF games where you have the guided story that switches to an open-world grind experience so you can continue to enjoy the game elements on your own. Definitely an option for an indie game, but OP is right that there isn't any clear indication that you have reached this pivot point.

But the opposing argument that we can't be too critical of a game with 2 years remaining on its early access timeline is also fair. I want to push this further with a better question. Why are games that are clearly unfinished being released into early access? Functional testing is reserved for beta and alpha testing phases, not partially-completed games. The purpose of using an iterative development paradigm is to build versions of a project where each released version is considered primitive (or in-progress, a prototype, etc.), yet complete to some extent. Although you can build larger projects in chunks, you shouldn’t release an unfinished project to your clients/customers in any state that implies it is complete and price it to align with other similar finished products.

As a fellow indie software dev, seeing so many indie and AAA developers release unfinished games irritates me. It scares me that this is becoming the norm and expectation. As a player, I don’t want to play half of the game now, then wait a year to finish it later on the developer’s schedule. I have larger clients that would fire me if I did this to them. I understand the need to rush to market these days, but developers and players are encouraging this horrible habit. And what happens to the project if something happens to Tyler or he simply moves on to another project? He has no obligation to give us refunds or complete the game. Let’s not forget what we all could’ve had if PT was finished. We got a nice taste of greatness just to have it stripped from our hands and never realized.

I’ll stop my rant here by saying that I love Schedule I. It is an awesome concept that was executed beautifully with smooth gameplay. I just wish there weren’t so many bugs and that there was some kind of conclusion or final goal to work towards. Although I haven’t reached this point myself, the halted story issue I’m seeing certainly seems like a disappointing precursor.

If you like to read and care to see more of my thoughts on the game, check out my review:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198251481834/recommended/3164500?snr=1_5_9__402

[x21Sneezinx]

As someone that's put a decent amount of hours in the game. I'd say your points are valid but the reality of this game is it's early access. Lots of games were early access for years before finally getting a full release. One example would be satisfactory. Early days of that game felt the same as this one does. Just focusing on efficiency and automation more and more, to maximize throughput. Another amazing game that is still in early access is ground branch. A fun fantastic milsim shooter but it didn't have prone built into the game until recently. In the end it's an early access game and fantastic one at that which can be rare, but it's one dev trying to appease the masses when he probably wasn't expecting this game to become what it was. Let the man cook and show the community over time what he can do with this labor of love project.

[Hyper]

This is something that definitely needs more time. I think with future updates we'll be able to sell in bulk to other groups, like an actual crime boss. Drug kingpins usually don't push their own product, they sell it for bulk to others

[kris]

Why Early Access?
“Schedule I will continue to receive substantial content updates on a monthly basis for the next few years.

[FaerlyMagical]

Thank god nobody severely overreacted in this thread and post.

[Maligner]

Publicado originalmente por kris:

Why Early Access?
“Schedule I will continue to receive substantial content updates on a monthly basis for the next few years.

Devil's advocate point of view; it's been a month since release. Where's that "substantial content" update? That is the reason for questioning why Early Access for a mid priced incomplete game; expectations, real or perceived.

In essence, EA games do not have to ever be updated. However, the dev themself made a statement and is not delivering, right out of the gate.

[That Guy]

your on to something about the unloaders I do feel the cleaners should do it besides just picking up trash if i can have them put my resources in the right locations that would save me time and the trucks wont have to wait hours for me (ngl sometimes I forget I order ♥♥♥♥ lmao)

[Scarsick]

Publicado originalmente por Maligner:

Publicado originalmente por kris:

Why Early Access?
“Schedule I will continue to receive substantial content updates on a monthly basis for the next few years.

Devil's advocate point of view; it's been a month since release. Where's that "substantial content" update? That is the reason for questioning why Early Access for a mid priced incomplete game; expectations, real or perceived.

In essence, EA games do not have to ever be updated. However, the dev themself made a statement and is not delivering, right out of the gate.

Could you be a little patient? It's been a month, not 6. It's one guy, although I'm pretty sure he will expand the team with all the money he made, these things take time.

Of course I'm trusting he will keep developing the game, that's why I bought it, but the fact is, when you buy an ea game or put some money on a crowdfunded project you're making a bet. There's no way to know if it's gonna be something like Minecraft, Factorio, Divinity, Undertale and other very successful games or a failure like Godus.

[Chaezaa]

I think a part of the problem could be the store page. Here is what's written on the page:

"This is a dangerous line of work - you'll have to contend with increasing law enforcement, as well as deadly cartel competitors. Fight with fists, melee weapons or firearms."

That part of the store makes it sound like the beef with the police and other gangs is already in the game. I own all business, properties and can make all drugs but i was never arrested and never had to use a gun or knife. I can understand it when some people feel like something is missing.

[Chef]

Publicado originalmente por 「AMOEBA」:

As I finally achieve my first million in this game, I think I've reached a valid point in this game where I can say from experience that Schedule 1's endgame is atrocious. I get that Tyler probably wasn't expecting this game to get nearly as big as it has, but considering the achievements he willingly put into the game, he clearly expected his players to play this game for some amount of time which is why I feel somewhat justified in making this post.

