Possible solution for the ride aging/prestige mechanic...

[Bitter Jeweler]

For those wishing to turn off aging --> https://forums.planetcoaster.com/sho...utation-Update

It will soon be possible

That's good news. I can't wait to see how they tweak it for those of us who like the mechanic.
I think removing it from Harder Challenge parks, turns them back into easy challenge parks though. So, why would one choose the Harder, and then turn off that feature??? That makes no sense to me.

 

[Wablamo0821]

That's good news. I can't wait to see how they tweak it for those of us who like the mechanic.
I think removing it from Harder Challenge parks, turns them back into easy challenge parks though. So, why would one choose the Harder, and then turn off that feature??? That makes no sense to me.

Yeah, exactly.... It may be a stop gap until they tweak the mechanic. That's why I asked in that thread if they were going to tweak it. Otherwise it's plop two flats, plop two shops and win.

 

[seeker7]

Yeah, exactly.... It may be a stop gap until they tweak the mechanic.

- Old coasters will attract lots and lots of guests
- Nobody of these guests is willing to pay for the coasters they came to the park in the first place. Well, okay, maybe a buck or two, the old coasters will still lose you money
- But if you place a new piece of scenery at the queue and paint the tracks green the ride miraculously is profitable again.
- And of course if you let your crappy old ride only sit long enough it becomes a classic and you can charge even more than back when it was first built.
- And it works like that for every coaster. Every kiddy attraction. All rides are the same.

How does this make sense to anyone? It's not like this in real life. As an idea to expand upon aging rides, ok. But to make the game harder giving us less money at the beginning of a scenario would be only slightly less interesting as ride reputation now.

I hope they develop real new managing features.
Researchable upgrades for rides would be where I'd start. Refurbishing could be a real thing: Not just chaning a color or click on a button that says "refurbish". Unlockable stuff like new track pieces, better brakes so you can have rides go faster, different cars with different properties (comfort, safety)... Of course that doesn't make sense for every kiddy ride but why should aging work the same for every ride? Through research you could unlock better (and more expensive) versions of flatrides (or just buy engine and capacity upgrades).
By different mechanics the way rides work could change over time.

Even the coaster stations could evolve. For your big coasters you could unlock new bigger stations. Those have a certain amount of staff slots. More slots filled of course means you pay more but by doing so you can boost safety, queue time/guest happiness... and of course your staff happiness is improved.

One of your old coasters in your park, a classic, isn't state of the art anymore, the old track system is unreliable, the ride breaks down a lot and is expensive to maintain. The catch would be, by tearing down this "classic" you upset fans and it affects your park reputation negatively. You would have to counter that by something like a press statement and announcing a new attraction in your park, a campaign for the grand opening....

This is just off the top of my head, there's a lot more things you could come up with to design interesting gameplay involving an aging mechanism. The thing it is right now is simply another variable added to every ride that changes over time. As a game machanic it's clumsy and unimaginative as can be.

 

[Souldrake]

I have some problems with the OP:

Sure, old rides may become less profitable and people may not want to pay as much for them, but currently in the game, people stay in the park for excessively long amounts of time compared to the fiscal schedule of the park. When a scenario tells you to make X in monthly profit, that's extremely hard to do when people don't leave your park and don't pay for another ticket at the beginning of the month or at least on a date 1 month upon entering your park.

I tried that once, and I made money the first month, but lost a ton of money in the next few months because of no ticket sales and for some reason no one was going to my shops so they were losing money too. This was in Cavernous Coasters scenario. I've never really had this problem with shops in any scenario but that one and I'm not really sure why... but then, I didn't play the game much after the aging system because I simply don't enjoy it enough in it's current state. With some tweaks and changes, it could be a lot better. One suggestion I had was to make a double slider for the aging system:

Speed: (how fast rides go from new -> old)
Length: (how many years it takes to go from new -> old -> classic) (with maybe 10years for short and 30+ years/never classic for the highest.)

 

[Wablamo0821]

The option to turn off ride reputation is now live --> https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/20813-Update-1-1-2

 

[seeker7]

The option to turn off ride reputation is now live --> https://forums.planetcoaster.com/showthread.php/20813-Update-1-1-2

One step forward, one step back! [gaga] [haha] I never understood the complaints how ride aging "ruined the game". Aggreed, the feature seemed unbalanced and simply slapping an extra variable that changes over time unto every ride wasn't a good solution. But you could simply ignore the modes in which it was active, and those weren't many to begin with.

In the discussions on here people couldn't even seem to aggree on the way the mechanic worked, so it's fair to assume some didn't really know what they're talking about. Who knows how many of the people complaining about it were playing in sandbox mode the whole time (where ride reputation isn't active)? I don't think ride reputation was that much of a problem. All the new patch is good for really is that the devs can say "see, we're listening".

