A few suggestions that need to be heard!

Democracy 4 Alpha Feedback
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  1. More information on effects:
    When gaining or losing a positive or negative effect, rather than just a a short paragraph stating what happened, please show the effects it is having.
  • For example, I always like to clear obesity first since its an easy hurtle to clear. When I click on next turn I just get a message saying: We are happy to report that obesity problem now seems to be under control. No additional information provided so If I wasn’t paying attention to it how am I suppose to know what effect that corrected?

  1. Music:
    Don’t use the title music in the actual game play, its a bit obnoxious. More cool low brow or shady dealings vibe would flow much better, heck make the music follow how everyone is feeling, bad job = depressing/dark music, happy people is more up-step.

  2. Portrait Artwork:
    I don’t know who did the artwork for your cabinet ministers or who signed on off on it, but they are just so unappealing to the eyes like they all have the same British dentist and got beat with the ugly stick. Even male politicians wear make up when they go on camera, could we please do something to make them look more normal.

  3. Numerical values:
    We have graphs and data everywhere, but no numerical values. Could that be an option we add from -100 to 100 for the effects of each policy? Would be easier to understand so we can see a positive/negative effect how strong it actually is and the actual value its generating than just visual line graphs.

  4. Surplus Benefits:
    Please create a positive benefit for when you get your country out of debt. Its hard to do it and then no real reward if you do. We should be able to invest the surplus into a variety of things which provides benefits and risks.

  • In example: Investing in other countries can generate positive foreign relations at risk of that countries enemies seeing you as a threat and sanctioning or going to war with you. Dump funds into infrastructure to further clear up traffic conditions and increasing GDP at risk of short term increasing traffic congestion or wasting money with poorly managed construction. Increase Minister income to increase their Loyalty and political capital at the cost of effectiveness & corruption. Purchasing Political Capital at the expense of losing cabinet loyalty.
    The possibilities are endless!

  1. More information with GDP:
    Could we please have more information with the GDP, its has a huge impact on almost everything and so many values effect it, its hard to get a sense of it and how to make real change. Also, when the economy is down, what can we do stabilize or push out of recession? What gov decisions puts us into a recession or Boom Times?

  2. Negatives that are actual positives:
    When we are looking at effects of different policies, we only see green for increase and red for decrease. Can we add a new color (blue) for a left pointing ‘negative effect’ that is an actual positive?

  • For example: Health Food Subsidies increases health in Green going right and decreases Obesity in red going left. Red and going left looks like a negative and more advanced policies with multiple effects would be alot easier to visually weight the benefits if a blue bar going left took its places so we can visually calculate that as a positive effect.

  1. More info on canceling policies:
    Canceling a policy pops-up a warning about are you sure you want to scrap this policy. Could it also show under that pop-up the effects it would cause by canceling the policy?

  2. Alternative policies for non-cost effective policies:
    Other policies to supplement cost ineffective programs. State pensions, health services military spending etc are very costly, why not scrap those policies and instead make incentives for private pensions, hospitals, mercenaries to handle those things for less cost than state run at the risk of increasing corruption and organized crime?

  3. Secondary benefits:
    More 2ndary benefits from getting a green positive. Some are hard to obtain and keep, could we add secondary benefits for keeping up and maintaining positive effects?

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I think you’ve put this in the wrong game. This is production line, why not bring your post over to the Democracy 4 Forum? And delete the post here.

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I thought it was the actual game after post 1 because I didn’t understand it. Like the actual production line :joy:

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Thanks for the feedback and suggestions!

All of the minister artwork is actually based on pr photos of real politicians around the world. Depending where you are from, you may recognize some of them.
There is a famous quote saying politics is the movie business for ugly people :D.

Basically this is what normal people look like, and by your comment about british dentists that I assume is from the 1950s… you are from the US? Actually no, US politicians are not not all supermodels. Take a look a Bernie Sanders. Or Mitch McConnell. These are not brad-pitt contenders!

Most video games deliberately make everyone unreasonable attractive and sexualised and we deliberately do not do that. This is what average people look like :D.

Regarding the colors for different effects… we really have no choice but to only have green for going up and red for going down. Everything else involves us making a value judgement on what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’, which introduces developer bias.
Is smoking going down good? is alcohol consumption going down good? is immigration going down good? It depends on your personal opinion :smiley:

FWIW the game does already use different music based on how popular you are, at three different levels. And I’m pretty sure the games title music is only used on an election win. Otherwise its just for the main menu stuff.

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Top shows its in Democracy 4 forum, check again?

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Yeah, now it seems to be in D4. Earlier it was in Production Line.

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Wow I didn’t know that, and sorry if I came off harsh. There be some ugly people making are lives hell! :smiley: I was just making fun, I’m from cali so I bought this game because I’m tired of all our crazy politics and want to make my own oasis. Its alot easier to draw realistic people beautiful than ugly I think.

I see your point it makes it kinda hard to determine what is good and what isn’t, so I would say perhaps provide the option that allows the user to select what is good or bad based on their goals?

Didn’t know that about the music, thank you for the clarification.

How about the rest of the post? I think I had some other goodies in there that would be harder to shoot down. :slight_smile:

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I also get fulfillment when I imagine living in my own political paradise where I know my opponent won’t pull anything. :wink:

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I hear you, I’m kinda tired of the two party system. I want to take the best from both worlds and put my own flavor into it, seems like my society ends up being high in tech, education, and environment with the right amount of capitalism and a slight hint of socialism to help everyone become contributing members of society.

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I think admin moved it, but I was sure I posted it in D4 :frowning:

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Cliffski gave alot of valuable insight on a few of the suggestions, what do you think about the rest? I’m curious to know what you think!

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I like your idea on surplus benefits, though we can already spend extra money on other programs in the game. Perhaps having a positive budget could ameliorate budget conscious conservatives or libertarians?

On another note, I do think alternative policies might be good to implement. The private sector already exists in game but is not very detailed (obviously). The risk with adding in incentives for privatization is that you just end up with the government regulating the economy again, just as before.

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Cliff informed me that additional music is highly expensive, so perhaps that would have to wait until the game has sold more copies.

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Regarding investing in other countries with surplus funds:

Its worth thinking about each policy as actually being a whole policy area, which is symbolically represented by the highest profile policy. For example foreign aid might be a whole basket of policies, including directly handing money to foreign governments, but also subsidy and grant schemes for projects in other countries that you wish to encourage.

The reason I think of it like this, is it allows the game to be playable with only 100,150 policies, rather than the tens of thousands you would need to actually represent every government initiative. Too many individual policies would make the game too complex for new, and casual players.

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Tell cliff I have music he can have royalty free I made, but its not very good lol

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That makes alot of sense Cliff, I was just thinking with how long and sometimes difficult it takes to get to surplus a positive situation or the ability to use those funds as investments schemes with a chance to backfire would be awesome. China did that to the US and is making a killing in interest (assuming we pay), with a country on a surplus of money, it should insteal confidence for capitalists and do some of that “overall” investing.

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bro, make your own thread. Don’t hi-jack mine! :stuck_out_tongue: Also put in descriptions of what you are looking to achieve for each of those. The tax mod in workshop has most of those.

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