Suggestions Box (Jan 2015)

Every month I list five things I'd like to see added, altered or abolished from the game. Because even though my long time of playing Restaurant Story clearly shows I love it, that doesn't mean it's perfect. Some of the ideas I'll air will be significant game changers while others will be low-key and irrelevant in the eyes of many of you readers.

In no particular order, here are this month's entries...

 #81: Introduce sorting of recipe lists

This is an idea which has been voiced by many over time, including DonY in the comments section of the last Suggestions Box, but for some reason has never made it to press!

On the three main appliances - the Basic Stove, Basic Oven and Basic Grill - there are so many recipes that it can be time consuming to browse through and find a dish with a particular statistic. So to remedy this, a sorting function should be introduced. There could be a number of variables which the sorting could be based on, including the dish name, the cooking duration and the profit.

 Previous Suggestion Box posts

 13/12/14 December 2014
 15/11/14 November 2014
 18/10/14 October 2014
 20/09/14 September 2014
 23/08/14 August 2014

This would reduce the amount of time I spend scrolling through searching endlessly for a certain food.

 #82: Allow Stormie to leave tips

Stormie's Store is a neighbour to us all, and does an excellent job of returning part requests relatively quickly. But he doesn't do much else (and I include decorating in that!)

Stormie's Store

Stormie needs to start pulling his weight by stopping by our restaurants with some tips. A large portion of the playing community manage to do this with Stormie every day, so you'd think he could return the favour once in a while. Of course there's limited benefit to it as six tips only amounts to a very small coin and XP bonus, but it's the thought that counts and it would feel like TeamLava were helping us out, even if only a little. But as they say, every little helps!

 #83: Prevent going over max characters in a wall post

Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this?

I'm not on Twitter, but I do believe that the social networking site informs you of how many of the maximum 140 characters you have remaining in a tweet. The lack of such information in Restaurant Story leads me to overshooting the text box far too often. To try and prevent this happening I try and predict where the cut off is and use ellipsis to indicate that the message continues in the next wall post.

Example of overspilling message on wall

But this process doesn't always work out, and since you can't delete a message posted on another player's wall the evidence of my babbling is there for the world to see!

The gamemakers need to come up with a way of indicating when you have reached the maximum number of characters in a wall post, whatever that number actually is. It doesn't need to be as high profile as the explicit counter used on Twitter; a notification box when you tap 'Post' would suffice as you could then go back and alter the message accordingly.

 #84: Block a gift when maxed out

Here's a problem I'm having at the moment. I collect food gifts of Stew for a rainy day when my counters are bare and the customers hungry. But such weather hasn't come my way in a while, and as a result I've reached the maximum number of plates of Stew in my inventory. That's 32,767 helpings!

Maximum number of Stew gifts

Yet gifts of Stew are flowing in, and shockingly I can still accept them! That's not good news because clearly doing so is just wasting one of my gift slots for the day - you only get 20 and by tapping accept I'm using one up for nothing in return. Unfortunately I do make the mistake of hastily accepting the surplus Stews quite regularly, and it's rather annoying!

So the game's developers should look at introducing a blocking system that prevents me from getting worked up. A quick notification preventing me tapping accept would do the job, or even better a filter could be put in place which would rebound the unwanted Stews back at my poor and unsuspecting neighbours!

 #85: Phoebe and Action Chef Lee on a date!

We finish on a light note, with a suggestion pertaining to Valentine's Day. With updates for this romantic event now presumably on the way, I'm pitching my idea for a floor decoration.

I always enjoy getting figurines for my place, especially when they are versions of the recurring characters from the goals. So how about a scene in which Phoebe and Action Chef Lee are on a date?

It could be very similar to some of the elegant dinner items we've had in previous years, with a posh candlelit meal and a romantic ambience set by a violinist. And with only one existing decoration featuring Action Chef Lee it would be great to get another in which he is relaxing and enjoying the allure of Phoebe!