It's too much to give it a title

Feature Suggestions
1

(Forgive me If i broke some thread rules, i highlighed the suggestion stuff, donno if it’s allowed to give some explanation/feedback before)

Hello everyone.
Before I start I want to apologize for my English in advance, I have never studied this language, and learn some by playing MMO with english community.

Secondly, I want to appreciate the devs, it’s really nice product with a lot of potential if you’ll keep your ‘ambitions’. And I actually never help any game with suggestion or smth (it will be my first experience), but this thing got me, I found it by steam recommendation a day before and played 38hrs already (i didn’t sleep).
My review will be based with full understanding that this is early access and I am not mad at all . It will be hard for me to structure the points (I will try it, but I already feel that some of them will be out of their headline, forgive me), I will try to discribe the problems that I faced from the start to the point where I am currently.
Anyway, let’s move on.

A) Employees

  1. Hiring process is awkward, I do not see any reason to hire a person that has some ‘needs’ if I can just scroll a bit and find the person that ready to work 7/7 without any needs, especially, that the cost to get 10 rivals within 1 day is just 5000$ (it’s nothing after some hrs of gameplay), plus I can spam it for several companies, as result I will get 40 rivals in 1 day. At this point, this game-mechanic that you spend time on just doesn’t make sense unfortunately.
  • the only solution that I see is to make ‘needs’ for every employee, yes, it will be harder to schedule them around, but I don’t think that every person is ready to work 7/7 in real life.
  • we need an option to select which needs/demands of employee you are looking for
  1. HRs - the actual reason we need them currently is just quality improvements and urgent replacements. First of all, I was happy to find them because I tired to calculate the schedule and always gave up (wanted to start making money and do some testings with the business) finally autofill button becomes available, but I found out that this is not the place where they can ‘shine’, the schedule that they’re making is just bad, some open hours were just empty. As result, I spend around 50 mins with an ideal scheme of schedule.

  • it’s up to you to consider it as a problem or not, but it feels that Employee manager is exactly the person that you can rely on in terms of management and he cannot even make a right schedule. Maybe it was empty because my assigned workers has some needs and so on, but I think in that case they need to message me about the problem, that we’re missing workers or we need different ones, something like that.

  • besides of Employee Manager I’d be glad to have ‘Business manager’ (as a spot in the shop with his own office) which can be assigned to the specific company. He needs to manage schedule and provide an info of workers that he needs to fulfill the schedule that I set up. And some statistic (it will be a different headline ‘CRM’) of the exact company would not be shown correctly/fully without him, or without you at his place

B) IRS & Rent

  • I am pretty sure that Taxes & Rent is insanely low (1k$ per day in VIP quarter, when i am generating much more), I don’t need to think how to optimize my budged, I am literally spending money as much as I want. Taxes must be different for every type and size of the company and have different types of taxation (sorry, I am not familiar with some kind of terms in english), like Salaries funds and so on. I am not asking to make it exactly as in real life, but something more complex for sure. Currently I am making 350k$ per day (21mil of pure income per 60) and they just asking 150k per 60 days (less than 1%), I hope i’d live in this Country.

C) Business types

  1. Unforunately, i will not be able to provide a lot of feedback, but I found something weird.
    I tried to run Fast-food like 4-5 times (first one was at the start when the mission pops up) every of them was unsucessfull (sold every of them at the end) even when I was prepared for it. Absolutely unprofitable, a lot of pain in the ***, all the products is worthless, generating no money, I need an insane amount of employees, import a lot of differents goods (which takes a lot of space in the warehouse). Every time my first Gift shop with 1 cash register was making much more money than every fast food I made.
    I end up with Jewelry. No pain, just 2 types of goods. Insane money (first one in the poor quarter gives me ~26-32k$, second one in the rich quarter gives me ~240-260k$). Feels unbalanced vs Fast food.
  • Maybe I am still bad, or it’s balance problems.

  1. Definitely want to be able to run Furtinure store and something more in the future (but it’s not urgent at all, until the actually important stuff is implemented)

  2. Chosen business type should not allow me to sell any other products outside the ones that includes in it. Why Am I able to sell Clothes in the Jewelry or cigars (at some point it make sense, yes , but I think I need an additional sertificate or smth and it will bring me different taxes for this store). This system must have some exceptions, like sell soda in the Gift shop is totally understandable. But my gift shop also sells flowers.
    (we will touch this topic soon in the different headline under the different edge)

  3. Amount of business of the same type in the quarter (or some N amount of distance from my shop) should affect my traffic and their traffic, and it must be shown in statistic. With that I need to consider to buy organization of my opponent (and of course demolish his business after :slight_smile: ).

