I balloon, you balloon, we ALL balloon

[j_j]

Ok, I've had to pull out the one shopping center because the balloon sales in in a hard to access corner, and causes massive traffic jams no matter who or how I path it.

I've tried putting the balloon store at the far end of the park. Great, but then I get all 4000 peeps fighting for a balloon. So, I've put in about 5 generic balloons to5res, with 5 generic beef stores next to them. So now i only get mini-traffic-jams.

Balloon stores are popular, yessiree. Seems almost excessively popular, but it's a great tool to pull people deeper into the park.

Still, I think my basic observation holds: The limit to park size is when the peeps run out of cash walking to the back, riding rides, eating, drinking, and buying balloons and hats.

I think I've hit it. I've a (goes to check) Gigacoaster rated 8.4 5.6 2.0 and prestige 1010. Nobody rides it, everyone is out of money by the time they get there. Yes, I have a bunch of ATM's, clustered near the more expensive ride entrances. It helped for the previous layer of coasters, but they can't seem to make it this far.

 

[Bullethead]

Yes, there are quite a few threads, both in the general discussion area and the bug reports, about the over-attractiveness of gift shops. Especially balloons, which peeps want the most, then hats, then mementos. This seems to be an issue with peep behavior in terms of how much they want gifts compared to rides, so pending a balance pass on that, you only have a couple of imperfect ways to clear the logjams and get peeps back on rides.

1. Don't use any gift shops. Close the ones you have and don't build any more. This is 100% effective but has the downside of leaving peep needs unfilled, so they get a little grumpy. Peeps want balloons the most, then hats, then trinkets. So if you close the balloon shops but keep the others, you just transfer the problem to the other shops.

2. Jack the gift prices way up, like 2x. That way, only a small fraction of the peeps will buy gifts. This keeps money in their pockets for other purposes but has several negative side-effects. First, peeps only learn the price of something when they get up to entrance. Because they all still want balloons, they all still mob the balloon shops, so you still have traffic jams. However, you don't have huge, stationary clots like before. Instead, you have dense herds moving in both directions, towards and away from the shops. And second, those leaving the shops are mostly irritated that balloons are so expensive, so overall happiness declines. And third, peeps don't know about price synching so if you have multiple balloon shops, those who found the prices too high at Shop A will immediately head to Shop B in hopes of finding a better deal there, even though you synched the prices. And because the prices are the same, once they get there, they get a 2nd dose of disappointment.

As to ATMs, they seem to be rather like priority passes in that only a small minority of the population will ever use them. Most peeps seem to enter the park with a budget and stick to it. It's only those with a "gambling problem" who hit the ATMs.

As to ride popularity, excitement seems to have little to do with it. Peeps decide to head towards a ride with the intention of using it based only on fear and nausea. Once they get to the start of the queue, they decide whether or not to actually ride based on price and queue length. Scenery, and probably excitement (as both affect prestige) seems to increase a peep's tolerance for high prices and long queues, making it more likely that he will actually spend his money there.

For the initial decision to head towards a ride, fear is the most important factor because as a general rule, peeps are more tolerant of nausea than fear. And families, who are the 2nd most-common type of peep in the park and also the richest individually, don't like fear ratings above 4. Only small fraction of them will go on a ride with fear > 4, and none at all if the fear > 5. So, if a ride has more fear than that, you've already cut your potential customer base by about 1/3. And this is for the even the small selection of coasters that kids can ride on at all.

The upshot of this is that the "green" ride ratings are somewhat misleading. "Green" in terms of money-making is a fear rating of about 3.8 - 4.0. Nausea can actually be higher, just not excessively so, and excitement isn't very important. This means that small, rather bland coasters (including track rides) are your cash cows, and you need a fair number of them to provide enough income to support a huge, expensive, intense, non-family coaster.

Bottom line, the game could really use a few balancing passes and tweaks to the weight of different variables in the peep decision-making process. But hey, it's still quite a new game and the peep AI has a lot of variables to consider, so this isn't surprising. I expect changes in these areas fairly soon.

