Suggestion List Thread

TiiX · May 6, 2013, 7:39pm

I’ve got 3 suggestions:

• I really enjoy the storyline as it is right now BUT i still feel that there could be alot more added that would make the gametime longer. For instance the companies that are actually in the game could be making more consoles after the “Wuu”, “Playsystem 4” and “mBox Next”. There could also be new, smaller companies starting up, making new consoles. Also during the game I’ve noticed that the only real competition with other game companies you have is the booth-“rank” at “G3” and the placing every week while the game is being sold. I think the game could benefit from some actual competition.

• Multiplayer… We’ve seen this one already but here’s how i think it could work out.
There’s 3 “gamemodes” i can think of which are:

Coop - Basically the same thing as the base game but with up to 6 friends(based on the 6 extra tables at the third office). This could be really fun because you have to be extremely careful how you spend the money and you need to do all the training and researching for your own character by yourself.

Competitive(/Coop) - This is also the same as the base game but instead it’s you(and up to 6 friends) competing against another company of 1-7 players. This could use some kind of leaderboard to make it more competitive with categories such as “Competitive Solo” and “Competitive Team”.

MMO-Mode(for lack of a better name) - This could work with some kind of dedicated server where every company that enters the server gets “saved” to the server and the server would work as kind of a “story” where all the player-made companies replace the current in-game companies, competing for “best company” or such. Basically this would be the same thing as the singleplayer game but instead of “Micronoft”, “Ninvento” and “Vonny” there would be various other player-made companies. Hard to explain so i hope you understand

• Mod-support - This is fairly self explanatory. Basically it’s some kind of way for players to make new gamemodes, new R&D-like rooms, new offices… Whatever, and share them with other players.

Thanks for reading

SamBC · May 6, 2013, 9:14pm

You can! It’s a research lab project.

flemmi · May 6, 2013, 9:45pm

even when i have 200 or 300 bugs they get fixed so fast i can even wait for the G3 and i never lost a single point on Hype!

/edit. I just read you post again and saw that you mentionend “0” bugs!
but in my eyes the Hype should slowly decrease over time.

Or even better: You can put up an release date to boost the hype but with the risk of releasing a bugged game or too late (with lower hype).

flemmi · May 6, 2013, 9:53pm

the MMO mod sounds fun! But what if people come and start naming things like “Hnti Tentacel P*rn” or some shit like that with less * and more e, a, o (you know what i mean)

so there should be a content filter to keep the game free from such words that can offend or so.

also, what if some people use a way to get alot of 9.75 (witch happens at least once to me in every early game). wouldn’t that made it inpossible to be successfull?

theoryof42 · May 7, 2013, 11:42am

Competition

I want some competition. So there should be other game studios which develop games, too. I think it would be sufficient to randomize them based on some believable rules. Let us compete for some awards. I want to see which games they develop and if mine are better or not.

Another possibility would be that I compete against my previous self. For instance in my first game my company ShadyGames released the successful Cyberpunk RPG “Punks in the Beerlight” on PC in year 10 unfortunately one year later I went bankrupt. In my next game, I should get a message that my competitor released the RPG “Punks in the Beerlight” and one year later that he went bankrupt. This should then somehow have an impact on sales of my games. For example if I have a similar game at the same moment, but Punks in the Beerlight is the better one, it’s harder to sell my game. Every time I finish a game either because of bancrupty or because I was successful, a new competitor is added which should make the game slightly harder each time.

Game development / Research

It’s nice that I can develop sequels, but I want also develop expansions and DLC for my games. Sales numbers of expansions and DLC should not only based of quality, but also of the sales numbers and the fan base of the original game. It should be possible to introduce new features with an expansion like modsupport or an level editor. Developing an expansion could boost/ressourrect sales of the game.

Patching/Bugs should happen far more often. It’s too easy to release bug-free games.
During my first playthrough I made more than 50 games and had only to release 3 patches.

Let me develop a game for a new platform when its announced. So that I can release it, as soon as the new platform is officially released.