  • currently, amount of people is based on basically ‘marketing’ which is definitely sad (and overall satisfaction, yes, but we’ll talk about it later as well)
  1. There’s currently no way to see the stats of the opponent’s business, it would be nice to hire someone (pretty expensive person) to get an inside information of selected place.

Intermission: I saw some comments here about ‘add guns, crime, playing chess in the park’ - I want to cry actually when I see this. At the end of development this game can become a good teaching experience how the business work overall, how to operate it, make decisions, analyse important things and how to solve business problems. This is not GTA (just wait a couple of years).

D) Character

  1. Very bad topic. Happiness system is very bad. When we’re running business usually there’s no time to chill (especially at the start), why my guy always wants to walk. Why visiting a restaurant doesn’t considering as ‘relaxation’. Empire is growing, he has to be happy, buy he’s always sad. I am more happier as a player to see the results, than the guy who literally owns all of it.
    I am coming to the shop to see how all works & get some review about the prices or interior - he’s unhappy. I am working in my own shop - he’s unhappy. Unhappy every day. I agree that everyone needs some sort of relaxation, but not every day for sure. From my perspective, his not a businessman, he became a streamer in my world. Playing video games constantly.
  • sorry that this is not a suggestion, looks more like a complain, just consider to increase the points of which character gets happy. Visiting, shopping, some positive routine.
  1. Energy and Food is fine in terms how they go down, but the system itself needs an improvement. Currently, I am just always holding a bag of x10 fresh food in my car and eating them from time to time. There’s no satisfaction in it, just an extra step within the day, in the SIMS for example, if your character gets hungry, you’re actually feeding him and you feel it. Here - is just 2 buttons.

E) CRM (very important topic, since the game is actually running around it)

  1. There’s already filters in the ‘employee’ section, but it’s okay while you have 5-10 people. When it comes down to much more, I’m spending too much time to find someone, especially if I need to jump from window to window.
  • Employees window really needs to be more complex asap:
    SearchBar - not just a simple one, but the one that will delete everyone that doesn’t fit for searching. It can search for 'Name / age / hourly wage / task / Primary skill / Current business / Hours per week / Satisfaction / Uniform / Full or part time / Demands
    Custom Filter - to choose a group of employees that fit for my current need.
    Imgur: The magic of the Internet

  1. Currently I am using uniform to understand which HR owns which employees:
    Imgur: The magic of the Internet - With that I know, that Olivia works with the Checkout stuff. It must be a different section, with the similar functionality as uniform window specifically for HRs.
    Also, every my HR owns another HR to rise their quality, which is kinda weird to think of, since all of them in the same position, they literally have to rewiew others HRs work besides their work. There must be a person who works on their quality - Headmaster of the assigned office and he’ll automatically improve his office employees with the less time that would HR do and no reason to assign someone manually (as we do for HRs)

  2. Currently, there’s no way for me to understand how much of which product people are buying daily, and this is very important statistic. Yes, we can see 7 days stats, but it’s not enough, for the actual view it must be a Daily sales / weekly sales / Monthly sales. I am literally drawing it on the paper to сompare and calculate montly sales, but I cannot do it for daily basis. It’s very important when we’re trying to setup warehouse supply or notice a demand drop. Meanwhile, Ecomony tab can provide daily sums, which is useful, but not really, especially when I am not worried about the expenses unfortunately (sad part). And yes, I’d like to see assigned business manager to see that statistic.

  3. Shop stock statistic must be separated for 3 parts:

  • summary stock (of both below)
  • unsold products that are in the points of sale
  • stock balances in storage (of specific shop)

F) Marketing / Phone / Brand
First of all, I want to tell how insanely good billboards looks like, it’s just so satisfying to see your logo on it. Also thank you for the opportunity to add your own logos, it’s super-cool. I was able to open my own SWAROVSKI store. imgur/a/7qt2NC0 (cannot post full link, find it manually)

  1. Besides adding just logo icon, it would be great to have an ability to upload a full icon that I drawn or got. Because currently it does re-size of the logo and putting the name under by default. I just want to draw everything by myself and upload it as end picture, just tell us what resolution the logo must be.

  2. Same addition with business TV (don’t know how it calls, sorry / vertical ones). Would be great to upload the GIF-file and it would play it in the selected place.

