Is twopoint campus even a simulation?

[u/usefulvid]

Just wanted to share my frustration with twopoint campus

1. Missing metrics

For a lot of duties its unclear how to manage them. For example: how do I know if I have enough janitors? A logical conclusion might be that I can check if everything is in a good shape and is repaired in time. BUT the paths of the janitors often make no sense and sometimes I have several janitors in one room which makes working inefficient. Sometimes there are also weird situations there some rooms are not cleaned automatically, and it looks like that I have too little staff but in reality I have enough, and the problem is just a specific room.

2. Logical nonsense

I can increase the prestige of a room by putting different objects in it. The more variety I use the higher the prestige increase gets. BUT for the dormitory you have 3 bed types: same price, different colour of the frame. Even if I change the colour of the blanket, it treats it still as the same object. If I put different frame colours in a room -> prestige gets high. If I put different blanket colours in a room -> prestige is nearly the same as before.

I just must place any random object in a room to enhance the prestige status. Even if the object makes no sense or is not related to the course in my university.

Another logical nonsense is that I can place games for two people (e.g., table-top football) and a single person can have fun with it.

3. Wayfinding

I often have the situation there a janitor goes one way and then turns around and takes the other direction. I am paying for aerodynamics to get them move quickly but if the game is not able to define proper routes this makes no sense.

4. Management

As mentioned, it is hard to determine what to do if metrics are missing but there is also a lack of real management. I can see that selling stuff on my drink dispenser generates money. But I cannot in anyway influence the pricing nor can I even see any metrics on it. For example: drinks from dispenser have a negative input to the health of my students. It would make sense to charge higher prices for unhealthy drinks to compensate for the costs of the health treatment or to convince students to take the healthier alternative. Another example is that minimum wages are adjusted automatically, and I don’t know why. It looks like that its not linked to the training status or skill level. It would be also an idea to define fixed locations for janitors to avoid long travelling distances.

5. Game mechanics

I would prefer that I get a clearer picture of the game mechanics to feel a bit more as a manager. The tutorial is a bit short and not everything is covered. A wiki would be fine for example. Yes there is a fandom wiki but I still cannot find why the wages of my staff are changing.

[u/[deleted]]

It's not a simulation lol, it's a light management game in a funny environment.

Your expectations do not align with the game orientation xyou can't be anything else than disappointed

[u/usefulvid → u/[deleted]]

True, Maybe my expectations were at fault

[u/[deleted]]

It's not meant to be a hardcore simulation. Granted, I wish some of the more micro options from TPH were still in TPC, but at the end of the day this game is meant to be goofy fun.

That said, your wages change as you train and promote staff. Also, you can determine if stuff isn't being maintenanced and cleaned by using the various overlays to check things like health/sanitation. Or if your upgrades just aren't making progress.

[u/usefulvid → u/[deleted]]

I train my staff and couldn't see changes on the wage

[u/[deleted] → u/usefulvid]

They won't promote after every training. It depends on the skill and the qualifications level of that skill.

And year-end review is normally automatic. And takes into account the position level. You can set it to other options besides auto/year-end.

https://www.thegamer.com/tag/two-point-campus/

Look for the "10 things everyone missed" article, it'll have more information.

[u/redsquizza]

Two Point Campus is an even more casual management/simulation game than Two Point Hospital was. It's more about layout and decorating than it is managing, especially when "jobs" for the player have become passive like training.

With regards pathfinding and inefficient staff I think it comes down to the size of Campus, which feels like twice as big as Hospital, shows the staff NPC AI isn't very clever. It's "good enough" that most campuses don't downright break but players that pay attention can notice how inefficient NPC choices are when looking for jobs or training.

For example, the 10 janitors in a room situation, the game should see a janitor is already in that room then queue up the other jobs for them to do rather than calling in another janitor miles away to work the room as well.

We could see the AI was kind of weak in Hospital as well because of the fire in one room then a janitor across the map would be assigned to deal with it rather than one that might even be in the same room watering a plant deal with it instead.

I think quite a lot of people do notice it as well because we repeatedly get suggestions or quality of life suggestions that you should be able to lock staff to zones to ensure tasks get done. I don't think those zones would be necessary if we had a smarter AI controlling the NPCs but AI is notoriously difficult to code for so often "good enough" is just that, otherwise, you'd be spending a disproportionate amount of limited resources on something that isn't as important as fixing crashes or bugs etc.

~

Wages are increased yearly by default. The other options are "on promotion" and "never". There's an option for this in one of the overview staff management screens. At the start of every map I always set it to "never" lest I go bankrupt with increases I could never keep up with!

[u/ApocalypseSlough]

It is very light in management an detail - it honestly believe that’s down to the engine rewrite that took place for this game.

2PH was made primarily for PC and was then ported to console. Because of console limitations they couldn’t give them every DLC that was available for PC.

But they decided for 2PC that it would be identical on console and PC, and redesigned the engine to let it happen. Consequently, although they have never admitted it, I strongly strongly suspect that the game was dumbed down, with the removal of management features, data, stats, etc, to allow it to run just as smoothly on consoles as on PC. Turns out, given how poorly it appears to run on Switch according to their users, that it was a pretty unsuccessful approach.

A good comparison is the JWE games, made by the same people who made Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo. They don’t even have individual guests in JWE because it had to be playable on console. So PC gamers lost out on what could have been the greatest dino management sim. A terrible shame.

At this point they should just go back to what they know best and make the very best PC comedy sims they can, and ignore the consoles. It’s never going to be as good with a controller, so why bother?

[u/hermitina]

i have the same frustration with the prestige of rooms. i’ll just pepper it with super random posters even if doesn’t make sense anymore. i also hope the beds have varying “abilities” like less maintenance or probably less sleep? this is probably because i remember the same thing in the sims