Devlog #4: Qualifications Overhaul, Reviews Rework, Personality Rework

Hello, pledgers and pawnbrokers! How are your relics? Are your shelves stuffed? We hope they are!

We have good news, and we don't want to waste your time. I'll cut it short!

Where were we?

First of all, we apologize for the delay in publishing a devlog. We were so obsessed with making big changes in the game and hoped for the best, to present an update soon enough to keep you satisfied. But that took longer than we expected. But today I'll be showcasing you what this wait is all about.

Qualifications Overhaul

Qualifications are now "Store Management". It's the place where you can upgrade and advance your store 360 °. It features a tree-based advancement. Some are grants; some are new mechanics; some unlock new item types and allow you to expand your store. They still may require some prerequisites or objectives to be completed.

Now they may provide some bonuses on application, clearly explained in the description. We are currently trying to improve this page's UX and add some QoL improvements. Enjoy the sneak peek for now!

Review Rework

Many valuable players have complained about reviews so far. We are carefully reading and threading the feedback. Normally, this update's scope was limited to Qualifications, but we decided to take this further after seeing so many valid complaints.

Previously, reviews were rated on a 5-star scale. And they were taking many things into consideration without giving proper feedback (other than the review texts in FourSquirrels or NextPad's home screen). A 3-star review was neither good nor bad, but it can be given by customers after a successful deal, which was raising eyebrows. We heard you, totally.

With the upcoming update, reviews will be binary. A customer will either give you a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. These are much more contrasted and easier to understand. And we will provide clear feedback to you when you receive a negative or positive review, if it's tied to an instant action like rejecting a customer or accepting a deal. Of course, there are other scenarios like a pledger coming back for the item and the store being closed - and those are the things we are working on as you are reading this devlog.

These are the actions/situations that might result in a review:

Again, you will see the consequences of the bold written actions with proper feedback.

Personality Rework

To tie both the review algorithm and negotiations more closely together and make them more engaging and strategic, we started reworking the personality traits.

Previously, each trait was independent; nothing was categorized or structured in a sense. We noticed it was creating some conflicts. We split traits into 4 categories.

Moods

Mood can and will change for each customer as they enter your store. It will affect their browsing, queueing, negotiating, and reviewing actions. Each mood will yield different results in interactions such as rejection, direct acceptance, lowballing, etc. Moods will respond with a positive, negative, or no review based on a table.

Devon is currently Restless.

And Mikaila feels Distracted.

The way we display the moods will look like this. We are confident that the mood visuals will provide sufficient and effective feedback.

Disposition

These traits will define customers' financial dispositions. Are they old money, subsisting or tight-pocketed? Each customer will certainly have one disposition trait.

Negotiation

These traits will actively change how a customer negotiates, gut buyers, undervaluers, poker faces, and everything related to negotiation goes there. The customer might only have one.

Item Affinity

These will be abundant. Nearly every type and definition will have separate affinity traits. For example:

• Comic book nerd

• Boxed DVD collector

• Sports memorabilia enthusiast

These will change how customers act with respect to a specific type of item. A customer might have one or two.

Epilogue

The above things were the main concerns. We also tried to fix some design problems with customer spawn rates. Other minor bugs along with some major ones. We are trying to tackle each and every issue one by one. It took longer than we expected. We are sorry for this.

We promised you 50 items each week on March 16. It's been about 15 weeks, and we've only been able to fulfill about 100 items. It's not enough to make it up, but I can say we are going to add at least 100 items to the game with this update.

We are working really hard to make Pawnbroker Simulator better, as we dreamed of it in the first place. We thank you for your patience and for sticking with us for the time being.