Feedback regarding Automation, income, liq & cards

[Misaki]

This is in regards to the official post that mentions that it is being looked at, and what my experience has been up to this point. I will post my thoughts as the pop up, so it will not be in the best format or logical order. Sorry in advance

So! First thing that comes to mind is the "random" businesses each season. Towards the end of any given season (say the last 5 or so quest steps) Every liq. you spend is a gamble. Reason is that you may very well end up having spent them on something that will have zero impact on the season that is coming up next. Possible help? Maby show what season(s) each business is active, or an 'spoiler' section in businesses that shows the next season business' list so I may upgrade characters or businesses that relate to that season rather than the season I am working on at the moment.

Second is the card distribution smart? system. I have 1500+ cards of 5 or so businesses that have fallen way behind:
Level 8 Kittyland 1689 cards.
Level 7 Dirty Dancer 1540 cards.
Level 7 Convenients Store: 1777 cards
Level 7 Pi$$ Factory: 1791 cards.
Level 10 Burger: 1000+ cards (unknown since, well, if you're maxed you don't actually know anymore)
While I likely have a bunch of cards for my maxxed businesses I have no real way of knowing, but I suspect it is quite a bit less in most instances.
Characters has been less of an issue since the implementation of the smart trading system, so that was a big plus! I've had several "Trade 50 Coconut for 250 Liquor?" deals and same for rogers. I don't seem to ever get it for Sarah however, but that may just be randomness.

Third, I mostly relied on an autoclicker for season 41 and onwards. the increase of liq. requirements of all characters scaling up with liq income being mostly static (exception being the patched updates such as the trading, hourly trunk, event & lesser extent TV crew)
Even with the autoclicker I found some oddities at some points. I can't recall all the seasons, but at some points the following situation happen:
I fight like CRAZY to get a customer count of 710 for all businesses for one cash quest. Next step is gain X amount of cash. That step is done in literally 0 seconds because it doesn't cost more then a thousand of a thousand of what my last building upgrade happened to cost. This does not happen all seasons and I can't recall which one(s) it did happen on, but it has happened more than once or twice. Season 51 likely had that issue, but I can not say for sure.

Fourth, regarding my autoclicker: I use an old timey keyboard macro input to simulate mouseclicks at a rate of one click per 4 ms (click down, wait 1ms, click up, wait 3 ms and repeat), ending up with 250/second for this game. I am unsure how many clicks actually get logged and functional, but I can with certainty say that I got more than 10x the business normal output easily. I knew that it was too good to be staying, but I am an active player generally and every clicker/idler I've played to this point have been balanced in such a way that progress is 'mostly fine' in full idle and ranges between 'mostly fineR' => quite nice in full click mode.
However, as an active player getting an 80% income boost from clicking and having to stay 100% active in the game is not worth it and as such I have ceased all activity outside of trading and opening trunks(and clicking TV crew while doing said things). I engage the macro when going to bed if I have an business that, well, I need to do it on.


Fifth, regarding multipliers
I never really understood why the businesses have such seemingly random and extreme multipliers coming out of nowhere. as an example: I go from 500 => 550 customers and gain a x2 multiplier. I then fight like an animal to go from 550 => 600 and I suddenly get an 8000 multiplier. 8 thousand. This means that 1 seconds output gives me what took me over 2 hours! just before. then it drops down to x2 again, this could possibly have been spaced out a bit more so you don't literally swim in cash for a bit after being completely dried out.
Not having ANY indication of that this is about to happen is also an issue, I guess.
example of indicators(from other games) is how they have milestones: an x1000 of a business might warrant extra numbers, but an random-ish 550 might not. Instead of x2 x2 x8000 x5 x2 x2 x2 you could possibly put it to x4 x4 x100 x10 x4 x4 x4 or something along those lines? Not sure how the underlying code is built, and how much work it would entail... But again: these are just my spontaneous thoughts. I am not a game designer, but I do play a LOT of games. So I have thoughts but not solutions


Current:
I'm at season 61 and ground to a (mostly) complete standstill after the patch. I realize I am quite likely ahead of the curve you intend a full free to play-player to be at and mostly accept my fate as such. I will grind my way up through the second two quest lines as much as I can, and then I will just wait it out. You heard my input regarding season 41 and I hope people who got there after have had a better time of it and I further hope that any data I can provide will help the ones coming after but I suspect my progression of the game will... suffer for a bit - but again: I am likely a bit ahead of where I "should" be. I have played the game quite actively since launch however. Which my playtime and (if tracked) opened trunks/done deals etc. should corroborate.


