A few suggestions from a brand new player of the genre

Hi people, I hope you are doing well today.

I am writing to drop a few comments about the game as well as input some suggestions that might improve game-play.

I am a new player of the Democracy series, and have never played Democracy 1, 2 and 3. The game is fun for me for the first day, but the fun slowly diminishes. If you ask me, I would say this is slightly disappointing, but I do feel the game offers a great idea of gameplay and is quite unique in its theme.

These are the problems that I feel when playing as a new player.

  1. It feels like the game is more like the playing as the “executive branch of a democracy.” It seems like you have the power to pass laws and policies whenever you have the political capital. But it is not exactly like this in reality, is it? When the democrats, for example, want to introduce universal healthcare, they need to pass bills in the congress. They need to address the Republicans’ opposition and perhaps need to pass a few legislation that the Republicans want in exchange. The fact that the legislative branch is non-existent confounds me in a game called “Democracy,” which should include a separation of power that the player needs to navigate through. Also, the court is also non-existent. When I impose tougher gun laws, it is likely that I would be challenged in the court through judicial review in the US. But in this game, I can just take away this fundamental rights of the Americans by adjusting the slider. I just feel the game, as it is now, lacks these elements that are so core to how we understand democracy.

  2. I played both Britain and the US. One of the biggest disappointment is that I feel no difference when playing the two countries. Yes, these two countries have different starting problems to solve and different political systems in the game(for example, the British have unlimited terms). But I feel like, other than these, the game offers little variations for both countries. The British monarchy is basically non-existent. I am sure that the British parliamentary system is different and has different favor than the American Congress system. Yet, I do not feel any nuances being accounted for in the game. I feel like I am just playing the same country. The difference is just that I start with different social and economic and health problems.

  3. Elections feel too easy for me. I have won by 100%, which is never possible in reality. As a outsider of this game, this is quite confounding for me as well.

Because the game lacks the depths and variabilities that I mentioned above, I quickly get bored to it as a new player, even though I was so thrilled to try this game on. I hope these help provide a perspective as a new member of your community.

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@cliffski I’m not sure how, but some people end up posting in uncategorized section.
https://forums.positech.co.uk/c/uncategorized/1

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Game difficulty is being worked on.

Everything you mentioned under your first point is pretty much exclusive to America or a few other countries with rigid two-party systems. Everywhere else in the world coalition governents (made up of multiple parties with somewhat similar views) are way more common. When I enter my party name in the setup screen, I always view it as the majority coalition, not a single party. The reason american parties have to cooperate even when one has a majority in the legislative branch is because of your wierd fillibusters and supermajorities. These restrictions don’t exist if multiple parties are already cooperating in the excecutive branch, so including them would be weird.

The countries feeling the same probably also comes down to difficulty, when the game is so easy you can do whatever you want you will always play your same favorite playstyle.

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Thanks for the feedback. Difficulty is definitely too easy, but this will change a lot in build 1.09 coming soon.

The British monarchy is totally irrelevant. Reading about our ‘unwritten constitution’ does give people the idea that the queen ahs some sort of power but she has absolutely none in practice. Its basically just a charade where the prime minister meets her once a week for about 20 minutes to chat, she reads out the governments speech (the ‘queens speech’ is written by the government), and she rubber stamps absolutely every bill that is ever submitted, and always will.

Our UK system is actually fairly similar to the US, except we have less of a 2 party system, and our 2nd chamber is entirely unelected, but then they have no real long term power either.

I agree we do need more differentiation though. That will come from country-specific dilemmas, events etc. The US doesn’t get the royal family events and dilemmas, for example, and UK does not get the keystone pipeline dilemma.

barely, as far as I can tell… It’s basically Tories vs. Labour.

Yeah mostly, but we had a coalition government quiet recently, which is NOWHERE on the horizon for the US :smiley: