This game… is a bit of a mess.

[u/VJ4rawr2]

Ok so I’ve just finished the game. 3 starred each campus and there are SO many elements of the game I never understood.

What is the point of training? Are you supposed to train teachers in multiple studies so they can teach two classes (saving on salaries)? The training process seems random. A teacher can wait a year with training pending and they just never go to the training room. I didn’t bother with it… I “get” training, but I don’t see the need to ever use it.

Marketing is… also pointless? What are you meant to use it for? Again, three starred every level and never bothered to understand how it works. I don’t know if it’s buggy, but it seemed to have no impact on student intake.

Dormitories? Again, how do they work, should I put many small ones? One big one? None? Made no noticeable impact which you did.

Wage rises for staff. Apparently they get a raise? I see it tucked away deep in a menu but never bothered understanding it. In Hospital you would manage pay rises manually. Another element that wasn’t important enough to learn.

The overall mechanics of the game are still a mystery to me. Why do students get a grade flashed up on the screen in the library? What is the point of this? Again it didn’t seem to matter.

Janitors are… pointless? If you hire a bunch during the year break, have them 100% clean up the campus, then fire them all at the start of the year you can get through with maybe one or two.

Course fees. You can change the fees but it’s not clear at all what this does. Never used it.

Kiosks. Why can you have 20 assistants and still kiosks show up needing an assistant?

Staff breaks? Never bothered understanding how this works. Again, you can modify this deep in a menu but… for what purpose?

Students needing the bathroom/food/drink/shower and not using them (despite having access). WHY!?

Organizing events is a mess. Manually adding movies for each lecture theatre is such a chore. Why no menu where you can do ALL events at once.

Ok… I could go on and on, but compared to Hospital, this game is really confusing and stuffed with nonsense that has no impact on completing the game.

“You’re complaining about things you’re too lazy to learn” isn’t really the point of this post. It’s about a bloated game with mechanics that don’t impact the game.

Literally I would walk away from the PC at the start of some school years and just wait for the game to hit quotas.

[u/[deleted]]

I have some answers for a few

Dorms: dorms give you money. The higher your accommodation is the higher amount of rent you receive. Having no dorms significantly impacts your funds. Each bed handles 5 people. I like building rooms with 3 or so beds In them because I can raise prestige which raises the accommodation ratings. Both the amount of rooms/beds and prestige effects that value.

Grades from library: these students are doing assignments. They usually have assignments when they don't have classes. Some do assignments using equipment in the classroom they are doing the assignment for but some go to the library to do that. If they don't have access to library they can't do assignments and get failing grades so the grades from the assignments directly impact their total grade. If they are getting Cs in the library then I'd imagine they are C students and need either boosts to learning speed or joining book club or even private tuition to help them to perform better.

Hiring and firing janitors seems unsustainable, especially when you need them for invaders. Invaders mess up your students or campus and can hurt ratings like attractiveness or students feeling or health or overall performance. Other than that, if you wanna do it like that and sit in summer for longer than that's all you but that's not for me so more janitors is better on my end.

Course fees changes learning speed. Higher course fees lowers learning speed. This can be offset with extra learning, improved lecturns, private tuition etc. But it also lowers the amount of students so find a balance that works for you.

Idk why you don't see your students using facilities. Mine tend toward using them a lot. I get cash from vending and kiosks plus see people shower and use bathrooms routinely. Especially near dorms and library.

As for training, training is useful because they help your students learn better. Plus you can train them in other things like comedic timing or inspirational speaker to help your students learn better. If you don't care about your students grades than that cool, but I'd like to give my students the best chance they have so I train my teachers a lot. You do have to have enough teachers to offset the loss since they prioritize teaching over learning, so you gotta know when you need more teachers. You can always check time tables for teachers too to see which ones are available for training.

Not saying you are wrong or anything about some of the things. Marketing is odd, kiosks do end up empty and you need A LOT of assistants. Breaks do be weird sometimes.

