Check-in Shop Demand - Major surge when run out of seats - Delaying Passengers & Impacting other sales

So this started with suspecting a bug based on the following situation with sales in a large airport, around 20 stands with the check-in area shown in two screenshots below :slight_smile: (This example is a slightly expanded version of NCA Cyprus Nicosia Airport that can be found in the content forum). Have posted this in Beta 7 forum but feel it is more suitable as a general support discussion here.

Current Sales Situation, based on “less” seating in check-in hall. The imbalance is triggered. Further below is the like comparison changing onto the check-in hall seating capacity.

Pre Security Franchise Sales (1 of each type, departure customers only)
Shop Sales 1,500+
Food Sales 300-400

Secure Area Franchise Sales (total for around 3-4 of each type, departure customers only - fully segregated)
Shop Sales 500
Food Sales 900

The issue is if the passenger hasn’t a seat available to wait for check-in (when they pause at the transit structure waiting to walk into terminal), they will instead of waiting, stampede to the shop immediately and use up the demand immediately :wink: They also stampede the café but to a lesser extent.

There will be far more important things to tweak and focus on I’m sure. But I’ll live in hope that a tweak might be possible to prevent this “waiting outside, craving a shop” situation, maybe it’s a side effect of the improvements made to franchise demand over reason versions. Ideally if passengers only start to crave franchises once they start entering terminal. Unless of course it’s a chair shop :wink:

Here is the simple, like for like comparison demonstrating how pre-check-in seating capacity for passengers, causes major head aches for pre-security franchises.

Enough seats for every passenger waiting to check-in
Shop sales pre-security = 229

Not enough seats for every passenger
Shop sales pre-security = 1100+

Welcome other players to experiment with this. Try remove seats, or significantly increasing seats in your non-secure check-in areas. Run the a few game days to allow adjustment and the results could be similar.

Do we maybe need a minor background tweak to when the craving of franchise shop/food begins to generate only once a passenger has a “target destination” in the terminal aiming for (either a vacant seat, or the check-in desk). It appears passengers only proceed into the terminal once they have either of those targets? Whilst there is a realism element of increased sales from boredom and lack of seats, I don’t think we can realistically provide thousands of seats in a check-in hall to prevent this “over influence”. 10 medium stands can be 10x150=1500+ passengers if flights aren’t staggered.

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So, you’d rather pay to build seats for your passengers so they can not spend their tired time wandering through the store buying more stuff while they’re waiting and have nothing else to do? I’d venture this is actually working exactly as an airport functions. And honestly, I’d have little difficulty with it as an airport administrator. They can rest on the plane. For now, I have to make sure my vendors can pay their rent by not building systems that make it harder for them to do that.

And on top of that, you’re paying for the construction of the physical airport so they can sit and wait and not spend more money…

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I think you are misunderstanding the reason I am posting this.

The demand is entirely correct. The issue is that it shifts dramatically from gradually timed across the passengers time in the airport, to being immediate seeking shop/cafe before anything else.

Instead of waiting at the transit structures before coming into the airport to either check in or sit down briefly and wait for the desks to open. They now rush into franchises. Far more heavily the shop but also to a smaller extent the food outlets.

Once theyve made that rush to them, they get stuck in queues and miss check in or security. Or, they have spent their demand. This comes at a major cost to all the franchises after security waiting for gates to open.

The factor which determins this shift, is if there is a seat or not to trigger the passenger entering the terminal.

Until beta 6 or 7, pre security franchise sales would be more modest. Most passengers realistically would wait until after security and browse shops or buy food. We actually used to need to provide seats pre check-in to encourage passengers to come sit and wait and encourage sales. Now, that has flipped around and if there is no seats they rush to the shop.

This is entirely about the timing of the demand being shifted in a recent beta version, not the actual demand itself.

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That’s something which should be again.
I mean who is going to use shops in the public area when he/she is flying away? Everyone wants to enter the secured area as quick as possible and use the shops there. As you cannot buy drinks, “knifes”, alcohol etc. and then go through security with it. You buy it after the security.

The pre security shopping should mainly be used by visitors.

The restaurants ok, but mainly only until x minutes before opening of the check in. if queues are getting too long, passengers should be able to cancel the waiting process when the check in opens.

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Yeah, that is simply my concern that it is so significantly impacted in latest versions by pre security seat availability. As shown in examples the result same game situation but with different seating offering is quote a difference.

Run out of seats = run to the shops (then some to the cafe) rather than wait at the transit like they used to

Otherwise… the enhancements to franchise demand and selection is brilliant and has really improved.

This is just one gremlin that sneaks out at us :wink:

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No seats vs plenty seats it’s such a big impact on franchises, far more so the shop demand from passengers otherwise that would wait outside for a seat or check-in to open as they used to. Must be a unexpected side effect of other enhancements to franchise demand?

