Feedback and annoyances near end of first campaign playthrough

[zimzat]

I'm several plots into the fourth section of land and feel conflicted about the game. I want to like it, it has several aspects that I like, an interesting concept, nice graphics, but I also feel like things don't scale well or aren't obvious.

• In each campaign a new technology is introduced which requires a very large initial investment. Without knowing what to expect and for how much it's hard to plan to save up tons of cash. I spent much of my earnings on upgrades to stay ahead of the curve only to start the next area without the cash to get the upgrades until half way through the area.
  
• Spending tens of thousands of dollars on an upgrade between sessions only to find out it costs +/- 750 to enable it, each and every session, felt like a massive back stab. I felt like I wasn't making much progress on the power curve because every map starts out at exactly the same poor state. In the first 3-6 months there's not much that can be different so it falls to luck to get anywhere.
  
• Being able to take only 2,000 as seed money, despite sitting on 30,000, makes the starting curve of every map extremely boring very quickly. At the very least being able to take an extra 1k after each area would be nice.
  
• Missing a way to pay back a bank loan during the year seems extremely odd and very wrong. The earlier in the year the loan is taken out the more it costs yet loans toward the end of the year are largely unnecessary.
  
• The bots buy almost no upgrades yet constantly stay within shouting distance of player profits and buy notable amounts of town share.
  
• Finding diamonds is either insanely expensive (scan everywhere), extremely lucky, or a massive letdown once the map gets revealed. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where they are and with no way to indicate if there is even one on the map during the year it's just frustrating. (For that reason the bank buy prices are ridiculously low.
  
• Not being able to save during the year, and being permanently penalized for stopping a level early, makes it difficult to play without knowing I have 30 minutes of solid time to devote to playing the game. Sometimes I want to take a break half way through a level or something comes up, but knowing if I stop my campaign progress will be stunted makes me hesitant to start playing a map.
  
• No way to turn off that rig clacking sound. Muting music, ambiance, and sound doesn't shut up that clacking sound.
  
• Background music is fine at first but gets monotonous and boring half way through the game. More variations, more ups and downs, and more energy would be nice.

[Gamious]

Hi Zimzat, thanks for the extensive feedback.

To start with a little mystery: we weren't able to reproduce the rig clacking sound (when we had all the other sounds turned off). Do you hear it sometimes or is it the sort of continuous sound when you're pumping oil?

About the music: this soundtrack has quite some tracks, but they may all sound a bit 'backgroundy'. Which is how we wanted it to be. Not sure if we'll add tracks in the future.

About the economic balance/high prizes: most of these are also very deliberate. They are there to make the game challenging. For instance: we could let you start a level with 10k, but you wouldn't be brought in a position of having to make difficult choices under time pressure. Which is what Turmoil is all about. Making the interest low, or being able to pay it back, would make the decision of taking a loan a very easy one. The same goes for not-permanent upgrades. You spend cash for the ability to get the rock upgrade during a level, but you still have to take a decision if that's economically wise. We could however do a better job of explaining if upgrades are pemanent or not before you spent money on them. This was also mentioned in another topic, and is something we'll take a good look at soon.

Saving during a level is very hard for us to implement, and that's why it's not high on our list at the moment. What also comes into play, is that it would be easily exploitable (save early in the level, then check where the oil is, and then restart from savepoint).

It's true that diamonds are not easy to find. They are quite rare and we want to keep 'em that way. Finding a diamond must feel really special. If you do not find them however, there's no real harm done. And if you really want lots of them, choose Henry as a character in Expert Mode, and you'll have loads of them. :-)

Overall we're getting the impression that you might have some trouble with spending money because you might not earn a lot of money? Once you're comfortable with using natural gas to boos the oil price, you should have no problem beating the AI in normal mode. Just in case, here are some tutorials for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJbeWZByX1s&list=PLQoNs0zkHxPeF_P1okkLbTiGoKWdNzHGV

Again, thanks for the feedback and good luck!

[freebank]

The campaign is extremely exploitable as is, since you can go back to the main menu and erase giving your diamond to Anthony and re-bid on a stock. ----------*SPOILER------- The thing that annoyed me about the game was using every exploit to get all the achievements then finding out there was an island at the end and using the exploits wouldn't have even been necessary to get the achievements afterall. And when the gas pockets on the winter level are really close together, it's pretty annoying. Fun game though!

[Z.E.D.]

Is the Henry character broken? I am using him in the Expert campaign but I'm not getting any diamonds, even if they are in the lot I choose. (I even tried sending moles randomly, but that has no effect either.) So after ayear is over, I see diamonds uncovered, but I do not get them :(

[David]

I don't have the problem of having to finish a level mid-way but what about ironman saves? (When you save the game quits, when you quit the game saves)
That usually gets around save-reload exploits unless they scum the actual ironman save.