Jun 25, 2006 → Rollercoaster Tycoon 1. The hardest for Added Attractions Pack has to be Pickle Park, god I hate that scenario it's a pain in the neck, and for Loopy Landscapes it's got to be Micro Park, how the hell are you supposed to complete that park it's too small! I didn't really bother with the scenarios in RCT2 because they were already. Oct 01, 2017 Rollercoaster Tycoon is a game. What, were you expecting some wacky, off the wall description? Support Zisteau on Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/Zisteau.
I made this discussion because I feel that difficult scenarios are vital to the games success. Atari really missed the mark with rct3 and I'm hoping to highlight some of the mistakes that were made.
The main thing that turned me away from rct3 was the lack of difficult scenarios and the unlimited time to complete them.
Camparisons of scenarios in rct1,2,and 3:
RCT1:
Roller coaster tycoon 1 had the best scenarios in my opinion. They had hard to beat goals and had structure where you had to beat one to unlock another. They also had unique maps where you couldn't build above the treeline or were forced to use a very small park. They had 25 parks in the original scenario list starting from very easy to decently hard.
RCT2:
Roller coaster tycoon 2 had the same difficulty levels in scenarios of rct1, but was severely lacking in structure. Structured scenarios (beat one to unlock another) gives users a reason to play through the entire campaign. It forces them to play through harder scenarios and ultimately has them spending more hours playing the game.
RCT3:
Rct3 had in my opinion the worst scenarios of the 3. They had very beautiful parks that obviously took a lot of time to create, but they lacked difficulty. They lacked difficulty in two areas. First, the scenarios goals were too modest. An example goal in 3 would be to build 2 coasters with very modest excitement ratings.. A similar scenario in rct1 or rct2 would have been to build 8 different types of coasters with a much harder rating to aquire than the counterpart in 3. Because of this, while playing through the scenarios, you were moving on to the next scenario before you even started to get attached to a park. The second area rct3 lacked difficulty in, is failure conditions. None of the scenarios in rct3 had failure conditions, you had unlimited time to achieve the goals. In the earlier installments, the failure modes were either: meet X by Y date.. or maintain condition Z (park rating ussually). Never having a failure mode killed any difficulty the rct3 scenarios may have presented.
TLDR:
Good scenarios contain:
1) Failure conditions (meet X by Y date.. or maintain condition Z)
2) A steady climb from easy to hard (ussualy takes multiple tries) in scenarios
3) A good variety of scenarios when entering the harder difficulties (very small parks, can't build above tree line, ect)
4) Structure (unlock one to beat another)
Discuss:
Do you guys agree?
What types of scenarios and goals would you like to see?
Did you enjoy the please the please the guest scenarios found in rct3, or do prefer hard goals instead (same goal, just completes as soon as you get it instead of waiting for guest X to come to the park), I personally prefer hard goals.
Fungus Woods is a 4 year paid to enter park. It is quite large, however it is completely covered in trees. The gimmick of this park is that you are only allowed to build “old” style rides. This means that there are no thrill rides, and only a very limited number of gentle rides and rollercoasters.
I started off by removing the Merry-Go-Round that was originally placed in the middle of the park, and building a few gentle rides at the start of the park. I then decided to start building a Miniature Railway that would transport people around the park. At this point there wasn’t much of a park. so I just had it on a short loop.
I was gaining a lot of guests into the park, and was charging $40 a person. The hardest part of this scenario was going to be affording to build new rides, so I wanted to make sure that I had a good start and had a lot of extra spending cash for later in the game.
On the right side of the park I built a log flume, they are cheaper than big wooden rollercoasters, and can be built in compact areas, which was perfect for this corner of the park. It also gave the guests who wanted more intense things something to ride.
Using the space inside of the Miniature railway I built a Virginia Reel. It was a great ride to build in this area, because the sharp corners gave me the ability to have a long ride length. I also built some gentle rides around it just to utilize the space.
At the end of Year 1 I had built up quite a park, and had almost 500 guests and increasing. I also had paid off all of the loan, and had some extra spending cash. Also you can see that I stopped spending any money on research, this is because I had way more rides than I could build for now, and I definitely could use the money elsewhere.
I had a long way to go to get the 2,500 guests so I had to continue building new rides.
I built another Virginia Reel over on the right side by the Log Flume. This one was a bit longer, but fit in a nice square, so building rides around it would be easy. I then built a Wooden Wild Mine Ride near the center of the park.
Both these types of rides can be built to have high or low intensity and excitement, and are fairly cheap.
The second Log Flume I made was on the left side, right next to the Miniature Railway. It was kind of long, but it held a lot of guests and they really enjoyed it, and I was very happy that I could fit one section above the Miniature Railway and then still have the station go underneath it.
At the beginning of Year 3 I built a Tram that went between the left and right sides of the park, about in the middle. Guests love transport rides, and this would help them move around the park a little bit better. I was definitely behind at this point, I only had 800 guests but I really should have been around 1200 guests to be on par to finish the objective. So I built a lot of gentle rides to get a quick increase of guests, which would hopefully generate a lot of money that I could use on bigger rides.
I fit quite a lot of rides into this little area, and it seemed to have brought in enough guests to pay for itself. But then this happened
The original Virginia Reel had crashed! And now nobody will ride it, so it is usually best to just destroy it. So that’s what I did.
I filled it out with gentle rides, and expanded the whole area around it to include a lot more gentle rides. I was up to 1400 guests and increasing, with Year 4 just around the corner.
At the start of Year 4 I finished this Wooden Rollercoaster on the right side of the park, and I was up to 1600 guests out of the 2500 goal.
I built some more gentle rides next to the rollercoaster, more rides means more people! The park was getting really big, so I decided to build another transport ride that would connect the lower section of the park.
I built 3 stations, and it left a nice inside area that hopefully would get me the extra 500 guests before the end of the year. The first thing I did was, of course, put down some gentle rides.
I had some cash so I decided to start building bigger rides. I first went with a Log Flume, because I had so much success with it earlier.
The problem was that I was building in the back of the park, and these new rides were fairly empty for a while. It did help that I had a transport ride dropping guests off here, however most of the guests were still walking around at the front of the park.
Luckily, the way RCT works is that a new ride will usually get some more guests to come to the park. I built two Wild Mouse coasters in the lower section of the park, and was up to 2,200 guests. The problem was I only had one month left to get the other 300 guests. I did an advertisement for the park, and then continued building new rides.
I started at the front of the park, and any where there was still space I placed a few gentle rides. When I got to the bottom, I still had a large section un-used so I built a Wooden Rollercoaster.
By the time I finished the rollercoaster it was mid October and I needed about 100 more guests. I had used up most of the area in the park, and was still getting more guests coming in, so I decided to wait it out until the end.
It worked! I really liked this scenario because it presented a fairly unique challenge by limiting the type of rides so much. Thrill rides are so good at getting money and guests into the park, not being able to use them makes everything much more difficult. Also only using “old” style rides creates a very cool looking park, it looks like a 1950’s theme park.
I would really like to do this scenario again in the future, next time I would probably build much more at the beginning, and not worry about paying off the loan. If I would of had more guests around the end of Year 2, I probably would of had much more money and an easier time in Year 3 and 4.
For someone wanting an interesting challenge in RCT2, I highly recommend trying this scenario.
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