Allow game development for multiple platforms and multiple topics (e.g. Zombies and Sci-Fi)

Developing large or AAA games should introduce the need for a further professionalization and should be more challenging. For instance hide the number of bugs. One can decide to release it instantly, to wait and fix some bugs (very slow and inefficient (like it’s possible at the moment) or to make a beta test (by internal QA team, open/closed public beta). The beta test will reveal some or all bugs (depends on time and money spent) which then can be fixed by the dev team. After that one can decide again to make a beta test or to release it. A public/open beta should be the most efficient way to find bugs, but should also come with the risk of diminushing the hype if the game isn’t good.

Piracy should become a problem :). One should be able to develop DRM (should work like a game engine). Releasing a game without DRM should have benefits like a growing fanbase, the possibility that pirates will buy it, because they tink it’s a great game and want to support the dev, but there should be the possibility that sales are lower than normal. Releasing the game with DRM would mean less piracy, more sales, but the possibility to enrage and lose fans, maybe even critics will reduce the rating because of a not working DRM implementation.

Sandbox Mode
To increase the replayability offer a seperate sandbox mode where the introduction, the features, the market share and lifespan of consoles and other devices is randomized.

Sales

Games defunct too fast from the market. They should sell for a much longer time (in small quantyties). Certain features like mod support could expand the longevity of the game (e.g. SimCity 4 is after 10 years still very popular). Add costs of distribution to the game, so that after some time it’s more expensive to continue to sell it, than to defunct it. After defuncting it, one should be able to sell it again, when it would make sense. For instance developing an sequel could ressourrect sales of previous games in this series.

One should be able to sell game collections (Best Strategy Hits Vol 3…) or old games for a very low price.

All this extra possibilities to generate more income should come with a serious risk that it won’t be a commercial success.

More Random Events
One of your devs becomes sick during development, you get sued for copyright infringement, everyone is upset because the coffee machine doesn’t work, youtube video with cute cat distracts everyone…

Various things

Offer a slower game speed.

Pause button

It’s a little bit intransparent how assigning different people to different task contributes to the quality of the game.

I want to give my games longer names.

Let me view which features are implemented in an engine

Please make the texts of reviews more interesting and versatile. After some time I’ve seen every possible review text.

TiiX · May 7, 2013, 1:34pm

Well obviously either something would have to be done to filter chat or there would be no chat at all. I’m guessing that if you have a team of people you would talk on skype or whatever.

About the gamerating thing, i guess that if someone knows how to get alot of high ratings there’s not that much to do about it, afterall it’s all about selling the most of the best games, however if they’re using programs to manipulate the ratings there would have to be some kind of anti-cheat program.

CocoMadness · May 7, 2013, 4:41pm

I’ll start by saying that you managed to create a game that forced me back into the early years of tycoons when I would waste hours and hours at an end just to make that new office, railway or port.

First two times I played bankruptcy slowly creped on me and the level of ‘frustration’ was clearly over 9000. Your game is the first one in the last 6-7 years that actually forced me to burn through a night just to see it through and make those bucks. I literally played more than 9 hours straight into the night.

As I am now going for that 84th year, I came across a lot of issues, most of which have already been discussed on the forums and I will not go into bugs. I am sure you will eventually fix them all.

I want to focus on my ideas and hopefully help you improve this game beyond its current state. It is quite the diamond in the ruff but, as of now, the game has still a long way to go before saying that it is ‘complete’.

So, let’s do it!

