End Of The Line

[grr663]

I just had a thought... what will happen once we've completed the campaign like from 1940 to 2030 or whenever it finishes. what will happen after that? will the game go on or stop and we'll have to start a new company ??

[Pleb]

I would guess that some kind of scenario would play out and result in the end of your company some way or another and you'll have to start a new one, not sure though..

[Killrob]

The campaign ends in 2020, that's when all your efforts are summarized and a final score is given. You get put into the hall of automotive fame (or something like that) along with your most successful models and you can start a new game (randomized world or not) after that.

Before you ask: no. You cannot continue playing.

[WizzyThaMan]

Why isn't it actually made possibile to continue? Because then you can keep playing, but not for highscores anymore and just with the tech already designed. Also for modding it would be very nice if you can continue, so you can make FutureTech mods for example?

[Killrob]

Two reasons (there are more):
1) The calculations become imbalanced/broken after 2020.
2) We'd rather have players play the properly made parts of the game instead of an inferior non-existing post-end game.

[WizzyThaMan]

1) is reasonable and understandable, but a work around could be to freeze everything at the way 2020 is, or real slowly decreasing.
Transport Tycoon Deluxe actually does the highscorechart thing at 2050, and afterwards you can keep on playing, but do not gain any more tech/vehicles.
You just do not play for highscore anymore, but you actually get to see your company and can still build and play around a little.

2) I wouldn't call it inferior for that matter. I can actually find it frustrating, that I've been building hard towards 2020 and then it just gets wiped because its 2020 and only the highscore shows it.
If I want to play a new campaign I can just start over myself. Theres more fun in starting over, sure, but sometimes it just feels good looking at what you've built, really. You will lose all platforms, cardesigns and engines and there would be no way to look back at them?

Maybe you can have some sort of post-game view and take a look at the stats and such, but don't actually play? So a paused version of the game and still look at all the data belonging to that company/savegame.

[Killrob]

Your argument in 2) for having the ability to continue playing is actually exactly another of my arguments against it: 3) attachment. The more attached a player becomes to the current game (which at that point becomes worse and worse), the less likely he is to start a new game, which ultimately is what we want.

Another one is 4) it kills replayability because then you can just try out whatever and don't have to incorporate that into your company strategy in a meaningful way. That is really poor game design, shown in well-known examples like Diablo 3 where you could reskill as you wished, which killed replayability and character to a large degree.

I do like the idea to keep the game in a frozen state however, so that you can still view everything if you wish but not go on playing. That's great!

[WizzyThaMan]

Thats exactly why I came up with that idea in the last line, because I actually see what you are saying with argument 3).

I would be pleased to see this frozen state in the game. This way you don't have to work around some fancy thing to keep viewing your models and always have access to the complete statlist, designs and engines of your company

Hope to see this implemented!