In short, I think prestige/aging does not work properly and the game is better without it.
That's a bit harsh. I think you misunderstand what prestige is and why it's there. Aging is a separate issue, or at most a spin-off, so it's best to discuss these things separately.
So, prestige... You have a park with a large variety of rides: coasters, flats, and tracks, with the full spectrum of EFN and every other way where rides can be different. Peeps somehow have to decide which one of all these rides to go on next. Fear and nausea tolerance shorten the list some but odds are, there will still be quite a few rides suitable to every individual peep, so there must be some sort of tie-breaking mechanism. Problem is, the rides are so physically different that you can't just compare their individual attributes. And you can't use their straight EFN values because then coasters would totally dominate things like track rides that simply are incapable of having high EFNs. So, we have prestige, a composite of several different attributes, the idea being that a given type of rides would be strong in 1 or 2 of these areas but weak in the other(s). Doing this allows rides with vastly different physical characteristics to be compared directly together and thus compete on hopefully an equal footing. IOW, the idea is to take apples and oranges and turn them all into plums.
IMHO this basic idea is a simple and elegant solution. It's a good thing and I think the game is much improved since it was introduced. Now, can the prestige system be improved? Certainly. But that's a balancing issue, not a systemic problem. Maybe change the relative weighting of the things that go into the prestige score, maybe add 1 or 2 additional factors to the mix, but on the whole. However, regardless of how you tweak the system, it will still work the same way. All that will change is something like the relative popularity of track rides, but that just means something else will probably take their place.
So the main thing, IMHO, is that players need to have an overall prestige plan for their park. You need to build rides with a park-wide average prestige value in mind, and understand that rides with prestige significantly higher or lower than that will get disproportionately more or less business. This is in addition to providing enough rides with various fear ratings to give each demographic some variety.
Now, we get to ride aging. Aging is just a complication on this because it makes rides' prestige vary over time. This adds a layer to the prestige plan because now you have to schedule new construction to fit into the ever-changing prestige situation. Before starting a game, therefore, it's essential know the rates of prestige change, so you can space out construction to match both your revenue and the prestige situation. Or you can just turn aging off.
I started Fortune Bay Park in challenge mode, hard, with reputation turned on because I wanted to play the game the way the devs intended, but once the track rides hit 25 years it was obvious that that system is horribly broken or at least, not working the way it was intended. Recently, I began a new challenge park with age/rep tuned off, and find it so much more enjoyable.
LOL! Sorry. I just find it amusing to hear folks say they chose hard or harder difficulty, then claim the game is broken because it wasn't easy
Seriously, if the devs had intended the game to be played with the "hard" settings, they'd have called those settings "normal" and "hard" would be more difficult. When making a game, you put your balancing efforts into the "normal" level. The other difficulty levels are by definition imbalanced---that's what makes them easier or harder, the lack of balance found at the normal level. And because of this lack of balance, any imbalances at the normal level will be amplified at the other levels, so you should always expect strange results. That's the nature of game design.
That is by far the most insane (and hillarious) and has inspired me to make my own fir tree ride.[up]
And anybody can always find a way to game a game. Such things have zero relevance, for several reasons:
1. This is a single-player game. Thus, such exploits have zero effect on any other player.
2. Nobody seriously trying to play the game as intended will do such things in their real parks.
3. What people do in the privacy of their own single-player games is their own business. If getting Steam achievements is a big deal to somebody, and he finds an exploit to get an achievement quickly and easily, that's his business. Nobody else should care.