General Gameplay Punishing Guest Death

Your Feature Request / Idea
Oh boy... I don't want to come across as negative, I like the game a lot but some things... It just seems like it was targeted exclusevely to 8 year olds...

So on to the matter at hand, the game need A LOT of work Frontier it feels really incomplete although I am happy with the progress you've been making so far. Slow progress but progress nonetheless.
One VERY IMPORTANT feature you NEED to address is the Guest Death penalty. It's basically non-existent at this point. It's far too easy to make money in the game and the Guest Death penalty has 0 effect on me. I can let my carnivores go on a murdering spree whenever I feel like if for however long I please and absolutely nothing of consequence will happen because all I have to do is put them back in their enclosures and wait for mmmaaaaybe 5 minutes before everyone forgets about it and I start making half a million per minute again.

So here's the suggestion and the simplest thing you can do (I think simplest I don't know jack**** about game development)
1. The penalty should be instant. Something that a park with say 100.000 in the bank can somewhat survive. Say 5.000-10.000 per Guest Death that instantly is removed from your bank.
Better yet if you can make it a percentage of the total money the park has so that rich park owners will suffer bigger penalties.

2. Longer lasting penalty, the lawsuits should come in and stay for a longer time. I had a penalty of -300.000 I don't know how long it lasted it never felt like a problem I had over 82.000.000 in the bank. Had that lasted for a longer time it would have made an affect (slightly because again it's waaaaay to easy to make a gazillion of dollars within an hour).

I noticed that once a guest dies the penalty is around -10.000 for each guest, but that is only per minute, that's nothing it's super easy to deal with this there's absolutely no challenge and it doesn't feel like it matters when it really should. So make it an instant penalty of 10.000 per guest + 10.000 per minute for the lawsuits and that lasts for say double your star rating in minutes. So 2 minutes for a 1 star park and 10 minutes for a 5 star park.
And while we're at it, if the tornadoes could kill Dinos and Guests that'd be great.

Or just increase the lawsuits penalty. If I died in your studio I think my family would take you to court for something closer to 100.000 if not 1.000.000 not just a mere 10.000... I would expect more if you ran over my dog for crying out loud...

I know you want to cash in from the kiddies, that's fine everyone does, but make this an option for seasoned gamers that can take a punishing if the mess up. Make it a "Brutal" option something that I can turn on if I want to have a greater challenge and off if I feel like playing casual.

Anyway just some silly suggestions that came from the top of my head I'm sure there's balancing that needs to be looked at a park that's struggling and has 80.000 cash shouldn't receive a -300.000 instant penalty and -500.000 per minute for 3 minutes because something went wrong, this is still a game and should be fun... but right now... well it's kinda boring...

I hope you will look into this and figure out a way to provide us with a greater challenge. Bottom line is Guest death should be something that freaks you out, something that you try hard to avoid and when it happens it is a setback that will haunt you for a considerable amount of time.
 
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"a park that's struggling and has 80.000 cash should receive a -300.000 instant penalty and -500.000 per minute for 3 minutes"

Sorry that is SHOULDN'T not SHOULD.

My bad
 
Agreed on all points. I try to play with the mindset that the humans are my #1 priority. The dinosaurs are #2. I would go so far as multiple casualties results in a forced park closure for a period of time.

People getting killed in your park should be devastating.
 
Having a guest death should for hard mode be instant loss. Every instance of Jurassic Park (and world) in canon was shut down because of a relatively few deaths of guests not because they couldnt afford legal battle fees. For regular mode something like 3 total deaths should be a game over each death with some kind of sanction. The first one being something light like a permanent fee added to the hammond foundation then subsequent deaths leading to the permanent banning of species that either caused the deaths or are deemed dangerous. This would all be very easy to implement into the current game and would give real challenges and consequences which as of now we really don't have.

