Store Decay and Business Risk

Feature Suggestions New Feature Ideas
1

My son (who is also addicted to this game) and I were lamenting how we rarely visit our oldest stores and have no real reason to revisit them once they are set up and running successfully. In the real world stores and businesses often do refresh/renovation/redecorations to revitalize the store and keep patrons coming back. Fixtures (like tables and chairs) get old and broken, carpet gets worn out, paint ages and bleaches out: everything just starts to look old and tired.

Maybe you could introduce a decay feature based on the time of a store’s existence (say 4-5 years). Once that time was hit for any given location, you would get some kind of notice that business is declining in that location due to old age and it’s time for a re-do. The player would need to take action to keep the business afloat by filling a meter, basically. To do so, they would need to utilize a combination of replacing fixtures, changing up the floor plan, and redecorating. Once they’d made enough changes to fill the meter, business would return to normal. Neglecting to change things up would see business decline to near zero as customers would gravitate towards the newer, shinier businesses in the neighborhood offering the same products.

This would give players reason to revisit their old properties and give them more things to do in the late game, as well as being a better reflection of the realities of owning and operating successful businesses.

I understand some players would be resistant to this as they’d spent a lot of time perfecting the decor the first time around. Perhaps giving an option to “Refresh” rather than redecorate. Refresh would come at a higher cost, but would basically be ‘pay this amount to keep things the same’ which would functionally mean repaint, replace worn out furniture and fixtures, and keep the same floor plan but without actually changing anything looks-wise. I definitely have a couple of my businesses where I’d likely choose the ‘Refresh’ option, but I’d welcome the kick in the butt to get into the others and mix up the decor.

2 Likes
2

Hello you wonderfull people :wink:

First of all - I really like the idea behind this game. I think this game hase a huge potential!
Also i am aware that the game is still in developement and everything is suspect to change.

Second - I’ve read a lot of suggestions so far. Some of them had the same idea as my suggestion but with different approaches.

I’ve played now for some hours and after some time it feels like there is nothing really challenging. You have your constant income and there is no way to mess things up.

So here is my suggestion:
As in the real world, there should be some risks when running a business.

  • Your business/warehouse could get robbed (already on the roadmap if i remember correctly)
  • There could allways be a fire/water damage to your shops/warehouses
  • Furniture or workstations could break and you would need to repair/replace them
  • Angry customers could vandalize your shops
  • Other negative events - feel free to comment on this topic

You could also add a way to reduce the damage to your wallet by adding insurance which you would pay on a (maybe) weekly bases. The insurance would not (!) cover the full 100% of damage.

Also there could be a risk that employees just quit their jobs (because they found a better paying emploer?). After, lets say, 3 days the would then leave your company.
To prevent things like this you could be able to pay your employees a bonus or give them some reasons to stay at your company. Maybe you could use them company cars or other things? Feel free to comment your suggestions as well!

Either way, what i want to say is: As far as I know, this game want to be a simulation (on steroids), so why not consider real world risks of running a busioness :slight_smile:

I know that all these things could be a whole patch in its own and i want to remind you that this topic is just for inspiration. (But it would be cool to have some mor challanges. Sleeping for a whole week and buying a supercar is not the gameplay i want)

Best regards

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