Welcome to your new job. This time, someone shows you around.
Day one has a reputation. Some of you told us you had no idea what was going on, that Stapley's advice went by faster than you could read it, and that chaos "spiked out of nowhere" with no clue how to put it out.
You were right. We had our scripted test player play a nervous first shift, and it hit the same wall: once the queue got away from it, chaos went from 0 to 100 in about 40 seconds. Every spike set off the next one before anyone could see why. So this update is about the first day.
NEW: ORIENTATION
An optional practice run before your first real shift. It's ticked by default in New Shift on a new profile.
- The clock is stopped. Nothing is saved. Nothing counts. Nobody gets fired. (Yet.)
- Stapley gives you one instruction at a time and waits until you've done it: read a ticket and pick the right quick fix, work a ticket by hand, survive a morning rush over capacity, find out what the flame in the tray means, buy your first automation and reboot a struggling server.
- Skip it whenever you like. Either way, the real day one won't repeat the tips it already covered.
CHAOS NOW COMES WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER
For the record: chaos mostly comes from holding more tickets than your capacity, even when every server is fine and nothing is late. Get back under capacity and it cools off by itself. The game now actually tells you that.
- When you're over capacity, the ticket window says so: a red OVER CAPACITY 14/6 panel instead of a one-pixel line nobody saw.
- Hover over the chaos flame in the tray and it tells you exactly what's feeding it and how to stop it: the queue, a downed server, late tickets.
- Chaos spike warnings say the same thing, so a spike is never a mystery.
DAY ONE IS FAIRER
- Chaos spikes now come at least 40 seconds apart, so one incident can't set off the next before you've dealt with it.
- A queue that's badly over capacity raises chaos at a steady rate instead of faster and faster.
- On day one, the first chaos spike is a warning, not an incident.
- Stapley now tells you about the thing that's on fire first, and saves the tour of the office for later. Teaching tips also wait for a quiet moment instead of arriving back to back. He's been spoken to. He didn't take it well.
Your career balance is unchanged: Intern, Sysadmin and Damned last as long as they did before. Damned is still Damned. You asked for this.
Thanks to everyone who wrote a review, especially the long, honest, slightly furious ones. They're how we found this.
Clock in. You're already behind.