Regarding liquor/card income
One thought is the soft-reset that most idler/clickers use can be implemented to increase card/liq gains at the cost of resetting current liq/card counts (except whatever people got from buying DLCs of course. possibly keep epic cards out of the resets? unsure, but just a thought)
If no resetting is planned then just disregard, I fully realise that it is more than just a button to implement such an idea into a game that doesn't have it from the start.

This is in no way a sob story. I want to give input, and outline the situation I am currently in and what led to it. The clicking update sped up my progress significantly due to not really limiting the click input, but! with that said: even WITH that autoclicking power I had major issues at some seasons. I still do not have the second character for Roc Pile Cellular because my businesses were horrible that season and I barely scraped by through autoclick+second and third questlines. Only way I know of how to get said character now is from the 70# trunks, and no dice so far.

I have 5 Viable businesses as follows: (depending on season)
format: Common character/rare character
Ricky's Used Gas (10C/10R) also lv4 ricky costume. Relevant due to absurd power.
Roc Vodka (11C/10R)
Moneyvale Casino (12C/9R)
Sunnyvale Wrestling(11C/10R)
Denture King(9c/9R)
Usually rickys gas becomes the top business if available, when I reach the soft-cap of a season (when businesses stop giving the random-ish 8000x multipliers for no apparent reason)
Currently working on making the burger thing viable, but am a long way off liq. wise (and by counting cards I can see that I will be stopped soon enough there as well.)



Thanks for reading this. I am not good at formatting my thoughts and I for some reason love using parentheses and commas while typing.
I do like the game, never doubt that. This is creeping up on becoming my most played idlegame for a reason.
I will keep posting feedback as I get any to post. I can more actively post when I get weird cash quest happenings (as in: hit final customer bonus treshold and suddenly you get 3 cash quests done due to income being way waaay above target)

Thanks for actively updating the game! Looking forward to playing the event soon after posting this

// Misaki

* edit
screenshot showing current status for whomever might be interested
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2418872982878665977/15218F9CFFD160595D13A44912B3E2CE957EDE14/

[East Side Games]

Thanks for this bud! We'll be looking over all the feedback you guys send us! :D

[Misaki]

and while poking around on reddit I remembered another thing, regarding costumes and Rickys gas station buff in particular.
For some reason, costumes seem to scale linearly and thus have severe diminishing returns, while still costing obscene amounts to actually upgrade. They usually have an incredible baseline boost, though. But it makes all cards I gain for said costumes feel completely worthless (and I suspect they are not part of any trade deals; I have not even once seen a deal with costumes => liq. or costumes => character trading)
Anyways, it would cost me 1250 to upgrade rickys costume
it would net me (for gas station only mind you) an increase from 12 => 14 cash and 6=>7 speed
this comes out to an increase of (total) multiplier from x72 => x98, which is an increase of 1.36. Next level would (logically) be1500 liq. cash 14 => 16, time 7 => 8 which is 98 => 128 or 1.306 and it would keep having diminishing return for an ever increasing cost. all the while taking a card "slot" (unless custumes have an unique card slot, in which case this is an nonissue and I'm sorry)

This might be a messy post but I hope it gets my thoughts across! I assume costumes are supposed to just be a bonus and not something one should strive to upgrade, but the rate of diminishing returns makes it... mostly worthless to even attempt for the mostpart

[michael]

with reference to your first and fifth points there is a link to a spreadsheet from the Reddit which contains all the character automation requirements for all seasons and also the business multipliers. Not saying this information shouldn't be made available in the game but in the meantime it is available.

I use it all the time and as I take around 3 days a season thus far I can work a few seasons ahead on making sure I will be able to automate when I get there.

As an aside there is also a spreadsheet for events and as the PC events have been pretty much identical so far this is useful for working out what strategy to go for and what cards to save up or buy from the shop.

[Misaki]

I have been using that since... about when the event started, but it is a bit too late now. This is my fault I guess; but the game could use a link to reddit, or a referrence to it possibly? there are a few games (I *think*) that referrence their reddit in them to help newer players, but most of that information should be available in-game rather than, well, not. Especially business multipliers feels off to me that I can't see a preview off. having the next season be essentially random(without said reddit post) also feels weird. I can't think of another idler that has had characters be locked from reset to reset. I'm sure there are, but I haven't played any that I can recall

If the information is intended to be hidden, that is fine. But if there is no particular reason behind it being hidden then my feedback stands on both point(s) one and five

Thanks for mentioning the reddit post though, even if I noticed it not long ago some others may yet have to find it. It would likely have been a big help earlier on