Dear Retailers!

It is Friday, and as promised, here is a follow-up update to our 0.4.0 release.

It seems like the faster game day speed, starter stores, and multiple complexity levels have been very well received. We have also received a lot of good feedback during the week, and we have used it to make a number of further improvements.


Instead of only adjusting complexity, you can now also adjust the actual difficulty of the game. You can make customers and employees easier or harder to manage, depending on how you want to play.


Many players go through all tutorials, but with starter stores, you really only need the basic ones to get going. Because of that, we moved some tutorials into an advanced category, so new players can focus on the most important things first.


Some areas needed balancing adjustments. Electronics in particular had some cases where certain products were hard to sell and gave strange profit results. That has now been corrected. Employee energy and happiness have also received a small boost, and base customer traffic in starter stores has been increased a little.


Unreal defaults to unlimited FPS, which is why some players felt like the game was pushing their PC too hard. This could already be changed in the options, but it is now set to 60 FPS by default. I have also tried to improve loading times when starting the game for the first time. That said, the game still has more than 3,500 products to process, so it will still take a bit of time.


A number of smaller improvements have also been added. You can now set cart amounts in one place, the summary screen remembers your last selection, news messages will tell you if you are selling products at a negative profit, and customer collision has been removed so the camera will no longer zoom in when they walk nearby.

Overall, this update should make King of Retail 2 smoother, clearer, and easier to get into from the very beginning.

That was all from me for this week :)

Have a nice weekend, and I hope you get some great sales in your shops.

Kind regards
Daniel


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Here is the update log for those who are interested:

Major
Added an overall difficulty setting, allowing customers to shop more or less, reputation to increase faster or slower, and employee happiness and mood to be easier or harder to manage.

Minor
Default FPS is now set to 60 (can still be changed in the options)
Removed camera collision on NPCs
Added a field to set all cart item amounts at once
Separated tutorials into Basic and Advanced to avoid information overload for new players
Adjusted the one-day guides for scenarios
Added a reset-to-default-price button on the product overview
Summary screen now remembers the last selected category
Optimized first-time startup loading times
News messages now also report products with low profits

Balancing
Save games from before 0.4.0 will not take as long to adjust to the new values
Starter stores now have higher default corporation confidence
Added a bigger variety of products to the electronics starter store to avoid unlucky random product selection
All components now have proper versioning trends
Breaks now restore more energy
Nights now restore more energy
Adjusted component prices and average profit values
Adjusted help needs for components and phones
Existing newer stores now receive a bonus to local knowledge to improve game pace

Bugs
You can no longer access the staff bar while performing tasks
Trends now update correctly after loading
Products now use seeds for randomized pricing, so price adjustments keep a consistent range
Splitters are now copied together with displays

Dear Retailers,

After 3 months of hard work, update 0.4.0 is finally available for you to enjoy. In this update, we have focused on some of the biggest issues you have raised, and tried to address those before continuing further along the roadmap.

The main topics we have focused on are:

- Starter Stores
- Better game feedback
- Improved employee management tools
- Adjustable game settings

This update also includes many other additions and improvements, which I will go through further down in the post.



Many of you have said that the beginning of the game can feel tedious or overwhelming, with setting up the store, filling it with inventory, finding the right products, and placing your first orders.

Some of you simply want to get started and begin making sales sooner.

To support that, we have created a set of preset stores that you can jump straight into.
There is now a bakery, a clothing store, a cosmetics store, and an electronics store available as starter options.

That should bring some welcome contrast to the empty gray concrete block you have been used to so far.


A major issue for many players has been the complexity of the game. Another common point of feedback was the pace of the game day. Some felt that the day moved too slowly, while others felt that the level of detail required to manage everything properly became overwhelming.

To help with this, you can now adjust the game in 3 different areas:

1. Game speed
Originally, the game used 4 seconds per in-game minute. That is still available, but you can now also play at 2 seconds per minute, making the day feel closer to the original King of Retail and significantly more action-packed.

2. Product / customer complexity
Compared to the original game, King of Retail 2 added dynamic trends and individual customer segment attraction per product. You can still play with the full system, but you can now also scale it back to a simpler Price / Quality-only simulation, similar to the first game.

3. Employee management level
Some players would prefer to spend less time managing employees. To support that, we have introduced different employee simulation levels. At the simplest level, you only negotiate wages instead of full contracts, fewer job roles are available, and schedule desires and schedule satisfaction are removed.

