Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. The people behind it are also amazing people tips hat, but myself and a number of people playing this game can’t seem to get very far without getting an end game. I decided I’d start again and read up on good combinations. Still died. This evening I decided to read a strategy guide, and I understand why I’ve been failing so hard…
Long story short, I must consistently slightly improve the amount of design / tech points each game release in order to get high ratings. This is completely counter intuitive to how I play games like this.
My usual playing style: Get money. Research, skip as much research as possible and get really awesome things. Build with the really awesome things and smash the previous score into last week.
In the case of GDT, this means I’m out of money after my first game, as I won’t have enough to develop a new better engine and a game. I spend some money and research points on staff training, but that’s not quite enough to get a better score and therefore rating, and so the game doesn’t make as much profit as needed.
I feel this is really counter intuitive, and the core mechanics of this needs to be explained to even some basic degree. Consider Theme Hospital. I know I must build more rooms to meet the target. Roller Coaster Tycoon, I must build new rides to make more money, I know the market of the park and what rides they want.
To my mind, games are all about making something awesome. Let’s use the best skills we can get, make it amazing. GDT says, “hold up, you got to consider a long term business strategy here.” And that’s fine, but we need to be made aware fact, otherwise the fun is zapped out of the game and just leaves players confused and frustrated and posting so on the form.
/rant. Sorry. <3