Welcome to Part One of our shopkeeping changes.
This patch is designed to bring a tougher challenge and push the limits of a seasoned shopkeeper's skillset.
Try and see if you can build a 5-star shop in this new update! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
We appreciate any and all on the Steam forums or https://discord.gg/Saleblazers so that we can continue to iterate on shopkeeping in the coming patches.
Starting over in a new shop plot to check out all the new changes is recommended!
❌Losing Your Shop at 0 Star Rating
In this patch, if you reach a shop Star Rating of 0, the government will shut down your shop and seize your property. You will be unable to build inside the plot bounds and can no longer run the shop.
To get the shop back, you'll have to talk to Inspector Farley and convince him to return it to you! Maybe Pop Pop will know what to do...
This one might be a bit controversial, but consequences can be pretty fun in games! If you don't like this, you can also turn this feature off in the lobby settings.
👍👎Thumbs Up/Down Reviews
Instead of leaving a review of 0-5 stars, customers will now leave reviews of single/double thumbs up or down. All factors towards a review have been rebalanced for a more challenging experience.
The thumbs rating will also physically show over their head in-game to give a better overview of what's happening in your shop.
⭐Star Rating Overhaul
Customers' thumbs up and down ratings will affect the Star Rating in quarterly increments. You'll see the star UI flash when you're close to gaining or losing a quarter star!
Each Star Rating level has different thresholds for how much a thumbs up or down affects the Star Rating. The higher you go, the harder it is to maintain or gain in Star Rating.
Since we've significantly changed how the Star Ratings work, we'll reset your shop to half a star. Don't worry -- you didn't lose anything. Before, stars didn't do much and you could get 5 stars in 2 minutes.
🛒Closing Shop No Longer Kicks Customers Out
Because of the new Star Rating changes, closing the shop will allow the customers in the shop to continue browsing but prevent new customers from entering the shop.
🧑🏫Star Promotion
After gaining a full star you'll enter "Star Promotion" mode, where you'll have to serve a group of new VIP customers (marked by stars above their heads) to move on to the next star.
Successfully completing the promotion gains you access to faster customer flow and new customer types.
We hope you have as much fun as we did when we were testing these promotions. Good luck -- it'll be a real challenge to get to 5 stars, but we know you can do it!
🧑🏭Expanded Employee Systems
We're planning on adding more needs and items for employees later on, but we'll be monitoring how this plays out first.
👨💼Employee Skill Unlocks
In this patch, you'll start out with only Cleaning employees and will have to unlock more types in the Employee Table. If we add more types of employees later on, they'll all be accessible through this skill tree.
🪑Employee Needs
Employees now have Morale, Comfort, and Energy bars that you have to tend to. Low Comfort and Energy lowers Morale, which will cause them to stop working.
To raise Comfort, you'll need to build chairs throughout your shop just as you do for your customers. As for Energy, you can tell them to take a break or assign shorter shifts.
📚Employee Training
You can now train employees to improve their skills, comfort, and energy. They'll leave the shop when sent to training, so be prepared to take over for your employee while they're away.
😨Employee Fight or Flight Reactions
Employees will now fight or flee if spooked, just like customers. We really want to make employees feel a lot more alive, so this will be the first of many new behaviors for them.
🏃♂️Customer Flow and Shop Capacity Rework
Previously, shop capacity and customer flow were linked to the level of your shop. This wasn't ideal, since it didn't feel rewarding or responsive to how you ran your shop.
🏃♂️Customer Flow Increases With Shop Star Rating
We've changed customer flow to increase based on your shop's Star Rating - as you gain stars, you'll see more customers coming to visit your shop.
🏃♂️Increased Customer Flow
Base customer flow values have been increased across the board and the algorithm for spawning customers has been changed, so you'll see a lot more customers lining up even without any shop policy upgrades.
🏃♂️More Customer Flow and New Shop Capacity Shop Policy Upgrades
We've added shop capacity upgrades to the shop policy tree and added lots of new customer flow nodes. It's up to you to choose whether you want to run a bustling shop or cozy boutique!
If you prefer to run a personalized boutique, we've also added nodes that reduce the amount of flow you receive!
With these changes, we aim to open up the potential for a lot of different shop builds.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading the patch notes. We hope you enjoy these new changes! There'll be more to come soon.
📜 v0.13.0 Patch Notes
➡️ Changes
- Patience is now paused if needs are all above 65%
- Can now see customer needs even when they've left the shop
- 5 star reviews are now single/double thumbs up/down
- Shop now starts with 0.5 stars instead of 2.5 stars
- Stars are no longer the average review score but are gained from receiving good reviews
- It is much more difficult to get "5 stars" from before (which are now "double thumbs up")
- Dirty shops take away thumbs heavily
- Loss of needs take away thumbs heavily
- Added fallback option to load a backup save file if something went wrong
- Selling items at lower prices doesn't give thumbs as easily
- Talking to people don't give thumbs as easily
- Each level of item rarity will give thumb rating
- Selling at 0 dollars will give more thumb rating
- Fixed issue where customers sometimes wouldn't leave reviews if they were pooled recently (which is most of the time)
- Stars fill in quarters now, with visual feedback when a review is positively or negatively influencing progress
- Flow now linked to stars instead of shop level
- Instead of automatically increasing capacity based on level, you now only have 1 capacity and must upgrade the shop policies
- Number of customers that wait outside your shop scales with shop capacity now instead of a flat +1
- Patience affects thumb rating
- Beauty affects thumb rating
- Being wet (unroofed during rain) affects thumb rating
- Employee state rework: react and fear just like customers
- Added employee training mechanic
- Employee Table reroll cost reset every hour
- Changed fake review shop policy to only work when shop is open
- Shop can now be lost when reaching 0 stars
- New Shop policies for capacity and flow
- More likely that customers will spawn when you first start the game
- Customers now unlocked per star level
- Shop policies are now locked to shop level to better guide the attention of the player
- Added shadows to campfires
- Groups that spawn in will now spawn in as the same type instead of all random
- Customers can't drop messes unless they have arrived at plot
- Closing the shop does not kick out customers inside anymore
- Customers that leave while waiting outside in line will leave a review if the shop is open + stimuli are triggered, but will not leave a review if the shop is closed
- Customers can now leave reviews on shops that are not running, if they were currently browsing at the time of shop closure
- Changed initial haggle % success punishment to be less difficult
- Adjusted several shop policy prices and tuned their effects
- Night time customer flow is now the same as day flow
- Customers will display a thumbs up or thumbs down emoji when they leave a review, so that it's easier to tell what's going on.
- Gaining a full star will trigger promotion that spawns VIP customers - when in promos, shop cannot rank up and ranking down stars will exit promos
- When bar is 75%+ of the way to losing or gaining, the Star Rating UI will flash
- When in shop promotion mode, all Star Rating stars will flash
- Warning will appear if you are close to losing your shop
- Added option to toggle shop loss mechanic
- Added government inspector NPC that terrorizes your shop after it's been taken away -- maybe ask Pop Pop to help
- Repeater Rifle shoot sound has lever audio now
- Several light sources have been tweaked to be less intense
- Added ability to send employees out on a break
- Added Morale, Comfort, and Energy needs to employees
🛠️ General Fixes
- Fixed a lot of cases of customers not lining up properly
- Fixed customers not advancing in line properly
- Adjusted bubble icons to not clip in customer's head
- Fixing issue with double spawning plot ghouls
- Fixed village quarter wall recipe being incorrect