A lot of seasoned management/simulation game enthusiasts seem to agree that, despite some new things introduced (like staff management and prestige system), the management part of this game is still far from satisfactory, particularly because it lacks completely a progression curve and tends to became too easy, boring and predictable whenever the park grows.
A pair of things came to my mind that would be both easy to implement, and would add a better experience to the economic management part of the game.
1) Adding timed/conditioned/random events. This would work, of course, mainly for user created scenarios or Career scenarios, but with random events, it could also work for other types of play like challenge. We had already a thing like this in the RCT 3 scenario editor. Creating timed, conditioned or randomly triggered events, that have consequences on the attractions, on the number of guests, on the overall economy of the game, would add both to the story immersion, and to the economic difficulty of a scenario. An example of simple conditioned events, are the prizes and the fines that you got in RCT3 when you meet the conditions, but there should also be more complex events.
2) Scaling down the profit margin of the rides and scaling up their buying cost. They should earn a lot less, but also cost a bit less in maintenance and have an higher buying cost. The profit margin and buying cost of every attraction should be finely calibrated to avoid weird situations like having an attraction with high prestige that earns monthly more than its buying cost.
3) Limiting the prestige impact. Prestige feels a lot like cheating, as it works now. Probably a prestige cap for some type of rides would be useful to limit this, but see also the next points about other ways of limiting the possibilty to cheat with prestige.
4) All type of scenery, including plants, should have an higher maintenance cost. As it works now, placing scenery, particularly plants, feels like cheating. You place a lot of scenery to improve an attraction prestige, and you soon are making tons of money, without any expenses (if you have avoided animatrons and other pieces of scenery that have a monthly cost). An alternative way of balancing the number of plants would be to have gardeners as a new type of staff, and let the plants became ugly and finally die overtime without gardening.
5) A recalibration of the staff numbers impact on the park prestige. As it is now, you can have a huge park understaffed but with high prestige, and make a ton of money with it. It shouldn't work like that. An understaffed, dirty and malfunctioning park should be quickly avoided like plague by guests. Prestige number should drop a lot when your park is understaffed. There could be also other things that negatively affect prestige, instead of simply let it dropping with time as it is now.
6) The possibility of buying the land where to build (as it was in RCT3), and of course to set the starting land of the park by sectors and the price of the sectors to buy, would add a lot of strategical depth to the game.
A pair of things came to my mind that would be both easy to implement, and would add a better experience to the economic management part of the game.
1) Adding timed/conditioned/random events. This would work, of course, mainly for user created scenarios or Career scenarios, but with random events, it could also work for other types of play like challenge. We had already a thing like this in the RCT 3 scenario editor. Creating timed, conditioned or randomly triggered events, that have consequences on the attractions, on the number of guests, on the overall economy of the game, would add both to the story immersion, and to the economic difficulty of a scenario. An example of simple conditioned events, are the prizes and the fines that you got in RCT3 when you meet the conditions, but there should also be more complex events.
2) Scaling down the profit margin of the rides and scaling up their buying cost. They should earn a lot less, but also cost a bit less in maintenance and have an higher buying cost. The profit margin and buying cost of every attraction should be finely calibrated to avoid weird situations like having an attraction with high prestige that earns monthly more than its buying cost.
3) Limiting the prestige impact. Prestige feels a lot like cheating, as it works now. Probably a prestige cap for some type of rides would be useful to limit this, but see also the next points about other ways of limiting the possibilty to cheat with prestige.
4) All type of scenery, including plants, should have an higher maintenance cost. As it works now, placing scenery, particularly plants, feels like cheating. You place a lot of scenery to improve an attraction prestige, and you soon are making tons of money, without any expenses (if you have avoided animatrons and other pieces of scenery that have a monthly cost). An alternative way of balancing the number of plants would be to have gardeners as a new type of staff, and let the plants became ugly and finally die overtime without gardening.
5) A recalibration of the staff numbers impact on the park prestige. As it is now, you can have a huge park understaffed but with high prestige, and make a ton of money with it. It shouldn't work like that. An understaffed, dirty and malfunctioning park should be quickly avoided like plague by guests. Prestige number should drop a lot when your park is understaffed. There could be also other things that negatively affect prestige, instead of simply let it dropping with time as it is now.
6) The possibility of buying the land where to build (as it was in RCT3), and of course to set the starting land of the park by sectors and the price of the sectors to buy, would add a lot of strategical depth to the game.
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