Big game changes

[Robc]

I want to attract and keep more players and to do that it is important that I listen to feedback from new players. The two most common complaints that I get about TBG are that it takes too long to brew and that it costs real money to add new labels. Well today I am making a couple of very big changes to the game to fix both of these problems.

First, the brewing process has been changed to allow players to ferment their beer in as short as 3 minutes instead of the usual 24 hours. If you select this option then your maximum beer quality will be 300. You will also have the option to allow fermentation to go for one hour or for the full 24 hours. If you elect a one hour fermentation then your beer quality will be capped at 600. Of course if you allow your beer to ferment for the full 24 hours then there is no cap on your beer quality. The most important thing this will do is allow brand new players to have beer ready for sale within a few minutes of finding the game. Many players in the past have not had the patience to wait a full day and they would never return to bottle their batches. I hope that this change will reduce the number of players who depart early while at the same time keeping the same level of challenge for existing players. Players who registered before this update are defaulted to a 24 hour fermentation period but will have the option to choose a quicker fermentation time on every batch. Brand new players will default to the 3 minute fermentation period and will have to opt-in to the longer brew times. The game will remember your last choice and all future batches will be fermented at the time that you selected until you change it again. Kit beers are now set to finish with the fixed fermentation time of 3 minutes and this cannot be changed.

The second really huge change to TBG is the ability for players to buy label credits with brew cash. The online store now has an option to pay $20,000 brew dollars for one label credit. You must have $21,000 in the bank to buy a credit though. I do this to prevent players from spending their last dollar on a credit and then coming to me for help when they immediately go bankrupt afterward.

There were a couple of other bugs that had crept into the game over time that I found and eliminated in this patch as well. New players can once again choose a plain 'Ale' as their first label for example and won't receive a bogus 'invalid style' error. As always thanks to those of you who have stayed with TBG for a long time and please help me out if you find any new problems as a result of this fairly large game patch. I'd also love to hear your feedback on these important changes to the game. Hopefully we will continue to increase game populations with these changes and with some other things that I have on the drawing board now.

Brew beer. Drink beer. Play!

[riverbottom]

does the cleaning time remain the same if the brew/ferment time is changed?

[Robc]

Yes, the cleaning times remain the same.