Fans – Working with them

1.1 Communities:

it would be nice if you could sponsor communities or even fund/create them yourself; at first, just general, large communities that will support your company as a whole
as time progresses, the communities will start to diversify based on your titles; you would gain more support per title/franchise and you will sell more games based on how large/well put together are your respective communities
the downside would be creating a poor game for the franchise that will take its toll on your fans number -> the respective community would lower

1.2 Several Types of Fans

this comes hand in hand with the communities
create 3 types of fans: casual, dedicated, hardcore
the hardcore fans are the hardest ones to get but bring in the most revenue (+++++ average) and help promoting your title/franchise – you could have general hardcore fans and franchise hardcore fans
the downside would be that they would also be the easiest type of fans to lose if you frack things up with a particular title/franchise – the threshold could be based on an average grade that you will receive per title + overall quality (see the Media section – we will discuss things there)
the dedicated fans bring in ++ average income per title/franchise, are not so picky about your work and will give you a slack from now on then; are a bit harder to lose than the hardcore ones
the casual fans bring in average income per title/franchise and they do not give a rat’s ass about you as a person/company; yes, they will be upset if you frack it up several times in a row but, usually, they will stick with you

1.3 Fan Grading

this would be a separate grading system that will discuss your overall game quality from the perspective of the player and not the media ‘whore’ system
from the point of view of the hardcore fans, this is the most important grade – they will usually ignore the media grades if your game is good enough
for the dedicated fans, there will be a certain balance between fan grading and media grading, with a strong emphasis on fan grading
for the casual fans, the media grading will be a bit more important than the fan grading

1.4 HR/PR and fans

make them important aspects of your business
HR -> some of your hardcore fans might actually have skills – see what you could do with them
PR -> extremely important – building communities

2, Media – Owning a piece of the ‘whore’

2.1. Buying reviews

you should have the possibility of influencing the grades by investing money in the respective companies
this would influence your casual fans but will not be so important for the hardcore/dedicated fans as they do not care so much about the media reviews

2.2 Having your own media company

start small, with a site; from there, you could invest more and more money and eventually create a consortium that will promote other games (get money from other gaming companies for promoting their own games) and make a god out of you through the means of social brain-washing;
based on how much money you have, you could do a bunch of stuff (too many details – no point in wasting space) – depending on what you do, your hardcore fans and dedicated ones will not like it and you could trigger a chain reaction that will end up in you losing most of your hardcore and dedicated fan groups but you will win a lot of casual fans

2.3 Sabotaging the competition

you have a media empire at your disposal – as with 2.2, this could have serious repercussions with your fan base

Actual Design

3.1 In-Depth Design

as of now, I do not feel that I am actually in control when designing my game; sure, you have a few options but you could do so much more with it
add a lot more options and steps – add more random events for the design process – people getting sick, social interactions between employees, ‘karma’, breakthroughs
add testing periods, feedback from the communities – see point 1 -> your hardcore fans and dedicated ones (to a certain degree) could actually help you more than your in-house testers

3.2 Psychologists

add them –they are an important part of the design process – making games addictive is important BUT this could have serious downsides with your hardcore/dedicated fans (to a certain degree) – it would bring in more casual fans

Online World

4.1 Creating your company’s persona

as with 2, this would be an important part of your process
you must have a strong presence online as you eventually get to the online world and its birth

4.2 Make more with ‘GRID’

I feel that this is lacking -> you could invest/develop it into the strongest platform out there and this would help with your fan bases

I had much more ideas but some got lost on the way. I also need my coffee. Will add things as I remember them.

I really want for this game to grow and reach its potential. For now, it’s just sand that is waiting to become a pearl.

mungem · May 7, 2013, 8:20pm

New Suggestion
Make Port Option ( so we can ‘port’ games to other consoles

Dave_Lukewski · May 8, 2013, 11:34am

Please, please, make savegames visible somwhere in game folder, it be possible backup them (or if they´re stored somwhere tell me, i cant find them )

mungem · May 9, 2013, 12:49am

Save games are here :

The file file__0.localstorage contains all the save data for the game.

On Windows Vista/7/8 (Website Version): C:/Users/YOURUSER/Appdata/Local/Game Dev Tycoon/Local Storage/ where YOURUSER is your Windows user name.

On Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSER\Local Settings\Game Dev Tycoon\Local Storage\ where YOURUSER is your Windows user name.