 

[j_j]

Thanks for the advice. I guess no shops is the way to go if I don't want peeps peeved because they are stuck in a mob trying to go nowhere.

The problem is not ride popularity, for some rides the "I don't have enough money" is the first thought for the ride. When it's too scary, or something, that's easy to understand, of course, that should happen. For the coaster I mentioned above, watching people who bounce, the reason is, over and over, that they're broke.

I just made it a blueprint and moved it to an empty park entrance. It got swarmed, even though I had to build it way up high because it has some underground parts that don't autotunnel. I didn't build a line, but it's got two trains running and it can chew through a whole lot of peeps in short order, and they climb down the stairs, and head right back up. Of course, it's the only coaster in the park, and it's only for teens/adults, but that was just to find out what would happen if it was at the entrance. (well, not quite, I built a protopark with 2 flat rides, a beginning set of shops, and beginning staff which is where I usually start any park that's in sandbox. So it's about 20 meters from the park entrance, which is still close.

So that's my experience.

You note I'm not screaming bloody murder here. I have some experience in balancing games myself, and this is doing pretty well, actually. I think it's down to tweaks myself, and, maybe, having the peeps get a "map" when they go in (that auto-updates when you add something, of course) so they can compute when they are out of enough money to ride anything they want to ride, and can head out without getting peeved first.

By the bye, it's a pain in the behind to make a gigacoaster with a cable lift work right with two trains. Takes 4 blocks, and still breaks sometimes when you save while it's halfway up the cable lift. But I know better now, I won't do that again

IN VINO VERITAS!

 

[Bullethead]

Thanks for the advice. I guess no shops is the way to go if I don't want peeps peeved because they are stuck in a mob trying to go nowhere.

Yeah, you seem to get less disappointment from having no gift shops than by having expensive ones. But I'd still reserve space for them, or build them and keep them closed, so you can get right to business once the balance tweaks start.

The problem is not ride popularity, for some rides the "I don't have enough money" is the first thought for the ride. When it's too scary, or something, that's easy to understand, of course, that should happen. For the coaster I mentioned above, watching people who bounce, the reason is, over and over, that they're broke.

You only see the peeps at the ride, and they only regret they're broke, if they've decided they want to use that ride in the first place. But they're not the real problem with that ride being deserted. The real problem is that peeps with money are deciding they don't want to go on that ride, so don't ever go near it, and thus you can't see them or read their thoughts, you just see an empty queue. I mean, the park is constantly getting an influx of new peeps with full wallets, and most of those already in the park aren't broke yet, so more peeps have money than don't. The ride is thus more a victim of peep decision-making than peep finances.

Here's an anecdote of my own. I"m currently building a park that's really a sandbox test facility to learn about peep behavior, as well as practice building stuff for me. It currently has 5 coasters and multiple examples of all gift shop types. The park was (IIRC) built as a sequence of areas in the following order:

0. Hat shop near entrance
1. Spinner with like E5, F3, N2, plus balloon shop
2. Loony Turns with like E6, F4, N1, plus memento shop
3. Large wooden with E 7.3, F 4.8, N 0.8
4. Wendigo kiddie coaster (E 4ish , F 3ish, N < 1) plus 1 of each type of gift shop
5. Large hybrid (E 7.5, F 5, N 1) and car track ride (E 5.9, F 1, N 1)

Each area also has a couple of flat rides plus food, drink, restrooms, and ATM. All rides have 100% queue scenery and Very High track scenery. The hybrid and woody both have prestige well over 1000 and the small coasters over 500. Peeps are unanimous in saying they love my park, they don't want to leave, etc. Park entrance is $10 ($8 for families), priority passes work 90% of rides and cost $10, and all coasters and popular flat rides are $8-10. The track ride is $15 and the unpopular flat rides are $1.

