Feedback - two major issues with the economy in the game

[Nextej]

Currently the economy has two major issues, price inbalance between common items (food, drinks, medicine, services) and renovations, and the amounts of money player can accumulate and spend.

The amount of money player needs for a single renovation undermines the costs for other stuff, making it so that player can gain a lot of money so they don't need to care about its management when it comes to food, etc. while they still need to grind for renovations. Effectively very quickly player is still on a goldpile to buy anything at ease, while they can't buy any renovations without even more grind.

Early on getting at least 1 tenant or looting any locked safe from any easily accessible locations undermines stuff like collecting bottles or farming or jobs to just survive, as survival immediately gets trivial, while player is still not able to perform renovations without looting even more safes or selling expensive items they find, I think it's a bad design.

On that note I think I did provide wrongful feedback suggesting an increase in pay for farming/job, as I did not think of that before, while in reality I should've suggested to bring down the cost of renovations of makeshift level to be more in line with costs of common items, so that a choice between a food or a renovation is actually meaningful and requires management on player's part.

So what I am proposing is to drastically lower down costs of makeshift levels of upgrades, and to balance it, drastically reduce rent from early tenants, so the amount of what player earns matches their social status of being on bare bottom. Safe's accessibility should also be reduced (thinking primarily of Deekula A safe, Deekula B safe in B9, One Stop Shop safe (for that I'd remove the correct code from the note, maybe the player could track down the house of the owner of Mr. Bag and there find a code instead, so there's just a little investigation work on player's part)).

I don't know what renovation costs and initial job payouts would be good, did not think about it, but they should roughtly match what you can get from bottle recycling in a similar time, so they would need to be drastically lower, for instance makeshift walls should be reduced like 4-5 times in cost, so around 300-400 OC. A rent from a single tenant (of the lowest possible standards) should also be low, within what you can make from bottle recycling, so I guess around 300 OC, and no RMs from those poor tenants.

Shabby levels should probably be at a cost that competes with more advanced furniture/machines, so 800-1400 OC

This would also require to lower the starting amount of OC and RM, especially RM, so player actually has a need to interact with money exchange.

Otherwise in the game player is no really homeless or poor at any point, as they get riches quickly to buy anything they need, except for renovations, which they still need to grind despite being above anything else, this imbalance needs to be solved. To make initial game more accessible but at the same time the survival aspects and money management more demanding.

To summarize:

• The amount of money player earns, even early on, (safes, finding expensive items like silver, rent, etc.) is too much for any first-need goods/services, like food, hostel, drinks, medicine, etc. making any money management, or survival in poverty, meaningless, player can easily afford everything
• Renovations on the other hand are too expensive and grind the further the game goes on, making it annoying and dislocated from prices of any other services/goods in the game
• bottle collecting is pretty much pointless, while it argubly has the best balance in the amounts of money player should earn early on to afford survival, early on more money-making ways should be in line with what bottle collecting provides
• several safes are too easy to loot for large profit in compare to poor state of the player should be in, this includes Deekula A safe, Deekula B9 safe and One Stop Shop safe, the first two should be harder to get, the One Stop Shop should not contain note with an actual code for the safe
• Many expensive items (like silver stuff, industrial fuses, paint buckets) are too easy to find and sell off, it should not be the primary way/strat of getting a money to afford early game renovations
• I think that renovation costs for early upgrades (makeshift and shabby) should be drastically lowered, so that player is able to afford a single upgrade costs + cost of the materials with 2 days of actual work, like bottle recycling
• Consequently rent from early tenants should be also drastically lowered, a rent from a single tenant is way too much in compare to how cheap markets stuff is, I don't think a rent from a single tenant a day should be larger than 300-400 OC
• Player should start with much smaller amount of money, especially RM to encourage usage of money exchange

[Oskutin]

Do you have the handy spreadsheet of tenant income and requirements somewhere?

[Nextej]

Not sure if it's up to date, it's missing the Tenement A guy

[Oskutin]

Makeshift prices should be culled, and made be more about providing items. Same for other upgrades, besides very high tier ones.

I think one way to calculate prices would be estimating contractor's hourly wage.

[Oskutin]

Actually, the issue is that rents are paid every day. Should be changed to be weekly.

[Oskutin]

Jonasson's hourly rate for easy work could be around 50 OC, and for more demanding work around 10RM.

[Nextej]

Actually, the issue is that rents are paid every day. Should be changed to be weekly.

I think it will be a bad change since now player won't receive daily income to afford doing more renovations and will get a sudden large money drop at the end of the week, which only worsens the first issue

The amount of money player earns, even early on, (safes, finding expensive items like silver, rent, etc.) is too much for any first-need goods/services, like food, hostel, drinks, medicine, etc. making any money management, or survival in poverty, meaningless, player can easily afford everything

I think that instead of getting like 1400 OC per tenant, it should be lower of around 200-400, and no RMs from those early ones

[Nextej]

I think that each working activity per day should give player around 200-400 OC, with bottle collecting being the most profitable early on (since it's the more demanding and engaging job). I think that on average (even for newcomers), a 3 days of work should be enough to afford food (including beer and drinks) and hostel for those 3 days + a full cost of one renovation including resources price + cleaning utilities, to have actual money management present. I think the cheapear makeshift renovations should be around 300-400 OC, 10 RM and the more expensive ones around 600-700 OC, 20 RM.

[Oskutin]

Actually, the issue is that rents are paid every day. Should be changed to be weekly.

I think it will be a bad change since now player won't receive daily income to afford doing more renovations and will get a sudden large money drop at the end of the week, which only worsens the first issue

The amount of money player earns, even early on, (safes, finding expensive items like silver, rent, etc.) is too much for any first-need goods/services, like food, hostel, drinks, medicine, etc. making any money management, or survival in poverty, meaningless, player can easily afford everything

I think that instead of getting like 1400 OC per tenant, it should be lower of around 200-400, and no RMs from those early ones

I think that daily rent is enough to trivialize the economy for food and basic needs, and that having big lump of money once the week helps with funding renovations.

The first levels should be dirt cheap to do anyway, and later ones should require like week or two of rent income to do.

[Nextej]

I also think it would be bad given how long a week takes, making it more incentivized for players to just sleep it over until the payday comes. But also, after one week player will have enough funds for the food to be trivialized anyway, and at the same time, they'll be getting a surplus money from working jobs they would not spend on renovations, because they wait for the payday, trivializing economy for food anyway.

I think it would only make the game more annoying in the beginning since player will need to wait a lot to start renovating properly, and they will be obligated to do it fast or they'll miss another payday window. Because even if they get their first tenant after grinding for that one upgrade, they won't get any results from it and will still need to wait.

[Oskutin]

First renovations are made with grinding money anyway. I think the tenant payday should be calculated individually from the day they moved in.

[Nextej]

Either way, the total amount per day shouldn't be initially bigger than 200-300 OC, and the makeshift renovations should be lowered appropriately, whether you decide to keep the payout daily or weekly.

I think the cheapear makeshift renovations should be around 300-400 OC, 10 RM and the more expensive ones around 600-700 OC, 20 RM.

But I still think a massive money dump at the end of the week only deepens the initial issue of having a lot of money all at once where you can afford everything at ease

The amount of money player earns, even early on, (safes, finding expensive items like silver, rent, etc.) is too much for any first-need goods/services, like food, hostel, drinks, medicine, etc. making any money management, or survival in poverty, meaningless, player can easily afford everything

[Oskutin]

Talking with Zuntti, that all renovation prices should be lowered, and the makeshfit ones should be really cheap.

I think the weekly lump sum encourages some saving and money management, as most likely player will waste it immediatly on renovations, and then has to survivie on their own the rest of the week.

With daily rents, player will likely spent it on food and drink, pushing upgrades further into future.

[Nextej]

You need also to take into account the cluelessness of newcomers on the details of how the rent works and its benefits, people's limited attention span and patience to wait a week for action to start happening and their ability to planning weeks into the future when overwhelmed early on.

In any case, I wouldn't hesitate to add this option (weekly or daily) to the difficulty settings.

[Oskutin]

I think it already takes like ingame week for players to get their first tenants, with first days going to familiarize themselves with the game.

Difficulty option for rents is a good idea.

Like Daily/2-times a week/weekly/monthly

[Nextej]

@Oskutin I think that the way the game is currently is generally fine in its own way and has a good pace, so if any major changes are meant to be done to have the economy bigger impact early on, I think the difficulty settings should provide an option to replicate the rents/renovations/payouts the way they are now, just in case the changes will be met negatively.