The Goal That Never Mattered
Every expansion asks for a production rate and a number of one business. The simulation now reports which of the two actually held the player back, and the answer was sobering: the second goal never did, in any phase. Here is how odd-looking numbers like 62 and 68 fixed it.
Playtests showed two problems. First, the second and third regions (Monte Fiocco and Val Céleste) felt too short at the start. A few minutes after unlocking a region, the first expansion was already available, so the region was hardly explored. Second, every expansion has two requirements: a production rate and a number of one business, for example "10 double chairlifts". That second requirement seemed to be met every time before anyone noticed it.
Before changing any numbers, I wanted data.
Teaching the simulation to say why
The balancing bot from an earlier entry told me when a phase opened, but not what held it back. It now does three new things:
- It reports the bottleneck. For every expansion it notes when each requirement was met. The last one is the bottleneck, and the report shows how much earlier the other one was met.
- It models the boost. Real players watch ads for a ×2 income boost.
--boost 0.25means a quarter of the play time is boosted. Like in the game, the boost fills the wallet, but it never counts toward expansion goals or unlocks. - It measures the price. The report shows how long the bot had to save up for a build after meeting its requirements.
The first full report was blunt:
- The business goal was the bottleneck in 0 of 18 expansions. A run with the goal removed entirely gave identical results, minute for minute.
- Prices never held anything back. After meeting the requirements, the bot waited 0–8 minutes for the money.
- The boost makes players 10–30 % faster. That explains part of the "too short" feeling, but not all of it.
Why the goal never fired
The game doubles a business's income at 25, 50 and 100 units. These milestones reward buying everything evenly, and the bot does exactly that. When the production goal for Monte Fiocco's second phase was met, the bot already owned 55 double chairlifts. The goal asked for 10.
There is a second reason. All regions share one wallet. When a new region opens, the income of the finished region pays for it, so the early phases of the new region are flooded with money.
The obvious fix that didn't work
The first idea was to raise the production goal for the second phase three- to fivefold. The simulation said no. Time until phase 2 in Monte Fiocco, by production goal:
- today: phase 2 after 11 minutes
- ×1.1: 81 minutes
- ×1.5: 8 hours
- ×3: 44 hours
- ×5: never
The first phase has only three businesses, and each unit costs 15 % more than the one before. The current goal sits just past the 50-unit milestone. Beyond it, income grows only linearly while prices grow exponentially, until the 100-unit milestone, which is very far away. Small changes create huge cliffs.
Longer build times didn't help either. They add waiting, not gameplay.
Goals just above what players reach anyway
The business goal turned out to be the better lever, but only with the right values. Its target is now the number of units a player would reach naturally, plus a little more, set separately for each region, for phases 2, 3 and 4:
- Monte Fiocco: 62 double chairlifts, then 50 food stalls, then 36 fun parks.
- Val Céleste: 68 double chairlifts, then 66 food stalls, then 42 fun parks.
- Frostridge: 76 double chairlifts, then 72 food stalls, then 55 fun parks.
The results with a 25 % boost:
- Monte Fiocco reaches phase 2 after 17 instead of 9 minutes. Val Céleste after 42 instead of 28.
- The regions barely get longer: +6 minutes, +30 minutes and +1 hour.
- In these three regions, the business goal is now the bottleneck, or met at the same time as production, in 8 of 9 expansions, usually by a few minutes. It nudges the player, it doesn't wall them in.
The late regions (Yukihana, Gletscherkristall) stay as they were. There, even a few extra units add many hours.
Why not round numbers?
62 looks random. 75 looks like a deliberate milestone, so I tested round targets too:
- 75 / 75 / 100 made the regions 54–183 % longer, pushed every later unlock back and turned the goal into a wall of up to 20 hours.
- Rounding to fives kept the region lengths, but the goal stopped mattering again.
- 68 vs 70 double chairlifts doubled Val Céleste's first phase, from 42 to 85 minutes.
So the odd numbers stay. They sit exactly where the goal matters for a moment without dominating. And the game already shows the goal as a progress bar with "42 / 68", so an unusual target reads just fine.
Next
The new values are live. The analytics already record when a region unlocks and when each phase opens, so real players will show whether the first phase of Monte Fiocco and Val Céleste now feels like exploring a region instead of rushing through it. Only then comes the next balancing round.