On Windows 8 (App Store Version): C:\Users\YOURUSER\AppData\Local\Packages\B3B9BB81.56264F78B4FFF_swksbykwsp6kr\RoamingState\ where YOURUSER is your Windows user name.

On Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Game Dev Tycoon/Local Storage

On Linux ~/.config/Game Dev Tycoon (might be slightly different)>

Garman · May 9, 2013, 6:42am

I just finished my first full play through and thought I would add my suggestions while it’s still fresh. I’m sure many (all?) are covered but I’m afraid I couldn’t make it through this whole epic thread before posting - heading back to read when I’m done.

The biggest thing I would like to see added is more information. Having read a few posts by people who hated this game I can see one of the underlying reason they are frustrated. Just to be clear - I love GDT but I can empathise with some of the criticism. The only feedback you get on the quality of the game you create comes through the reviews but as the reviews are dependent on past performance it is very hard to intuitively improve your games unless you stick with a single genre. I have to check the wiki all the time to keep up with which sliders are important for which genres but if there was a secondary way of gaining that information I would not need metagame help.

By looking outside the game for information it spoiled a lot of the other mechanics that would have been fun to tinker with and find out (such as the YEM links to platforms). I don’t mind that but I certainly wouldn’t recommend this game to my brother because he would never bother with the wiki. Even if it’s a more detailed game history page that allows the games to be sorted, ranked and reviewed (which has to include the sliders or at least the ratio and some comments) it would go a long way towards making the game more accessible. It can be tied to difficulty options for those who want a more hardcore mode - this would also mean it could be rolled out in a beta format without impacting current playability.

A detailed budget would also be very helpful and allow me to know whether my console expenditure was actually worthwhile. I know it made money and month to month was in the black but I can’t really add up what I spent on R&D. A history of the popups would even be enough.

The popups are another issue which I have seen other people address. I find they get a bit annoying after a while and an option to choose whether they are a popup or just a notification (like the current budget) would be awesome. An option for the review and con counters would be nice too - click speeds it up but not a lot. Perhaps an option to change click to insta-show would still hold the feeling they’re after but not bog the game down?

I would also like the ability to hire more staff and create multiple games at once. You can have big R&D departments but only 6 designers? Just feels like that managing side of the game and risk v reward of hiring more people could be extended. A new area like the R&D lab that you can shuffle staff between would be an easy way of separating the work load and making it clear it’s a separate team. It would mean the core mechanics could remain the same too.

Those are the key issues I wanted to post about. There are lots of other small things (like cross-platform launches) but this post is too long already. Thanks for reading and thanks to the Greenheart Games guys.

DarkMajor21 · May 9, 2013, 11:53pm

Sequels, I think that there should be more incentive to making a sequel right now it seems like the only one is that it might sell better. I think that when making a sequel the game should start off with a little boost in design and technology, maybe like a 1/3 or 1/4 of what the first game had, for instance Space Fighter 1 has 20 in design and 20 in technology so I think that Space Fighter 2 should start out with 5 in design and technology. I think that Game Dev Story had a system similar to this.
More game length options, maybe have as little as 10 years and go up by 5 until you get to fifty years, and have a separate scoreboard for each year selection.
Freelance programmers. So maybe I am trying to make a medium game with only three employees and I can’t afford to hire another employee, then it would be nice to get freelancers, just someone who will design something for you for a price. But they would not level up like a paid employee, and they also charge more every other time you use them.
Coding in new components to old game engines. I think that certain engine components should be able to be added later on, for instance, new controllers, day and night cycles, better A.I etc. I think that all for all the minor engine components that there should be an option to re code the engine using these newer components. The only thing that you would not be able to add on is new graphics.

P.S Thanks for making this game, its awesome and I love it!

Edited: Removed sub-genre suggestion, when suggestions were made I had not played all the way trough the game so I did not know of the multi-genre combos.

Kairon156 · May 10, 2013, 2:54am

only doing this because my other posts were closed and I’m being forced to. :109:

– my company uses the word Pinguin in allot of it’s games as their “mascot” and I was thinking it would be a cool option or a market research to name a mascot.
Examples: Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man… etc

– most are my own ideas but some are ideas of others that I agree with.

