In short;
Phase 1 = feature blitz
phase 2 = ???
phase 3 = profit
That was just a joke reference to south park, if you don't get it, please ignore :)
In reality phase 1 was indeed the feature blitz where we added more and more game features each month resetting the ladder each new month as we broke saves. During phase 2 we will be running 1 long ladder season to crown the Early Access champions for both seeds. During phase 2 we are switching focus to expanding existing systems, polishing and adding missing visuals, and this is also when we will begin to prepare the game for localization. Updates moving forward will not break saves, however if any issues arise that need addressed, we will do what we have to. I believe the game is ready for this next phase and no such issues will come up, but nothing is a guarantee in game dev.
For a more detailed explanation of what phase 2 means please refer to the "Road Map 2.0" post in the steam forums found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1478350/discussions/0/3194737632272518614/
With that out of the way let's get into the patch notes for December's update. If you would prefer a short bullet list of changes, please refer to the GDM discord found here: https://discord.gg/WfbXE4cDVA
Balance Changes
There have been several minor tweaks to the games balance across many aspects and for each difficulty setting. I believe the game is in a great place balance wise atm, but this is something we will be monitoring very closely during phase 2's longer ladder. If you want to help, just play the game and generate me more data. Also, please feel free to share any feedback around your play through and the difficulty you used.
Changed Milestone Multipliers Based On Difficulty
The initial difficulty sliders all affected the difficulty % in the same way. Some of these settings have way less impact on your game than others, and now that is present in the added difficulty %. Based on my own play data as well as several players I have set each individual slider to affect difficulty based on how much of an affect that setting has on your progression. This may need additional tweaks in the future, but it at least now rewards players for playing with certain very difficult settings.
Difficulty Info Popup
You can now click the info icon beside each difficulty slider when setting up your new game. Each slider now has a clear description of what those settings will affect. This should clear up some confusion around some of the shortened difficulty slider titles.
Difficulty Review
You can now access the difficulty HUD when in game to review settings. You cannot change settings mid play as they would break the ladder, but you can bring up the menu to check your settings as well as the new info pop for clarity on any aspects. This menu can be found in the options menu in game.
Trend Tracker
I have added a new trend tracking system in game, it can be found in the studio options HUD and then Trend Tracker. Now you can pay money to see a current trend for a topic or genre. The system will remember the last 10 trends that have been checked as well as the dates they were checked on. The cost is based on the current office you are in to ensure the system is usable at any stage of the game for players. Because of the cost and the fact, it is only the trend at the time you check I feel it does not replace "Trend Visualizer" as a valid manager perk choice. However, it does provide players without that perk a way to check trends to try and land a huge sale. This system combined with mails you receive about trends starting and over saturating should give you the ability to hit great trending game launches.
Paragon Issues
Several fixes have been implemented to the paragon system. I have to give a huge shout out to 1 of the game's best player Dycart Gaming on this one, as he found some huge issues this month with that system. With his feedback, and my own play testing I think all the major paragon issues have been addressed, and more importantly all the exploits that were possible have been fixed. Everything should now be resetting smoothly, but please if anyone goes deep and makes use of the paragon system. If you see any issues, please report them and I will fix them immediately. I am hopeful that all exploits have been found and the system is good to go for the longer ladder season.
Digital Store Sales Events
Digital store sales events have been changed from a slider for discount % and a run sale button, to a 2 button 10% and 30% discount sale. It has also been moved above the listed game sales on the financial page. This makes it much quicker and easier to use, and offers a nice QOL improvement for digital store events. 10% discount will reduce sales by 10% and remove 1 age from every game on that platform. 30% will reduce game revenue by 30% but remove 2 age from each game on the platform. These are now an easier option to use when you are creating new games, but want to keep games alive on the store, or whatever way you wish to use your 2 annual events.
Handful of QOL
There was a bunch of additional quality of life improvements made to many systems. They are all pretty minor and just improve the general experience, you can just experience these for yourself. They include things like reversing the order of mails to put newest at the top, and other small tweaks and improvements to the overall experience based on feedback.
AAA Award Fixed
There was a issue around the late game awards when you own all the subsidiary AI companies. Every game you released was automatically the worst and best game of the year due to no AI existing to compete with you. I have added a special case to the system that generates statistical "AI" games to compare your games against based on award difficulty settings if you own all the AI companies. It kind of fakes its way through it and uses companies contributed by players in the large games section as your opponents.
