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List of forums -> Main forum of the online business game "Virtonomics" -> No sales in storesDiscussions on our virtual business game, your ideas and game mechanics
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Hello, everyone...
I'm a new guy and I have some questions and problems, in addition to a bit of criticism about the game. But first, I'd like to lay my problems out there and see if anyone can help a homie out! 
1.) I just started the game (3-4 days ago) and I made a bad decision and even got ripped off. I opened a pretty big store, and tried to jump right in to selling computers, cell phones and jewelry -- very expensive commodities. Due to my inexperience, I didn't know how the game works with quality, pricing, etc. I bought some computers at a quality of 1, and some way overpriced cell phones at about 2700, I believe...and that's more than the retail price on average. Then I realized my mistake and that I should have done a bit of research and looking around. Well, none of this stuff sold. I lowered the prices lower than local competitors, and still nothing sold. I'm advertising on the internet and "media", and getting several hundred wealthy visitors and no purchases. 2.) Alarmed by my big mistake and huge waste of money (my rent costs were high and I foolishly hired almost 80 employees off the bat), I decided I needed to do a small retail store dealing in foods. I cut as much expense as I could on the big store and went down to 50 employees. I cut all incoming supply to the big store as well, because it's no good to keep ordering what you're not selling (and at a bad price). I did keep advertising, but still no sales whatsoever. 3.) To try to save my skin, I opened a small retail store to start selling foods. BEFORE I ordered anything, I check all of the competitor's prices, quality and brand. I then skimmed through the suppliers selling each good, and found nice prices which would leave me a good profit margin. I knew not to make the mistake of selling way below market prices, so I employed a more conservative strategy. I order the best quality products I could get at a good price, and I slightly/moderately undercut all competitors, exceeded them in quality and/or near matched them. I made sure my store had the best bang for the consumer's buck on all products or at least an equal bargain. Once the goods arrived, I let it roll overnight. I came back to check it yesterday and... NO SALES! I was full of stock, so I dropped all orders to 0. Let it ride again for another night after adjusting prices a little more... NO SALES AGAIN! Nothing is selling! 4.) Now, fearing the worst and running out of money, I could only think of one thing to do. So I made two warehouses to store the big store's goods, and just transferred everything there. When it all arrives tomorrow, I'm going to close the big store as it's been a failure (I shot too high too soon and made bad choices out of inexperience with the game). I suppose I'll try selling the goods on the world market at a decent price or to at least break even if that fails. If no one buys anything, I'll then just have to ship it to the small store and see if anyone (virtual customers) will buy it. But IF I sell my food, I can start recovering from my losses and not collapse completely...and have a shot at building a successful business. But at this rate, it looks like nothing will ever sell...ever, lol! So what is going on here? I don't understand what the problem can be! But then again, maybe I'm misinterpreting the way this game works and going about it all wrong? If anyone can tell me what's going on and how I can try to save my dwindling business, please do. I've heard something about a "relief fund" for new players, but I don't want it (maybe only if it's a last resort to keep playing). I want to build my business from scratch without any "handouts" or "welfare"...it's against my philosophy and ethics! 
I'm a total newcomer to this game, but not at all a newcomer to real economic theory and business. I've studied Austrian School economics (Ludwig von Mises rules! lol) and even Keynesian economics and other "mainstream" theories (which I hate, lol). And let's just say I have a background in business. So maybe someone can tell me how/where this game is different from the real deal? What do I need to be aware of? Everything I know about economics and business suggests I SHOULD have made good sales already with my prices and having hundreds of visitors (unless I've wildly misinterpreted the way this game works and made false deductions from my "research" of the game market). Please shed any light on this that you can... CRITICISM: I have several criticisms of this game and the way things work, some of which may disappear once I get to know it better but some that won't. 1.) The pace is waaaaayyyy too slow!  I hate waiting 24hrs just for something to happen. I also think the "resolution" of time updates is too big...you jump 7 days (one week) in time at each update.
I would suggest the game should be sped up, and should move along in one "game day" increments instead of a week. And different actions could take different amounts (and more plausible/realistic) amounts of time. I realize many players may not like the idea because they only have a short amount of time to check their account each day. But I think it would be best to add a "fast-paced", "hot" market counterpart for the existing worlds. I think this business of clicking a few buttons and having to wait 24 hours for a whole game week to pass is a big turnoff to the majority of gamers (even in this niche genre). People want some action and excitement. People want to see how their decisions and moves are having an (somewhat) immediate impact...and a whole day is just too long to wait. I've only been here for 3 or 4 days, it feels like forever and nothing has even happened, lol. Having a new game update once every hour (or few) and keeping the time ratio (1:7) the same could do the trick. Think about it... When I wanted to move my goods to a warehouse in the same city, I have to wait 24hrs which is one week in game. That would really take a few hours in the real world...it should be at most 1 day in game. Something coming across the world should take 1 week. This would obviously require rewriting a lot of the server-side code and might get complex, but just hope a developer would keep that in mind when making future improvement. 2.) If my prices are correct (as I suspect they are) then it simply isn't realistic that I had several hundreds of customers who didn't buy ANYTHING... Absolutely nothing... While pricier and lower quality competitors are booming. The world doesn't work that way. People would have probably stripped my shelves bare, lol. If I set my prices wrong and I'm NOT actually undercuttting my competition, then please explain...that's not what the game information and market info told me. If I am wrong, you can drop this criticism until I try again with correct pricing. 3.) Doing some marketing research is painfully slow, tedious and dull... It would be better to have some extra UI elements and controls in the price-setting form so you can look at competitors prices and even have a pre-calculated quantity/price suggestion. It's also sort of a shot in the dark when you're ordering goods, unless you have one tab browsing through supplier and one through competitor prices/quality in your location. Flipping back and forth makes it take forever and get annoying, and I had to get a notebook and start writing things down (e.g., competitor price/quality I wanted to beat, my optimal price, etc). Doing ALL of this stuff by hand shouldn't be necessary, and I hope future versions of the game will provide a tighter workflow and vital data for quick comparison.