Save Game V2 could include Autto save and Quick save. (Those options didn’t come out tell about, 6 years ago?)
FPS games. (they may be included under Action which I haven’t done much of.)
Gun and motion sensitive controller. (Gun = Duck Hunt, motion sensitive controller = Wii)
port games to other systems. (I’ve had games rate 8-10 do baddly because it was on the wrong system if I could port them to the PC it would be helpful. Games do come out for more than one system but that might be larger companies)
Beter UI or UI enhancement. this could have different versions. (I don’t remember what UI stands for but it’s the layout of game menues of things like action bars and what not)
Cross system servers.(I’m not sure how common it is now but a few games lets PC players, xbox 360, and PS3 players play online on the same server)
Player hosted games. (AKA ln games like orgional diablo or player server games like Minecraft)
character editor/design. like the level editor but for characters, cars and other things like that.
Sprite A.I. under AI. would be between Better A.I. and A.I. companion (Sprites would be for RTS games or games where you controll NPC’s and they are free to do what they want.)

– computer upgrades. I know there’s an event that let’s you upgrade your computer but I’m talking about each componant.
you start by right clicking on your computer and than search for upgrades on the market.

MOBO: helps you with engine develmont
CPU: helps with peformance and gameplay
RAM: gives you more programming speed and or helps the boost thing recharge faster
Video Card: let’s you design graphics with ease.
Sound Card/speakers: helps you develop music and audio.
mouse and keyboard: helps lower all work load by a small ammount.
new chair: for emploies so they don’t need to go on vacation as often.

When making medium games these upgrades can help with lowering work load.

– Ideas for engines

able to sell your game engine to other companies. (like the Unreal engine)
add up to 3 upgrades to an engine. (building new engines just to add a controller or dialog is just stupid)
make old engines obsaleate. (gray them out so you don’t use them or even remove them from the list)
– option to stop games from having numbered names!!

– under Gaming History when you view a game there should be a button to show you what features were in the game, engine, level design, graphics, what features were put into the game like controllers, sround sound and so on.

– the ability to pull games that have an average raiting of 3 or less off the market. or at the very least lower the price allot (I lost 2k+ fans because of a bad game which after seeing the raiting I would have pulled from the market.)

DarkMajor21 · May 10, 2013, 4:33am

I like your engine idea better then mine, it makes more since and would make it balanced.

xyanide1986 · May 10, 2013, 3:52pm

Besides all the cool ideas here for the future I think there really needs to be some better way to manage your engines and research the components. Planning investments would be much better to manage with these few additions that should be easy to implement:

Managing Engines: Making limited upgrades, looking at their content, deleting, renaming, maybe an out-dated indication
Indicate what research is or is not an engine component (seperating engine add-ons and core components if you make upgrades possible)
Reviews should give a little more hints on what you did right or wrong. Right now you sometimes get Captain Obvious telling you what you did correctly. It doesn’t even have to be with every reviewer, just one or two dropping hints of their thoughts.

example:
5/10 “Looks old, plays well”

7/10 “Good game”

8/10 “Great gameplay”

6/10 “Good effort, boring visuals”

Like others mentioned I would also love to see hardware limitations with certain engine components. A gamelink somehow running 3D to give a sales boost is just silly.

The way how most aspects in this game are trial&error makes it addictive to find the hit game. Please don’t overdo the player help.
Please make these changes as soon as you can, thanks for the great game.

DarkMajor21 · May 10, 2013, 5:20pm

I like all your ideas but the DRM one, reason being that in the real world more DRM = more piracy not less. Games with less DRM seem to not get pirated as much.

