Excitement/Fear/Nausea - How do they work?

[fxknight]

I'm sorry if this is an idiot question, but I just spent a long time designing my first coaster, and I thought it was great... made good use of the scenery, had a lot of variety, was totally huge, and I was sure that it would be the central attraction for my park.

Except that it was a complete and total failure in all three categories... Excitement, Fear, and Nausea.

Let's start with excitement. This is a really exciting ride, by all accounts... tons of things happen. The Excitement measure was in the green constantly as I tested the ride, and when I look at a heat map for excitement, pretty much the entire coaster is in the green. And yet my ride earns a 0.90 in Excitement! How can this be? Is this a bug? I've watched it again and again, and excitement is right up at the top during testing.

From the very first bend after the drop, my entire coaster is plagued with Fear. Even the slow parts, where it's just gently rising, or going at moderate speed up a gentle spiral. What the heck is causing this unrelenting terror? Does anyone know exactly what causes Fear and how to alleviate it?

And Nausea is constantly in the red, again, even at times where it's just gently rising or some such thing. I get that it would be high at a few points, but it just never changes... it's always in the red.

I watched the 5-minute tutorial video, but all they do there is enthuse about how great their testing process is for giving you the statistics, and they don't actually tell you what generates the Big Three. Am I missing some sort of information here? It seems like a really bad idea for the game to judge our coasters so harshly and so mysteriously after we spend a long time making them.

Can anyone give me some pointers here?

[mabrown666]

I have no special knowledge, but I've noticed a few things that may help.
Excitement is measured from the moment the customer sits to the moment they leave. Therefore wait times, chain lifts and unloading queues all count against excitement.
Next fear and nausea are accumulative, if a section would give medium nausea on it's own, it will give high nausea if placed directly after another high nausea section. After a high nausea section, give the customers a bit of a smooth ride for a bit before throwing them around again.
Finally, watch out for that auto complete. It can create some evil finishes. Try to only use it for more or less finished tracks and remember to smooth them into the existing track afterwards.
I hope that helps.

[R3sistance]

You can use heat maps to see where your rides are bad. Rough rides seem to cause extra nausea and so making sure your rides are smooth helps lower it from what I see. Also consider natural ride elements, rollercoasters are usually smooth and have hills, etc. Pushing people through many intense things will make them feel more sick than afraid or excited.

[fxknight]

Thanks for the tip about not having too many intense things, R3... that's helpful. But still, I think my game may be bugged. The heat maps don't show a single thing... the entire ride, every part of it, is red (or in the case of excitement, green, which is supposed to be good) which doesn't leave me with anything to correct, and despite it all being green for excitement, and constantly right around 10 during tests, it still awards me just an impossibly low 0.90 for excitement overall. Am I the only one having this issue?

[Spectre]

Can you upload your coaster to the workshop. I'll have a look for you.

In the mean time:

The primary factor for excitment are speed and height. The faster a coaster goes and the higher it is, the higher the overall excitment score. At the end, this is calculated as an average for the duration of the whole ride, so time spent on slow sections, plain sections, chain lifts, block brakes or station clearance eat into the average significantly. I find maxing out the speed of my chainlift helps alot.

Fear, is a measure of intensity and is calculated primarily by the number of G's exerted throughout the coaster. High speed turns and small diameter inversions are the principle offenders.

Nausea, I dunno what cuses this actually.

[fxknight]

Thanks, Spectre. That was some very useful information. I sped up my chain and it helped, although it seems a little ridiculous... how can we ever get the ratings above 6 or 7 for excitement if it's always being dragged down by the station and the initial lift?

[Silky Rough]

I spent hours last night designing coasters, looking for the sweet spot. I only started to get successful when I did "smooth" - or as someone called it, "natural".

The sweetest imho are banking turns that don't "throw" people around corners but rather "rolls" then in and out of them. A 90 degree turn on a 0 degree bank scares the life out of them but change that banking to a gradual 30+ degree and they love it.

Again, imho, height and speed are good but I found prolonged speed seems less so. I had one ride where the best part of the ride was at ~70kph through banking turns. The most "feared" area was a single drop, on a straight section that reached 140kph.

But if I had to summarise, high lateral G is the biggest fear/nausea generator.

[thrgsmypny]

I have noticed that you should try to aim for a fear rating of 4-5 (green with the heatmap turned on). Also, when you build coasters, always enable the fear heatmap. I try to build my coasters around the fear rating and I always get an excitement rating of at least 6.9 and higher.

[EvilShuckle]

Originally posted by fxknight:

Thanks, Spectre. That was some very useful information. I sped up my chain and it helped, although it seems a little ridiculous... how can we ever get the ratings above 6 or 7 for excitement if it's always being dragged down by the station and the initial lift?

Heya. I've asked this same question on this forum before. I can't say for sure it's actually true, but someone told me that the excitement is lowered by a lot if the fear is high. Excitement can be all green the entire rollercoaster, but if the fear is off the charts, it kinda overwhelms them and lowers the excitement. I've tried to test it, but I apparantly suck at making rollercoasters in general, therefore I am not the right person to do so, but it did seem right. As I made parts less scary, the excitement went up.

So, I'd recommend doing what thrgsmypny said, and aim for fear being green and forget about the excitement.

[CaptainPerhaps]

Does anyone know if props affect Fear/Excitement? E.g. If I have a slow bit but there are some cool skeletons, flames or a massive kraken leaping out, will that just be a really boring bit of the ride in mathematical terms?

[fxknight]

An excellent question, CapHap. I'd be curious about the answer as well.

[Dakuwan]

Originally posted by CaptainPerhaps:

Does anyone know if props affect Fear/Excitement? E.g. If I have a slow bit but there are some cool skeletons, flames or a massive kraken leaping out, will that just be a really boring bit of the ride in mathematical terms?

If you pass real close to objects such as other rides tracks it causes fear.

[Turian209]

Widening turns and banking them is the key, as several people have pointed out. Although I can't find where to adjust the lift hill speed like everyone has been talking about

[Spectre]

Originally posted by Turian209:

Widening turns and banking them is the key, as several people have pointed out. Although I can't find where to adjust the lift hill speed like everyone has been talking about

You have to open the track editor and change the option on the lift hill in question. Select that piece, and then where angle snap and all that is there will be a second tab, it's on that.

[Voilodion]

Originally posted by Turian209:

Widening turns and banking them is the key, as several people have pointed out. Although I can't find where to adjust the lift hill speed like everyone has been talking about

Edit the coaster, then click on the lift hill itself, then go to the Utility Settings tab in the bottom UI panel.

[Monkeysam]

I have noticed that extreeme fear rides reduce excitement in a ride.. I had a ride that looked to be high excitement.. but it had some horrible fear sections that gave an end result with really low excitment, and extreeme fear.. afte I tweeked it to reduce the fear.. the final result had a high excitment rating.