The spinner and the Loony Turns have always been totally full since the moment they opened, regardless of what happened later. The woody was jammed to start with but became deserted when area #4 opened, and has remained so since. The Wendigo has been jammed since it opened and is both the most popular and most profitable ride in the park. This despite the huge clot of customers at the adjacent gift shops, and those shops also had no effect on the popularity of the spinner or Loony Turns. The car track is also doing quite well and the hybrid reasonably so. The more extreme flat rides are breaking even (Collider, Insanity, and a couple others) but the more sedate ones (carousel, magic twirl, aeronauts, etc.) are essentially deserted even after greatly increasing their sequences and cutting their prices to $1. Between building areas 4 and 5, I doubled the prices of all gifts, which only caused peeps to trek between equally expensive shops. It had no effect on the queues of any rides.

The hybrid is too scary for families and the woody nearly so. Thus they are essentially in direct competition for the same adult-teen customer base, and the hybrid is winning that handily. There simply aren't enough non-family peeps in the park to support both right now (there are about 5000 peeps in the park). This supports @kickfliip's observation that you need 5000 peeps to support 1 non-family coaster, especially if it has a high throughput due to multiple large trains.

The small coasters and the track ride however, attract lots of adults and teens besides just families. This is because of their low fear ratings. Quite a few adults and a surprising number of teens actually don't like "green" fear ratings. And these coasters remain quite busy even when the gift shops are totally jammed up with hundreds of peeps who aren't on any rides.

So what I'm saying is, you can't blame gift shops for taking business away from big, extreme-ish coasters. If all coasters cost about the same, you'd see folks regretting being broke at both the big and the little ones about equally. That's not what I see. I see big coasters going hungry because they serve niche markets, and that niche simply isn't big enough in your park right now.

But hey, the whole purpose of the park is to make peeps broke. Whether the peeps spend their money on hats or ride tickets, it still ends up in your bank account. The one thing you don't want is peeps going home with money still in their pockets. So, having broke peeps is a good thing, regardless of how it happens.

 

[j_j]

You only see the peeps at the ride, and they only regret they're broke, if they've decided they want to use that ride in the first place. But they're not the real problem with that ride being deserted.

Well, I have to disagree. There are more than enough people turning back for "broke" to blow the queue.

I'm sure that some of the family groups are avoiding the 5.5 fear rating, they have their own rides to ride.

Like I said when I put it at the front of an otherwise empty (except for some flat rides and basic shops and employees) park, it fills up pronto.

You know the drill, "last month 3000 dollars" for the first month, even though the smoothing for predicted monthly profit hasn't ogtten there yet.


So, at the front of a park, it fills up like (snap) that. At the back, it gets a relentless series of "i'm broke". It's still got enough riders to make money, but they tend to ride once or twice and then they're broke, too. But that IS the point.

Of course the smaller rides also get "i'm broke" thoughts too, but the farther in one gets, the more broke the peeps are. It's literally that they spend as they go in, get to the more remote areas, and are broke when they get there.

Yeah, they spend their money, for sure, I can get them to do that but I'd want to attract more peeps, and maybe find a way to get the older folks (teens, adults) to go directly to the stuff they like.

 

[Bullethead]

I'm sure that some of the family groups are avoiding the 5.5 fear rating, they have their own rides to ride.

ALL families are avoiding the 5.5 fear rating. Few families will touch a ride with 4.0 fear and none at all at 5.0 or above.

So, at the front of a park, it fills up like (snap) that. At the back, it gets a relentless series of "i'm broke". It's still got enough riders to make money, but they tend to ride once or twice and then they're broke, too. But that IS the point.

OH, your OP literally says "nobody rides it", so I took you at your word.

[

Yeah, they spend their money, for sure, I can get them to do that but I'd want to attract more peeps, and maybe find a way to get the older folks (teens, adults) to go directly to the stuff they like.

The thing is, adults and teens also like rides with E 4-5 F 3-4 N 1-2. Thus, every such ride you have competes directly with the more extreme rides for the adult and teen customers. Look over in the general discussion at this thread for full details.