Azhf · May 11, 2013, 6:38am

All above is good. One more suggestion(may have been suggested before.) is multi-topic!

jimmmartens · May 11, 2013, 1:35pm

Sadly that is a non-valid argument as you compare apple with bananas. Do you know two big games with roughly the same budget, where the game without DRM has absolutely more sales? I mean the big publishers look onto that: What brings effectively more money? It might be so that DRM improves the reasoning for piracy as downloading a pirated game is easier than the DRM thing for honest buyers. But if they still get absolutely more sales than a competable game with the same budget and no DRM than they have their approval.

Don’t get me wrong on this. I hate DRM but sadly that argument isn’t that valid.

@topic:
My problem leading to the suggestions is as following:
I am planning on making an MMO like Star Citizen (even with that name -> easter egg). So the topic is SciFi and the genre is (I’d say) Simulation/Action/RPG in that order. Why? You control a person that is basically just your avatar but you can modify your ship etc. So the “character progression” would be a ship progression. For such a game the following things are all relevant (especially with Star Citizen):

Awesome AI
Good Engine (well they use CryEngine 3, not their own)
Awesome gameplay (Mouse/Keyboard, Gamepad, Joystick, Newton flight physics)
Rich Backstory
Virtual economy
Linear story (for Squadron 42 part)
Dialogs (for Squadron 42)
Voice over (unsure, but probably there)
Awesome Level Design (space, and terrestrial zones like Terra, Beiijing, big carriers [Bengal Carrier], etc.)
Awesome Graphics (3D to it’s best and fully immersive with Oculus Rift)
Complete Body movement(very realistic)
Good Soundtrack

and a few more.

So if I sum that up under the Game Dev sections, I would need maxed out graphics, engine, AI, World Design, Level Design and Gameplay, at least half up Story/Quests, Dialogs and Sound. If you have counted, we already have all 9 parts and especially the third section (World Design, Graphic, Sound) is heavy.

We all (hopefully) know that is currently not possible to do in the game. You can only combine two genres whereas Simulation/RPG would leave you the most freedom. Simulation/Action is actually better fitting but wouldn’t allow for the necessary WorldDesign together with Story and Dialogs. And if I choose as much controllers plus advanced physics and the Story and Dialogues and World Design things than the game will be not as good.

My suggestions are because of that (after the wall of text):

Multiple (3+) big genres and sub-genres (Strategy -> (RTS/Round Based, gemischt [Total War-Serie]), Action-RPG (RPG/Action -> like Gothic, TES or MassEffect [event these three are very different])
More staff to address the awesome games like Star Citizen
adjust percentages with sliders (e.g. 50% with two many features and too few percentage) into something like: the more trained the person is that does that part the more features can be implemented without increasing the slider percentage in relation to the others (that would allow for truly immersive and awesome games)
many have said that, I repeat it (slower time optional)
the current year and month as better memorable date (December 1980 or just 12, 1980; 10/2010 , etc.); that would make remembering release dates a lot easier
Pause button
modification of engines (let’s take the X-Series, from the first game X-Beyond the Frontier until X3-Terran Conflict they always used the same engine and have put in more and more stuff); the reboot of the series will use a new engine (X-Rebirth)
more useful publisher deals (once I got a deal with Post Apocalyptic/Young which is dumb, or publishing an simulation game on an only action console)
ability to be a publisher yourself
more transparent competition and consequences for sabotaging other companies (what are they by the way)
a lot more pre-production infos (for an Advanced mode) like: market analysis -> which developer has announced a new game, etc.
more during-development marketing decisions like (do you want to announce a game already or just later)

Basically all my suggestions go in the direction to make Game Dev Tycoon to a true simulator and not just an arcade game. I don’t say it is bad but it can still be way better.

Azhf · May 11, 2013, 6:00pm

Here is one for the Shareholder’s Edition Expansion to come: Being able to bribe a reviewer. You should be able to bribe them a certain amount, and if you bribe them like 500K, they gaurantee a 9, even if it is bad? But you should never be able to bribe to get 10.

photoheathen · May 11, 2013, 7:45pm

I would like to be able to offer pre-orders of games I’m currently developing. Sales could begin before the game has been released, which could also help to generate hype.