Baked goods cannot be put on sale as a whole anymore (only portioned) - after Birthday Update

[Starwing]

I just want the option to sell whole or portioned. Of course, I want to sell whole more often, and that’s why I hired employees to keep up with the demand as the cafe grew. After the update, I have employees with nothing to do most of the time. Okay, I HAD employees. I dismissed them because their wages are way too high when all I can sell are cake pieces and coffee servings.

My employees were high in baking and coffee art skills, but not maxed out. I think they were at level 6 in both baking and coffee art, and their daily wages were between 800 and 1000 mew. (One was earning a bit more.)

The employees had nothing to do but take the majority of my earnings.

This is definitely a bug and not something working as intended. If they want us to earn less, then the employee wages have to be adjusted. I don’t think we should have to exploit their labour by reducing their wages to compensate for this annoying bug.

But I’ve got to say it:

I’ve noticed the devs constantly reducing the money zois can earn. They killed off the lottery so you can’t win enough to bother ever buying a ticket. They did the same to criminals extorting money. I haven’t tried it, but I watch a Let’s Play where the extortion dropped from a few thousand to a few hundred. Considering the extreme risk of the extortion interaction, that makes it almost not worth that player’s trouble.

This is definitely something I’ll be vocal about in this week’s Brainstorming thread on Discord, since no one ever notices their own forums.

[Starwing]

@anibea528

No, I meant a different one, it’s longer. Sorry, I can’t take a screenshot The product card name directly states that it’s a cake display case. It might not be in the business products section, but in the city decorations category. I remember there were many different shelves for a store, a bakery, a clothing store.

I think you must mean this.

This is only a display item and already includes display cakes when you place it. This isn’t in the business items section because it’s not used by the business feature.

I’m pretty sure I saw that display and a few others in a bakery in Bliss Bay and my zoi couldn’t purchase from those cases or certain other displays of baked goods. It’s for decorative purposes. It looks nice and that’s all its really for.

[tatyana-gold]

I can assume which showcase you’re talking about — it’s the one that opens when a business receives its 4th star.

[RealmOfZoi]

I confirm the annoying issue.

[VIBES]

@Starwing

I just want the option to sell whole or portioned.

Yes, this would be awesome - especially for the bakeries

[anibea528]

That’s true, the world economy is really important. From the very start, it seemed to me that something was off with the money. Before, the cost of living was very low while the game gave you plenty of money at the beginning. Then they significantly reduced earnings, but that didn’t lead to balance at all. Something needs to be done about this.

[EllaEstella]

This would be the big display with 8 slots. But I don’t think that we will be able to place whole dishes / cakes for sale in this one either as @anibea528 suggested.

Cannot test it now though as in my current save I am not yet at 4 stars.

[EllaEstella]

I fully agree with you @Starwing. These change makes running a bakery not much fun anymore. We are limited on the profits and having empoyees is way to expensive. If I look at my material costs + the wages + the business fee vs the menu sales there is nearly no profit or even a loss per day. Even worse when we count in the other new bug where employees overwrite goods already placed for sale with newly baked / cooked items.

Currently the only way to run a profitable business seems to be with paid services such as massages or lectures. With these options we can still earn a lot of money fast but the profits have been lowered quite significantly as well (for the lectures).

@anibea528 as you said the balance seems somehow off at the moment. There are still strategies which give you very quick and fast money so that you can live in a mansion after one week playing while others let you live your whole life with not less work but not being able to afford it. I don’t know… Or they wanted to give us the realism that not every work gives you the same potential for earning a lot of money

[Starwing]

The economy has always been off. I think the cost of food, walls, and windows are good. Potentially all structural elements in Build Mode, but I’m not too sure. But the furnishings are way-out-of-whack. Some things are way too affordable, while others way too expensive.

I think all economic balancing could be done in the Build Mode catalogue. Then if the devs still feel things are too easy, the next thing to do is add more ways to enjoy discretionary spending. Going out to eat, watch movies, buy gifts from businesses (including the Pocket Market gifts and maybe more), and eventually, pay for vacations, owning a boat (where there’s water), etc. will take care of the rest very nicely, I think!

