Lots of Big Updates!!
First of all - to everyone who has played the game and loved or hated it, I appreciate your time and feedback! I have watched several playthroughs and seen the comments and frustration, so I hope this update solves a lot of these issues for you all!
Tutorial and Popups
To put it generally...level 1 didn't work well. Level 1 is very stripped down to help guide you through it, but failed to guide you through it. For those who made it past the first few levels, they really enjoyed the game and found it quite addictive, but others found the first few levels too confusing and tedious. Especially since the tutorial was delivered through a small, awkward text message!
This all changes now!
Tutorial
The first level is now a simple tutorial. Your "Mom" guides and instructs you to hire your first few Employees and make a few different types of Media, showing you the basics of your economy.
And then you're ready for level 2. No need to grind out a bunch of Media for level 1!
Popups
Beyond the tutorial, there are also Popups that happen the first time a new event happens. This ensures that the player is aware of what is happening and how to deal with it.
These Popups include going into a new room, earning Money for the first time, clicking a new shiny button, etc.
Random:
- Made the Employee alert Popups more visible.
- Added a giant Dollar Sign graphic with the word "Payday" that flashes on Payday as some players would miss that payday had passed.
- Updated the "?" room popups
- Mom Text messages are now just her taunting you for story reasons, and isn't related to the tutorial
- Banker only pops up now if you go fully Bankrupt, and not if you're just negative on Payday.
- If you go negative through a Payday, a red "X" now appears above your Money. If you miss two paydays, a second "X" appears. These both go away as soon as you get above $0.
Individual Department Employees
Another big issues players were having was the lack of visual representation of your entire crew.
As the "Studio Manager", you will always be more focused on the big picture, so the intent is for the Department Heads to do the "micro-managing" of the entire Department. While this is still true, it has become very obvious players strongly dislike each department being merely one desk and a number.
You will now see each Department's individual "bay" of Employees. You can see the individual status of any Employee in the Bay: if they walk-out, get sick, get Poached, etc. Additionally, I have added skill ranking for the Department Employees you hire. At first you hire Interns, but you can use XP to upgrade that and start out hiring better Employees.
Production Department Bays
- Each Department starts with a limited number of Employees that it can hold.
- You can buy larger bays to double the number of Department Employees you can hire.
- You can upgrade it again for another double number of Employees.
- Instead of an overall Employee limit for the Studio, you just have Department limits.
- **IF you load a previous save game file, everything should work, but if a department has more employees than its max Bay size (the second upgrade), then that Department will be reduced to fit the max bay.
Employee Ranking
- After hiring your Department Head, each subsequent Employee has a Skill Ranking.
- They will be hired as Interns and will grow every few weeks from Rank 1 to Rank 5.
- Rank 1 - Intern. 3 Weeks.
- Rank 2 - Novice. 3 Weeks. +10% Speed
- Rank 3 - Competent. 4 Weeks. + 15% Speed
- Rank 4 - Proficient. 5 Weeks + 20% Speed
- Rank 5 - Expert. + 25% Speed.
- Poaching will only happen on Rank 3+
- When you Fire employees, you'll start with the lowest ranked Employee.
- If an Employee is sick now, it will be an individual Employee rather than the entire Department
Department Speed
- In addition to the other factors that impact speed, Each department has its own speed which was previously impacted by department happiness.
- Now that Department speed is also based on the average Rank of the Employees in your Department (see above for those numbers).
- This means if you have several Rank 5 Employees, your average speed will be at 125%. However, if you hire a new Rank 1 Employee, that new Employee will have a normal 100% speed, which will make your Average speed drop down a little.
Extra Credit (Educational Videos) & Seasons
In addition to making individual Media that you sell for instant profit, you have two other options for creating Media.
Extra Credit
Each week you now have the opportunity to create an animated Educational Video about animation for your local community. Depending on your level, you will start making videos for an Art Community, then High School, Community College and finally a Film School.
As a reward, you choose from three options:
- A monetary payout (increases from levels 1-4).
- XP Points to be used for upgrades on the XP Board
- Inventory - The community can also make you some inventory that you can use to build your own Media that you sell each week. (you receive the newest inventory you need for your level)
Seasons of TV
Seasons of TV already existed in the previous update, but have been explained better with the new popups. You can also earn XP with Seasons of TV.
Experience Points (XP) Upgrades
Previously, XP was only used for Corporate Training at Level 5, but now that has been expanded.
- Health Care - Putting points into this will reduce how often your Employees get Sick.
- Loyalty - Putting points into this will reduce how likely it is that your Employees get Poached.
- Hiring Rank - Putting points into this will increase a department's starting Rank
- Coming Soon - A fourth Upgrade will be related to a feature that will be in the next major update (Minigame).
Use XP earned from Season of TV or Extra Credit.
Fixes and Balances
- In Hard Mode, Employees were Walking-Out and getting Poached too easily, so I toned down those numbers a little.
- In Hard Mode, happiness started a little bit too low for new hires, so I balanced that a little.
- Fixed a glitch where the To-Do list would still tell you to hire "1 more" Employee, even after you had hired enough and the checkmark had already appeared.
- Fixed a glitch where if your Season was getting renewed on the same Payday as a Negative Money bank alert, the two messages would overlap. Now you must close the Season renewal notification before you can open the Bank notification
- Replaced Department selection & pop-ups graphics (such as Alerts or Retraining). Previously it showed the Department head's face, but people were having trouble keeping track of all the character, so now you see the department's inventory instead.
- Added the Corporate Inventory Icons to their Department's whiteboard overview, as there was no current clear indication of what inventory those departments made.
- The Fog on "Risky Oops" started too transparent, so it is now more opaque at first.
- Fixed a glitch where Employee of the Month - which shouldn't unlock until Corporate - was defaulting to Writer until Corporate was unlocked. This was causing the Writer to be shielded from certain negative effects.
- Balanced the Producer meeting again so now it's a nice brisk 90 seconds!
- Increased the amount you earn from selling your Soul from $10,000 to $20,000