Now it's optional but they can't make every change to the game optional. This way you have to realise we will end up with no changes or only superficial changes to the game in the future. There will certainly be no "deep(er)" management if with every design decision hundreds of threads pop up and want things "optional".

Seeing how from all the issues PC has, people chose ride reputation to freak out about I don't see how including the community is gonna make the game better in the end.

 

[Wablamo0821]

Seeing how from all the issues PC has, people chose ride reputation to freak out about I don't see how including the community is gonna make the game better in the end.

C'mon now Seeker, you know as well as I do that people have been freaking out for a solid two months now about everything under the sun.

 

[Kickflip]

I have some problems with the OP:

Sure, old rides may become less profitable and people may not want to pay as much for them, but currently in the game, people stay in the park for excessively long amounts of time compared to the fiscal schedule of the park. When a scenario tells you to make X in monthly profit, that's extremely hard to do when people don't leave your park and don't pay for another ticket at the beginning of the month or at least on a date 1 month upon entering your park.

I tried that once, and I made money the first month, but lost a ton of money in the next few months because of no ticket sales and for some reason no one was going to my shops so they were losing money too. This was in Cavernous Coasters scenario. I've never really had this problem with shops in any scenario but that one and I'm not really sure why... but then, I didn't play the game much after the aging system because I simply don't enjoy it enough in it's current state. With some tweaks and changes, it could be a lot better. One suggestion I had was to make a double slider for the aging system:

Speed: (how fast rides go from new -> old)
Length: (how many years it takes to go from new -> old -> classic) (with maybe 10years for short and 30+ years/never classic for the highest.)

The secret to admission based pricing is to have a scenery score almost equal to your ride score. But not all animatronics and special effects, cheap $0 maintenance scenery.

You'll have far more guest traffic with no additional operating costs.

Cavernous Coasters is only difficult because they cap the park at 600 guests. You can't have tons of extra shops or facilities or rides to keep the operating costs low.

 

[Kickflip]

- Old coasters will attract lots and lots of guests
- Nobody of these guests is willing to pay for the coasters they came to the park in the first place. Well, okay, maybe a buck or two, the old coasters will still lose you money
- But if you place a new piece of scenery at the queue and paint the tracks green the ride miraculously is profitable again.
- And of course if you let your crappy old ride only sit long enough it becomes a classic and you can charge even more than back when it was first built.
- And it works like that for every coaster. Every kiddy attraction. All rides are the same.

How does this make sense to anyone? It's not like this in real life. As an idea to expand upon aging rides, ok. But to make the game harder giving us less money at the beginning of a scenario would be only slightly less interesting as ride reputation now.

I hope they develop real new managing features.
Researchable upgrades for rides would be where I'd start. Refurbishing could be a real thing: Not just chaning a color or click on a button that says "refurbish". Unlockable stuff like new track pieces, better brakes so you can have rides go faster, different cars with different properties (comfort, safety)... Of course that doesn't make sense for every kiddy ride but why should aging work the same for every ride? Through research you could unlock better (and more expensive) versions of flatrides (or just buy engine and capacity upgrades).
By different mechanics the way rides work could change over time.

Even the coaster stations could evolve. For your big coasters you could unlock new bigger stations. Those have a certain amount of staff slots. More slots filled of course means you pay more but by doing so you can boost safety, queue time/guest happiness... and of course your staff happiness is improved.

One of your old coasters in your park, a classic, isn't state of the art anymore, the old track system is unreliable, the ride breaks down a lot and is expensive to maintain. The catch would be, by tearing down this "classic" you upset fans and it affects your park reputation negatively. You would have to counter that by something like a press statement and announcing a new attraction in your park, a campaign for the grand opening....

This is just off the top of my head, there's a lot more things you could come up with to design interesting gameplay involving an aging mechanism. The thing it is right now is simply another variable added to every ride that changes over time. As a game machanic it's clumsy and unimaginative as can be.

The mechanic is to force you into an attendance based price schema which is harder than the ride ticket based system.

Classic mode needs to go and I think free rides should be more popular in general. The prestige hit should only slightly effect popularity and should more drastically effect the price guests are willing to pay.

Tearing down a ride already negatively effects your park reputation... it lowers your park score which lowers your potential guests.

 

[seeker7]

C'mon now Seeker, you know as well as I do that people have been freaking out for a solid two months now about everything under the sun.