Cutting to the chase, the weighted averages of maximum fear tolerances are as follows:
Families: 3.8
Adults: 5.7
Teens: 7.5

Thus, the customer base for your coaster is 0% of families, a bit more than 50% of adults, and 75% of teens. The demographic makeup of individual peeps in the park is 39% adult, 31% families, and 30% teens. Therefore, of all the peeps in your park, only about 45% would even be interested in this coaster to begin with, considerably fewer than the non-family fraction of the population which is 69%. And of the 45% potential customers, the majority of them will also be attracted to less extreme, family-friendly rides. Therefore, the only customers who will walk all the way to the back where the big coaster is, past all the equally attractive but more accessible kiddie rides, not to mention gift shops, are those who think the queues there are too long. This means the big coaster's customer base is really only a small fraction of the potential max of 45% of all peeps.

This is why your coaster does better at the front of the park than the back. Those peeps potentially interested in it come to it first, so it's stealing business from the shops, not the other way around. When you put it in the back, it's essentially catering to a small niche market, the fraction of the minority of guests who make it that far. And this is why you really need at least 5000 peeps in the park before building such a coaster, so that this niche market has enough peeps in it to keep the coaster busy.

 

[j_j]

So there is no "minimum" for people, or a very small minimum. I understand why the families won't use that coaster, I wasn't in any confusion about that, but I was kind of assuming (obviously incorrectly) that people who would ride it would attempt to maximize their excitement.

This suggests a very different strategy indeed for large coasters.

 

[j_j]

Ok, so I tweaked the coaster so it was 7 4.4 1.5 and I get about 1.5 as many people trying to ride it. 60% according to the game accounting are still broke. But it's better. Now it makes 3K a month instead of 500/month.

 

[Bullethead]

So there is no "minimum" for people, or a very small minimum. I understand why the families won't use that coaster, I wasn't in any confusion about that, but I was kind of assuming (obviously incorrectly) that people who would ride it would attempt to maximize their excitement.

This suggests a very different strategy indeed for large coasters.

Ok, so I tweaked the coaster so it was 7 4.4 1.5 and I get about 1.5 as many people trying to ride it. 60% according to the game accounting are still broke. But it's better. Now it makes 3K a month instead of 500/month.

Glad I was able to help.

From what I can tell (and I could be wrong), a peep initially makes a list of rides that are below his max tolerances for fear and nausea. Then, if he still has multiple choices, he will exclude all rides that are below his minimum tolerances. If he still has multiple choices after that, then it gets even fuzzier. Excitement goes into prestige but even 2x prestige advantages seem to be trumped by the distance a peep has to walk. IOW, given 2 rides that are both with a peep's min and max tolerances, the peep will USUALLY (but not always) start walking towards the closer ride.

Once at the start of the ride's queue, the peep makes a 2nd decision: actually go on the ride or do something else. This is based on the peep's tolerances for queue length and ride price. Both of these tolerances are increased by scenery and ride prestige, which as far as I can tell is the main place excitement might come into the equation. You can control both these factors but you have no control over how much money the peep has when he gets there, and very little (if any) control over whether he uses and ATM if he's broke.

Peeps don't have a physical need for money like they do for food, drink, toilets, and energy. Instead, the need for money, and thus the tendency to hit and ATM, seems to work like the desire to go to gift shops. Some peeps have it, others don't. You can (slightly) increase the chances of a peep using an ATM if said peep is so happy he doesn't want to leave. However, with proper scenery and plenty of shops to satisfy the physical needs, plus enough rides that suit that peep's tastes, still only a few peeps will use and ATM. And being broke doesn't register as a cause to leave the park immediately if the peep isn't predisposed to use an ATM. Thus, you frequently find broke peeps wandering around the park continually being disappointed that they can't by a ticket on various rides.

 

[j_j]

Oh, and I found a good fix to the balloon vendor problem.

Just put the shack by itself (I used the generic) at the end of about a 5 meter stub path, with nothing else on it. It contains the peep swamp that results.

 

[Bullethead]

Oh, and I found a good fix to the balloon vendor problem.