Extended Paragon
The paragon system has been expanded to add new options. Now with varying amounts of cost you can unlock sequels, remakes, DLC, and ports for each game size. You can also add 10% to the base stats of all workers per point. This will apply to your current manager, and will change the stats of applicants that show up in office 2 and beyond. You are meant to spend paragon points on the start of a new game, but if for some reason you have made it to office 2 and hired additional workers before spending your paragon points, it will also take them into account and improve their stats by xx% of their base rolls.
Added a Crypto Market
This is the largest addition in the 6.1 update and I am very happy with its initial implementation. I am of course open to any and all feedback players have with this system and will improve it as needed.
The market can be found from the financials > Banking menu, and this can only be accessed from year 2 and beyond. The reason for this is to allow your specific and dynamic market to have had some data generated for you to view and fill the charts.
Markets update every week in game and are dynamically generated on each new game. They are also regenerated on any use of paragon like all other dynamic game systems.
On creation each company is given a max value it can reach between 25k - 1mil. Then from this max value a minimum value for that company is determined to be randomized between 5-25% of that max value. Then an initial value is selected somewhere between these min and max values, this gives us our starting point for each coin.
Each week that passes there is a .1% chance a coin can CRASH causing it to be untradable for 2-6 weeks and will return to a random value between its original min - max when the market recovers. This is a small chance, but if you have stock in a market that crashes it could be a good or bad thing when the market recovers. During the crash period you cannot buy or sell this coin. However, any coins you own are held until the market recovers.
Provided a market is not crashed and there is no current trending direction for the coin then there is a 50% chance that coin's value will go up or down. Once a coin has been set to go up or down it will adjust its value based on a random % between 1-15. The following week after a coin has been changed there is a 20% chance of changing the direction and an 80% chance of continuing to go up or down as it previously did for another random %. Each week 20% more is added Ie 40% change / 60% change until it either changes direction or reaches 5 weeks trending in 1 direction. At which point the coin will re-roll for a chance to go up or down. This can have very varied results where some coins can keep switching between up and down and others can keep going up or down and everything in between.
From the financial page of each coin, you can see the previous 12 weeks of trading values. You can also see the min and max the coin has ever traded for, helping you decide if it's a good time to buy in or not. Keep in mind this is the recorded min and max not the actual min and max it is possible a coin could keep going down beyond your listed min until the actual min value has been reached.
Overall, this system is very dynamic and can make big swings up and down with its markets. It is completely optional, but it could indeed be the best source of gains (not from games) if you make the right investments. I have tried to provide enough tools and data for players to make good decisions, but it is still a gamble and I look forward to hearing about your wins and losses with the system as we move forward. I know from my own testing I had a blast and made a killing and lost a fortune already.
I don't intend to add any milestones associated with this market to keep it completely optional, but I think it adds a nice bit of spice to the game and gives you something fun you can do with extra cash while making games. It is just one more thing to add to the game in an interesting way, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.
Conclusion And What's Next
As previously stated this marks the end of phase 1 and you can of course read more about that on the forum or talk to me about it in discord directly. This is a huge milestone for the game, and I am really proud of the current logic / depth in the game as well as the many systems in play. If we can bring the rest of the game up to that standard, I think we can really make an impact on the game dev simulation genre.
From this point forward updates will not be as stringent as previously with an update at the start of each month, they will roll out as aspects are completed. This could be any time from 1 - 4 weeks for an update, it all depends on the current work being done. These updates will not break your game save though and you can continue to play with changes just happening around you in each office and area of the game.
The first planned update will be very underwhelming for most players but is a necessity for the game. I will be going over the games code removing any redundancy and optimizing math, as well as pushing a few functions from blueprints to c++. All these will add up to a better optimized game, which if you have a good PC, you may not even feel. However, for average and lower end PCs this will have a big impact. Plus, the game running better is just good for everyone. Following this process, I will be beginning to gather all the games language together to seek out translations to begin the process of localizing the game for other languages. This will be a slow and painful process, but very worth it in the end to bring the game to other players. I will be announcing on here as well as in discord when I am ready to seek translation in hopes of making use of some of the amazing people who have already reached out to me with offers of help. More to come on this in the coming weeks when the language is gathered and neatly organized and ready to be given out.
Thank you so much for your support. This is a big day for GDM, but there is still a lot of hard work ahead and I am so thankful to have players along for the ride.
Changed files in this update