First, I would just like to say thank you to all the new players and support the game has received since leaving early access. There are still areas in the game that need work, but it's running very well with very few issues, and has amazing depth and features. We are far from done with the game's development though. I still have big plans for additions, overall improvements, and expansion of some existing systems for many aspects of the game. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I am very proud of the current state of the game. I am so pleased that the majority of players are having a positive experience, and the feedback we have been getting has been amazing. Thank you for that, it makes working on the game that much easier.
I will be opening up a new poll for GDM around the leader boards / seasons. I would love to hear your feedback on this issue. You can do so on the discord in the gdm_projects channel found here: https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA If you prefer you can also cast your vote in this thread. More information will be given at the bottom of these notes.
Balance Changes
There have been a bunch of small balance changes based on player feedback and game data.
Here are a few key balance changes worth noting;
Famous IPs
I love the famous IP system, but in late game some of the sales increases were a little too good. I have reduced this system to be roughly half as powerful on larger games. It remains unaffected on smaller games, but it is reduced by a little bit as you move to medium and then eventually about half as effective on AAA.
Self-Published
Smaller self-published games have not been adjusted, but large and AAA have been slightly reduced. We almost had someone create a AAA game that hit the integer cap for the steam leader boards(2.1 billion). I did not think that was possible, but clearly with the right game and situation it is. So, AAA have been reduced in sales by roughly 10% and 5% on large. This combined with the famous IP changes should bring the sales figures down to a more reasonable place.
Digital Stores
A lot of players don't really get how the digital stores work, which I am working to improve the system and tutorials to make this clearer. However, I have gone ahead and bumped the sales value for digital stores up by a few percent to help players see the value of digital stores.
In short digital stores are long term passive income compared to the quick 12 weeks of sales given to self-published. Digital games have a hype from 0-100 and an age from 0-6. Using tools such as dlc, updates, ports, convention, and game sales events you can keep the hype at 100 and the age at 0. By manipulating the hype and age of a game you can continue to get the max monthly sales for multiple years, and you can do this for multiple games at the same time leading to massive passive gains for your studio. If you do not update or work on these games in any way then self-published will be better, but provided you manipulate their hype and age well digital stores outperform self-published in the long run.
There is also a visibility and reputation attached to each store. Reputation goes up based on releasing games on that platform depending on quality, and visibility goes up based on total sales for that platform. Just like steam if you sell more, they will push your game harder to a larger audience. Something GDM itself does not experience, but at least we can experience this in game.
Epic Engine
I have gone and increased the revenue share for the epic engine from 15% to 30%. Late game the epic engine was too good of an option for most players. I want it to be there for anyone who falls behind in engine requirements, but I want custom engines to remain the better option provided you are up-to-date. This could hurt early small games revenue, but early game you should be able to keep up with your engine for the most part. I am always open to feedback if players think this was too aggressive of a change to make epic engine take a steam size revenue split.
Studio Perks
I have adjusted a few studio perks to make them more valid of an option. I reached out to a few of the best scoring players in GDM to ask their thoughts on studio perks and what they used. I found that the vast majority prefer the increased sales option. So, I have increased the other aspects to try and entice a variety of skill choices. Fans, Engine costs + sales, and game creation costs were all increased to make them a better appealing option.
Fixes
There was a typo on the training HUD for the speed stat showing $10k where it should have been $15k. This now correctly matches up to what it will actually cost you.
I have increased the background sign algorithm that sizes the backdrop based on your studio name length. This was falling a bit small for short names; it should now be a better back drop for any players who use this option.
We have had several translation improvements to multiple languages. These are all still not perfect, if you see any issues with any translations, please report them to me and I will continue to improve these translations as much as I possibly can. I have a community member working on some Portuguese fixes right now, I am hopeful to have those live next week as well as an additional language will be added "Turkish".
The main convention did not allow you to use your in-development games for the main stage. This has now been fixed to allow you to use your in-development game on the main stage. This will grant increased sales for that game based on the quality of its matches and the other 2 games being showcased. This does not add hype, you can still max hype to increase sales, this adds an additional buff to sales figures for the showcased main stage game.
New Additions
Added a select all option to game add-ons for self-published games. This should make turning all options on a little bit quicker.
I have added in the custom console creation cost to the custom console review menu. This should make it easy to see cost vs gross to give a more accurate income return from that generation of your console.
I have added the ability to press the ESC key to close out menus and resume play. This can be used for most menus that are open with the exception of a few menus you cannot close without completing such as the dev stage huds. Other than those few cases this should work to close out any menu or worker menu you are looking at. There are a lot of different edge cases for the menus, but I believe I have this working issue free. If anyone runs into a weird issue trying to close out any menus, please report it to me and I will fix them up.
What is Next
I know I said in the roadmap that around this point I wanted to look into the possibility of a mobile port for the game. However, we have had so many new players with amazing suggestions and never before heard of ideas to improve the game that I want to do a content patch before we look into the possibility of a mobile port. My current plan is to drop a translation patch with fixes and the addition of Turkish by Monday, followed by a content patch that I hope to drop around July 10. This should give me time to work in some of the larger amazing ideas players have suggested for the game. After we get this content patch in, we can then look into the possibility of a mobile port.
GDM Poll
So, now that we are post release. I was wondering if players want me to collect the top 10 scores for each board into a hall of fame and then reset the boards for an additional season. I did this during Early Access every month as we added new features, and I thought it was a lot of fun having fresh boards to conquer. My question to you players is how frequent should we do these resets or should we not reset? Please drop the number of your choice in this thread or on the discord to help me make this decision. Thank you for your continued support and I very much look forward to hearing your feedback.
1. Reset every month
2. Reset every 2 months
3. Reset every 3 months
4. Reset every 4 months
5. Never reset the leader boards