Unlike many games of the genre, it is a voluntary sissification game, allowing you a lot of liberty prior to "storyline driven" sissification, which I understand is not the kind of content some might enjoy. In game guidance would probably help get things started faster too.
As of the money issue, balance in the matter is still very finicky and honestly, I don't know what to do at this point. Everybody agrees there are income balance issues, but no one agrees on the size of the issue, yet alone gives me suggestions onhow to improve things. I have done some balancing in the past, but once again, I think in game guidance might be able to solve some of the frustration entailed.
Thank you for the feedback!
I mean, not for nothing, but I can probably help you with your income balance issues. I think the first thing to begin with is what is your goal for game play length. IIRC, your game does a day to day basis, so you want something to generate a daily income, for weekly upkeeps and monthly school fees (again going by memory from awhile back, no idea what you've changed).
Begin with how much content you reasonably have for over what period of time (and hopefully you have some sort of end game goal, like you should reach an ending in X amount of days, or at least have a bench mark where you can switch into systems). Typically with business in general in real life, something that would suit a game like yours that works from the ground up is a stepping system, where for each benchmark reflects a quality of life change in the overall game.
Example:
Let's say the first month is dedicated to you 1) discovering your identity 2) honing skills to support that identity, be that whatever lifestyle you're choosing to reflect. I believe it is very poor and trashy at first, and your goals are more or less to make your tuition payments within this time period as well as make weekly rent.
Each week as you can open better opportunities, be they work related, or caming/whoring, or just finding a sugar mommy/daddy to take care of you, within 30 days, you want your player to hit a stable income proficiency where if they didn't cop out, the reward is probably a better standard of living. Be that in the form of new apartment, stability, clothes, better camming equipment, etc.
so then you move on to the next month, where your goal now is that you have those resources to be able to afford the next higher quality of life you want your players to reasonably achieve. Be it pay off the tuition, qualifying for better pay, etc. and you use this month to transition into the next tier of living, like going from ratty apartment to better quality one, possibly a house, possibly moving in with one of the story characters.
Honestly, I haven't played your game in awhile to actually give you any specific details, at the bare minimum if you want me to help you figure out what your inflation and economic rates are though, I would at least need you to outline that much of your where your development is headed. Once you have your benchmarks/length of overall game planned out, it becomes easier to come up with a formula and what players need to hit to progress. Even if you change your mind and add and tweak things, like make it longer or shorter, those can be adapted easily enough, but first a skeleton needs to be in place so we can plan the overall growth and determine if you want that changed through story, player agency, or a mix of the two. When people are complaining about grinding, I would suggest you have in game events that provide some opportunities that will then give the player agency to afford whatever quality of life they are going for.
I think one of the things I remember you having issues with balancing was the cam girl thing...the thing is, that honestly can be super lucrative, a dedicated cam girl could definitely make way more than a typical college student and there is a reason why stripping tends to be a popular way to pay for tuition without taking out a huge loan. so that kind of game play needs to reflect what it is though: high risk and high reward, I think you had high reward without the risk at first, and to compensate you took away the reward but still didn't add the risk, that's just tedious and removes the viability of what that kind of position was supposed to provide.
There is a lot more I can say, but I am not sure how helpful any of this is for you and its turning into a big wall of text. I can discuss more with you about it as I have time, ultimately I can help hammer out your economy but it needs a baseline first to figure out its sustainability.