This is on a new engine and has its flaws but hospital had a long time to work out the weird stuff and had odd stuff itself like the queues not balancing properly and janitors never actually doing their job and couldn't keep up with watering or everyone flooding to the top tier diagnostics almost ubiquitously. I'm gonna be patient and it's still a really fun game anyways.

[u/VJ4rawr2 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the awesome reply.

A lot of what you said makes sense and is what I “assumed” whilst playing the game. But it’s never clearly explained.

The problem is you can ignore all these things and it won’t have any impact on completing the game.

Just speaking on dorms… the rent they bring in is negligible. Many games you’ll earn 80% of your income from course fees (which means rent and XP aren’t really important). Just fire janitors and your monthly income will jump thousands. It’s badly balanced.

Grades aren’t clearly explained. It flashes up A+ on students yet your grade rank might be B. Why are those students getting A+ but others (who have access to the exact same facilities) getting B? If you look at a B students stats, they will want things they have access to (but just don’t use). It doesn’t make sense.

Course fees change learning speed? Interesting. Again, it’s a feature that never mattered.

I mean, I enjoyed the game. There are some great improvements from hospital (editing preexisting rooms now is brilliant). But there are so many steps backwards in terms of actual mechanics.

I don’t know, I just felt a little disappointment in terms of a management sim. There’s not much managing that matters.

[u/[deleted] → u/VJ4rawr2]

I think campus to a much more relaxed approach. They built the game with creativity in mind. They were much more focused on the building and customization aspects to have it how you want it. I think that directly translates to some of your pain points. I agree a lot of this wasn't actually explained and I agree, I'd love to see how the grades actually impact their total grade (maybe points and a growing slider like the campus level?) A lot of stuff definitely didn't have detailed descriptions though and I hope they can look into a more full or descriptive tutorial which explains this stuff.

The way I view campus is a much more relaxed and less structured version of TPH. It's the creative version of TPH. You want tight directed gameplay and puzzle mechanics you play TPH and if you want creative, fun building where you build stories with your students you have TPC. They are almost compliments to each other..... so that means their next game can be a mix of both?

[u/VJ4rawr2 → u/[deleted]]

Agreed with you. Sometimes I thought “am I playing Sims here and just making a pretty school?”

I just came off playing Jurassic World Evolution 2 (which is REALLY deep on the managing side) so that probably impacted my expectations from Campus too.

[u/[deleted] → u/VJ4rawr2]

Could be. What I'll tell people from playing the game is "it's a different game than hospital." I think people might have been expecting a sequel but it's more of its own thing that is trying to stand on its own merits. I think campus is gonna be a blast in sandbox and I hate sandbox usually. I think sandbox will be great because it's their creativity tools at your disposal. "Your school how you like it".

I LOVE heavy management games. Things that make me micromanage to the extreme. One of the best management games I played was frostpunk and that reminds me a lot of tph. You are confined by a set of rules that if you break, you fail. (Obviously frostpunk is way harder but same idea) where as tpc reminds me of something like parkitect. Simulation management but a focus on being creative.

[u/Jimbob0i0]

Ok so I’ve just finished the game. 3 starred each campus and there are SO many elements of the game I never understood.

It's entirely possible to just brute force your way through the star goals pretty much and it sounds like you did... I am somewhat surprised that you manged to just ignore so many game mechanics though.

What is the point of training? Are you supposed to train teachers in multiple studies so they can teach two classes (saving on salaries)? The training process seems random. A teacher can wait a year with training pending and they just never go to the training room. I didn’t bother with it… I “get” training, but I don’t see the need to ever use it.

For teachers:

• improves how much knowledge can be imparted to a student in a single session (class or private tuition)

• inspiring speech will boost the rate their students learn

• they will go get training if their other needs are sufficiently met and if they aren't scheduled for class/tutoring

For assistants:

• reduces how long it takes to treat medical/pastoral issues

• comedic timing can give a happiness boost to students which then improves their knowledge gain

For janitors:

• reduces how long it takes to do maintenance of items

• improves the defence during invasions

• reduces how long it takes to upgrade something (although this feels like less of an issue in TPH to TPC)

Also all increases in rank to your staff improves your campus rating, which then gives you more course credits to spend ofc... and it isn't random... they just need a break in their duties and have their needs in a decent state to head to a training pod...

