So I decided to give a JP era Challenge mode on Jurassic Difficulty a go, and I'm finding that the way the contracts are handled in a JP era park are sooo much better than the JW ones and they honestly make the experience much more enjoyable.
The first contract difference in a JP era park is that taking a contract for one person does not ever decrease reputation with another and you don't get sabotaged for it (at least I haven't experienced it yet if you do). This is a nice little change from the balancing act of the JW Divisions, which was just more tedious than difficult. It never made much sense to have 3 divisions of the same organization be so opposed to you helping another division to the point of them sabotaging your park and literally risk getting people killed over petty nonsense. The idea of getting sabotaged in itself isn't bad, it just shouldn't be tied to division rep I don't think. The ONLY contracts that I can think of off the top of my head that make sense to give negative rep, is the dino fight ones which would thematically conflict the interest of the science division with that of entertainment, but those types of contracts don't seem to show up in a JP park, and let's face it, I'd love to see those get removed from JW contracts anyway since they are never really worth doing in challenge mode. As a small little side note, it's just really nice to get the feel that the people actually feel like they're trying to work together in a JP park to get things running smoothly, instead of being against each other like they are in a JW park.
The second (and more important) difference is that certain people give out certain contract types, ie Dr. Grant giving out expedition/genome contracts, Finch giving out profit/building contracts, Hammond giving rating/guest count contracts, etc. This is a huuuugeee deal for me, because this one thing right here not only makes sense for the characters involved with each division in a JP park, but it gives the player some control over what type of contract they can expect to receive. That said, there is research locked behind reputation in JP era Challenge mode, which ties in with this. While some may or may not see this as a benefit, it serves as an incentive to go after a certain person's contracts to encourage you to go after ones you wouldn't normally take. One could argue that the contracts being completely random were part of the challenge, but to me that made the JW contract system so unbearable that the only way I could tolerate slogging through Jurassic difficulty challenge modes was to reload my save if I got a cruddy contract (which there are a TON of terrible ones) and stop doing contracts once I was ok on money. It also made little sense when you get something like security giving out genome % contracts but.. decreases rep with science division, and so on - the changes in JP era contracts fixes this. JP era challenge mode has been so freeing for me because I feel like I can just play the game without having to worry about reloading my save all of the time because I have some control over the type of contract I'm going to get.
TL;DR, I would love to see the JW era divisions + contract system function like how it does in a JP era park : it makes sense for each division to give out specific types of contracts, it makes sense for contracts to not ruin reputation with other divisions (unless there are ones that directly conflict with the interests of another division), and most importantly, it is simply more enjoyable imo.
The first contract difference in a JP era park is that taking a contract for one person does not ever decrease reputation with another and you don't get sabotaged for it (at least I haven't experienced it yet if you do). This is a nice little change from the balancing act of the JW Divisions, which was just more tedious than difficult. It never made much sense to have 3 divisions of the same organization be so opposed to you helping another division to the point of them sabotaging your park and literally risk getting people killed over petty nonsense. The idea of getting sabotaged in itself isn't bad, it just shouldn't be tied to division rep I don't think. The ONLY contracts that I can think of off the top of my head that make sense to give negative rep, is the dino fight ones which would thematically conflict the interest of the science division with that of entertainment, but those types of contracts don't seem to show up in a JP park, and let's face it, I'd love to see those get removed from JW contracts anyway since they are never really worth doing in challenge mode. As a small little side note, it's just really nice to get the feel that the people actually feel like they're trying to work together in a JP park to get things running smoothly, instead of being against each other like they are in a JW park.
The second (and more important) difference is that certain people give out certain contract types, ie Dr. Grant giving out expedition/genome contracts, Finch giving out profit/building contracts, Hammond giving rating/guest count contracts, etc. This is a huuuugeee deal for me, because this one thing right here not only makes sense for the characters involved with each division in a JP park, but it gives the player some control over what type of contract they can expect to receive. That said, there is research locked behind reputation in JP era Challenge mode, which ties in with this. While some may or may not see this as a benefit, it serves as an incentive to go after a certain person's contracts to encourage you to go after ones you wouldn't normally take. One could argue that the contracts being completely random were part of the challenge, but to me that made the JW contract system so unbearable that the only way I could tolerate slogging through Jurassic difficulty challenge modes was to reload my save if I got a cruddy contract (which there are a TON of terrible ones) and stop doing contracts once I was ok on money. It also made little sense when you get something like security giving out genome % contracts but.. decreases rep with science division, and so on - the changes in JP era contracts fixes this. JP era challenge mode has been so freeing for me because I feel like I can just play the game without having to worry about reloading my save all of the time because I have some control over the type of contract I'm going to get.
TL;DR, I would love to see the JW era divisions + contract system function like how it does in a JP era park : it makes sense for each division to give out specific types of contracts, it makes sense for contracts to not ruin reputation with other divisions (unless there are ones that directly conflict with the interests of another division), and most importantly, it is simply more enjoyable imo.