To further flesh out the idea on banning species lets say the first time you have a death its because the raptors broke out. The first strike would put said species at risk. Second time it happens you are no longer able to make raptors (if on campaign this applies to all islands). I honestly dont think making every consequence "take more money away" is a real consequence since you continuously generate money and it is more of an illusion of a consequence than anything. Losing a potential attraction you had research collect fossils for is very real and noticeable and would force the player to really plan out how they are going to prevent breakouts and how to quickly end them when they do.
 
Agreed on all points. I try to play with the mindset that the humans are my #1 priority. The dinosaurs are #2. I would go so far as multiple casualties results in a forced park closure for a period of time.

People getting killed in your park should be devastating.

Yeah being forced to close down the park for a few minutes (or what would be the equivalent of a couple of in game months) is a nice touch
 
Having a guest death should for hard mode be instant loss. Every instance of Jurassic Park (and world) in canon was shut down because of a relatively few deaths of guests not because they couldnt afford legal battle fees. For regular mode something like 3 total deaths should be a game over each death with some kind of sanction. The first one being something light like a permanent fee added to the hammond foundation then subsequent deaths leading to the permanent banning of species that either caused the deaths or are deemed dangerous. This would all be very easy to implement into the current game and would give real challenges and consequences which as of now we really don't have.

To further flesh out the idea on banning species lets say the first time you have a death its because the raptors broke out. The first strike would put said species at risk. Second time it happens you are no longer able to make raptors (if on campaign this applies to all islands). I honestly dont think making every consequence "take more money away" is a real consequence since you continuously generate money and it is more of an illusion of a consequence than anything. Losing a potential attraction you had research collect fossils for is very real and noticeable and would force the player to really plan out how they are going to prevent breakouts and how to quickly end them when they do.

While I do like your idea I think it might be a bit extreme. See the problem with the game in its current state is that if a Dino so much as touches a Guest the Guest will die, if a Struthio runs a lightly touches with its tail a Guest in the arm the Guest will die. Having to instant lose the game or kill off the Dino would be unplayable due to the way the game is made... They'd have to start all over again and make the game with a completely different approach which they will not do.

However making punishing monetary penalties is doable quite easily and if handled correctly it would be a serious setback. I agree it's not a realistic consequence or much of a consequence but it's far better than what we have so far which is pretty much nothing.

Don't wanna be "that" guy but JPOG handled this pretty well back in the day. If 10+ guests die in your park you should be seeing your per minute income as well as your total budget go into the red zone and stay there for quite some time. Your idea could potentially be implemented in this following way: If you are in the red zone for a long time and go to -2.000.000 (for example) then it's over and you need to restart the isle or go back to a previous save.
 
While I do like your idea I think it might be a bit extreme. See the problem with the game in its current state is that if a Dino so much as touches a Guest the Guest will die, if a Struthio runs a lightly touches with its tail a Guest in the arm the Guest will die. Having to instant lose the game or kill off the Dino would be unplayable due to the way the game is made... They'd have to start all over again and make the game with a completely different approach which they will not do.

However making punishing monetary penalties is doable quite easily and if handled correctly it would be a serious setback. I agree it's not a realistic consequence or much of a consequence but it's far better than what we have so far which is pretty much nothing.

Don't wanna be "that" guy but JPOG handled this pretty well back in the day. If 10+ guests die in your park you should be seeing your per minute income as well as your total budget go into the red zone and stay there for quite some time. Your idea could potentially be implemented in this following way: If you are in the red zone for a long time and go to -2.000.000 (for example) then it's over and you need to restart the isle or go back to a previous save.

I thought about that and my work around for that would be deaths to only include animated kills. Trampled guests could simply be counted as "injured" which could have a monetary build up based on amount trampled. I don't like the idea of everything just being money related because its too abstract and really doesnt add to the gameplay. With this workaround you can have your struthis get out and trample people but not get banned. The trade off being that carnivores are higher star rated where as "safe" herbivores are lower. If this is something that would be implemented for balancing reasons they could make large high star herbivores like sauropods have a kill animation where they "crush" someone.
 