Now this isn't a "waah I can't get my achievement" post, but I think the fact that a 10 million net worth achievement exists shines a big light on how poorly thought out this game's endgame is and I'd like to highlight some of the biggest issues I've faced and hopefully offer some solutions on how they can be resolved. In my opinion these are in order of importance so if Tyler graces this thread, he can have some idea on what to improve upon or put in his development cycle. I'd like to offer both an easy to implement solution as well as a harder, more long term solution to each problem so this doesn't seem like a long rant and again produce some direction to Tyler who I'm sure has ideas on how to move forward already.

Overall we all want the same things, we want this game to be better and I don't want Tyler to feel like he did a bad job, he didn't. I would just like this game to have a fulfilling progression from beginning to end and here are my suggestions on how to do so. The following suggestions in my opinion are in order of importance:

1. Schedule 1's endgame is a delivery simulator - Once you're able to justify building and producing enough product to support 3-6 dealers as well as your own personal clients, you quickly start to realize that maintaining this level of production is not fun in the slightest. Rather than exploring and making deals, you're constantly ordering deliveries or doing them yourself and driving them to where they need to go. This is extremely time-consuming, monotonous, and overall a stark contrast to the enjoyment Schedule 1's early game offers.

Solution: Improve the delivery app - this is one of the easiest things to do and it's so essential I would recommend anybody who hates this portion of the game to download any of the delivery mods available. I promise it is gamechanging. I'm talking about saving favorite deliveries so you don't have to reenter the same order, over and over again, setting up recurring deliveries. Another change I'd recommend is:

Add an unloader/delivery worker - Even though the delivery system is now improved, you still have to be physically be there to unload the product and organize it for your employees to use. Hire someone to do it for you! That's what I'm paying them for after all. Heck you can ever tack it onto the cleaner worker's duties, hardly anybody uses them anyway so now they'll have more of a use in the game.


2. Schedule 1's endgame has next to no scaling - What do I mean by this? Let's say you're at coke, you're making good money but you realize there's nothing left to go for. You say okay, and experiment or look up to eventually find the most optimal $735 mixture to maximize your profits. Now what? Well... nothing. There's nothing left. You've unlocked all the dealers, you've maximized all of your locations productions. There's nothing left. You want to keep playing the game, so you look up the achievements and you see 2 standouts. Achieve $1 million networth and Achieve $10 million networth. How the hell are you supposed to do that in any reasonable amount of time?

Solution, there's a few: Give customers more money to spend - It's dumb, but realistically this is the easiest thing to do. You can even add a condition so that for example once you unlock the last couple of areas, everybody starts getting more money to spend so it doesn't ruin earlier portions of the game.

Let the player list products for more than $999 - Same as the previous, it's dumb, but come on I know these guys have more money, let me get it.

Add a better money-sink than the Casino - The Casino's purpose, outside of giving fun minigames, is to be a money-sink. The problem is it does a bad job of it once you're at even a medium networth. You can only bet $500 which will hardly make any sort of a dent in your cashflow when you're selling coke for upwards of $1500 a pop to your highspending customers. Adding a higher limit to the casino, adding new games like horse racing, or even adding a stock market option could alleviate some of the woes players are feeling at this stage of the game

Add another product beyond coke - It sounds simple, I get it though, this one is hard. I'm not expecting it any time soon tbh.

3. Schedule 1's endgame doesn't have anything to do - It seems like Tyler already has plans for this like Police Raids being the most up to date example which is why this problem is at the bottom of the list. Even if the endgame is fixed, you're still doing the same thing over and over again, it gets boring ya know?

Solution: Make the police stronger - Right now the police have checkpoints setup but nothing feels like it's justifying it. Maybe make it so the more outrageous your products' effects are, the more police walk around? Maybe the more you get caught out of curfew, more checkpoints pop up or police are on patrol making deals harder? Maybe even your suppliers refuse to show up if there's too much heat?

Add cartel/gang wars - There's the mysterious cartel that we hear about in the beginning of the game that never once comes up again. Maybe in the future Tyler can take some time to expand on this? Maybe make a territory system where some customers won't buy from you if the cartel have control over a certain area?

Just some thoughts, I really enjoy this game and honestly Tyler don't let the pressure get to you, if you need help from other developers or have to take a break, by all means do it. It's just a game after all and you've made your well deserved bag.

Why even give a legit review on a game in alpha soyjack

[This PC]

Publicado originalmente por Chaezaa:

I think a part of the problem could be the store page. Here is what's written on the page:

"This is a dangerous line of work - you'll have to contend with increasing law enforcement, as well as deadly cartel competitors. Fight with fists, melee weapons or firearms."

That part of the store makes it sound like the beef with the police and other gangs is already in the game. I own all business, properties and can make all drugs but i was never arrested and never had to use a gun or knife. I can understand it when some people feel like something is missing.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Schedule I already offers a rich open world with several drugs to manufacture and distribute. There are already 10+ properties and businesses to purchase and fit out. Suppliers, workers, and dealers can be recruited to build a fully automated drug empire. Vehicles, valuables, clothing and weapons are just some of the things you can purchase.”

I have been arrested myself once or twice myself, police aren't a threat, but I didn't expect that because I read the box about the early access product, not the description of the whole game.

People don't read their licenses, don't read the actual description of the current state of the product, don't read the roadmap before making suggestions, and then they wonder why the product don't align with their expectations lol D:

[Groady Gruesome]

Dewd... the 'endgame' does not even exist yet... Area's and content are still being added. Smoke a chill pill. You suffer from hypercritical impatience syndrome.

[What?]

It's early access, what the heck is this thread have 11 pages of responses.