While I did run a search, I apologize in advance if I missed a topic already made about this.
Does anyone else think that the daily penalties for not socializing with your friends and for forgetting certain skills are unbelievably severe? It has honestly sucked all the fun out of the game for me.
I enjoyed the demo for an hour or so and decided to purchase the full version. While the game was indeed fun for a few hours, I soon found myself extremely frustrated in trying to keep my friends happy with me at all, even though I carefully selected activities that everyone enjoyed and went out in groups that always got along with each other. It should not be next to impossible to stay on good terms with 6 or 7 people. In the real world, I sometimes go for weeks (or months) without seeing certain friends with absolutely no ill will between us. It’s mind-boggling to me that if you don’t see a friend for a week in the game, they will go from bff to borderline hostile to you. Do people not go on vacations?
That’s not even mentioning the skills for which the penalties seem to simulate some bizarre form of retrograde amnesia. After bringing my chess skills up to nearly 30% by playing several times a week for several months, I lost ALL my skill in this area in less than a year. Really? I can understand being a little rusty but am I going to be just as bad as if I never even started playing? Or take soccer, which I played about once a week. I never got my skill above 5%. It would seem you only get better at something if you play it every single day (and due to the rigidity of the activity system, that means precluding being able to do anything else).
While I’m on the topic, that’s another rant. Does taking a BATH really take all of your free time for a day? Are there no such thing as showers? If I spend an entire Saturday reading a book completely alone, does that really mean I only get 60 pages into it? How fast is he reading? A word a minute? Keep in mind that his concentration was maxed. Apparently, that doesn’t stop him from being illiterate.
I’m sorry if this rant seems a bit bitter, but the purchase of the game represented a not insubstantial amount of money for me, and within a single night, I’ve found myself completely unable to play the game anymore. I support independent developers, and this game has a lot of really cool concepts, but it’s seriously driving me crazy.
I just came across this quote in the modding forum:
That would seriously make my day. I still think the relationship attrition be crazy, but the above suggestion would completely pacify my raving regarding skill attrition.
If you want to seriously decrease the amount of degradation that takes place for your stats, you can try the following:
In the Kudos 2\data directory, there is a file called config.txt. Step 1 is to back this file up, since you will be making changes to it. Copy it, and paste it as “Original config.txt” or something similar. This way, you will be able to go back to the original file in case you mess something up while doing these edits.
Open the config.txt file, and search for
GAMESKILL_DEGRADE = 0.97
This line starts off about a dozen or so characteristics that tell the game how quickly your skills degrade. A value of 1.0 means they never degrade. The lower the value, the quicker the skills degrade. If the value in these lines is less than 0.5, change it to 0.01 or something very low. If the value in these lines is above 0.5, then change it to 0.999 or something very high. The only one in that group (from GAMESKILL_DEGRADE to _GERMS_DEGRADE that you should probably leave alone is the LITERATURE_GAIN, since that sounds like something that it a god thing. I’m also not sure how changing GERMS_DEGRADE to a value of less than 1 would mess with things, since you can automatically reset your GERMS value to zero by cleaning your apartment.
This may really mess with the balance of the game, but if you get more enjoyment out of it like this, that’s what counts.
Well said. Kudos 2 has no difficulty levels, so for some people it might seem a little hard, some find it too easy once they find a good combination of activities. In retrospect, maybe difficulty levels might have been a good idea after all.
Hi!
I think Hinotori is absolutely right, it is way too difficult to keep more than 3 friends satisfied at the same time. This way, you almoust feel guilty having a bath (cleanliness long gone) instead of going out with others. I would recommend a “friendship-degrade” kind of thing, that can easily be altered through config.txt.
It’s a tricky thing, game balancing. After playing the game for a time (starting with failing friendships quite badly) I’m now at the point where I find the entire game a bit easy, including continually having 9 (10?) friends at once. A difficulty setting might have helped. Oh well, next time, eh Cliffski? 
I’d suggest a few things to try:
- Keep events small, 2-3 invites at a time is good, but 1 on 1 is sometimes better. (Going out to 4 events with the same 4 people doesn’t seem to give the same result as 4 “1 on 1” events with 4 different people. I’m not sure how it’s calculated though, so I could be wrong.)
- ‘Dropping’ friends who don’t have the same interests as others, and I mean more than just “Italian Food”. Things like conversation, culture and sports are good generic interests that apply to many situations, and having multiple interests seems to increase their enjoyment of an event.
- If you don’t have a lot of money then 1 applies even more so as you’ll want to spread events out so you can constantly do things with friends.
- Only go to outside events in good weather. Bad weather will serious hamper everyone’s enjoyment of the event, and combined with bad luck might even reduce your friendship.
Finally, if you ABSOLUTELY MUST resort to ‘cheating’:
- To my knowledge there is still an exploitable ‘bug/feature’ that allows you to invite friends to an event they attended just recently and gain friendship from it, meaning you’ll still get a friendship increase for inviting them out even though they’ll refuse. This can be done once per day/time period.
The cost of events doesn’t seem to weigh too much on the enjoyment so you can still be an unemployed bum with a number of friends, but it is much harder due to the low number of free events. Feel free to MOD in some free events, but don’t forget to upload them here 
Wayno, thinks it’s Boozy McBooze time
I’m playing version 1.07 of the game and i am finding that i only seem to be able to get better at one sport. I am 100% at bowling but no matter how many times i play the other sports the percentage never increases above zero even though the game states i am 3-4% better after the activity. I haven’t altered or attempted to mod any of the settings.
I tried to have a musical career, but that was just plain impossible. Trying to do things required to boost attributes required for better jobs (kudos, confidence etc.) meant not enough time to keep practicing that damn guitar. All the time I got increasingly good at performing with the guitar, but playing for a living should at least maintain technical guitar playing skills at the same level or preferably increase them slightly.