With these settings, you should now be able to tailor the game much more to your own preferences.

Like managing staff, but not diving too deep into products? Covered.
Like min-maxing products, but want employees to stay simpler? Covered.
Like faster, more intense days? Covered.
Prefer a slower pace? Covered.

Hopefully this makes the game more enjoyable in the way YOU want to play it.



The next topic is game clarity.

Adjusting prices, understanding customer needs, and figuring out what to improve in your stores could often feel difficult and unguided. To help with this, we have made several changes:

1. Improved many menus to provide much clearer feedback on your decisions.
2. Added customer feedback, so customers will now tell you what they liked and disliked about their shopping trip.
3. Overhauled the End of Day screen, turning it into a central hub where you can access the most important information in one place.

This should make it MUCH easier to run your stores without needing to search through multiple screens to find the information you need.


Some of you reached a point where your stores became larger and larger, and managing many employees with the existing tools became too difficult.

To improve that, we have added the following:

1. A centralized scheduling screen where you can manage all employees in one place.

2. A conversation system that allows you to talk to, negotiate with, promote, and transfer your employees. This finally adds a proper way to do inter-store staff management.

3. A reworked employee overview screen. It now follows a more classic layout like the one from the original game, but with much more added on top. You can now sort, filter, collapse sections, and choose which stats you want to see.

4. Employee feedback. Your employees will now let you know how they are doing during the day, how they feel overall, and they can also send you messages through the End of Day screen.

All of this should make it MUCH easier to manage a larger workforce.


We have continued expanding the electronics selection and added a MUCH larger range of products for you to bring into your stores.

We have also expanded the selection of storage units and delivery units, so the option to go both faster and larger is now there.


I plan to do an extra update on Friday to address some of the issues that may come up based on your feedback to this patch.

After that, we can finally begin working on the HQ part of the roadmap.
That means advertising & marketing, HQ managers, multiple concepts, concept talents, and much more, bringing your management options to a whole new level.


That was all for now.

This is by far our biggest update yet, and we hope you will enjoy all the changes. We will continue listening to your feedback, and we know there are still more areas to improve. That work will continue.

So please let us know what you think here on Steam, or join our Discord and help us make King of Retail 2 even better.

Thank you all for being part of the journey, and I hope you will have some great sales in your stores.

Kind regards,
Daniel

Feel free to join our Discord here:

[discord.gg]
And for those who would like to dive deeper, here is the complete update log for this patch (almost complete, as I occasionally forget to write something down):

## Major
- Removed all restrictions on decoration placement
- Added new delivery units of various capacities
- Added staff renegotiations
- Added staff promotions
- You can now transfer employees between your stores
- Added a staff conversation system
- Added a screen for editing schedules for all employees in one store
- In-store schedule view now uses a new screen with sorting functionality
- Added an option to select in-game day speed
- Added starting scenarios with pre-built starter stores
- Added simulation depth option for products
- Added simulation depth level for employees
- Added new refrigerated storage options
- Added new basic shelves
- Simulated stores now simulate each individual customer's shopping pattern
- Stores and concepts now gain experience and levels
- Added a new End of Day screen with much more information
- Full staff parameter changes: Happiness, Mood, Familiarity, Energy, and Productivity now change overnight and during the day
- Concepts now specialize and become positioned based on your decisions
- You can now see customer thoughts and feedback about the store

## Minor
- You can now see all products the customer has when overlapping
- Adjusted spacing between speed buttons and store name to reduce misclicks
- Changed the grouped button on the Customer Flow screen
- Added an info button for the Customer Flow screen
- Save games are now sorted by last played when opening the load game screen
- Removed the "Stand by caller" availability contract option. Everyone will have that option, but may be dissatisfied when it happens
- When hiring a new employee, sliders are now set to meet initial demands
- Removed the "Task preference" section from employees
- Added employment statistics to the contract screen
- Changed employee skills
- Added tooltips to basic staff parameters
- Initial contracts now set default happiness and mood
- You can now sort employees in the overview by role, team, wage, seniority, skill, base parameters, and name
- Added information tips to all elements in the product viewer
- Replaced Hype with Luxury in the product viewer
- Added expected price range to the product info screen
- Day simulation now respects game speed
- Fields that are not part of the selected product simulation level are now hidden or grayed out
- Added text values for reputation scores in graphs
- Added info texts to reputations
- Added segment tooltips when hovering a segment in the radial chart
- Improved profile pictures
- Added individual day modifiers
- Population of 0 within the influence ring still spawns an occasional customer
- Store selector on the computer now shows level and reputation
- Reputations are now available on the computer
- Assign cash register priority levels. Employees will use these when opening cash registers
- Added low contract satisfaction message on End of Day
- Offer desired wage to employee directly from End of Day
- Added employee birthday message on End of Day
- Added option to offer birthday presents to employees
- Added trainee period completion message on End of Day
- Shortened setup store tutorial
- Employees now have hobbies
- Employees now tell marital status
- Employees now share what is good/bad right now, and what is good/bad overall
- Increased visibility of HQ and store city pins

