Guest generation algorithm changed? Can't finish scenario without advertising anymore?

[FrankD]

I've been playing a lot of OpenRCT2 about two years ago, then I stopped for a while and I started again just recently with the newest version. But it feels like the guest generation works completely differently now. I used to just build attractions and the guest number would go up, but now for some reason the number stagnates after year 1 and won't go up anymore, no matter how many new rides I keep building.

For example, the first of my saves I've attached is in October year 2, with 21 rides and I have 855 guests.

The second save is June year 3, with 26 rides, but the guest number somehow dropped to 745.

In fact I used to have over 900 guests with something like 15 rides at the start of year 2, but the October year 2 save was the oldest autosave I had. So while I've built 10 new rides, I lost 150 guests.

I'm not using advertisements and they still work to increase the guest count, but this is an easy scenario and before I never needed to use advertisements to complete those. So what is going on here? Did OpenRCT2 change something, or am I overlooking something? Because I'm stumped right now.

autosave_2023-01-18_20-00-50.park Crater Lake.park

[FrankD]

And just for comparison, I looked up one of my old saves to compare, and found this one, of a more advanced scenario, where I had 1380 guests with just 15 rides, also without any advertising. So it really does feel different now.

Canary Mines.park

[ExCrafty]

Hmm, that's interesting, I'm actually finding it quite the opposite.

[FrankD]

3 minutes ago, ExCrafty said:

Hmm, that's interesting, I'm actually finding it quite the opposite.

Also the newest version? I'm using version 0.4.3 fwiw, upgraded to it last week or so.

[FrankD]

Just downloaded and installed the soft guest cap calculator ( https://github.com/Sadret/openrct2-soft-guest-cap-calculator) and found that the soft guest cap for the last savegame is at 1674. So there very definitely is something wrong with my game, where I'm at 749 and still slowly losing guests. Can someone please look into this?

EDIT: Added another old savegame for comparison.

Volcania2.sv6

Edited January 19, 2023 by FrankD

[joshmarsilio]

I downloaded all of your uploads and i didn't see anything particularly unusual. If you change your game speed to "hyper speed" you will see how park guestage fluxuates over time. The reason your parks are not increasing greatly in guest population is that you are creating one-tile-wide-path style parks. Try leveling land and making broader paths for people to walk around on and your guestage will probably increase.

Most parks reach a leveling out point in population. If you don't rearrange things or add land and rides, most parks will remain constant in population. If you do rearrange things and make more land etc. guestage will increase. If your park is not so great guestage will decrease. That's the way the game is programmed to behave  for the most part.

Edited January 19, 2023 by joshmarsilio

[FrankD]

15 hours ago, joshmarsilio said:

I downloaded all of your uploads and i didn't see anything particularly unusual. If you change your game speed to "hyper speed" you will see how park guestage fluxuates over time. The reason your parks are not increasing greatly in guest population is that you are creating one-tile-wide-path style parks. Try leveling land and making broader paths for people to walk around on and your guestage will probably increase.

Most parks reach a leveling out point in population. If you don't rearrange things or add land and rides, most parks will remain constant in population. If you do rearrange things and make more land etc. guestage will increase. If your park is not so great guestage will decrease. That's the way the game is programmed to behave  for the most part.

Well yes, I know that, that's how I played the game in the past, but the very problem here is that I AM adding land and rides constantly, and the guest count stays the same regardless. I went from something like 15 rides to 25 rides and only lost guests in that time period, and that is not normal.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by FrankD

[jensj12]

I've never heard about wider paths allowing more guests, they'll only use one side anyways. All my parks have single-wide paths and function without problem.

When looking for stuff to improve, first look at guests' thoughts. Complaints there usually means there's something you can do to make guests happier and less likely to leave. The park rating is a good indicator when something is really messed up in your park. Only when everything's alright and you've let the park run for some time and reached the soft guest cap (use ads to reach it faster and temporarily ignore the limit), adding more rides will help boost the guest count (it also comes with a temporary park rating boost). If you want to know the park rating and guest cap counts precisely, there are plugins for that.

