No one opens a park, gets 500 guests in 8 minutes, starts rolling in cash, and says "Gosh I wish my staff had staff rooms so that this would feel like a more cohesive experience".
No one is playing through "Career" mode, acing every scenario with little difficulty outside of the coaster stat challenges, and thinking "You know what would've made this a challenging and rewarding experience? Staff rooms."
The issues with the game's management boil down to the fact that the player barely has any need to do anything "correctly" to succeed. You can slap paths in any stupid shape you want, stick any ride you want along those paths, put any decor along those rides, and roll in money for the rest of your life with no effort.
Forest Frontiers in RCT1 is not a difficult scenario. In fact, its goals are WAY more freeform than those in Planet Coaster: 250 guests by the end of year 1, and a 600 park rating at the end of year 1.
But here's the thing: Both those goals are failable. The player can fail those goals. You can't fail goals in Planet Coaster. Right off the bat, there's a huge issue: There is zero sense of urgency in Planet Coaster. Every goal can be completed by waiting until you're financially stable enough to complete them. Every single goal in the game can be completed by waiting long enough to throw money at it.
And considering money is no issue, how are these challenges?
Forest Frontiers starts you with 10k cash, and a 10k loan in the bank, meaning everything you have is loan money and you're paying interest.
Pirate Battle in Planet Coaster starts you with a stupidly clumsy 5037 dollars and 59 cents, and 692 guests. The park is already thriving. You can sit here with the park as-is and make money.
The first goal is to attract 800 guests. You already have 692. So you need 108 additional guests, in any timeframe you please with no deadline. The second is to build 2 rides. You can afford to do that right from the start as rides in this game are priced really poorly in comparison to how much money you make- some under 1000 dollars.
The medium goal is to attract 900 guests, and make 4 rides.
The hard goal is 1,100 guests (awkward number) and have 15k in the bank.
You can literally complete all these goals in one month with little effort. Guests pay so much for rides, arrive to the park so quickly, and have so low of standards that you can complete all of these in a month. Or 20 years. Whatever you choose. Slap down a Wild Blue and charge 16 bucks for it, an Insanity at 15, and a teacups at 8- you're rolling in money. You win.
Forest Frontiers forces you to play for a minimum amount of time. It forces you to achieve and maintain these values. It forces you to earn your guests by starting you with 0, it forces you to earn your rides by buying them all yourself.
So now we've got a laundry list of balance problems from the first scenario:
-No time limits
-No time minimums
-No goals requiring "maintaining" an accomplishment
-High guest input
-Fast money flow
-High tolerance for ride prices
-Simple goals
When you play Forest Frontiers, it isn't challenging. But you can mess up. If you spend too much money on scenery you can't make it back with just one or two small rides. This is not an issue in Planet Coaster. If you develop too slowly, you will fail to meet your guest goal in time. This is not an issue in Planet Coaster. If you price a ride slightly too high, guests will avoid it forever. This is an issue in planet coaster- but the threshold is so outlandish and the prices for buying new rides and decorations and shops so low that there's no real penalty for it, because an acceptable price is unreasonably high.
This pattern follows through all the game's scenarios. Guests arrive too quickly, they are too eager, they spend too much, you spend too little, you aren't challenged, you aren't stopped, there's no deadlines, there's no threat of failure if you don't maintain something, you just have to do it once and you're golden.
Even looking at Forest Frontiers some more we can see yet more depth Planet Coaster just plain fails to have:
-Maps that aren't a big square, meaning you have to work with awkward borders
-Maps with land you don't own, meaning you can't build there
-Maps with land restrictions in general
-Maps with purchaseable land
-Maps with a different price for purchaseable land based on the map's theme and fictional location (The land in a scenario set in a farm community is ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ expensive because the nearby farmers want their cut, the land in the middle of the woods is dirt cheap)
-Maps with contruction rights meaning you can build in the air but not on the ground
-The ability to choose which varieties of attractions to research instead of picking a specific one from a few random options at a time
-Marketing campaigns that serve legitimate value for pushing in visitors at the last second
-Maintenance specifically for things like mowing the lawn or watering gardens, neither of which exist in Planet Coaster
And on top of all that, there's yet more that these games do to make the player feel like they have more agency, control, and challenge!
-Popups alerting the player that their park is doing good in a certain category such as scenery, flowers, cleanliness, entertainment value, prices, food
-Guest thoughts on a wider variety of topics with more legitimate feedback for the player
-Grouped guests thoughts
-The ability to see all guest thoughts in the park via a long list
-A more visible variety of guest ride preferences per-scenario
-Weather!
-Guests remain in line when a ride breaks down
-Various types of breakdowns which have various effects (overclocked carousel makes guests sick, brake failure can lead to crashes that permanently affect the ride's reputation, a stuck lift hill can lead to guests being stuck on the ride for ages and get off upset, a failed launch can make guests get two shots at launching on a launched coaster which makes them happier)
And moving beyond management, there's even more depth to some aspects of simulation!
-Guests wander, instead of being laser-focused
-Guests require a map to even be laser-focused
-Guests will stop and take photos of rides in construction
-Guests will stop and just watch rides in motion
-Guests will leave the park if they don't have any money
And what does Planet Coaster do when faced with none of these things feeling like they matter, if they even exist at all (most things listed do not exist)? Ride Prestige? Staff rooms? What do these things matter if the core foundation of the game is so lacking in terms of balance, agency, feedback, and depth? You can't fix the game's problems by stapling new things like this on top.
Yeah, your staff are going to be dealt with better (and likely be more expensive), maybe they'll no longer quit when there's nothing to do (only to instantly be replaced meaning there's absolutely no downside whatsoever for the player). But will the game be better for it?
Older RCT games are simpler, yes. Their management isn't as "rich". But their gameplay is better because the games are better balanced and designed at their core. Slapping more mechanics on top doesn't make a game better.
Frontier has a bowl of cereal with no milk, and when people say "But where's the milk?" they say "Milk Matters! Pouring evolved!", and they pour in some more ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ cereal.
We don't need more cereal. We need milk.
We have been telling you that we need milk for a year and a half. Are you ever going to listen?
I try to post suggestions about how to actually improve the game (maybe this wasnt the best thread, but I usually post a lot of suggestions)