I have no idea why some of my games with good tech/design proportion(as described in GDT wiki) with low overal score gets more positive reviews than my AAA titles with crazy tech/deign sum but poor proportion. It doens’t seem logical to me as tech/design rate are not hinted within the game and is very random in nature.
Shouldn’t sheer sum of T and D affect review more than T/D ratio?
They affect sales, not score, to my knowledge.
Amount doesn’t matter, only ratio. A 5000/5000 game will score same as a 2000/2000 game. But the first one will sell better.
This was my main frustration with this game. This is pretty much unrealistic game mechanic and hard to find out without looking at the wiki.
If your team is able to match the action game ratio, with a tech score of 2000, you could imagine having reach a “Crysis 3” technical level, and so do the critics say: “great game lol-meh” (very constructive, isn’t it ?).
Now, at the same date and with the same context, instead of having the previous ratio, you get 4000 in design and 2000 in tech for your action game. I would think “great, never reached such a great tech ratio, it’s a Crysis 3 like, but moreover, the gameplay is really really great !” But it’s a fail : the ratio doesn’t match the game dev tycoon rules. The scores are low.
Would any game critics in real life complain about having a great technical level with an incredible gameplay for an action game ? This is where I get frustrated.
Once I read the wiki, I understood my team was only able to produce 0,4 to 0,7 D/T ratios. I wouldn’t be able to build a dream dev team like “great, I made a Morrowind like with a 9.75 score. Now my team could build a great narrative strategy game, with such story and dialogue engine options ! How original it is”.
The games that actually work are fixed in development.
Action games with extremely good design but poor tech are not outlandish, they are rubbish.
Think about Aliens Colonial Marines.
From the tech side the game just sucks. It looks kinda nice but the game was thrashed by the reviews.
Similar with RPG’s like Skyrim.
The game got marvelous reviews because of the Design. From the tech side the game is good, but far from perfect. But different from the Action genre it won’t get thrashed here because no one expects an RPG to be perfect techwise.
The ratios are not without sense. But this restricts the player to “walk the path thousands have walked before”.
I agree, I am a little upset that I trained all my staff and no matter the Design/Tech ill somehow get a score of 4 - 6 … where as sometimes it will be 8 - 10. Personally i think all games that have a high level of design and tech should automatically be Good/Great games. Only sales should be affected.
This shit is infuriating no matter what i get on the damn Design/ Tech level … somewhere around 700D/680T i still get f***ed over with shitty scores.
Perfect name for the Perfect Review
That’s exactly the main problem.
You can’t be churning out games from every genre possible. You have te specialise depending on the empoyees you semi-randomly get.
Pause the game and look on the staff stats.
Count the flat amount of design and tech points available and consider the ‘Speed’ as a simple ‘More is MORE!’
If your team has more desing points than tech points forget about Action, Strategy and Simulation. Focus on RPG, Adventure and Casual.
You won’t get a hit game from the other branch.
Not even with 'perfect sliders’
The game will get thrashed by the reviews.
Naw wrong. Because when my workers are rubbish and say they do 1000 tech and 600 design points in an action game. the game scores highly.
Now, I keep the same workers, the same stuff they work on etc, they technical skill stays the same BUT I also upgrade their design skill. Now I do the same game, but with more skill in design and THE SAME skill in tech, the endresult will be like 1000-900 now. Normally a big improvement, but the game says 'nah-ah, why is your design so high?" and you get lower scores than if you never trained your staff in the first place.
This will also result in players who completely trained their staff to the max (900 Tech and Design) will score much lower than someone with rubbish, but unbalanced staff.
The whole rating system is a joke. The ratio would make sense only if the numbers are low. If your staff is extremely well trained and exceeds in both tech and design you should not get punished for it, expecting the total opposite.
Moral of the story … Next patch fix this so I can keep playing!
Wut’s wose is that the required ratio is FIXED amount, not something like greater or less than a certain point.
It means for .5 raito,
if you go 2000 tech, 1000design, you are good.
if you decide to improve your tech, 3000 tech, 1000 design, you are royally fucked.
if you decide to improve your design, 2000 tech, 2000 design, you are screwed too.
and the largest problem of all is that you can’t ‘decide’ which area to imrpove as it is all quiet random.
This is the largest deisgn flaw I’ve ever seen in games I’ve played. GDT is a fun game but reivew system is BS.
You dear sir/madam should learn to read.
You’re saying the same as me with other words.
But I’m wrong of course … 
I ment to reply to someone else then who was saying it makes sense etc. can’t remember. anyhow yea system is bad
Bad thing is it does make sense.
But this review concept is way to strict and punishing for any product not refering to the ‘usual game style’.
An Action Game is traditionally very much based on Technology. But we all know of the Crysis Series which is an Action game better known for its Design than its Technology.
With the reviews from Game Dev Tycoon Crysis would have been crushed.
Anything slightly off ‘perfect Balance’ gets murdered by the ingame reviews.
If at the very least an action game (for this example) would get at most slight penalties for say ‘having to much emphasis’ on story or dialogues. But the reviews of a 6000/6000 Action game are simply rubbish.
We are supposed to try for specific D/T ratios? I always try for the best I can get from both. I try to set a new record with each game released. Maybe THAT is my downfall!
It would be nice to know somewhere in the game that this is goal and not just making fun games the best that you can.