@anibea528

That’s true, the world economy is really important. From the very start, it seemed to me that something was off with the money. Before, the cost of living was very low while the game gave you plenty of money at the beginning. Then they significantly reduced earnings, but that didn’t lead to balance at all. Something needs to be done about this.

The reduction in earnings is just because we’re forced to sell only portions. We know this is a bug because there’s an option to sell both whole or portioned, and the bug only appeared after the introduction of a special cake that includes a special message when cut open. The anniversary cake is my #1 Suspect.

The earnings from selling my coffee items, which were always single servings, have remained the same.

I made the comment simply out of concern and uneasiness about the situation.

@EllaEstella

@anibea528 as you said the balance seems somehow off at the moment. There are still strategies which give you very quick and fast money so that you can live in a mansion after one week playing while others let you live your whole life with not less work but not being able to afford it. I don’t know… Or they wanted to give us the realism that not every work gives you the same potential for earning a lot of money

@EllaEstella That made me chuckle at the end of your message. It’s certainly true that not all work has the same potential and that’s true with the “off-camera” careers too. We can’t control our hours for those jobs, so some their earnings potential varies and can be a lot lower than what a business owner would earn from a successful business. In some cases, it makes a lot of sense.

I don’t consider owned businesses to be a freelance career, but I think it’s strange that the freelance earning methods keep taking hits. It makes zero sense in a game that has money cheats! It should be that players who don’t want to worry about money use money cheats, and players who want to earn what their zois get find ways to earn what they need to get what they want for their zois (even if it’s to save up for those very difficult wealth ambitions).

The freelance sales for crafted goods like tools, etc. are extremely difficult now because of a Bug they haven’t fixed or acknowledged that came with the October update and made it so customers cannot haggle on prices. For the freelance sales, negotiated prices are most of the income! But after the business feature was added, the negotiation interaction broke, and hardly anyone would buy an advanced tool made from anything above iron.

The criminal freelance career has taken many hits from what I saw on my friend’s videos. The money from bank robberies went down, extortion went down, etc. Soon it’ll be the stolen cars being worth only a few hundred.

Maybe farming is still profitable, but that’s the hardest work in the game!

Anyhow, those freelance methods should be ways that players who love to play to earn what their zois get help fill the gaps the basic off-screen jobs leave open. Why not have a job to go to three days a week, and then use some other method on iher off days to make more money. If it’s criminal and they end up in jail and lose their basic job, oh well!

[EllaEstella]

@Starwing I didn’t know that the crime career also took a hit after the last update. After doing my skill guide for crime I was actually surprised how profitable it is once you reach a certain level. And for this skill it actually made a lot of sense to be off the balance in the sense that you can earn a whole lot of money really fast. At the end you also have to live with the risk and sometimes consequences.

As for other ways to earn money fast I think we still have some freelancer ways to get rich fast (if there haven’t been even more changes on this). From my observation painting is quite crazy. Once you reach level 10, easy to get 50k or more per week with only a couple of hours of work per day when selling via Pocket Market. Crafting tools is also very profitable: even if you buy the materials one gold pickaxe brings 800k profit for 17 min work when you sell directly via inventory. But here I fully agree that the fun is gone for this freelance option since the selling via the market stand was broken back in October and was never fixed…. And gardening is only really profitable if you sell excellent and perfect bonsai trees via pocket market.

As for the other freelance relevant skills I would have liked some more variance. For programming, writing, media production, instruments, performance: would have been nice if there would be at least a small chance to hit a bestseller / a masterpiece from time to time. But it is ok for living if you don’t aim to become super rich.

And with the owned business only options left for getting rich are paid services. With lectures it is quite easy to get 15k or more per business day. Massages are also quite Ok. But the pure shop / café / bakery idea is not really worth it anymore.

[VIBES]

I finally managed to take some pics of whole cakes being sold in one of my previous saves - please can we sell whole cakes again?

[EllaEstella]

That was so much better!!! I really hope this is fixed soon. It is no fun to have a bakery anymore also in combination with the other bugs concerning the employee behavior, quality not displayed correctly etc.

[VIBES]

It was so much better ..!!

[Taibak]

That was soooo much better. I agree.

[NyushaDm]

The business is broken. It needs radical fixing.