Tips for Good Pricing and Earnings for Tycoon Games?

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#1

What are good numbers for pricing items in a tycoon, and what are good numbers for how much players should earn per second or per minute? I want to ensure that the tycoon games I work on have a fair progression/money earning system for players, but I also want to ensure that any players that play the game will spend at least 15-20 minutes trying to buy stuff in the tycoon, as well as have a fair monetization system, where players would be inclined to buy more cash to progress faster, but not to a point that it would be blatantly P2W.

In some of the tycoons I worked on before, the sweet spot tended to be around 55 cash earned every 1.5-3 seconds after maximum upgrades they could get, with the fast majority of items in the tycoon not going over 100,000 cash in cost - the average item was probably anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 cash. With that model, I was able to get around an average play time of 15 minutes (not great), but I was able to get a 1.5-2+ R$ to player ratio. I am thinking of following a similar system, of no more than $100 per second, but have items increase at a certain rate that I am trying to figure out.

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#2

I’ve never made a tycoon, so take this with a grain of salt, but maybe a 1.5:1 cash per minute to price ratio?
It sorta depends on what type of tycoon you’re making, like the classic tycoons (with droppers and such, i.e. prison tycoon), those customizable tycoons (where you get to buy individual shops and fill them out as the game progresses i.e. mall tycoon), or those tower tycoons, (the ones where you have towers with guys you merge that drop stuff, i.e. slime tycoon)

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#3

My tycoon will be using droppers.

One of the things that is a bit challenging, is I calculated how much players would be earning at maximum depending on if they have game passes for special droppers or not.

This being said, not all players will be earning the maximum, as most probably won’t hit the maximum before they leave the game, or simply won’t feel the need to as they go do other things they can do in my game.

It’s a bit difficult trying to figure out how I should price things according to the average player’s earnings, rather than the maximum-cash-upgraded player’s.

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