Hello all, it's Cassel, developer of <Ratopia>.
September is already upon us. It feels like time is flying by. While we've been rushing to develop content, we've had little time to add the great ideas that the players have provided. Therefore, throughout August, we decided to focus on developing the features suggested by the players. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who sent in their ideas once again.


"mamegatana" who suggested many ideas along with cute illustrations.


As we organize the various feedback we've received, we're realizing once again just how many compelling ideas there are. We are also going through a lot of discussions and decision-making processes within the team on how to best incorporate them into the game. In this journal, we will cover the Trading Post and Prosperity Reward Systems that are currently under development.



The Trading Post is a new structure designed to temporarily alleviate economic difficulties by allowing players to sell unnecessary resources in the early stages of the game. It also helps resolve situations where players are unable to progress due to the unavailability of certain resources. Many players have consistently provided feedback about the difficulty of obtaining specific resources and the necessity of early-game trading. While we have worked on improving the exploration and trade systems to address this, there remained the issue that these systems were still not fully accessible in the early stages.

To address this, we decided to add a Trading Post where players can trade with wandering merchants right from the beginning. This way, the Trading Post can serve as a stepping stone before players advance to the diplomacy and trade stages. However, to achieve this, we first needed to establish the trading mechanics for the Trading Post, which led to several considerations.

The first consideration was the range of resources that could be purchased at the Trading Post. After a long development period, there are now over 150 types of resources in <Ratopia>, and since the terrain changes with each game, it is challenging to predict which resources players will need. Allowing all in-game resources to be purchasable at the Trading Post would diminish the necessity of gathering or producing resources. On the other hand, if only a few resources were made available for purchase, it would not significantly reduce the difficulty of obtaining certain resources, which was the initial problem.


You can buy all these resources at the trading post—could this be a revolution in logistics?


To improve this, it was necessary to limit the types of resources that merchants could bring to the Trading Post. We first categorized merchants into different types, such as food merchants and gatherable goods merchants, and set it up so that a different merchant would visit each day. Each merchant would then trade only items that matched their specific category.

Even after categorizing the merchants’ goods, there were still over 30 types of gatherable and processed resources, which gave the Trading Post too much impact compared to the Trade Center, a structure available in the later stages. To maintain balance, we decided to limit the number of resource types a merchant could bring to a maximum of eight. Additionally, the types of resources they bring would change randomly with each visit. This way, planned trades could be conducted through the Trade Center, while more spontaneous trades could be done via the Trading Post.

However, adding randomness to the Trading Post introduced a new inconvenience: players now have to visit the Trading Post directly to check the resources brought by the merchants. While providing a notification message to inform players of the resources available for trade with the wandering merchants would be the most straightforward solution, there were concerns that if we displayed daily notifications about which merchant arrived and what resources they brought, the sheer volume of notifications appearing in the late game could become overwhelming.

To address this, we considered displaying the resources available for sale directly on the Trading Post building. We decided to indicate the type of merchant currently present by showing their appearance or emblem on the Trading Post. Additionally, we placed boxes with icons of the available resources around the building so that players could see what items are being sold even from a distance. We anticipate that this will reduce the instances of players making unnecessary trips to the Trading Post. However, we are a bit concerned that the size of the boxes might be too small to be clearly visible from afar.


We also paid attention to the details where surrounding decorations change depending on the visiting merchant.


The second consideration was the trading method. We wanted to avoid allowing transactions using Pia at the Trading Post. This was because we didn't want the Trading Post to become a building that generates Pia. We believed that if trading with Pia were possible, players would repeatedly exchange endlessly regenerating resources for Pia. Therefore, we thought it would be better to make transactions based on a barter system, allowing players to recycle unnecessary resources.

However, it was quite challenging to obtain Pia before building the Mint or the Trade Center, and we realized that the users who provided feedback likely wanted to acquire Pia through the Trading Post. So, we decided to allow players to earn Pia through the Trading Post as well, but we set the amount of Pia that could be obtained from merchants to be relatively small for testing purposes. Additionally, by designing it so that the more a player buys resources from a merchant, the more Pia the merchant has, we could still encourage the intended barter system.


Various UI mockups created to explore different ways of trading.


There were also issues with the UI design when trying to smoothly implement the barter system. For bartering to work well, both the items possessed by the merchant and the player, along with the items to be traded, need to be displayed on the screen simultaneously for easy use. However, adapting the existing UI resulted in insufficient space, limiting the number of items that could be traded at once and making the controls cumbersome. It became clear that we needed to create a completely new UI, but developing a new UI would take a considerable amount of time, making it challenging to implement. However, if trading was done with Pia, we could separate the buying and selling screens, allowing us to quickly test by adapting the existing UI. Although it was a bit inconvenient, there were no functional issues, so we decided to put the barter system on hold.

The final issue was that it became too easy to gain research points through trading. In <Ratopia**>**, players get research points when they acquire a resource for the first time. However, during testing with a somewhat finalized Trading Post, we found that it was much easier to buy items one by one from the Trading Post to gain research points than to painstakingly find or produce the new resources.