I don't think so. Maybe I was reading the wrong threads but there was a lot of "OMG the game was perfect before but now they messed up EVERYTHING I want a refund because the game is unplayable since the winter patch!!".
I didn't see much of that for other stuff where I'd expect such a reaction.

The mechanic is to force you into an attendance based price schema which is harder than the ride ticket based system.

Classic mode needs to go and I think free rides should be more popular in general. The prestige hit should only slightly effect popularity and should more drastically effect the price guests are willing to pay.

Tearing down a ride already negatively effects your park reputation... it lowers your park score which lowers your potential guests.

I understand how the mechanic works and what its purpose is, thank you very much. It was a relatively simple thing that could be added fast. What it was and is not is good game design.
Discussing if popularity of ride should go down a little bit more or not doesn't matter is thinking too small. The right question to ask is: What would be a mechanic that improves the game as a whole?

 

[breezerHOG1]

The right question to ask is: What would be a mechanic that improves the game as a whole?

well I've said my suggestions many times (staff facilities, park closing, better objectives) but what would be your #1 request?

 

[Kickflip]

I don't think so. Maybe I was reading the wrong threads but there was a lot of "OMG the game was perfect before but now they messed up EVERYTHING I want a refund because the game is unplayable since the winter patch!!".
I didn't see much of that for other stuff where I'd expect such a reaction.



I understand how the mechanic works and what its purpose is, thank you very much. It was a relatively simple thing that could be added fast. What it was and is not is good game design.
Discussing if popularity of ride should go down a little bit more or not doesn't matter is thinking too small. The right question to ask is: What would be a mechanic that improves the game as a whole?

Clearly you knew the mechanic you suggested adding as a new mechanic was already in the game. Makes total sense.

This discussion wasn't about designing new mechanics, it was about how to correct the aging mechanic with the flaw being it provides too large of a reward with classic status.

Please stop derailing the thread.

 

[seeker7]

well I've said my suggestions many times (staff facilities, park closing, better objectives) but what would be your #1 request?

It doesn't work that way. Simply adding (a) new mechanism(s) will not necessarily make for a better game. It's how you set them up to interact with each other. I've tried to show that with the example of a re-designed ride aging system (see post above).

There's obviously limits. Take "staff training for janitors" for example. As long as it means clicking on a button to spend money so your janitors work a little faster that's not a very interesting thing.
But what else can you do with this? I don't see much room for improvement, but one idea is this:
Amongst other stats for staff there are base levels for customer friendlyness and effectiveness. Now force the player to make a decision. You can have very effective janitors but the pressure to get their work done means they're more likely to be rude towards guests. On the other hand you can have them take lessons in dealing with difficult guests so peeps will say how great the staff at your park is but of course these janitors will be less effective.
In both cases you can somehow counter the negative side effect (bring up guest happiness/ spend money on park promotion or in the second case hire more janitors). This is what a management game is about, understanding how different decisions have different effects and figuring out how to set up a system that is working.

This discussion wasn't about designing new mechanics, it was about how to correct the aging mechanic with the flaw being it provides too large of a reward with classic status.

Please stop derailing the thread.

[shocked]

So why exactly are you accusing me of "derailing the thread" when I've showed how the existing aging mechanism can be improved upon?

Maybe you got a better contribution to this topic? Let's hear it.

 

[tyczj]

It doesn't work that way. Simply adding (a) new mechanism(s) will not necessarily make for a better game. It's how you set them up to interact with each other. I've tried to show that with the example of a re-designed ride aging system (see post above).

There's obviously limits. Take "staff training for janitors" for example. As long as it means clicking on a button to spend money so your janitors work a little faster that's not a very interesting thing.
But what else can you do with this?

An idea I was playing with the other day was that each staff member has their own "training points" and you spend these points on different attributes that a janitor can have like emptying garbage cans, sweeping paths, walking. The more points you give to a specific area the faster they perform that job but at the cost of the other attributes.

The idea is similar to sports games where you build your own player and you are given a certain number of points per player to increase their skill.

could this become tiresome to do with for every person, sure but it gives people that next level granularity that they have been looking for

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

The game doesn't need "one" new mechanic to improve the game as a whole. It needs several, possibly interconnected things going on. This mechanic is interesting enough, it just needs tweaked. What I offered up was after considering what the major complaints with it are/were, so that it gives more people what they are looking for. Two big points are peeps still riding rides, and continued hardship for the hardest challenge. The "Classic" bonus is bogus.

