Ok, so now that we have a management thread on the front page again, I'm going to have one last punt at making some suggestions to this. Some feedback as to whether Frontier are even taking this on board or not would be nice too, but anyway here goes:
- Give us human staff.
Currently the staff are just robots that you poke with money until the green bar goes up. In the capacity that they are they kind of just feel like cookie clicker gameplay. Let them go on breaks and use staff rooms/areas; let their fatigue levels affect their efficiency, let them have working relationships, let them go on holiday, or have sick days. You could implement a system whereby your staff will strike if you just keep firing sad staff and re-hiring. The staff have got to feel like they're there, and people.
- Random events of some kind
I have played so many games where something random happens, and it's such a useful tool to keep you on your toes. Really the list is bloody endless on this one, but VIP visits that check your park out for maintenance, cleanliness, scenery, vandalism, security and pricing. If you fail then maybe your reputation as a theme park owner will diminish (more on that later. You could have an event where a truckload of kids come on a school trip, which will give you a boost in visitors but will also increase the littering and vandalism. Or perhaps events where there is some kind of stock shortage so some of your shops suffer (again more on that later). Or even some weather events, that have effects.
- Competitors please!
It would be nice if there were some invisible comptetitors for us to stack ourselves against. They could be better or worse depending on difficulty, and perhaps appeal to specific demographics, effectively 'stealing' your guests and making you lose money on rides if theirs were somehow better (better sequencing, scenery, excitement ratings etc). At the end of every year the Theme Park Awesomeness awards would issue a shiny gold star to the best park, giving a big boost to you park reputation (Yes yes I'm getting to it).
- A proper park reputation system.
As it stands right now the rating system doesn't really seem to do much except for go up if you build loads of scenery. We need to have things that buff or rebuff your rating. Like of the above mentioned VIP found your security lacking, or too much litter, then he would write a bad review and your star rating would drop. Less rep, less peeps, less money. If your reputation drops too low, then your park is shut down, or fined, or denied permission expand rides until the problems are solved.
-Good Lord give us a proper career mode.
The current "career" mode isn't a career mode, it's a scenario mode. There's nothing wrong with a scenario mode, but a career should be exactly that - start at the bottom and work your way up! What professions have you seen where people get given random challenges to complete? The career mode could be so incredibly deep, it really could. Start people off as a small time dude with limited research nouse, and out him in small maps with limited blueprints and a directive from shareholders. Make your scenery rating higher than X, build a park for this kind of demographic, build your reputation up to 4 stars, keep the VIP (him again) happy, make a specific theme, etc etc. As you progress you get bigger maps and harder objectives/levels, where you get given a park in major disarray and are tasked with improving it, or fitting a themed area into an existing space on a park. I know some of these things are kind of implemented, but the career needs a beginning, middle, and end, not just a big middle. Keep the scenarios, just rename the mode.
-Correctly balanced difficulty.
Correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that in higher difficulty settings you just start with less money and rides. Once you get past that initial wall everything just flows in exactly the same and money multiplies, with very slightly harder to please guests and more breakdowns. Why not balance costs, running costs, customer spending power, research time, staff pleasability and more? I have played the Game on the hardest setting, and once you get out of that initial hump it's plain sailing, every time.
-Shops need more depth
I know this one's a bit controversial, so I'll leave it as a bonus one. But I'd like to see shops have stock, and more effect on customers. The condiments kind of feel like cookie clicker once again, it would be nice to see them have some kind of impact.
All of these things I think add an essential failure state to the game. I know i've said this before, but i like the phrase so I'm going to say it again: this game is all icing and no cake. You at Frontier have given us an incredibly sophisticated toolset that can let us be kids again, and design our perfect theme park to go and play in. This is fantastic, so fantastic that I've spent well over a hundred hours playing. But this should be a GAME as well. You can lose at a game, you cannot lose in any way on Planet Coaster, and it just leaves me building parks for a bit before finally going 'pfeh, there's nothing to do except build stuff'. If the above features were implemented I would almost quit my job and play PlanCo for a living. The sandbox is great fun, but I've had my joy out of it now, I need some stuff to do.