## Balancing
- Customers now on average have higher needs for high-reputation items
- Adjusted values for increasing reputations
- Employees should now be more varied in top-level skills
- Work ethic influences initial productivity when hired
- Increased capacity of refrigerated storage units
- Increased randomness in which products customers look at
- Changed customer choosing and taking calculations
- Reducing price below the expected range now adds a higher bonus to chance of sale
- Price randomization of expensive products will no longer place them in the high-penalty zone
- Changed evaluation of how customers choose which product to look at
- Aggressive sales game now has 3 steps down from 5
- Product category reputation now averages based on which products you sell, instead of just being a race to 100%
- Familiarity increases faster, and is now also based on nearby leader skill
- Employee relationships now have more distinct types (hated/loved by all, etc.)
- Energy regeneration now depends on health skill
- Employee parameter changes now happen twice per hour to make them flow more smoothly
- Customer skin now starts aging 10 years later
- Failing to help a customer who asks for help will fail the next sale
- Productivity now affects checkout speed
- Productivity now affects sales speed
- Increased sales skill improvement speed
- Team leaders now increase skill learning speed of team members
- Increased effect of a good sale
- Reduced customer tiredness boost from a good sale
- Sales game speed increases each time a customer is helped
- Initial sales game speed now depends on customer segments
- Schedule satisfaction now starts at 1 and counts down based on unmet needs
- More lenient break/work ratio allowed

## Visuals
- Updated negotiation screen
- Updated contract screen
- Updated employee overview screen
- Updated recruitment screen
- Updated End of Day screen
- Updated product info screen
- Updated KPI screen and added customer thoughts to it
- Updated main computer UI
- Updated customer interaction screen
- Updated ordering screen

## New products
- CPUs
- Motherboards
- RAM
- Keyboards
- Mice
- Hard Drives
- Network Cards
- Phones
- King of Retail 1 and 2 as computer games

## AI
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on the filled status of displays they walk past
- Customers base checkout satisfaction on employee friendliness, scanning speed, and queue time before checkout
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on store crowdedness
- Customers base sales satisfaction on sales interaction skill and personality
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on product price/quality range
- Employees go to their assigned areas immediately
- Employees no longer only look at which customer is closest, but also at how long the raised hand has been waiting when deciding who to help

## Bugs
- Some fruits were missing their box
- Loading graphics options while pausing the game no longer causes them not to load
- Closing the "Save Game" screen in the store no longer forces normal speed
- Team orders now have a close button
- Customer Flow now updates properly when toggling grouped/non-grouped
- Customer Flow now displays properly when opening the screen
- Article info on computer no longer has a return button initially
- Fixed metal floor that could only be black
- Contract clauses now save/load properly
- Adaptability skill now properly affects familiarity speed increase
- You can again inspect hovered products on the computer
- Hovering products in carts now shows detail overlay
- Fixed bug that caused customer reputations to fluctuate between days
- Customers now calculate proper distance to registers
- Some settings no longer override all values of schedule satisfaction
- Removed potential crash when a simulated store has 0 customers
- Removed bug requiring multiple clicks for unpacking, depending on the first product in queue
- Product decorations are working again
- Doors could sometimes block each other for no apparent reason in build mode
- High talents worked in reverse
- Big sales now force the customer to look at the suggested product following the sale
- Customers now stop looking for products immediately if none are remotely interesting to them
- No longer seeing the inside of your own head
- Local knowledge now shows proper segment values
- Customer Flow analytics now properly sums all customers when grouped
- Fixed bug where closing elevator menu after selecting floor would lock the elevator and game
- Fixed bug where employees would only help a customer once
- Silent radio station is now actually silent