Simplifying Morale/Stress

[ImpalerWrG]

I have a proposal for an improvement to how jobs, morale and stress all work together.

 

First each tier of job 0-5 simply causes Stress and appears in the stress tabulation as 'stressful job' This makes it much more straightforward to the player what a stress cost a job change will create.  The value should be right at the top of the job page rather then the highly abstract values currently shown.  It's also just very intuitive to talk of a stressful job.

Second all Morale buffs are tabulated as simple stress reductions.  20 Morale is -20% stress.  Again straightforward, no need to mouse over an abstract function is to conceal another number.

The game play basically works the same way, but it's far more clear what is what.  We who have played through the several updates that together created this system can understand it because it was made one bit at a time, but to a new player and someone looking at the system holistically would be at a lost.

[Oozinator]

-1
It's no way complicated / hard to archive happy dupes..
I want to wait, how Klei implements it and how it unfolds, needs many more options to trigger -+ impact.
With germs / prios it was the same. Before the implemented system could really be tested out by playerbase, Klei nerfed it to death and followed some ppl suggestions, who didn'liked it, but it feeled like they did it for a minority..
 

[ImpalerWrG]

I said nothing about how hard it is to have your dupes happy, that's a separate topic.   Please reread, this is an issue of how the names/concepts are tabulated and displayed to the player, not about changing the game play itself.

[Sasza22]

Some clarification is always good. But they need to make sure the system is not changing more before they add tooltips. The morale requirement works for now. Maybe later they could add a tooltip explaining the effect of insufficient morale. Maybe the`ll even roll other stress effects like soggy feet and low oxygen into morale rather than keep it as a separate stress modifier. I think the whole system might still change a bit.

[RogueAssassin]

I played a new map in the EU. Its not at all hard to keep dupes happy. My vitals currently show 24/12, 30/14 etc.. spam paintings and statues everywhere. Also keep higher food like pepper bread and frost buns for your miners and highest tier dupes.

[ImpalerWrG]

RogueAssasin, again not what I am talking about, please READ what I wrote.

[Mariilyn]

I like the notion to rebalance the morale system so that negative morale always increase stress, 0 morale is neutral and positive morale always reduce stress. Current morale expectations make it appear as if highly trained dupes need to constantly « get happier » but that's not the case.

In your proposition, progressing in the job tree would instead generate a separate stress modifier, scaling in proportion depending of job tier. A simpler method and minimal change to the current system would be to generate a negative "Stressful job" morale modifier for each job tier, using the current morale expectation values (-1, -2, -4, -8, -12, -16 and -20).

I didn't really understand why the suggestion of two different systems for job tiers 0-5 and job tiers 6-7, that part makes the proposal seems more complicated than needed.