Game balance: paying for temporary help isn't worth it yet

[matshazi]

I never pay 45+ shills for help in negotiations, because that money can be spent on a pet, graft, cards, card removal, etc.

Instead, imagine if when you paid/hired someone to help you, you gained an opinion boost. That would increase interaction with all the characters, help you discover boons faster, it would be a more interesting playthrough, give you more variety, and incentivize you more.

In addition, if you buy them a drink and gain Liked, they help you for free, so why should I ever give them shills that cost as much as a drink with no permanent gain?

My main gripe with Griftlands is during the E3 trailer, it showed Sal failing at combat/negotiation alone, them when she hired 3 characters as backup she won. My playing experience doesn't reflect that.

I mainly rely on pets because they are strong and they don't leave you, and you can get them early enough in the playthrough to upgrade them twice so there's a sense of loyalty and progression.

I just don't understand why I'm always hiring pets and robots in my group when Klei has created a hundred amazing characters that are only good at giving quests lol. GET OVER HERE AND HELP ME DEFEAT THE BADDIES (especially on expedition type quests that span multiple combats/negotiations!)

I'm wondering if this would be a major update, or something that needs to be modded? 

[SpicyNiceCream]

7 minutes ago, matshazi said:

them when she hired 3 characters as backup she won. My playing experience doesn't reflect that.

What do you mean? Isn't there is a pay to help you in a fight option?

[matshazi]

21 minutes ago, SpicyNiceCream said:

What do you mean? Isn't there is a pay to help you in a fight option?

Yeah but I never pick it because I could give a gift for 100 shills to get a permanent 5hp every time I sleep, or buy a card I need, etc., its a waste to give 45 shills or more to pay someone to help me, it's too short term. If we could get a permanent opinion boost + their help it would be more worthwhile. As it stands, I just never pay them for their help because the math isn't worth it.

[RageLeague]

You can gift someone shills, or you can't, because they don't like you already, and you need to drink with them first, which you can't do because you are at the Slurping Snail or something.

But still, right now the negotiation bonus from those who helps you is very trivial. You never want to pay anyone to help you with negotiation. However, sometimes you need to pay someone to help you in a fight, because otherwise you might get overwhelmed by the opponent's support.

[Maniafig]

I also barely ever use the pay off features during the random quests, the only time I've done it was during a quest where I had to engage in combat and there were two people backing up the person I had to beat up, there was no way I could get them all to surrender simultaneously, so I decided to pay one to look the other away rather than risk getting a bane.

Other than cases like that though, I agree it's just not worth it to pay money for the very small temporary bonus it gives you, the whole point of quests is to maximize your earnings while minimizing losses, and paying people to help in negotiations is a clear and substantial loss with an insignificant gain.

I generally feel the same way about hiring people to join the party, it's usually just not worth it except for that one random Spree robbery mission where the extra party member makes it much, much easier to rob all four targets and get a ton of shills. That's a good example where a risky player could choose to not hire anyone for more profit, but it's also a sensible choice to hire someone to vastly improve the odds that you won't need to back down.

[RageLeague]

Wow, you can actually earn a lot of money from the robbery quest, huh? I always thought it was a noob trap since the quest is so hard compared to other quests because the opponent have full party every time I try to do it. And I died or almost died every time I tried to do it even with robbing one group.

[TF3]

1 hour ago, RageLeague said:

Wow, you can actually earn a lot of money from the robbery quest, huh? I always thought it was a noob trap since the quest is so hard compared to other quests

High risk high reward babeeeeehhh. Are you basing the difficulty on prestige 11 or something? I always had no problem clearing atleast two groups if I had a pet/hired a merc from the meat market at prestige 0. Normally Meat Market's not worth much, but its a godsend for the robbery quest.

I think if you get too greedy an admiralty patrol shows up to stop your fun, but I dont know the specifics about that. One time I managed to get through 4 groups before admiralty showed up, another time they showed up after my first group when I had my allies kill the guys.

[Maniafig]

I've usually been able to do four fights in a row with the hired help, IIRC there's the Merchants, Hesh Cult, Laborers and Jakes groups. I find that the quest is WAY easier to do early on in a run when it's a 2 or 3-star difficulty quest, at that point most teams only have 2 or 3 enemies so with the Spree ally, the hired help and a pet you can actually outnumber all enemy teams. I've noticed the enemy teams do get much more dangerous when it's a 4 or 5-star quest, it's the difference between fighting just two Priests or fighting a Priest backed by two Luminaris for example.

Eventually an Admiralty Patrol will show up, but you can just negotiate a way out of it without any drawbacks, so I like to see it as a way to earn more EXP on your negotiation cards and grafts. I'm not sure what determines when they show up, maybe it's just RNG?

[Wumpus the 19th]

Highway robbery is probably one of the best money sidequests in the game, up there with tax collection quest. I found the easiest group for the cash was the heshians, as they're unlikely to have a luminari and priests by nature are support. Jake's are good for fat cash and I would never choose the merchant simply because of the stinging eyes makes it much harder than it really should be. Once I chose it for money, although it was the hard quest so I ended up shilling for a merc from murder torch, but it's always a good payout. Plus lots of resolve from all the fights 

[pacovf]

Robbery is fine as long as it’s 3 stars or below, and yes hiring a mercenary is highly recommended. It pays out handsomely if you do 3 or more fights, more than making up for the cost of hiring a merc. You can’t haggle though, so if you have Haggle Badge, you might be better off just getting one of the regular quests. At 4 stars or higher, it’s not worth the danger, especially since you won’t get any money if the Spree ally dies. You can do it for style points / final score, though.

EDIT: about the topic, my feeling is that the game just isn’t about building an RPG party, so you’re not encouraged to hire people. Game will more often than not provide you with any support you need, and bribes/hires are there to respond to unlucky difficulty spikes in quests. The exception are pets, in Sal’s campaign.