The original intention of this system was to encourage players to keep exploring their city for new resources to gather and produce, rather than idly waiting for research points to accumulate over time. However, as the methods for obtaining new resources became more varied and easier, the necessity for players to gather or produce resources diminished.

We seriously considered removing the system of gaining research points through acquiring new resources altogether. However, this seemed like too drastic a change to the game due to the addition of the Trading Post, and we couldn't make that decision lightly. For some players, the game could become frustrating if progress was suddenly blocked due to a lack of research points. We are still contemplating whether it's okay to leave this issue as is or if there is a good alternative to reduce this problem.


The final look of the trading post! The size of the trading post had to be doubled for the visibility.


It would be ideal if the Trading Post could serve its original intended purpose effectively, but we are both hopeful and concerned about whether it will fulfill its role properly. What do you think about this?



The Milestone system began as an idea from an email sent by a player who has long enjoyed playing <Ratropolis>. This player suggested that the Prosperity rewards in <Ratopia> could be made more special and diverse, like "artifacts" in other games, to provide a unique experience in each playthrough. Appropriately, <Ratopia> is a game that aims to offer a new experience each time, and because of its high difficulty and frequent updates, many players often start from the beginning. Therefore, we decided to actively consider and incorporate this player's feedback.

Coincidentally, the existing Prosperity reward system was in need of improvement. After reaching Prosperity Level 5, the maximum number of Ratizens in the city would no longer increase, meaning that raising Prosperity further only made enemies stronger without providing any significant benefits to the city. We saw this as a perfect opportunity to adjust the maximum Raitizen limit for each level of Prosperity, allowing the maximum population to continue increasing even in the later stages. By allowing players to choose their rewards, they could experience new styles of play, achieving two goals at once.


Engaging games that offer a change in gameplay direction through choices.


The Milestone system allows players to choose one of three predetermined rewards each time their Prosperity level increases. For example, when reaching Prosperity Level 2, the following rewards might be offered as choices:

- Path of Expansion: Increases the maximum number of Ratizens and the speed at which Ratizens are acquired, allowing for faster early expansion.
- Path of Gathering: Permanently boosts the gathering speed of Ratizens, making plant gathering a key growth driver.
- Path of Education: Enhances the abilities and growth speed of Ratizens, leading to improved overall efficiency as the game progresses.

However, having fixed rewards for each Milestone at different Prosperity levels made it challenging to design rewards for higher Prosperity levels. As the game progresses, it becomes difficult to predict the extent of a player's development based on their Prosperity level, increasing the likelihood of offering irrelevant rewards as Milestone choices.

For instance, we wanted to introduce a Milestone related to power usage to encourage players to start using power before they actually needed it. However, by the time this choice became available, players might have already developed to the power stage or, conversely, might be too far behind. This posed a risk where the Milestone system would end up reinforcing the current operational direction of the city rather than bringing about new changes in future gameplay.

To address this issue, we grouped the Milestones that could appear according to the player’s Prosperity level (e.g., 2, 3, 4 / 5, 6, 7 / 8, 9) and allowed players to choose one Milestone from a set of three randomly selected options within each group. Additionally, we introduced a refresh function that allows players to replace an unwanted Milestone a limited number of times, aiming to reduce the frustration of receiving an undesirable Milestone while still offering the excitement of discovering a desirable one.


Mockups designed to make selecting milestones visually more enjoyable.


Designing the effects of these Milestones required a lot of thought and a variety of ideas. The core concept was to offer rewards so appealing that they might inspire players to change the direction of their city management. However, features that could significantly alter gameplay became too technically complex to implement. It was disappointing that the system intended to offer a new experience couldn’t go beyond adjusting existing mechanics and stats.

Given the limitations of deriving features from the existing system, we experimented with various approaches. For instance, we tried adding higher tiers and conditions for the appearance of each Milestone, so that choosing "Path of Gathering Lv.1" would lead to the appearance of "Path of Gathering Lv.2" later on. We also tested allowing the same Milestone to be selected multiple times, thereby amplifying its effects.

However, due to the inherent randomness in the Milestone selection process, players might feel significant disappointment if higher-tier Milestones didn’t appear. This approach also tended to reinforce the initial city management direction chosen in the early game, which wasn’t the intention. Additionally, there was the problem that the appeal of individual Milestones was diminished when higher tiers or repeated selections were not utilized.


Police rapidly catching criminals thanks to the accumulated effects of the Paths of Law.


For now, we decided to provide significant adjustable values to create a more varied and enjoyable experience. During testing, I found that making choices at each Milestone stage led to more thoughtful and enjoyable gameplay. However, perhaps due to my own expectations, I felt slightly disappointed that the rewards were not fresh enough to drastically change the existing play style.

We are still brainstorming and adding more compelling ideas for Milestone effects, so if you have any creative ideas for these effects, please leave them in the comments. Your valuable feedback will greatly help us make the game more fun!


We plan to continue reviewing and incorporating the various feedback and ideas we have received. One piece of feedback that stood out to me was the suggestion for a reward system for defeating invading enemies. I hope to introduce related content in the next DevDiary!