  3. Marketing is another sad point, basically a couple of phone calls. Marketing Campaign should be less relevant within the time, have a statistic and we need to find new ways to find new trend, something like that, but It’s too complicated. The easiest way I guess is at least having an opportunity to buy more time on billboards to make less shows for our opponents, or AI auctions between the competitors for the time on billboards.
    Billboards itself must have a statistic depends on the place where they are placed, how much people daily looking at it, what traffic goes throught and so on. And that will trigger the marketing success for the chosen company.

  4. Phone calls sometimes triggering me, because while I am trying to analize the stuff around my business, I always missing working hours of the place that i want to call.

  • Phone should be closer to GTA’s. Companies must have their own website (it’s actually a different good idea, with that, there’s a reason of in-game programmers companies, which also expands marketing ideas) where you can go any time and make an offline request and they will contact me later by the phone or send the stuff that I orderered outside their working hours.
  1. The biggest problem that I faced that I cannot continue my SWAROVSKI empire. Game just doesn’t allow me. That’s just frustrating. Name is busy - choose another one.
  • Please allow us to expand the brand if it’s more than just a gift shop on the corner.
    Yes, most likely big corporations actually have to be an another separate part of in-game systems, but for the start, just allow us to have duplicate with a hidden number outside of duplicate’s name, like SWAROVSKI [1] - where [1] is only visible for me and for UI indication or simply address of the store.

G) World and people

  1. World feels too empty, where all those people indecated by the traffic of the store. They comes out of nowhere after a while when you’re inside, a lot of people going in - you’re going out, and the street is empty.
    (just remember how much people spawns when you’re going in IKA, and there’s no one on the parking)
    Game is already doesn’t feels too optimized, I understand the decision, but still a thing to consider.
  • in the other hand, car traffic is just insane, it was a lot of situations when I am totally stuck and cannot drive anywhere from my parking, because there’s 100 cars waiting for a miracle.
  1. Stuff appearing out from nowhere as well as self re-stocking shelves.
  • employees should come by the foot to their shift and actually moving the boxes if the shelf needs to be restocked, right now they’re worse than zombies
  1. Cleaning stuff cleaning my place mentally. I hired him and I never seen how does he looks like, he cleaning my place by sitting at home. Clean stuff must be a part of the place that they’re working at

H) Building Statistic / Furniture / Customer satisfaction
Whole system looks a bit weird to me with this 15/30/35/40/75 capacity. Especially when it comes down to 1000 square meters.

  1. The required amount of cash registers for such a big place is only 4.
    And for example of Jewelry I just need 10 shelves with Expensive and Cheap jewelry and we’re running. Just look how empty it is (even that I tried to fill it for my personal satifaction), and how it would be if i’d place the actual required amount for 75.
    (couldn’t post the link because I am a new user)
  • you should reconsider an amount of clients and requirements for the expensive buldings that have a lot of space in it or reduce the coverage of business shelves (depends on business type), 2-3 instead of 15

  1. foot traffic is pretty bad everywhere, I still haven’t found a good place in Midtown that would’ve a good traffic, everything is around 25-44, and those 40 literally in front of the main city park which is definitely weird.
    (or again, maybe i didn’t get the system at all maybe traffic isn’t too important and we just need to fill the bar above to get max result - if that so, would be great to have in-game explanation)

  2. Customers is too AI… Sadly, but true. There’s no personalities in them. All they need is: ‘change the floor, change the wall, give me music, change the price i cannot afford it’

  • customers needs to have more expectations and wishes from the place that they’re going in. And it should depend on the business type
    (you don’t expect suit on the Mc Donalds stuff, but you definitely wants it from the lawyer)

Also, I found out this thing, I guess everyone noticed, that after the shopping, customers goes to the entrance first instead of the cash register. If we’ll open Interior Designer and move cursor to the cash reg, we’ll see the path of the customer** imgur/a/zLlIhel (cannot post full link, find it manually) i wish it would be movable, but sadly not. Maybe it’s a bug.

  1. Lack of the furniture. Especially frustrating when you’re going to IKA, see different colors on some furniture and it’s always the same when you’re unpacking it. But I guess you guys plenty of suggestions about the furnitures and type of it. Anyway, it’s easy to just open SIMS :slight_smile:

This game has too much options to add, development can take forever, do you guys considering a Steam Workshop by any chance? I am not a modder, but I am pretty sure community can do great things.

Pretty tired (didn’t know it will take several hrs tbh), I will edit and add some things from time to time. Thank you if you actually read it :slight_smile:

Again, sorry for the grammar, if you want me to edit this massage because you cannot read it, feel free to contact me

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