Fellow GoVenture entrepreneurs, we have some big upgrades on Tuesday, March 7 at 9:00am ET (GMT-4). These upgrades require a full game RESET. This means that all player, business, and game data will be deleted. All companies, sales, inventory, bxp, logins, … everything will be gone.
We will give you a few days notice before the RESET will happen. We will post this notice in the game header, send an in-game message, and a regular email to all players.
As soon as the RESET happens, we will all have the opportunity to start fresh. You will start from the point of creating your login and holding company name, then proceed to the tutorial and continue into the full game (just as you did when you first joined). You cannot skip the tutorial, but you can go through it more quickly if you are already familiar with it … but we recommend that you take it slow and capture as much wisdom as you can.
We are doing a RESET because some bugs in the early beta allowed players to generate huge profits that normally should not be possible. With these bugs cleaned up, the gameplay will be much more balanced and make for a better experience for everyone. We do not know if we will need to do another reset in the future, but we will certainly give you lots of notice if we do. The game will remain in beta for now.
Bug Fixes & New Features
Items marked with this red circle were added or modified in the text below on Feb 13, 2017.
Navigation
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There are a number of speed improvements throughout the game, but the biggest improvement is a shortcut we have added on the business screen. You can now jump from one business to another with just 2 clicks and less waiting because you do not have to navigate back to the Manage or Boardroom screens.
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Messages and Chat now appear in the TABLET popup window. This allows you to chat and manage messages while on any other screen - much more convenient!
Business Progression
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The six options available for Manufacturing Stations, R&D Stations, Retail Signage, and Salespeople now have a one-time setup cost (g money) required to implement each of them. All new businesses start with all of these options turned OFF and you have to pay g money to ADD them to your business.
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Once added, Manufacturing businesses incur a per-unit cost (just as they did before) and Retail businesses incur a per day cost (just as they did before).
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Once turned ON for the first time, there is no cost to turn them OFF or ON (but you will always incur the per unit or per day fee while turned ON).
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This feature will make it more expensive for businesses to create higher quality products and products with more features, thereby providing more differentiation between businesses and making it a tougher decision whether to invest in expanding an existing business or starting a new business. Same with Retail businesses.
Start New Business
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The bxp and g money required to start a new business has been better scaled so that you have to continue to increase your bxp before you are able to start a new business.
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Some business types require more bxp and g money than others.
Economy
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The entire economy has been reworked to fix bugs and provide proper balance. Players should no longer be able to generate unrealistic revenue and profits.
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The MARKET DEMAND in each country has been corrected so that some countries are not unreasonably high or low. To clarify, the game still uses the same real-world economic data where countries with high GDPs still have higher MARKET DEMAND than those with lower GDPs, but we have fixed bugs that were assigning too much or too little DEMAND to some countries.
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VIRTUAL CONSUMERS are more price sensitive so that when the product selling price exceeds a reasonable (fair) price threshold, the number of sales made by a Retail business will decrease. To clarify, businesses can still set a high price if they want, just not an unreasonably high price (as compared to the Cost of Goods). There are no price caps on Manufacturing businesses, meaning they can set any price they want (but Retailers won’t be able to pay an unreasonably high price since the Virtual Consumers won’t buy at such a price). The price effects in the game will not be disclosed so players will have to experiment to figure out the right approach (just as real entrepreneurs do).
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Countries with small GDP will be able to support at least 1 car sale per day GT. Part of this was accomplished by reducing the number of CONSUMER GROUPS in these countries. Depending on the current GDP of a country, it will have anywhere from 1 to 10 CONSUMER GROUPS. As the global economy grows with new players joining, more CONSUMER GROUPS will be added to each country based on its current GDP. For example, a country may start with only 1 Consumer Group and then when its GDP reaches a particular (undisclosed) value, it will increase to 2 Consumer Groups, then 3, etc, up to a maximum of 10. It is also possible that a country will have the number of Consumer Groups reduced if businesses shut down or leave that country, or players become inactive. Players should monitor the CONSUMER PROFILES report to discover changes in the Consumer Groups as time goes on.
Stock Market
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When issuing Stock on the PRIMARY MARKET, the Holding Company issuing the stock will only be able to set a share price that is plus or minus 25% of TOTAL EQUITY of the Holding Company (as per the Balance Sheet).
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When posting Stock for sale on the SECONDARY MARKET, the seller can set the share price to plus or minus 25% of TOTAL EQUITY of the Holding Company (as per the Balance Sheet) as of the time the stock is posted.
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This means you cannot attempt to sell a stock for significantly more or less than the fundamental value of the company based on its EQUITY which equals ASSETS minus LIABILITIES.
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The reason we have maximum and minimum thresholds is so that stock price cannot be easily manipulated by players trying to artificially inflate or deflate prices.
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If a company has zero or negative equity, the maximum and minimum prices will be based upon TOTAL EQUITY of g100,000.
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In the future, we may build a more sophisticated stock market system, but the current system should work well for now.
Bond Market
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When a Bond is first issued, the PRICE will be set to g1,000. This matches the FACE VALUE of the Bond. All Bonds in GoVenture World have a fixed Face Value of g1,000. Previous to this change, players were able to issue Bonds at PRICE that was different than the FACE VALUE for sale on the PRIMARY MARKET, as this provides an opportunity to discount the Bond to make it more attractive. With the new change, all Bonds on the PRIMARY MARKET will be priced at g1,000. Bonds can be differentiated by their COUPON RATE and the reputation of the Holding Company issuing the Bond.
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When a Bond is posted for sale on the SECONDARY MARKET, the player selling the Bond can choose any PRICE they want, but there will be a MAXIMUM PRICE allowed. Posting a Bond for sale on the SECONDARY MARKET does not guarantee that another player will purchase the Bond, so it is always in the best interests of the seller to set a PRICE that is attractive enough to motivate buyers, but we also want to minimize the possibility of a Bond being unreasonably overpriced. The MAXIMUM PRICE will be based on the YIELD of the BOND. The YIELD is essentially the total cash value of the bond from the time in which it is to be posted for sale to the date of MATURITY. Example: FACE VALUE of g1,000 + COUPON RATE of 10% for 2 YEARS means the total cash value is g1,200, assuming the Bond issuer will pay the full COUPON INTEREST and FACE VALUE as required (which is never guaranteed). Note that if a Bond sits on the SECONDARY MARKET unsold for a long period of time, it is possible that its MAXIMUM PRICE will be exceeded (because one or more COUPON INTEREST payouts may have been made since the Bond was posted for sale), so players should always do their own assessments on the value of Bonds and other securities.
Trademarks
Registration is now enabled.
Purchase Orders
Dates added to make it easier to manage time.
Brand Score
Has been better refined.
Courses
Now reward the proper bxp and cash.
Bankruptcy
Law Firms cannot purchase bankrupt businesses for which they are trustees.
Business Reports
Fixed a bug that allowed other players to view business reports they should not normally have access to.
What’s Next?
We will continue to monitor the above to make sure the gameplay is properly balanced. With the big issues out of the way, we will now start to focus on refining specific gameplay items and expanding the business types available in the game.