[FrankD]

18 minutes ago, jensj12 said:

I've never heard about wider paths allowing more guests, they'll only use one side anyways. All my parks have single-wide paths and function without problem.

When looking for stuff to improve, first look at guests' thoughts. Complaints there usually means there's something you can do to make guests happier and less likely to leave. The park rating is a good indicator when something is really messed up in your park. Only when everything's alright and you've let the park run for some time and reached the soft guest cap (use ads to reach it faster and temporarily ignore the limit), adding more rides will help boost the guest count (it also comes with a temporary park rating boost). If you want to know the park rating and guest cap counts precisely, there are plugins for that.

My park rating has been at 999 for almost the entire game, and my soft guest cap is at 1674, a whopping 900 more than the real number of guests. The main thought guests have is "I'm running out of cash", but I've checked in older saves of pay-for-rides parks and that's their main thought as well in those parks, but there the guest number is always very close to the soft guest cap. So that can't be the reason why the guest number is so low.

That's the problem here, I already did all the normal things that would generate guests, build lots of rides, get a high park rating, but for some reason they don't work, and I still have no idea why. With 26 good quality rides and a consistently maximal park rating, I shouldn't be at 750 guests. That's why I really think this is a bug and not how the game is supposed to work.

Edited January 20, 2023 by FrankD

[jensj12]

I had a look at the code and compared it with v0.1.0. Except for some refactoring, I can't spot any differences.

What version do you consider old enough to still have a non-broken guest generation?

[jensj12]

I just checked your park and guests are simply starving for cash (with no cash machines available to refill their pockets) and because of that getting sad and likely leaving faster than they come in. Lower your prices to keep guests in your park for longer.

[FrankD]

26 minutes ago, jensj12 said:

I just checked your park and guests are simply starving for cash (with no cash machines available to refill their pockets) and because of that getting sad and likely leaving faster than they come in. Lower your prices to keep guests in your park for longer.

That can't be the problem, because the guests have the exact same problem in the last save I shared, I'll attach it again to this post.

It's about 1.5 years old, I don't know what version exactly, and you can see the guests are all running out of cash, but the total number of guests is still at the same level as the soft guest cap, around 1070. Whereas in my new game, the guest number is at 40% of the soft guest cap. You can let it run if you like, you'll see the guest number will not decrease.

I tried running that game until the same point I'm at in the new game, June 13 year 3, and I found that the old game had at that point 400 more total admissions than the new game, despite the soft guest cap being 600 lower, which means the number of tickets sold SHOULD be much lower for the old game.

So the generation of new guests is a LOT lower in the new game than in the old game of 1.5 years ago, that's what causes a big difference, it's not because of existing guests leaving faster.

Volcania2.sv6

[yankeefan93]

On 21/01/2023 at 11:36, FrankD said:

That can't be the problem, because the guests have the exact same problem in the last save I shared, I'll attach it again to this post.

It's about 1.5 years old, I don't know what version exactly, and you can see the guests are all running out of cash, but the total number of guests is still at the same level as the soft guest cap, around 1070. Whereas in my new game, the guest number is at 40% of the soft guest cap. You can let it run if you like, you'll see the guest number will not decrease.

I tried running that game until the same point I'm at in the new game, June 13 year 3, and I found that the old game had at that point 400 more total admissions than the new game, despite the soft guest cap being 600 lower, which means the number of tickets sold SHOULD be much lower for the old game.

So the generation of new guests is a LOT lower in the new game than in the old game of 1.5 years ago, that's what causes a big difference, it's not because of existing guests leaving faster.

Volcania2.sv6 950.03 kB · 21 downloads

People have already mentioned the reason your guest amount is still around 700. Here is a picture of how many guests have entered the park. Look how big the number of guests that entered the park is compared to how many guests are in your park currently.