Suggestions

Kudos Kudos (General)
1

I bought the game yesterday and have been playing pretty much all day today. Anyway here are some suggestions which may improve the game, let me know what you think:

  1. Invites.

You should be able to give an excuse for rejecting an invite. For example, if I have a night class. Maybe the person who invited you would not be upset if you said you had previous commitments.

  1. Robberys/Street Crime

I think they happen too often, it almost makes Kung Fu/Burglar Alarm a necessity which isn’t true in the real world. I think the frequency of these events should be turned down a bit.

  1. Jobs

I think there could be a much broader set of jobs/careers, and also promotions.

For example, when working as a Lawyer, I was promoted a couple times but my job title was still a Lawyer, and nothing had really changed except the fact that I was getting more money.

Maybe promotions should be made more important, for example. A promotion might increase job stress because you have more responsibility. But it might increase happiness because you have less people to answer to and more control in the workplace.

  1. Work Morale

I don’t understand how I can have a bad or a good day at work. Is this random, sometimes I go into work very happy and calm and it still says I had a bad day.

Maybe there should be a section describing certain factors which influence your day at work, for example:

Job Satisfaction
Deadlines
Colleague Relationships

All these have their each individual percentage (similar to the IQ system) and they all make up one big percentage which determines your chances of having a good/bad day. You can then do things to improve each situation so for example:

Deadlines - Use your evening slot to work overtime and finish a project.
Colleague Relationships - Organise office social events with all the staff, the success of these determines wether the relationship meter goes up or down.

  1. Bank

Maybe have an option of storing money in the bank, so that if youre house is broken into the losses are not as high.

  1. Happiness

I think that happiness goes down way too easily, and considering you can’t really do that much to improve it (going out with friends make you happy but if you go in a bad mood then you don’t get as good effects from it)

Basically Happiness should go down or up slowly and steadily and should only move dramatically if you get mugged or your house broken into. Or fired from your job (if thats possible in this game)

This also applies with confidence, your confidence does not go from 0 to 50 in one day. If you are naturally a confident person, you can’t suddenly lose that without it being some sort of mental illness. Correct me if I am wrong here, but I know that confident people are always confident and their confidence does not change from day to day.

Overall the character you play as needs more stability, we should be able to start out with a completely normal guy, and have the choice to make him become mentally unstable or not. At the moment, I go day to day from being really happy to being completely down and anti-social. Nothing major is happening to me to affect these mood swings so I don’t know why such a steep change of mood happens in the game.

2

I have been playing for a few days now and am enjoying it.

  1. With regards to invites, I agree. If you have a night class, they should be more understanding. I also would suggest that if you are in a bad mood you be able to explain that. Sometimes you are down and don’t want to bring others down.

  2. Agreed! Is this London or Beirut? This is really affecting playability.

  3. Careers, agreed. More job titles please. This is minor in my eyes. Also, is there any possibility of working at home? Might be interesting. More happiness balanced against less social interaction and lower pay.

  4. I’d like to know why the day was bad. Was it my mood? A bad commute? Low job satisfaction? Just a generic bad day thanks to customers?

  5. Banking and investing might be interesting.

6a. Happiness does drop too quickly. I’d like to see happiness be more stable with only a slow decay, with events having an effect. A burglary, mugging, demotion, etc. would obviously lower it. Certain things would raise it. I’d suggest a promotion at work, or successfully completing a night class.

6b. I’d like to see IQ, Confidence, and Culture decay more slowly as well. The choice to set your character in the beginning doesn’t seem to matter since they decay so rapidly. Confidence in particular seems to drop quickly no matter what. I can see it dropping if you get a demotion, job loss, or fail to get a job, but not just from living life.

  1. Fitness also seems to plummet too fast. I can go jogging every day and yet my character is in the red, despite not drinking and eating healthy options.
3

Hi, the bad news is i won’t be releasing a new patch to tweak anything for a little while, the good news is that you can change most of this stuff very easily, just with a text editor.
much of the games balancing comes from the file “config.txt” in the games data directory.

these entries are the ones you are after for crime:

GV_MUGGING_INTERVAL_MIN = 28.00
GV_MUGGING_INTERVAL_MAX = 90.00
GV_BURGLARY_INTERVAL_MIN = 28.00
GV_BURGLARY_INTERVAL_MAX = 90.00

they are in days. you might also like to change:

_CULTURE_DEGRADE = 0.993
_LOGIC_DEGRADE = 0.99
_PROBLEM_DEGRADE = 0.99
_IQ_DEGRADE = 0.99

A value of 1.00 will mean these values never degrade once earned (if that’s what you want).

be warned though, game baalncing is a very tricky topic, the values that are in there by default are the ones that I judged made the game the nicest blend of challenge and reward. I recommend backing up this file before changing it.

I’m thinking about what new features and changes will go into the next patch right now. If you play on easy mode in the current version, people dont get annoyed if you cant afford to socialise. They might say they are annoyed, but they arent really (numbers-wise).

4

Yeah, those constant “you had a bad day at work” really get me down :imp: I am a good worker! What CAN I do to enjoy my work :question: :confused:

I agree with all other comments too. Nevertheless: 2, 3, 6 and 7 are in principle all moddable, but 1 and 4 are really necessary, I believe. One should have some feedback why he/she doesn’t perform good, and this is what friends are for, who should also be more understanding and forgiving! Now it’s 4 months later, patch v.1.19 out… And the ideas :bulb: are still waiting to be accomplished… :arrow_right: :arrow_right:

5

The bad day at work is random, so its pretty much a case of dealing with bad customers, or bad people in the office.

The other item (understanding your broke / busy) is a good point. some people should occasionally pay for you, if youve paid for them in the past. I should code a system that takes personalities into account. maybe some of your friends are understanding, and some arent etc.

6

:bulb:

Yes do, please! I was thinking of “awarding” (through modding) the personalities of some friend types with bad characteristics (confident with some stress gain due to high-task activities you get involved in, intelligent with some confidence decrease etc), but I have to equilibrate yet. With another characteristics such as understanding, friends would be even more human :smiley:

This is what I love about this game; vast abilities emerging from rather simple (and therefore deep) principles. I am all for modifying and expanding existing features - and making them more transparent; less, however, for introducing whole new concepts (banks, savings, stocks and investment) which would only complicate (or worse, automate) the gameplay.

:blush: Except for introducing deeper intimate relationship features, as has been many times suggested on this board - if I recapitulate, more knowledge about your intimate friend -also he/she should explain, why doesn’t he/she have time for you when refuses to go out with you (I’m actually busy tonight) -, progress in relationship other than relation line strength … just minor supplement to flavour the relationship would be applauded to :wink:

Keep up good work! :smiley: