Quick post before I stop work to eat!. I’ve been analyzing some play stats from sessions of the game to try and work out why some people are saying the game is impossible, and others are clearly generating a TON of cash. Some are obviously cheating the config files, but regardless of that I feel that there is definitely a problem with people amassing too much cash too early (in terms of providing a fun, balanced experience). Here is the cash balance of players at 50,100,200,300,400 and 500 in-game hours of play:
Its clear that there is a VAST range, and perhaps nobody should really be able to go beyond the 100million cash point so early, so I need to toughen up the cash in those first 50 hours. ironically the toughening up seems to overcompensate late in the game, as the trend is clearly to lose cash later, rather than increase it. yikes…
This second chart shows how strong the AI competition is during the game. I have made major screwups here, for example, the AI ignores you for the first 50 hours. BIG mistake, I need a lot more intelligence in deciding when to step in…
Lastly lets take a look at the players profit margin over time:
Clearly some cheating going on with those outliers, and some real disastrous, almost snapchat level loses for some people. Looks like that free fifty hours of no competition is letting people go nuts in the first 50 hours, and as I suspected from the above data, I then overcompensate and crush people with over-competition until their cash levels drop down.
I’m so glad I have this data, it will allow me to make a much better, much more balanced game.