Suggestions Box (Mar 2016)

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.

You can share your own suggestions too via the comments. If I like them, I may even include them in the next instalment!

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

 #151: Stop misleading pricing for Value Packs

This is something which annoyed me when Value Packs first came on the go, and with them now making a resurgence (at least for iOS players) I feel it is time to elaborate.

Each Value Pack comes not only with a price, but an original price which has apparently been crossed out. This is pretty standard in the world of retail, but in the UK at least businesses do need to demonstrate that the product was indeed offered at the crossed out price originally. I don't think Storm8 can do that.

Value Pack including Spring Lunch

All seven of the Value Packs to flash up have advertised a single decoration plus 25 gems for £3.99, reduced from £14.99 (UK version). Now the standard 24 gem pack available for purchase is valued at £3.99 which means the remaining £11 of the original price is what the gamemakers are valuing the decoration at.

Going by UK pricing £11 lands somewhere between the 50 and 105 gem packs. That is probably acceptable for a box first prize, and with three of the six Value Packs so far in 2016 including exactly that all seems well. But the Leprechaun House was a second prize, the VIP Lounge was a LTO given for free with any gem purchase and the Spring Lunch and Blossom Grove (when re-released) were 35 and 40 gems respectively. That essentially means the pricing for these is being pulled out of thin air. Given that there's not been much discussion of this on the Storm8 Forum I think this has been swept under the carpet until now - hopefully if the game's developers read this they'll see fit to alter their practise.

 #152: Add 'Pirate Ship Wall' style dividers

This one was provided by Erdmännchen a good while back.

Dividers are an invaluable tool in the game, and thus it is unsurprising that I called on the game's developers to introduce more designs long ago. But what I'm looking for here are dividers in the style of the Pirate Ship Wall from Bakery Story.

Example of use for Pirate Ship Wall in Bakery Story

This is like the standard dividers seen in both games, but it comes with a difference. Instead of the divider being positioned across the centre of the occupying square it is placed along one of the edges. The result is a divider which can be cumbersome as it appears to waste space, but is also has an excellent property which I've done a rudimentary job of displaying above.

The Pirate Ship Wall is such that it is much easier to make three dimensional structures using it. I had a go at using White Dividers do construct a bridge last month, and although I was satisfied with the outcome there's no doubt that this format of divider would have enhanced the effect.

Not only would this style of divider be handy for decorating into the third dimension, but also for storing appliances and counters of food you'd rather couldn't be seen. This divider can easily be applied to form a wall that hides undesirable objects, and consequently is an addition I think would be very much welcomed by the community.

 #153: Stop including sparkles on décor

This is something I touched upon in Wednesday's update post, and I felt it merited a mention in the Suggestions Box too. Lately Storm8 seem to have seen fit to introduce a sparkly touch to many new items, and I think it is both misused and overused.

Flowers appear to be the most common victim of this strange glean, and that is where the misuse comes in. When was the last time that you saw a plant shine?! It's totally unnecessary and just means that the gamemakers are giving themselves extra work. The sparkle isn't adding anything to the items in question and therefore I'm left bewildered at why they'd put so much effort into adding it.

The overuse is easy to demonstrate just by looking at some of the stuff that's been given the treatment recently. The V-Day Bouquet, Sweetheart Basket, Festival Flowers (from the Chinese Celebration box) and Holiday Bouquet have all popped up in the last few months and all have that twinkle, as well as everything from this week's Sunflower Crate.

Items from Sunflower Crate which are include sparkles

There are examples of items where the glint has been applied justly, such as the Silver Skates and Jack Frost, but for every one of these there are several flowers which have been spoilt by it. So I urge Storm8 to stop feeling the need to over-engineer new content with this sparkle.

 #154: Bring back update notifications

This suggestion comes courtesy of Jantiene Witzen and is something I've thought about including in the past.

Up until some point last year every weekly update came with a pop-up window to let you know of the new content. Some players complained that there were too many of these notifications upon opening the game, and I tended to agree. If there was an update, an LTO, a new game to download and a call for you to rate the game it could become rather overwhelming.

 Previous Suggestion Box posts

 20/02/16 February 2016
 23/01/16 January 2016
 19/12/15 December 2015
 21/11/15 November 2015
 31/10/15 October 2015

But now we've gone the other way. Goal updates are accompanied by the appearance of the opening goal while box updates do get a nice preview window showcasing some of the prizes. However the standard updates are not accompanied with any pop-up, except for LTOs. This is not good for a couple of reasons - firstly there's a good portion of the playing population who are unaware of the update schedule and may not realise new content is added every Wednesday. Without the notification they may not catch the fresh items before they are relegated to the depths of the market.

The second reason why the lack of pop-ups is irritating is very selfish on my part. In days gone by I would start update posts on this blog with a introductory sentence followed by an image of the notification window. That's out of the question for standard updates now, and so I'm left with a slightly disorganised opening. So if for no other reason than to improve the readability of my blog, please return the weekly notifications Storm8, even if they only appear the once for each update!

 #155: Add more racing cars

A couple of updates back we got a small selection of motor racing stuff, and I found it to be a really interesting and novel theme. But something that was missing was a standalone race car. We got the Pit Crew which features a car being worked on by mechanics and the Hot Rod which includes a girl waving the chequered flag, but no solo car.

Items from racing update as shown on Storm8 Blog

The reason I'd like to see this being added is that it would give us the opportunity to put together a proper racetrack. I realise this is a restaurant game and not a race circuit designer, but since when did we always stick to the sensible in Restaurant Story?! With a number of different types of car we could go on to choose a terrain and surrounding for the track, and present our very own episode of Wacky Races!