Current State of the game and my thoughts

[Jonas]

Hi mate,

First of all thanks for your feedback, it’s clear that you have put some effort into this. Responding to everything would be a bit too overwhelmingly for me, but I’ll pick out what I consider the most important below.

@Clownsinhollowweird

In its current state, this game is still very much in its infancy - at least, that’s what I’m hoping.

Absolutely! We haven’t even started balancing the game yet, so the game experience will radically change over the summer.

@Clownsinhollowweird

I get that this is a game and that stuff is hard, so I’m not judging that too harshly, but that’s something I think would be nice to add to the world. Traffic right now is actually one of my favorite parts of the game.

Traffic is hard, and incredible expensive. We already sunk in hundreds of hours making it what is it so far. That being said, all the things you want, we want too. We plan to continue improving traffic years after the release.

@Clownsinhollowweird

The one part I dislike and feel is game-breaking for me at least is that Some businesses are always full of cars, which makes it hard when delivering goods or setting up business, and these are low-traffic areas that make no sense.

We already have support for time-based and location-based traffic volumes. We just haven’t had the time to balance it out yet. I hope we get this done by Beta 4.

@Clownsinhollowweird

Seeing them when I buy add space is what I expected, not the reality of it. Very disappointing.

This is actually already the case and your own ad will be part of the billboard cycles around the town. However, we have earlier discussed internally if we should increase the chance of seeing your own ads. +1 vote for that now

@Clownsinhollowweird

This brings me to another game-breaking feature. Advertisements should be limited to the number of billboards in the game.

That’s a good idea! Much more realistic with that being heavily limited. Would be awesome if you submitted that as an individual suggestion for others to vote for.

@Clownsinhollowweird

It would make the player pick and choose which businesses they have to run ads for. I would expect it to be a limited community, and the menus for setting it up says as much. Be fun to find where the ad I bought was located. Another thing you can add is competing businesses can also buy that space and even have bidding wars. But that’s just a thought. to add complexity to the game.

Another good idea! Would be great setting up an individual thread for that too.

@Clownsinhollowweird

There currently are no market shares in this game.

You’re 100% right. Fortunately, it’s coming in Beta 2. You can read more about it here (or join the discussion):

Feedback wanted: Market demand system

Although, the specific system you’re asking might be out of our relatively small indie budget But we do our best.

@Clownsinhollowweird

You can just own the van and it will run exactly the same and cost only 6800 dollars.

You’re right the medium truck is meant just for the warehouses. The regular van allows 2 destinations and the medium truck allows 4. That’s the reason to buy it. We might buff the destinations count later, we’re still collecting feedback.

@Clownsinhollowweird

Now we come to another problem. You never get to see what you’re buying before buying it. When buying a store or warehouse, unless you bought that exact building before and know what you’re getting into

This is changed in Beta 2. We introduce a preview feature and we also add more data to the building presentation like customer capacity and traffic index. We’ll also add more information to the help system. Discussed here: https://community.bigambitionsgame.com/t/building-layouts/990/3

@Clownsinhollowweird

When you look at the map, the sizes of the buildings on the map vary but the stores once you buy them do not reflect this.

We’re still busy creating building layouts. We target 2 additional layouts for every beta. Same goes for beta 2.

@Clownsinhollowweird

This is another mess that should be sorted out. In its current state, you can only buy certain items from imports.

There’s 2 additional harbor importers located in Murray Hill, which will complete the “import catalog”. This last neighborhood is planned for release in Beta 3.

@Clownsinhollowweird

I used google and with seconds I for hot dogs for .56 an ounce. which is way cheaper. But I would not buy them there if I owned one of these businesses. Also, that price is always fixed. It doesn’t go up and down

Beta 2 introduces “Import Price Index” with the new demand system. Prices will vary depending on the current demand for a product. We haven’t yet balanced in-game prices, but it will be very hard to simulate real-life prices as we have much fewer variables affecting revenue in BA.

@Clownsinhollowweird

Staff management is another big issue in the game. When acquiring a company, you do not retain any of the employees from the takeover, which is part of the value of the company.

We’re gonna change that. Completely agree.

Staff management and recruitment are generally implemented with a minimal level of complexity. This is something we expect to improve a lot later on, but for now unplanned.

@Clownsinhollowweird

I wonder if this is to keep the load times down. because they dont know how to fix the lag from that many people

I never heard about this issue before, but I would love to get a copy of your savegame so we can investigate. We’re badass at fixing lag and performance issues.

To sum everything up, I think your “frustration” comes down to our unusual way of developing games. When I developed my first game, Startup Company, I learnt the power of involving the community early on. Constantly listen to feedback as the game evolves, and admit that we can’t plan out a perfect game on paper, develop it and not make mistakes.

Many of the mechanics, like the employee or marketing systems are left relatively simple, in order to leave space in our budgets and schedules to actually react to player feedback. It’s not part of a bigger “game plan”.

I should also point out that even though we hope to release the game by August, we’re having no plans on ending development. As a studio, we have no “next game” in our pipeline. Our hope and dream is to continue developing the world of Big Ambitions for the next decade.

Thanks again for all your feedback and thanks for playing so far. Almost everything you mention is somewhat already on our radar, which makes me confident that we’re on the right track (which is nice!).