Dear Retailers! It has been quite some time since the last update, and I apologize for that. A lot has been changed, i have taken a vacation, and had eye surgery that I needed to recover from. So that is the reason behind the lack of updates in the last period. But now the update is ready, and there has also been made actual work that is ready for the next one, so we have not been sitting idle by. But let's move on to the actual changes of this update.

--- Staff Overhaul ---

The focus of this update has been on improving many areas of how your staff works. Many of the changes has largely been based on requests from all of you in the community.

- The role designer

Many of you have been annoyed with your staffs efficiency, where they would stand around if there was nothing more to do. This has been changed with a complete overhaul of their job system.
Now instead of them having one task to do, you can now customize their roles, and create as many as you want. This means that you can have one employee go and unpack articles, and after that task is done, to start selling to the customers in the store. Another employee can selling as the primary task, and refill the displays in the meantime. So the control of which tasks, and how they should prioritize them is entirely up to you.
On top of this, you can assign these on an hourly basis. So an employee can be a restocker from 9-12, and be a cashier from 12-17 if that is what you want. So full control of your staffs tasks in every hour of the day. And for those of you that don't want to go into this level of micromanagement, this system also has the same ease of use as the old one, as you can quicly assign a simple task for the entire day as well.

- The greeter

Thanks to the new system, it is now much easier for me to add new tasks to the game. So one of these additions is the new greeter task.
This finally allows for something many of you have dreamed of for a long, long time. More precisely for you to be able to send your employees outside the store to try and convince the customers to go into the store. So no more standing outside and doing endless conversations to get one more customer into the store.

- New skill system

The old talent system ensured that all staff eventually would be equally good at everything. This gave the feeling of the staff not really having any difference from each other. Instead this has been replaced by a new skill/perk system.
First of all, in this system all staff can do all tasks to begin with. So no more sending them on courses to make them able to stand at the cash register. Instead they have various skill points regarding the various tasks, and learn each skill at various speeds. Yes in time this also means that all staff can become equally good in the end, but it is highly individual when they will reach this point. And to ensure their individuality, various perks have been introduced. This means that each employee can have a set amount of favorite customer types, favorite article categories and specialized perks that makes this person more unique at a certain area. So now it can generate higher profits, if you think more about the scheduling and placement of your employees during the day.

- Staff motivation

During the day it has never really been possible to influence your staff directly during the day. Yes, you had the possibility to send them on a break, but nothing more than that. This has also changed.
Now you can go directly to each employee and conduct personal talks with them. Here you can give them an optimistic morale boost, as well as a stern reminder for them to pick up the pace. This will influence their mood and their new productivity stat they have received. Productivity, combined with familiarity, energy and skill determines how fast they will perform a given task. This will give you a top performance from a happy, productive, well rested worker that has been around for quite some time. So spending time managing your staff in depth can give you an edge which will generate higher profits. Although if this is not your thing, your store should still be able to run rather smooth still. On top of this you can also see the things that currently affect the mood an productivity of your staff, such that you can react on this.

- New courses

With these changes the old courses was obsolete, and frankly, you needed to send your staff on too many courses in general. So this system changed as well.
When your employee has reached a certain level, you can send the person on a course to gain a new set of perks, chosen by you. A different type of course, the Booster Course, has also been added. When an employee has been sent on a booster course, their learning is improved by a lot the following week.

--- Woman's Bottoms ---

For the last update a lot of work has gone into adding a women's clothing category. However it was not finished. Now the addition of a new set of items has been added.
This completes this category so far.

--- Bugs and ideas ---

As usual, bugs might be hiding around somewhere after a major update like this, and i will be ready to fix major issues quickly, so don't hesitate to report anything you might find, both here and on our Discord. Also feedback and ideas are as always very welcome.

--- Up next ---

As mentioned we have already prepared at bit for the next update. My graphics artist has been spending a lot of time on upgrading the characters in the game, so the future will bring much better and different characters, customizable uniforms, morphing system for heads, allowing you to customize the face of characters, improved hairstyles and more.
This will hopefully bring the game to a whole new level of graphics. After this it's time to take a look at the environments of the city, and add more of these, as well as adding more content to the corporation mode in general. That was it for now. I really hope you will enjoy the new changes to the game. Don't hesitate to join our Discord!
So until next time, happy sales. //Daniel

[ 2021-10-18 14:02:23 CET ] [ Original post ]