Suggestions Box (Sep 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...

 #181: Mark on sale decorations in market

Before I delve into this opening suggestion, it should be said that we all greatly appreciate the sale that has become a staple part of the weekly update of late. But recently there has been a problem, particularly with regards to the floor decoration deals - they aren't marked in the market.

Tunnel Playset on sale in market

This means that if you accidentally tap away the notification of the sale without reading it (and we've all done that!) then you're left with no idea what item the special offer is on, at least until the next time the pop up appears. That's obviously not good, especially because of the length of the floor decorations tab these days. Unless you've got a keen eye and sharp memory spotting the on sale piece is nigh on impossible without a banner over it.

Plus the lack of a timescale on when an item is going to return to the full price can be frustrating. I still don't know exactly when these deals typically finish, and would hate to be in a position where I'm frantically trying to earn gems in order to get a quality decoration which could lose its cut-down price at any moment.

This lack of marking doesn't work out well for Storm8 either. At the end of the day marking an item on sale is essentially a form of advertising. The aim is undoubtedly to encourage players to spend their real cash on gems in order to purchase discounted content. But if said players don't know what's being flogged they're not exactly going to dive into their wallets and purses!

So I'd like the gamemakers to start attaching a banner to on sale content again. It's not a new concept, but that makes it all the more straightforward for Storm8 to reinstate it.

 #182: Add delete all option for wall posts

I'm one of those players who's happy to let their wall reach the post limit, even if that means it gets a little scruffy. But there are scores of players out there who do like to keep things neat, and my good neighbour The Red Chair is among them.

She came up with a simple yet highly effective suggestion, which is a delete all button for wall posts. I believe that up to the last 100 posts are shown on your wall, so the process of deleting them all individually after being away from the game for a period is a real expenditure of unnecessary effort. For those who like to stay on top of things a delete all button would really simplify proceedings while it might encourage some who are more lazy on this front (ahem, like myself!) to be more organised when it comes to their wall.

 #183: Add more disguised counters

This is inspired by the Stacked Trunks Counter which was introduced a fortnight ago. One of the most striking attributes of this counter is that without food on top it could quite easily be mistaken for a floor decoration featuring a pile of cases. That got me wondering about other counters which share that characteristic, and for my money there are very few.

Disguised counters

In addition to those shown above you could perhaps include some of the glass box counters that have something inside them, but I feel there are so many of them now that it's pretty clear they're counters.

So there's not many disguised counters to be had. It would be great if the game's developers could work on some counters that could pass as floor decorations. Rightly or wrongly counters are often an afterthought for me when it comes to decorating, but some more disguised ones could well change all that.

 #184: Allow content to be rotated prior buying

Jantiene Witzen is never far away from her next excellent idea for the Suggestions Box, and this is another which I can't believe I didn't come up with before! Whilst browsing the market it can be really frustrating trying to envisage what an item is going to look like once rotated. Sometimes you can feel that a decoration will only work the other way from the default, and nobody wants to fork out a bag of gems to find that rotated an item doesn't look the way they'd expected.

 Previous Suggestions Box posts

 13/08/16 August 2016
 16/07/16 July 2016
 26/06/16 June 2016
 14/05/16 May 2016
 16/04/16 April 2016

I'm not sure how easy or difficult it would be for Storm8 to implement the option to rotate content prior to purchase, but looking at Restaurant Story 2 I can't imagine it would be that tricky. You can't actually do this in the sequel game either, but when pulling an item out of the market over there the rotate icon does appear above the object. Unfortunately it's faded out so you can't spin before buying, but this is definitely something the game's developers should work on across the Story games.

 #185: Allow door to be locked

How many times do you see players asking about the mechanics of blocking the door to the diner? Well, it's a lot, and this alone indicates that there's a market for this suggestion.

At present to prevent the bots devouring your rising counters of food there are three standout methods - block the door with an item, block the customers' path to any chairs, or remove all your chairs. However the game is not designed for the first of these, meaning that your growing feast could disappear without any coins given. And the other solutions mean losing your customer satisfaction rating.

Main door at The Garlic Tree

So there's definitely scope for an official locking mechanism that prevent the gannets from getting in. This would allow players to build up their counters high and proud, or alternatively keep their counters stacked while they take leave from the app. I'd definitely find a use for this, and I suspect many others would too.