I think a good idea would be if guests die at your park you receive a temporary debuff to guest sales. For example, for every 1 guest that is killed at your park, 10% less people will come to your park, and this debuff will last for 10 minutes. 2 guests killed will result in 20% less people coming to your park for 20 minutes. These are just arbitrary numbers to show an example. Guest fatalities at a dinosaur park would definitely receive a lot of attention, which would make potential guests less likely to go. If many guests die at your park, you may face a sort of economic depression, especially when you combine this with harsher legal fees, like the original post wants. However, there would be ways to win back your guests' trust more quickly. For example, you can increase shelter coverage, or sell dangerous dinosaurs (especially the species responsible for the guest fatalities, and large carnivores). The downside to this is that it costs money, and if you sell these dinosaurs you won't make as much money once trust is restored.
 
I thought about that and my work around for that would be deaths to only include animated kills. Trampled guests could simply be counted as "injured" which could have a monetary build up based on amount trampled. I don't like the idea of everything just being money related because its too abstract and really doesnt add to the gameplay. With this workaround you can have your struthis get out and trample people but not get banned. The trade off being that carnivores are higher star rated where as "safe" herbivores are lower. If this is something that would be implemented for balancing reasons they could make large high star herbivores like sauropods have a kill animation where they "crush" someone.

That's actually a good work around I can see this working quite well and doesn't sound (in theory at least) like something complicated to code in the game.
 
I think a good idea would be if guests die at your park you receive a temporary debuff to guest sales. For example, for every 1 guest that is killed at your park, 10% less people will come to your park, and this debuff will last for 10 minutes. 2 guests killed will result in 20% less people coming to your park for 20 minutes. These are just arbitrary numbers to show an example. Guest fatalities at a dinosaur park would definitely receive a lot of attention, which would make potential guests less likely to go. If many guests die at your park, you may face a sort of economic depression, especially when you combine this with harsher legal fees, like the original post wants. However, there would be ways to win back your guests' trust more quickly. For example, you can increase shelter coverage, or sell dangerous dinosaurs (especially the species responsible for the guest fatalities, and large carnivores). The downside to this is that it costs money, and if you sell these dinosaurs you won't make as much money once trust is restored.

Another great suggestion Stutter11! Now if only Frontier can look into this...
 
Yeah I totally agree with this! Does need more discussion on how it could be handled though. I do like the forced park shutdown for X duration thing. Options...

- forced park shutdown
- forced markdown of ticket prices
 
I would be happy with anything at all that would make me think "If there's another accident in my Park I am *d" There's got to be some suspense of "Can I pull this through? Can I survive if there's another death?" because right now it's soooo boring. They could make a system that is based on how many breakouts occur and stack penalties on that frequency. But based on certain time periods and not on actual fence breaks of guest deaths. So for example say that 2 fences break and dinos are out killing 20 people and then a couple of minutes later another breakout happens killing 10 people. That would count as "One Breakout Accident" because all 3 breakouts occurred in a short duration. Monetary penalties for each individual guest death would be applied normally plus some extra punishment (you next "monthly" income is cancelled, shut the park down for some time or anything at all). Then half an hour later another breakout occurs, that one counts as a "Second Breakout Accident" because it was after a longer period and now there are some stacking penalties that will keep rising with each "Accident" that happens. (double the income penalties or double shut down time etc. etc.)
That way you get the pressure of "I can't let this happen again" while also not being severely damaging from the start, essentially you are allowed to screw up a couple of time or be dealt with some bad luck, but there are only so many chances people are willing to give your park once it starts getting notoriety for frequent breakouts and guest deaths.
I don't care how many dinos you have or how tasty your burgers are, if people keep dying violently in your park they are going to stop coming eventually.
 
I don't agree that it should be an instant loss, but stiffer and longer penalties would be a great improvement. That being said, I think cranking up the lawsuit realism should come hand in hand with more security tools (ranger/acu guard towers, foot patrols, improved bunkers (with bigger doors that guests can pile in faster rather than bunch up into a buffet like they do now)).
 
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