Just put the shack by itself (I used the generic) at the end of about a 5 meter stub path, with nothing else on it. It contains the peep swamp that results.

I found a better fix. I just closed all geegaw shops.

Prior to this, I had 2 of each type (so total of 6). I had about 4500 peeps in the park but about 3/4 of them seemingly were either in a queue at a geegaw shop or walking from one to another after becoming disgruntled about the huge prices I'd set them all for (not realizing that all prices were synched). So they were mad about the shop queue lengths, mad about shop prices, and mad about going without food, drink, and restrooms to satisfy their geegaw addictions. This even though they might already have a balloon---for some reason, they wanted another one. Meanwhile nearly every ride was losing money from lack of customers and the food and drink vendors were quitting in droves due to low business.

Upon closing the geegaw shops, the vast multitudes clogging them and the paths between them immediately disperesed and started going on rides and buying food and drink. Because they were no longer unhappy about the geegaw situation and the related need issues, their happiness improved. This raised the park rating enough to bring in a few hundred more peeps. So the food and drink vendors started doing normal business and became happy, and previously deserted rides started filling up, and I started making way more money.

So, until the various issues with geegaw shops (way too attractive, peeps desires for geegaw getting reset when loading a save even if they already have that type of trinket), I won't be having any gift shops.

 

[j_j]

The trick is to get their geegaw upon entry. That way you don't have everyone going for it at the same time.

Now, if they were sunscreen shops ...

 

[Bullethead]

The trick is to get their geegaw upon entry. That way you don't have everyone going for it at the same time.

Now, if they were sunscreen shops ...

I'd rather sell beer than sunscreen

But anyway, once geegaw shops get fixed, clustering them at the entrance might well be the optimal way of using them. Get that craving out of the way then go on and do rides. But until they fix the shop issues, I think it's better by far just to not have any geegaw shops.

There are 2 problems with geegaw shops, 1 minor and 1 major. The minor one is the one everybody notices and complains about, that geegaw is too high on peeps' priority lists. so nearly all the peeps dogpile the shops. This I suspect is a very simple fix, probably a matter of changing the value of 1 variable slightly. And I suspect this hasn't been done already, despite a couple updates since the over-attractiveness of geegaw became apparent, is that there's no point in doing this until they fix the major problem, which is harder to see but runs way deeper.

The major problem is that beaucoup variables throughout all aspects of the game get reset to their default values when you load a saved game. This causes quite a few issues with various things, but one of the most serious problems is that it affects a peep's desire for geegaw. So, when you reload your saved park tomorrow, all the peeps who finally got through the massive queues and purchased balloons yesterday won't go on rides. Instead, they'll get back in the queue to buy balloons even though they've got one in their hand already. Thus, the massive queues never go away, they just get bigger as the same peeps keep going through them again and again, and new peeps enter the park.

 

[j_j]

Seems odd. I'd think that the variables for each peep would get stored for the peep, and then rebuilt.

It can't take that much space. 5K peeps, 4K per peep ought to hold a crapload of state.

 

[Bullethead]

Seems odd. I'd think that the variables for each peep would get stored for the peep, and then rebuilt.

It can't take that much space. 5K peeps, 4K per peep ought to hold a crapload of state.

You would think. But it seems to be some systemic issue with the whole game. A bunch of things forget their states and reset to default upon game load. Animations that aren't controlled by ride triggers, for example. By carefully timing when you place them relative to others, you can set up cascading events. Sadly, these only work right then. If you quit and relaod the game, everything starts at the same time.

 

[j_j]

You would think. But it seems to be some systemic issue with the whole game. A bunch of things forget their states and reset to default upon game load. Animations that aren't controlled by ride triggers, for example. By carefully timing when you place them relative to others, you can set up cascading events. Sadly, these only work right then. If you quit and relaod the game, everything starts at the same time.

I've had that problem with some coasters, too, when they have a block structure. I have yet to get a blueprint that works for the cable-lift coaster with block sections. It works great until you reload it, and it never works if you add it from blueprint.