Hello there, Landlords!
It's time for another major update! This time we're back with one that everyone's been waiting for quite some time, the Landlord Update! Introducing possibly the most requested feature by the community, apartment selling, today's update drastically enhances the gameplay as you know it, adding on new layers of interaction with the game and a plethora of new content to explore. To celebrate the occasion, The Tenants is now 25% off! Let's dive right into it!
New Apartment Selling & Buying
The biggest changes in this update are by far related to how we look at properties in the game. We've always intended for The Tenants to have a more managerial style of gameplay at the very top of our gameplay loop, with players buying multiple properties, investing into them, renting them out, and eventually flipping them for profit. This dynamic was not possible to achieve without a number of key features, including the ability to sell apartments and the revised buying system. Both utilize auctions, a new interactive way to handle all your purchases and sales, where you'll get to bid against other landlords!
To make investing and progression more meaningful, players will now have to upgrade the so-called property limit, which describes the number of properties they can own at any given time. You'll find all about it, including a list of all upcoming and ongoing auctions in the area, in the new Properties app on your phone. Be sure to check it out!
Note: For players with existing save files who own more properties than their current limit allows them to, the game will prompt you to sell a number of units of your choice to convert your save file to a landlord update compatible version.
Job Overhaul
Jobs are an essential aspect of the game. As you venture into the landlord update, you will notice that the jobs have changed. You may see that all jobs that once were are no longer there or have been revamped in one way or another. Alongside doing this to existing jobs, we have also added new jobs, so over 90 new jobs are available in the game.
With new jobs come new requirements called prestige scores. We have decided to remove “decor” from jobs as it felt disconnected from the rest of the game. Adding prestige scores instead will make the game more consistent between jobs and your places, as scoring will be the same throughout both.
Moreover, we have added a new type called puzzle job. You will be challenged to think outside the box to fit the requirement task list into a small room supplied to you in these jobs. Are you up for the task? If so, try not to hurt yourself thinking!
Job Rating Changes
We've been closely monitoring the feedback related to job ratings, and the thing that kept coming up was that the game more-or-less forced players to keep using the same items over and over again (the most expensive ones). In the previous updates, we've added the Tags that didn't work exactly as planned since they were regarded as a separate rating category, and the old issues were still present for the other categories.
However, with this update, we've made bigger changes to the whole rating system. We've removed the Decor and the Tags categories, adding the new Prestige category in their place as previously mentioned. Furthermore, we've changed how the game rates the Required Furniture, Preferred Furniture, Walls, and Floors categories. Now, these categories don't consider the given item's price; instead, they focus on using the correct tags (if available) and avoiding placement issues.
The overarching goal here was to remove the focus on expensive furniture and materials, and enable players to use a wider variety of items while doing renovation jobs. Of course, this is an intricate system, and we're eager to hear your feedback on the changes. We plan to keep tweaking and balancing it in further updates.
New Unlockable Items
Another exciting feature of the new update is the new unlocking system for Elite Contract jobs! You will be able to unlock the complete set of unique job items for each contract by completing it three times. Each successful job will yield a portion of them, making each one more than worth the hassle while giving you a reason to come back to them to get the full lineup!
Landlord Points
One thing that we wished we had introduced right from the very beginning, was a second currency. With this new currency added, instead of using money for everything, you will now be required to use Landlord Points on a number of in-game features, such as gifting, sabotaging, and services. No more spending real money to boot your most hated tenant!
In the future, we'll be looking at adding even more avenues to spend your landlord points on, so make sure to keep an eye out for that!
New Events
It's been a while since we added any tenant events to the game, and it seems like our tenants have managed to come up with a number of really interesting issues to bug you about during your gameplay. New events are all uniquely tied to specific tenant archetypes, and they all can involve Steve in one way or the other! And so, alcoholics might forget their way to the bed while artists will message you asking you to drop by to pose for their new painting. Plenty of fun ahead in Wondersville!
New Tenant Archetype - Magician
It wouldn't be a major update without a new archetype coming to town! Magicians are all about gaudy appearances and equally ostentatious magic tricks. Although, with enough gigs lined up for the month, they can be pretty good at paying rent on time! Make sure to treat them well, or who knows what can happen to a landlord they deem problematic.
No update would be complete without a batch of key quality of life changes and improvements to the existing mechanics. We've focused a lot on improving loading times and the general loading pipeline, which in the past could cause crashes for some of our players. Important balance changes have been also pushed, lowering the $12k cashflow quest to $8k, while adding two new quests in the Slums in between to make the transition to the Suburbs smoother.
We're very excited to get this update out for you to play with! Some of the features released today have been in the works for months, designed right at the beginning of the development, and it's incredibly rewarding to see them come to fruition. We hope you enjoy it, and we can't wait for your feedback!
Full Changelog
Features
- Added a new Phone app: Properties.
- Implemented selling apartments via auctions.
- Reworked buying apartments to work similarly to selling.
- Added a new currency: Landlord Points.
- Implemented Elite Contract item unlocks.
Content
- Added a new tenant archetype: Magician.
- Added 6 new tenant events tied to specific archetypes.
- Added a new renovation job type: Puzzle jobs.
- Added 4 new Elite Contracts.
- Added over 90 new renovation jobs.
- Added 2 new missions in between the Slums' missions..
General
- Optimized the game's loading speed in a major way.
- Tweaked and polished the environment in the Suburbs.
- Fixed Open House jobs being sometimes wrongly 1 star reviewed for being sold too cheaply.
- Tenants will now leave their apartments for other reasons than only going to work.
- Tenants will now try to use the freshly installed items right after a renovation request.
- Tenants will now look at items of interest (for example when watching TV).
Jobs
- Reworked (once again) how rooms are assigned and recognized in renovation jobs.
- Removed Decor from scoring categories, added Prestige instead, and reworked the scoring in general.
UI
- Polished the item unlock popup on level ups.
- Re-organized item assignments to different furniture categories.
- Added the ability to click and search scored item types in the room context menu panel.
- Tweaked the furniture placement warning icons in renovation mode.
- Added an event icon that signalizes that a tenant's lease is ending.
- Added tooltips that explain how to unlock locked features in the Open House UI.
- Moved the common requirements to the bottom of the renovation checklist.
Balance
- Reduced the casfhlow required in the "Playing for High Stakes" mission from $12k to $8k.
- Reduced the number of required Babysitting jobs to perform in the "Babysitter" mission from 3 to 2.
Thank you,
The Tenants Team