BIG GIANT GAME FLAW

[Guest]

am i the only one who thinks something is really wrong in this game ?
do you think that the numbers are slightly diffrent from real life market ?

Two different questions. Games should be games, then when you have a good game you tweak the appearance it to make it realistic.

But I'm totally with you on the former point. As are a number of people. It's not a compliment calling the game "gas and steel." I don't like to hang out on a game's board knocking it, so I don't really bring it up. But at a fundamental level the basic price customers are willing to pay is out of whack.

Now markets can adapt. That's the beautiful thing about capitalism. But it would be better still with a more equitable underlying basis. The only reason to exit out of a profitable industry right now (gas) is being squeezed out by higher quality. What about sheer numbers? Shouldn't the biggest factor be not quality of competitors, but volume of competitors?

What I'm saying is even the secondary check is out of whack. Ideally even if gas was a basically more profitable product than candy, more people would enter and immediately drive down the price restoring the balance. But what's happened here is that it remains profitable for all gas sellers except for quality differences. A month ago, Gas supply in France was equal to 59% of demand. Now, gas in france is at 43% of demand. People aren't leaving because of pure competition. I suspect if the players could agree to all remain at q0 (theoretically) it would remain profitable for many more entrants.

But I don't anticipate any change to this. Updating would seriously throw the game into chaos, which some would really dislike. If they start a new realm with a new version however, I'd sure like that taken into account.

[Guest]

Agreed that the pricing needs massive rebalancing for the game to be more interesting and multi-dimensional.

We do have a market demand system that punishes oversupply. My stores show an obvious change in selling time when the demand is 60% versus when it is 80%. That's great. Unfortunately, most industries are just stupidly unprofitable. The name of the game is TV, gas, wardrobes, and leather jackets, when this game would be far more interesting with a more even distribution.

I don't think it would even throw the game out of whack to raise some of the prices. I would love to see prices for biscuits, stuffed animals, toothpastes, and what have you raised to be decent. It wouldn

[Guest]

But at a fundamental level the basic price customers are willing to pay is out of whack.
Now markets can adapt. That's the beautiful thing about capitalism.

i totally agreewith you here. but, why isnt this game addapting ?

Now, gas in france is at 43% of demand.

if you take a look again and you do the math you will see that gas market share is more than 43%. this means that the demand for 1 good (gas) is bigger than what all companies in this game are able to sell together. so, 1 of the things i would do would be to decrease demand for all products. it can't be done in a day but what if we try to do it gradually. like decrease total demand 1% daily ? than, the next day decrease it 1% from the remaining demand. in time, this would squize out the gas producers that aren't making high quality gas. so they would have to find diffrent products to trade in. chances are that they would try wardrobes, TVs or Leather Jackets. but soon, the demand for these products would be too low and ofc, as they are the last who joined the business the would be the first to go out. but not all of them. some have enough money to build R&Ds and research high quality fast. anyway, the profit for every1 in this products would go down, and people would consider other industries.

[Guest]

if you take a look again and you do the math you will see that gas market share is more than 43%.

No, what I meant was Demand = 43% of Supply for Gas. Meaning that in the last month demand has grown more than supply, and we're even further from people squeezing each other out of the market.

I think what you're saying is that more gas is supplied than all other products put together. Which is true. And alarming. I mean we shouldn't just count raw numbers, as one Factory makes more gas / day than one Joinery makes Tables. But even with some relativity adjustment, it would still show what everyone knows. Gas is dominant.

Dropping demand 1% a day is not only jumping over the point, it's complicating it. Firstly the values need to be recalculated from the ground up. Then the commitment needs to be made to put these new values in the database. Then we can worry about changing gradually vs all at once.

I'm still holding out one day they'll realize gas has a typo and is off by a factor of 10. Gas demand is tied with eggs. Only milk is more in demand, and that's a heck of a lot less profitable.

[Guest]

lets make the total value of products sold in the last days in France
Gas 6,837,621 * 21.56

[Guest]

I think the problem is the price ceilings.

As it is, steel remains a very profitable venture for anyone to get into because the ceiling is at 135, and the demand for steel is extremely high.

The demand for steel, along with the low price, creates a vacuum.

More companies enter because they see demand outstripping supply. Existing companies continue expansion because demand outstrips supply.

If the cap were removed, we'd see more interesting dynamics I think.

Or maybe not.

If supply/demand has really placed the price at 128, then there is no need for the price cap in the first place.

The game needs a lot of balancing, to be sure. But it is a fun game nonehteless.

[Guest]

The problem with the game is that you cannot simply profitably sell many products even if the demand for them is almost uncovered (0.1% or so) and you provide goods at proper quality (3-4 as compared to the 0-1 averages). In real life economy (but also in a game rewarding rational behaviour) one should expect that uncovered demand should results (per definition) in profiatble sales and its upward elasticity should be much less severe.

I have grim feeling that the in-game demand formula simply takes into account only the historical prices (in many cases basing on close-to-zero supply placed on the market at dumping prices) and effectively ignores the demand (or at least it is not the key driver). Such a way whole sectores are effectivelly "killed".

The game is fun, but I think it could be funnier if it worked on formulas closer resembling real life economy.

As the formulas are hidden it is hard to discuss much more but I just wanted to point that it would be nice to base the game behaviour on something rational.

[Guest]

i dont think they gonna make changes on prices

[Guest]

i dont think they gonna make changes on prices

then this game will run in stereotype and most of the products are only good for statistics

[Guest]

yea i noe they shud btu they wont most probably