Frontier made a big mistake with the Pop-up hint about Old rides, that you consider replacing them. They set up how people would respond, wrongly, to the mechanic. People couldn't get past that "replacement, as a solution. And the numerous rants prove it.
The hint should have been along the lines of "Maybe you should try expanding your park with new rides? But don't worry, maybe the ride will become popular again". Not the best wording, but you get the idea. Frontier basically told everyone to delete the old rides. That's not the right answer, and so many got hung up on that. Many people went down that path of an endless loop of ride replacement, never reaping the benefit of patience. [bored]

I don't see the money hit as the easy way out for challenge. It is just one way. Since this is basically a financial sim, with everything tied to money, no matter what new mechanics people suggest, they will ultimately be tied to a money hit. You want natural disasters? Money hit. Lysteria outbreak in your shops? Money hit. Vendors going on strike? Money hit. I have yet to see anyone offer anything up that would make the game harder that doesn't directly or indirectly involve a money hit.

Personally, I don't mind if Frontier keep adding new mechanics over time. It will keep it interesting for me. Even if the new thing doesn't effect old parks. It won't stop me from continuing them, nor starting new parks. Some things do need to be baked in at this point though. If they drastically change coaster friction, it could break a lot of old coasters. Like 15 thousand of them in the workshop.

 

[edjenoh]

The game doesn't need "one" new mechanic to improve the game as a whole. It needs several, possibly interconnected things going on. This mechanic is interesting enough, it just needs tweaked. What I offered up was after considering what the major complaints with it are/were, so that it gives more people what they are looking for. Two big points are peeps still riding rides, and continued hardship for the hardest challenge. The "Classic" bonus is bogus.

Frontier made a big mistake with the Pop-up hint about Old rides, that you consider replacing them. They set up how people would respond, wrongly, to the mechanic. People couldn't get past that "replacement, as a solution. And the numerous rants prove it.
The hint should have been along the lines of "Maybe you should try expanding your park with new rides? But don't worry, maybe the ride will become popular again". Not the best wording, but you get the idea. Frontier basically told everyone to delete the old rides. That's not the right answer, and so many got hung up on that. Many people went down that path of an endless loop of ride replacement, never reaping the benefit of patience. [bored]

The problem is that this strategy works much better too, especially on flat rides. It's just a huge nuisance to replace the rides all the ' time. They need to balance it and make it so the novelty of a ride depends on the amount of time that particular TYPE of ride is in the park, irrespective of whether you place a new one or not, then make the old period not as punishing and perhaps remove classic. They should also give the ride a prestige bonus if you lower the price so you can counteract unpopular old rides low popularity by offering cheaper prices. Popularity of a ride should also go down as queue time decreases. Currently peeps do get happy and are willing to queue faster on low queue rides, but it should also slightly increase the prestige of the ride to attract more guests to unpopular rides.

It only makes sense: cheap and low queue ride, should be valuable to guests, even if the ride itself is maybe a bit dull.

 

[breezerHOG1]

I have yet to see anyone offer anything up that would make the game harder that doesn't directly or indirectly involve a money it.

Its fine if you dislike my ideas, but I dont know how you can say Im not at least trying [knockout]

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

It's just a huge nuisance to replace the rides all the ' time.

That's my point! They really didn't intend for you to replace rides all the time. If they did, they would never have them revive, and turn classic and be uber popular again. Classic was the intended goal, and replacement will never, ever, get you there. Their BIG mistake was with that in game hint.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Its fine if you dislike my ideas, but I dont know how you can say Im not at least trying [knockout]

Where did I EVER say you weren't trying? [rolleyes]

In our last discussion, I drilled down to the heart of why one idea that you claimed was "interactive", wasn't, and that it didn't really add anything new or interesting. Instead of answering my last questions, you brought out a strawman argument, then redirected to other things. Just because we all have ideas, doesn't mean they are all golden. I put this idea out there to see what others thought of it, and over all it's been interesting discussion. I'm not bothered by anyone who thinks it's not the best idea. I don't need to defend it to it's death. I welcome anyone pointing out it's flaws.

 

[seeker7]

I don't see the money hit as the easy way out for challenge. It is just one way. Since this is basically a financial sim, with everything tied to money, no matter what new mechanics people suggest, they will ultimately be tied to a money hit. You want natural disasters? Money hit. Lysteria outbreak in your shops? Money hit. Vendors going on strike? Money hit. I have yet to see anyone offer anything up that would make the game harder that doesn't directly or indirectly involve a money it.

Of course it's gonna be tied to money in the end but you still can't say "it's a money hit either way so it doesn't matter how it's designed".

It does matter if it's a one-time event, a single variable that streches out the hit or a more sophisticated take on the whole thing. I've suggested a by far more complex system in this very thread. And it seems to me creaper's feeling similar about his suggestions (I just don't remember right now what they were). If you're not convinced, fine. But don't act like the only other suggestions were on the same level as one-time random "money hit" events.