Really hope this can be improved before full release otherwise it’s a real head ache. Assume in both examples, we have 4,500 approx departure passengers (half of the total which I think combines ARR and DEP?), then divide this into the 3 waves of flights, the first wave checks in before the franchise open hours, so 3,127 potential departing customers for the pre-check-in franchises. The cafe works perfectly and proportionate, the shop is a drastic change in the experiment below…

Example 1 - No pre-check-in seats (This also causes delay in clearing security search area, further impacting secure zone sales)
TOTAL DAILY PASSENGERS 9476 (COMBINED)
Check-in Shop Sales = 2,334
Check-in Cafe Sales = 245
Secure Departures Zones Shop Sales = 90
Secure Departures Zone Cafe Sales = 580

Example 2 - Substantial pre-check-in seats (More than enough for every single passenger, more so than other airport areas)
TOTAL DAILY PASSENGERS 9318 (COMBINED)
Check-in Shop Sales = 202
Check-in Cafe Sales = 269
Secure Departures Zones Shop Sales = 170
Secure Departures Zone Cafe Sales = 690

@andyc maybe give similar experiment a try on a safe save game? :slight_smile: I’ve no issue with the 200 or so pre-security sales that’s reasonable as a game world, but it’s the impact between the two examples based purely on seating.

Sorry developers to be so persistent with this, but it’s quite the frustration to have to work around only since more recent versions. Hopefully this experiment and numbers break down might be of use to better demonstrate the situation :slight_smile: It is not airport/save game specific.

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@craigwats I will say your math observation about dividing the franchise sales shops relating to the time open for the franchise is quite spot on. I run 4 waves of large birds and depending on when they fall, I miss both sides of a 1/4 of the passengers, possibly up to half of the passenger volume.

Shops has been something I have fumbled with in this game since they were a thing. Can never seem to figure out the math/layout on them. I remember seeing people get insane numbers and I couldn’t get hardly a person into a shop. i’m also watching some interesting dynamic in how much the passengers will prioritize the flight pathing and ignore the other stuff, but when they get to the stand waiting area, they start to realize they need stuff. Then if they’re stuck in the international zone that I was experimenting making for each stand individually, I was toast.

Never a dull problem moment in this game, that’s for sure.

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For me its more the issue that if they cant find a seat before check in they no longer wait outside, they stampede the shop.

Hopefully the developers can tweak this to revert back to how it used to be. They need to stay waiting outside from their transit like they used to and that would solve this issue. The maths speaks for itself that lack of pre security seating, it has a substantial impact

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I recognize that there is still a discrepancy with this particular configuration and that the initial adjustments we made were good in general. However, I don’t like making multiple large changes based on one single point of reference, we have thousands of airports out there, new players and tutorial progression to take into account and I’m not really seeing any complaints on this system apart from this topic. It’s not that I don’t recognize the issue, it’s more so that large changes based on one airport tend to have the reverse effect of what you want to do as multiple airports across the player base in return start having issues instead.

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Thanks appreciate reply. As ive said it is great the enhancement its just shame we have to provide enough seats for every checking in customer when they first arrive, that is the only frustration.

They used to all wait outside if no seats left which personal preference for me was that worked great. As no airport anywhere provides everyone a seat in that location.

Understood though and I fully agree the benefits of the changes outweigh this one side effect. It is more that this small factor of providing seats pre-checkin has such a big impact on franchises throughout the “journey”. But appreciate reply :slight_smile:

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I can probably revisit this after the beta 8 rotation, we’ll not be making any large changes now to systems as we’re anticipating the transition to 1.0 next week, but I can probably take another look at it post full release and see if we can balance it further. Just ping me in this thread in a few weeks if I forget it! :slight_smile:

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Just curious @Olof is this bug report noticed on the .5 experimental version, related to this? Or was it more a matter of store type?

  • [ACEO-42158] - Passengers always perform purchases regardless of business class and content at store

The notes from the player initially sound familiar about pre check in sales :slight_smile:

No, that issue was related to the fact that all passengers always made purchases to the stores they visited regardless of its content. A section of the code that defines a passengers likelihood to purchase a product at that store had not been properly included - which was the fix! :slight_smile:

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Might this be reviewed sometime :slight_smile: The demand itself is perfect until this glitch is triggered, but as soon as the pre-check-in seats are taken, 99% of passengers turning up at airport go straight to any open shop franchises

Just to summarise for any new players to not confuse this with the imbalances already addressed…

  1. Passengers turning up via transit or carparks will enter terminal to take a seat, or wait outside for check-in to open if all the seats taken (Some will proceed to a bathroom, or a food franchise, a realistic amount). This has been the sensible and playable system since the early days of ACEO.
  2. If you have a shop in your check-in location, as soon as the last waiting seat is taken before check-in, every remaining passenger outside will suddenly stampede your shop rather than continuing to wait. You can verify this by clicking your shop room and it will highlight all passengers turning up as they rush to the shop.
  3. PROBLEM: You now have 99% of the remaining passengers turning up for check-in, surge towards a shop first, consuming all of the shop demand before they have even checked in. They are also likely to get stuck in an insane queue at the shop and miss/delay their flight.

I’d suggest experimenting with this, remove most your seats from your areas around check-in (or anywhere not in the secure zone), and watch what happens with a shop, or without a shop on the same save game. You’ll see the impacts

I am not at all complaining about the complicated and continuously evolved shop/food/bathroom demand. The issue I have and think other plays may begin to notice, is that this glitch triggers a nightmare chain reaction across airports. It’s the perfect crime, leaves no trace :wink: Big credit to the developers for how the demand has been improved very well over time. It’s why I refer to this as a “Glitch”.

Ideal solution - the shop demand only starts once they’ve entered the terminal (once check-in open, or they’ve came taken a seat, or bathroom/care). This is how it used to work, and this is how it still works for bathroom and cafe demand which is very well balanced.

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