| Søren (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 06:29 pm 
Hey, everyone. I thought it would be fun to keep a public record of correspondences with W3C where you presented a problem or suggestion that they responded well to - or even asked for clarification and they provided a good, detailed answer.
This is NOT a thread to bash on game decisions or the makers. It is merely a public record of the dialogue between creators and players, and it will hopefully become a reference tool for the direction of the game or issues that are muddy in other documents.
I'll start in with a new post 
Cheers,
Søren |
| Søren (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, November 10, 2010 - 06:31 pm
Me to gamemaster
show details Nov 4 (6 days ago)
Dear Gamemaster,
I want to bring 2 problems to you: The end quality of C3 corps and the excessive difficulty involved in starting a new CEO.
1. C3 corps produce 185Q goods without using quality upgrades or higher Q supplies. I understand this is to protect C3 corps and help make the market stable, but this also hurts players for two reasons:
-First, this gives C3 corps an unfair advantage in volatile markets, as they essentially get free cash from the magical upgrade. This makes it difficult for a player to gain market-share in a certain area by forcing C3 corps out of business and replacing them with his/her own corps. Such competition is important in the real world and should be as well in the game: Players competing with players for economic superiority, not players vs. C3.
-Second, if one wants to buy a C3 corp, one buys a corp with an inflated price but no upgrades. Buying existing corps is supposed to be more profitable than creating new ones, but the lesson is painfully opposite with C3 corps (as I learned in my new CEO). I thought it would be a good way to expand my CEO, but I basically paid 300B for a 100/100 upgrades corp with less starting cash than one I would open myself. I hope the problem with this is apparent, especially since there are significant costs involved in buying player corps, and since some players still view that hostilely.
Perhaps a solution would be to let C3 corps grow like normal corps, buying supplies at 100 but upgrading to 200 - they would still be profitable and stable. Or if C3 corps really do need the subsidy, perhaps make the magic upgrade be for the quality upgrades rather than on the end product (magically upgrade the corps to 200Q, rather than tacking on quality to their finished product). The end result on the market would be more or less the same, it would make it more fair, and it would encourage players to take control of C3 corps.
2. CEOs only start with 500B cash. This is enough to only open a handful of corps and let the CEO sink into debt. It takes time for corps to become profitable, and the longer it takes, the more debt accumulates. The solution - expansion - similarly increases the hole. The quickest way to become profitable is to grow your corps, but there simply isn't enough start-up cash to do so.
If one wanted to run a CEO entirely in the black (never go into debt) the time of waiting between the first startup corps becoming profitable and then GENERATING enough cash to build another corp would be extraordinary. On average, CEO corps make .5-1B profit a month. 10 corps would take around 80 months to fund the building of a new corp. On LU that is almost 2 weeks! Build a new corp only once every two weeks?! That makes for a boring game. Having to constantly bail your CEO out makes for a frustrating game.
The simplest solution would be to increase the starting cash of a CEO. Even doubling the amount to 1T would be infinitely better.
Thanks for your time, and I hope you take these ideas into consideration.
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Gamemaster to me
show details 7:37 AM (1 hour ago)
Hi,
Thanks for the two good suggestions.
The first will be looked into and we will find the easiest way to solve the problem.
Probably lifting the upgrading level of the C3 corporations.
The second is already introduced and a starting CEO is already getting 1T.
The gamemaster |