Ehhh, enough writing... and this is too long already. But I do realize that it's very probable everything I suggest/complain about has already been mentioned numerous times, but that's what forums are for, lol, and I couldn't find any similar posts anywhere, so there ya go. I also realize that "game ideas" and suggestions are rarely met with applause. But oh well... It may mean more to the developers than to the players. I am a software developer and, admittedly, I know "user ideas" are sometimes just unreasonable, haha. And I fully realize how much work major changes takes and how long a re-write and testing iteration can take. So take it with a grain of salt, folks...no demands being made. ;) P.S. - Sorry for wall o' text I just made... I'm a compulsive obsessive writer and very verbose, but oddly, I'm a quiet person, hahaha... |
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Thought I'd share some comments. First of all, I've never studied business, nor have I studied economics.
I'm a total newcomer to this game, but not at all a newcomer to real economic theory and business. I've studied Austrian School economics (Ludwig von Mises rules! lol) and even Keynesian economics and other "mainstream" theories (which I hate, lol). And let's just say I have a background in business. So maybe someone can tell me how/where this game is different from the real deal? What do I need to be aware of? Everything I know about economics and business suggests I SHOULD have made good sales already with my prices and having hundreds of visitors (unless I've wildly misinterpreted the way this game works and made false deductions from my "research" of the game market). Please shed any light on this that you can... The thing that you might find unrealistic, IMHO, would be the worker efficiency (which must NOT be neglected) in this game. The fact that it might limit your initial growth (such as the problem you are facing) by not being able to sell high-end items in store when you first start the game could be a major turn-off. But well, it's still part of the game. You might want to read more about it in the FAQ as what Mike1 has suggested. I think this business of clicking a few buttons and having to wait 24 hours for a whole game week to pass is a big turnoff to the majority of gamers (even in this niche genre). I would like to add that the initial period of this game will be somewhat a slow pace, but as time goes by (depending on your growth) you will soon realise you can spend a few hours on it a day, even for a middle-sized company. For me, I'm working full time and a daily update is just nice a pace
Doing some marketing research is painfully slow, tedious and dull.. I'm not exactly sure how you would do that in reality, but I think it's gonna be slow and tedious as well. But yes I do agree with you! Maybe some mechanism for cross-region comparison across a range of goods should be considered. Perhaps you might want to post this in the suggestion category. |
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Another criticism I have about the game mechanics is the whole "points" thing... the old "pay to play" deal, where people who're willing to put their real money into the game get an immense advantage. It's something I've never liked in browser games, and why I won't play most. The subscribers can just buy their way up to the top, and everyone else has to work towards it at a serious disadvantage. To me (and I think most gamers), it would be more fun without any "points" system -- where success only comes from your own individual initiative and skill. It's kind of disheartening to know you'll never have a level playing field with the people who're paying. 
Of course, they've got to pay the bills and keep the server going. But with a subscription service in a game like this, you will reach "critical mass" and either stop growing or grow slowly. Making money through advertising/sponsors/donations/investors/etc and eliminating the whole "pay to play" points system would (theoretically) make the game only limited by its *quality*, and exposure to the public. Sites like Google give all visitors the same search engine...what would have become of them if they provided a less capable search for free and only gave the full search power to paying subscribers? They would have never became the giant! What if Wikipedia made you pay to get to view the entirety of their information, and limited what free users could get? They wouldn't be one of the most used websites on earth. Just provoking some thought though. They DO let me play for free, and I've got to appreciate that! So again, grain o' salt. |
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| Merry Christmas, everyone!
Thanks Mike1, but I'm not trying to berate the game or rant about it. There are parts of every game we don't like, and each series of improvements to software always makes you aware of new problems. But it's actually an exciting and good thing. I guess that's why I was drawn to software development. I sit here and pick apart my own work and all of its flaws every day (trust me, I'm more harsh on myself lol), and other people do the same (and thank goodness they do!). Criticism is what progress is made of. If we just blindly accepted everything the way it is and never criticized or thought of new approaches, we might be playing "Stoneage-omics" in a cave today.
So, again... take it with a grain of salt. I liked many things about this game, and I surely haven't shut out the possibility of appreciation of new things. Something went seriously wrong though... I'd reduced all my expenses to where it should have only cost me about $50,000 last update. I had over $350K. After the update, I came back and it said I have -$350K! I have no idea how it happened. I had canceled all orders and cut everything except rent and $15K in advertising. It basically just inverted the amount of money I had yesterday and made it a negative value, lol. So I just hit restart, and decided to take the "rich uncle" offer to learn more about the game. It gave me $1,000,000 in cash plus all of the subdivisions. I did this maybe 15 minutes ago. Then after I navigate to a new page, I now have only $996,652.85?! How?! I spent NOTHING. I was simply looking around. I hadn't change a thing either. It just took away some money all on its own, lol. Odd, considering what happened today. Could there be some kind of bug? It shouldn't have taken away any money...and the next update is tomorrow night. :- |
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 IT'S JUST BUSINESS! |
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List of forums -> Main forum of the online business game "Virtonomics"-> No sales in stores |
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