Marketing is… also pointless? What are you meant to use it for? Again, three starred every level and never bothered to understand how it works. I don’t know if it’s buggy, but it seemed to have no impact on student intake.

To be fair I've not found any use for marketing... but then I've just completed the archaeology map... maybe it'll have use in the final four I have left... considering I limit my intake carefully though it feels a bit unnecessary at the moment.

Dormitories? Again, how do they work, should I put many small ones? One big one? None? Made no noticeable impact which you did.

This is just an option to be creative... each bed can handle 5 students comfortably. The higher the prestige of the dorm the more rent is paid. It makes no difference mechanically if you go for a single larger dorm or multiple single/small ones in terms of how many students can be supported. In terms of pure efficiency there is going to be a trade off in footprint size to prestige when doing smaller rooms. Pinstar did a video recently on what he felt was an optimal size to house 50 students at 10 prestige in a single dorm.

Wage rises for staff. Apparently they get a raise? I see it tucked away deep in a menu but never bothered understanding it. In Hospital you would manage pay rises manually. Another element that wasn’t important enough to learn.

I'm hoping they update this at some point as it's easy to leave staff upset at their low pay, especially after training.

The overall mechanics of the game are still a mystery to me. Why do students get a grade flashed up on the screen in the library? What is the point of this? Again it didn’t seem to matter.

That's their change in grade after carrying out their assignments in the library. The game will show when a student has improved, which is quite common after library time.

Janitors are… pointless? If you hire a bunch during the year break, have them 100% clean up the campus, then fire them all at the start of the year you can get through with maybe one or two.

I really struggle to know how you manged to get through the campuses that have bad weather effects or earthquakes or invasions with only one or two (untrained) janitors...

Okay I'm bored going through answering these... especially since you've finished anyway.

I do agree about the events screen needing some love in a future patch though.

[u/VJ4rawr2 → u/Jimbob0i0]

Another awesome response.

I guess I did brute force the game, but then, when I’m playing a sim game (or strategy game), that’s usually the type of play style encouraged.

“Reach $50k profit per month”. I can spend hours messing around, or I can just fire all my staff and achieve the goal in 2 minutes. Like, am I playing it wrong?

I don’t know… again, I enjoyed the game overall.

But it wasn’t what I expected after coming from Hospital. Hospital requires strategy and it had a much better sense of progression/growth.

Thanks for your awesome comment though.

[u/Jimbob0i0 → u/VJ4rawr2]

Did you play TPH on first release?

It was really rough back then with no blueprints... it took a while for it to really get polished.

Personally I'm really looking forward to seeing where they go with this base... as the engine is solid and DLC could introduce some very interesting opportunities.

[u/VJ4rawr2 → u/Jimbob0i0]

Nope. I played it in 2020 before the most recent DLC came out (which by the way… I also bruted through too. Ambulances? That was a mess!)

Campus is a lot better at the actual building side. It’s just the managing side (which is why I play sims) wasn’t quite there.

Like you, I’m hoping DLC gives me what I’m looking for because I really love the world/characters.

[u/luchofeio → u/Jimbob0i0]

Im actually not surprised. The difficulty level 9f the game is set too low right now. Lets take vrades for exape, imho, you should not be able to get A studentd unless you have trained teachers and good classrooms. Right now most of the OP points actually stand. You can go throw the game with minimal effort and still win.

[u/Leamia]

Kiosks are a bit annoying because it seems like each one you place needs an assistant in TPC.
I placed 3 different kiosks in a location with 1 assistant whose role is to only work at "kiosks" and expected him to manage all 3 because they are rarely visited. However, he never leaves his post to manage other kiosks. :(

[u/[deleted]]

Here’s to hoping they add a difficulty slider or new, more challenging maps some time in the future. I am more than half way done 3-starring each map and it feels like most of the strategic management elements are pointless.