I feel like in Planet Coaster you guys just gave up on trying to make the economic back-end an actual game. Every scenario/mission ended up being kind of boring because there was no doubt, that no matter how boneheaded your management skills were, you could win all 3 starts super easily. And when trying to make a challenging scenario, once again... there was no way to make it much of a challenge. So the game ended up being 90% focused on designers, and the rest of us that like strategy games or challenges were left out.
Please don't do this to us with Planet Zoo too. You can do a couple simple things, the same things I suggested for Planet Coaster, to make this happen. Add a checkbox modifier to the scenarios for "added challenge", or you could call it "hard mode". It would basically limit the amount of money each group has, or increase maintenance cost across the board by a set %. I mean super easy basic. The goal here is to change the scenario dynamic of "I can win this with no effort in 1 hour or decorate and finish in a few hours on normal, or I can play the hard mode and wonder if I can actually complete the mission". This way you feel like all the options you put into the game have a role. For instance, dealing with venders in Planet Coaster, from salaries to the number you're using, to the prices of everything you sold and what you sold. All of that ended up being pointless (except for leveling venders up). You basically just hired a ton of them and never needed to tweak anything because money was never an issue.
While I realize you may not want to put the time into this for us, but us modders would be happy to if you gave us access. I would love to go back and re-balance Planet Coaster for "hard mode" and would only need access to a few global modifiers. Plus implement something like a variety dynamic so choice influences people desire to spend money on foods and trinkets.
Please don't do this to us with Planet Zoo too. You can do a couple simple things, the same things I suggested for Planet Coaster, to make this happen. Add a checkbox modifier to the scenarios for "added challenge", or you could call it "hard mode". It would basically limit the amount of money each group has, or increase maintenance cost across the board by a set %. I mean super easy basic. The goal here is to change the scenario dynamic of "I can win this with no effort in 1 hour or decorate and finish in a few hours on normal, or I can play the hard mode and wonder if I can actually complete the mission". This way you feel like all the options you put into the game have a role. For instance, dealing with venders in Planet Coaster, from salaries to the number you're using, to the prices of everything you sold and what you sold. All of that ended up being pointless (except for leveling venders up). You basically just hired a ton of them and never needed to tweak anything because money was never an issue.
While I realize you may not want to put the time into this for us, but us modders would be happy to if you gave us access. I would love to go back and re-balance Planet Coaster for "hard mode" and would only need access to a few global modifiers. Plus implement something like a variety dynamic so choice influences people desire to spend money on foods and trinkets.
