Improve Department/Discount MegaStore uniqueness
Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:52 am
I believe the Department Store and the Discount MegaStore need a little extra differentiation compared to the regular stores to make them interesting choices over specialty stores in the long run. All stores offer the ability to sell a maximum of 4 products per store floor. It doesn't matter if you have a huge Discount MegaStore or a tiny Convenience Store. You can only sell 4 products (or 12 in total if you have the multiple floors enabled). The Department Store and MegaStore would be much more unique if they presented the ability to offer more products than regular stores do since this is what they are all about in real life where they offer a vastly larger array of products than typical specialty stores. The fact that a convenience store can offer the same product variety and line-up as a MegaStore is somewhat a shame and creates a lack of uniqueness in gameplay that the larger store firms category could provide.
Possible Solutions:
Solution A: Remove the multiple floor functionality from smaller stores thus making larger stores more unique. Small stores can only have 1 floor, Medium stores 2 and the Department/MegaStore 3.
Solution B: Department Stores and Discount MegaStores uniquely are able to expand over the 3 floor limit. Making them unique in presenting large varieties of product.
(personally I like the last idea a tad bit more since it increases their uniqueness without reducing product variety for smaller stores. But I don't think solution A is bad either in terms of gameplay balance and flavor because it would fit better with the presentation where large stores provide much more variety. Most small stores are specialty stores and don't offer more than 3-4 products so a small stores will not suffer nearly as much as one would think (with the possible exception of the convenience store which has a large variety of possible product to sell).
Possible Solutions:
Solution A: Remove the multiple floor functionality from smaller stores thus making larger stores more unique. Small stores can only have 1 floor, Medium stores 2 and the Department/MegaStore 3.
Solution B: Department Stores and Discount MegaStores uniquely are able to expand over the 3 floor limit. Making them unique in presenting large varieties of product.
(personally I like the last idea a tad bit more since it increases their uniqueness without reducing product variety for smaller stores. But I don't think solution A is bad either in terms of gameplay balance and flavor because it would fit better with the presentation where large stores provide much more variety. Most small stores are specialty stores and don't offer more than 3-4 products so a small stores will not suffer nearly as much as one would think (with the possible exception of the convenience store which has a large variety of possible product to sell).