There is a lot of new content and other changes to cover in this update, so let us start with a TL;DR: Beta 7 introduces the concept of friends and rivals among your reporter staff, along with a number of new in-game events, both repeatable events, and 2 new 5-event storylines.
It is strongly recommended that you start a new game, if your save is from before Beta 6.1. Rather than simply deleting older games, load it one last time and "finish" by retiring (from the Office Management screen). Doing so will calculate a final score and save it to your high score list.
Friend and Rivals
Returning to the friends and rivals concept, here is how it works. If two of your reporters share interest in the same topic and aren't political opposites (as in, one is Very Liberal and the other is Very Conservative), they might become friends. On the other hand, if they share an interest but ARE political opposites, they may become rivals. In theory, other events might cause relationships to form, but this is the standard way.
Once two reporters have established a relationship, their respective front pages and raises given, will affect their counterpart. In the case of a friend, there is happiness to gain. In the case of a rival, the opposite is the case. But if you end up firing one of these bonded reporters, a friend will surely suffer while the rival will feel relieved.
Word count counts
Besides the ongoing effects mentioned above, friends/rivals may also be affected by specific events, and they may trigger events of their own. Friends will sometimes do stuff together after work, whereas rivals might get into loud arguments at the office. With all of this, there are several new quotes for your reporters to say, as they are affected by these relationships.
Credibility Events
There are other new events in Beta 7, tied to specific stories that affect the credibility of your newspaper. These stories are already marked with a green or red flag in the game, and affect your reputation depending on the stories you publish. What is new is, that is any specific story has a very high influence may trigger new in-game events, depending on which way your credibility went.
In terms of game balance, you may now see a warning icon appear on screen if you exceed your maximum wordcount before going to the editor's desk. What happens if the articles are too long, is that they are edited down to fit before printing. This kind of editing can sometimes upset the writers who put all that effort into writing them in the first place. The more you go over the maximum allowed, the unhappier your reporters will be. A little bit over might be fine, but do try to watch out for the warning.
Awards
Award winning became slightly easier in Beta 7. Previously, every themed issue would add 0.1% chance that your next themed issue would trigger an Award. Now, the chance of winning the award is increased by up to 1% per themed issue. The exact percentage is based on the score of the issue itself. These awards are independent from Theme of the Month.
Storylines
There are also two new storylines to trigger! One involves espionage and may trigger after you research "International Affairs". The other might trigger if you publish an Economy-themed newspaper issue after having researched "Intranet". Each day you meet the criteria, the chance of triggering the storylines increase. A bug was fixed in this update, that would reset ALL your storylines any time another was added to the game. That has been fixed with this update.
There is even more in this update, like a digital pet you can put on your Editor's Desk! Check the full list of additions, changes and fixes below.
All changes in Beta 7
- Added: A digital pet toy, as a decorative Editor's Desk item
- Added: New 5-event storyline that may trigger if you publish an Economy-themed issue after researching Intranet
- Added: New 5-event storyline that may trigger after you finish the "International Affairs" upgrade
- Added: If two reporters have similar interests and political opinions, they may become friends
- Added: If two reporters have similar interests but opposite political opinions, they may become rivals
- Added: Several new reporter quotes, for getting the top spot on the front page, and making and interacting with friends and rivals
- Added: Friends gain happiness when their friends get a front page, or a raise.
- Added: Friends lose happiness if their friend leaves the newspaper.
- Added: Rivals lose happiness if their rival gets a raise or lands a front page.
- Added: Rivals gain happiness if their rival leaves the newspaper.
- Added: When reporters are either Friends or Rivals, occasional events will trigger that involve the two of them
- Added: When a surging topic matches a reporter's interest, they may gain a small happiness boost and 1 of 4 new quotes
- Added: If any story in your newspaper has a high effect on your credibility score, it may trigger an event. The result will be positive or negative, depending on how credibility was affected.
- Added: A warning icon (w. tool tip) now appears if your word count is over your maximum
- Added: Help-button in the sidebar, on the map screen (shortcut: F1)
- Balance: Slightly increased the happiness penalty for going over your maximum word count
- Balance: Reduced max opinion impact on celebrities when they're featured, from 25% to 12%
- Balance: Increased cumulative chance of winning an award for publishing themed issues from 0.1%/issue to a max bonus of 1%/issue chance, depending on the score of the themed issue.
- Balance: Events that trigger additional Angry Letters, add more letters on average (but retains same max. per event)
- Balance: Landing a front page has a wider range of possible happiness rewards
- Balance: Some events can now result in additional subscribers canceling their subscriptions.
- Balance: It now gets harder and harder to trigger the "Owner is Happy" event (Angry Letter forgiveness)
- Changed: Rewritten contextual help (F1) on the map to contain more information
- Changed: Contextual help windows (F1) can now be closed using Enter
- Changed: The summary on the Office screen now shows how many subscribers are needed to advance in the game
- Changed: Tweaked and added a few reporter quotes, to make them less ambiguous
- Changed: Reduced happiness penalty for disinterest-stories
- Fixed: Crash if a reporter quit while working on a story
- Fixed: Game might hang if a reporter got a new personality trait
- Fixed: Newspaper summaries sometimes saved with incorrect top story title
- Fixed: If the help prompt was open on the Office screen, you could skip a full game day by simply hitting Enter
- Fixed: Story surges not triggering from the "Influencing the People" event
- Fixed: Issue determining whether an issue is Themed when stories have been replaced
- Fixed: Morale Event button would sometimes appear, even though the event was still on cooldown
- Fixed: Text not rendering correctly in the help-pop up (F1 shortcut) while on the map
- Fixed: The Theme-indicator on the map would reset if you removed an unrelated story from a reporter
- Fixed: Upgrades unlocked in the previous game would be available if starting a new game immediately on Game Over
- Fixed: Bug that would mark ALL your reporters as out for the day (AFK), if any one of them was out
- Fixed: Sometimes, reporters would start asking for raises right after their first front page
- Fixed: Event trigger bug that would ignore associated reporter IDs in non-priority events
- Fixed: Various typos in event texts