That's great to hear! Yeah, it might be something like that, I think you're right. As I remember it, it seemed to me that having stalls, or basically anything a customer uses, also gets added into the park value. I believe your park value also goes down with the more red-lettered warnings you get (like your part is too dirty, or too much vandalism, etc...) which might entail, reversely, that the cleaner your park, the faster you repair rides, the less vandalism, etc...., in your park the higher the rating, and thus the more people will be willing to pay. I've always wondered it receiving awards increased your park value. I don't think it ever did, but that would be something cool to add into the game so that a "reward" is actually that, it isn't just some meaningless trophy you automatically win at the end of the year or something.
I've always found the park entree fee-style of play to be more fun and realistic (at least for large parks). Unfortunately, it's somewhat unbalanced, if not broken, for mid-late-game play. I've talked about it before, but it wasn't received very well by some in the community (perhaps that was my fault for coming off as harsh). You don't have to read the giant post, but if you're interested I'll post it here anyway and I'd like to hear what you think. Anyway, thanks again man!
-----------------------------------------------------
When you get to the late game where you have a park that covers up to half (or even all) of the entire largest custom map, you hit that 200 max staff mark REALLY easy - like really really easy. I have spent hours and hours testing this. In my large parks I've had my staff spaced out as much as I could possibly could and had them on their max patrols. That is, if I had them patrol larger areas than they were patrolling, you would have started to see vandalizing, rides being broken for too long, and litter covering the streets. In addition, I have zero entertainers because they just aren't as important even though it would have been nice to have them. I even just completely took out benches, lamps and trash cans in some areas so as not to need security guards in certain areas so that I could have more handymen and mechanics. Trust me, I'VE TRIED EVERYTHING. I can send screen shots too if you need the proof.
The main problem was always the cost of staff. With a maximum of 200 staff (all of which you need on a big park, and even more so! In fact, large parks need a minimum of 300-400+ staff to keep it running optimally. The only way you could do it on the vanilla RCT2 is to have the "fast staff" cheat that allows you to cover 2x-3x as much ground allowing you so spread your staff out more and cover more area) at an average of $65+ per staff, that's $13,000! There's no way you can make that money up at tiny park entrance fee of 100-200 - it's not going to happen. Especially when you reached the sprite limit - meaning you need to have one guest leave before anther one could come in. This decreases your park entrance fee amounts. It's poorly balanced. My largest park has a park entrance fee of $650 and a park value of $1,330,000.00. As such, guests pay the price of $650 and I'm barely breaking even. At $200 per entrance fee you would REGULARLY need 70+ guests to enter your park EVERY MONTH JUST TO BREAK EVEN. Which means you're not even making a profit to continue to build. And I don't know about you, but I don't think I've ever had even one month, even with advertisements, where 50 people entered my park in one month. Average seems to be about 20-30, and once you hit the sprite limit, average is about 10-15. Which means at $650, at most, you make less than $10,000 a month; $3000 less to break even. Sure, you can include $3,000 in food and merchandise, but subtract $1,200+ for restocking and that puts you at $11,800. Now subtract $2,500 for ride operating costs and your at $9,300. Congratulations, you just lost $3,700 that month. The financial aspect of this game is broken and these are necessary changes in order to fix it. And yes, these are all real numbers. I can provide screen shots for proof.
The fact is, the game gets to a point where it's broken because you can only raise the entry price so high (thus need to use cheats to raise it), the guests only carry so much money (thus need to use cheats to make them carry more), and you are limited in staff (thus have to use cheats to make fast staff). Combine this with the fact that you are limited in sprites and so when you reach max sprites you have guests coming into your park far lower rate. The problem compounds even more when you reach max attractions as there are higher operating costs. I hope to be able to build more than 255 max attractions in open RCT2. But that means you need more mechanics which are the most expensive staff members, and you'll have higher operating costs. There are many facets to this.
My biggest hope for this game is being able to raise the sprite level. When you make large parks like me, 8000-8600 (max feasible guests in a park) guests in your park makes the park look almost empty. I always hoped to be able to go up to 20,000-30,000 max guests. But of course this means you need more than 200 staff. But if you have more than 200 staff it's going to charge MUCH MORE. Which means you'll need much more than a 200 limit. You'll need at least a $1,000 limit, and better to have $1,200-$1,500 to play it safe.
At least three reasonable solutions:
1) Inflate the value of the currency (in this case the dollar) to match current economic standards. What does a coffee cost in RCT2? $1.50? A burger is $2.75? Who in the world pays that much for food these days lol. Even McDonalds isn't that cheap. And at a theme park? Psh... you're likely to pay $15+ for a burger and drink. Change the game so that guests are willing to pay at least $8 for a burger and anything less than that would be too cheap. You could quadruple your merchandise sales which would make up the difference.
2) Decrease the cost of hiring staff or make their wages bi-monthly. I don't particularly like this option much, but it is there.
3) It's possible, although I'm not sure how likely, that simply increasing the sprites, and therefore guests, in your park will make up the difference in itself. That is, if at $750,000 park rating I was at 10k guests, that increased revenue from concessions might make up the difference. For example, if you're at a park value of $1,330,000.00 and can only have 8,600 guests in your park, that's only 8,600 guests buying food and drinks. But when the new save format comes and the game limits are eliminated, you might have 20,000 guests in your park buying food and drinks. That's a lot more revenue! But I'm not sure it's possible to know with any certainty that this solution, by itself, will work.
.jpg.947e5014f79627a9bd4b0e100cead061.jpg)
.thumb.jpg.13fd1194299fc9813290ac61a1bb233f.jpg)
Yeah I checked it out, that's nice information. Are you sure there aren't more factors than that though? Like like a trash, vandalism, or broken down rides, guests not dying, etc.... Also, I see you haven't actually added a recommended price entry fee, just the check box for one, is that right? Because when I check the box nothing happens, just an option to click why and check out some of the factors that go into price entry fee.
