So, we waited that long for the big 1.4.2 update and the biggest problem is still there. You all know what i mean, the Rating problem. You make a game and it becomes a great hit with 8.75 or 9 and whatever you do, the next games are not better than 4 or 5 and you freaking don’t know why. It doesn’t make any sense. Yes we have the new features, but thats nothing else as an implemented gamedevwiki into the game with the +++ or --. Its nothing different on the rating system. Its still too hard, its still too unrealistic and I’m disappointed again. 
I think the basics behind the rating algorithm hasn’t changed, but know you get some feedback through the game reports. I haven’t played that much with the new version, but i still manage to get consistent good games (7 and up) with the occasionell hit (9+) and flop (below 6). But all flops were either terrible topic/genre combination (which the game report mentioned) or pretty low on bubbles (tired staff or new staff - later also being included in the game reports)
I don’t know what you expected from this update. Before we would get zero feedback on the reasons why a game was rated bad or good - now we get some feedback. We don’t get everything in each game report, but it would become too easy otherwise.
Also note that the hints you collect via the game reports, carry over into new games. So over several playthroughs you can get a full view on genre/platform, genre/topic audience/platform, audience/topic and an idea on the importance on the different fields for a genre.
I really don’t know what could be missing there.
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What is missing? A patched system, a real patch, but what do we got? An integrated wiki help system for the broken “roll a dice” system.
Wow, thanks.
What i mean? The biggest thread on steam with over 80 responses after 1 day with still the same problems like we all got when we first played it and posted about it here.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/239820/discussions/0/864977564022125240/#p1
Making a good game is not based on roll a dice, but i know that people often do not balance their Design and Technology points properly, resulting in mediocre reviews.
Perhaps the game reports could mention about T/D ratio a bit.
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The Design/Tech ratio just needs to be done away with.
It’s too hard to control in the game, and too unpredictable–especially if one of your employees happens to get head lice when it’s time to work on their specialty. By contrast, in real life, if the game technology needs improvement, you assign people to work on tech; if the design is lagging behind, you allocate resources to a design pass.
And it should be the totals that matter anyway, not the ratios. Let’s say your most recent game was an Adventure title with 30 Design and 15 Tech points, and was a big hit. Your next game is another Adventure title; let’s say that due to a new engine or new personnel this one clocks in at 40 Design and 40 Tech. If GDT is still penalizing the player for incorrect balance, that’s ridiculous.
I suppose it would be fair to ding the player for focusing too much on Tech if that had caused the team to drop the ball on Design…but if Design is still better than before, the message a penalty sends is just plain wrong: “Yes, we loved the Design of your last adventure game; yes, this new one is even better, setting a new standard for Design in a video game of any genre…but we’re actually not happy about that, because the Technology has gotten too good at the same time.”
This is completely overblown in the wiki and in discussions. In fact, the D/T ratio has very little effect. It has some, but nowhere near what people make it out to be.
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More relating to the OP comment. In the previous system you could create what should have been a good game (rating 6-10) and get bad scores (1- 5), just because you created a super-hit before that. This is no longer the case. If you create a good game, then you will get a good review.
Of course reviewers will still slowly expect more from the market, so you can’t expect to get the same great scores (8-10) for constant D/T achievements.
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I know it’s not a major factor for making good games, but often i see people ending up with a 50/50 T/D balance for a an Action game and then scores get lowered.
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The Rating needs rework.
In my first game ever and in amazingly enough my first game ever developed I scored an 8.5 with Medieval/Action and only one developer.
Nothing ever got close and I ended up losing with 5, 6 and a few 7+ games.
got all 10’s on my Airplane Simulation-Casual Game called Planes 2.
Can you guys just tell us what the rating algorithm is, in your words? You’ve said that the code is all readable. Most of us don’t speak Javascript, and would rather hear your interpretation than someone misinformed on the wiki.
Thx for the Info Retro.
Now I know that I won’t try this game again soon. I waited monthes over monthes. Like I said before, I am not going to play a game and waste my time when I need to have a wiki open the whole time to finish it or get through this.
You should realy listen to the guys who are saying it is to hard or not possible to see through the rating system. There are a few guys who like this game so much that they will do the whole wiki looking thing and try to remember everything that stands there. But the fact is that most of the people are not like that. And if you want the people the remember you as a good game developer than change something about the rating system and make this game more fun for everyone. For me it is to late, I am never ever going to buy a game of you, you just messed up, but try to fix this to not scare away some other guys… Sadly I can not sell my Steam Key any more, because I already activated it -.-’
[quote=“PatrickKlug, post:6, topic:7017”]
This is completely overblown in the wiki and in discussions. In fact, the D/T ratio has very little effect.[/quote]
If an incorrect D/T ratio is enough to turn a 10 rating into the dread 9.75, I’m still not in favor of it…but generally speaking, that’s reassuring, and I’m glad for the reply.
Funny that you mention that. I like it when games are hard. I love to play games that realy need some skills like Monster Hunter and Silver Surfer (NES).
Oh an guess what? Both dont need a Wiki to finish them and to have fun with. So better stop making such ridiculous comparisons. They are inappropriate.
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I agree. Theres a difference between a game being hard, and a game being a complete mystery without looking up a walkthrough/wiki. Parts of the zelda games were like that - no idea what to do next until it was looked up.
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But it makes me feel sad when I release a game with new records about 2500 in design and tech with a good weighting of needed factors (gameplay, engine, …) and additional content but I only get an average rating of 5 or 6.
I do not think this is work as intended…
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It still has this same issue. I know this is an old thread but it deserves a bump in my opinion. I do love this game and have made it successful a couple plays out of maybe 10. In my current play through i am at Office 2 upgraded and my previous high scoring game had a total of 421(D+T) with a 9.25 ovr score. I then made some mediocre games to fund me while training my 3+me employee’s.
With a new engine that had 1-3 new features researched in each category i made a new engine. Then proceeded to make a city/strategy for PC using 3D graphics v3. I have v5 already but wanted to allocate more points towards features since graphics aren’t that important. I finished it with a new highscore total of 488(277D+211T) and got a 7/6/5/5(maybe 6). Not making much sense imo. I feel like this game needs a memory wipe or something so it can operate in a logical way, shits more bonkers than R2-D2.
EDIT: Another thing that bothers me a touch is the insignificance of categories rated ++. Majority of my successful games have had the sliders maxed in +++ categories with zilch in any other category but ++ which i increase what feels like 10-15%. if ++ are almost as important as +++, shouldn’t they almost carry as much weight?
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The main problem with the rating system is how the adaptive difficulty is calculated. It rewards you for doing just well enough to get 9 or 10 and no better: A single release results in Needing 111% performance relative to your previous score. Ideally what should happen is that there should be fixed values that you need to hit, rather than a game that rewards you for inserting bugs to reduce your score so you get a 9.75 that makes your next 9.75 easier, or for hiring bad programmers intentionally because improving 100 -> 150 is a 50% improvement while improving 200 ->250 is only a 25% improvement, but both take similar resources to train.
Thanks for the feedback guys!
Okay, so lets get to the point.
If this was real life, you wouldn’t create a good game all the time. You would probably end up with worse reviews than what is in this game, because IRL people are different. You also got different reviewers who got different tastes. Some thinks about quality, while others think about graphics. Some only think about the fun they got out of the game. This review system - I feel - is what you can expect from a realistic game making simulator.