The Expressive Upgrade, Stress, and Decor

[JahwsUF]

So, in its present form, the Expressive Upgrade heavily alters how Dupe stress is maintained.  After playing around with it a bit, it feels like art (Portraits and Sculptures) have been heavily de-emphasized with this upgrade and have little use due to the power of meeting "quality of life" (hereafter, QoL) expectations.

How did I reach that conclusion? Duplicants no longer have scaling Decor expectations, which greatly reduces the impact of decor-related stress.  While rooms with lots of debris and/or Heavi-Watt wires are still likely to cause decor-related stress, other areas can usually get by with very little art.  Secondly, if you can meet a Duplicant's QoL expectations, decor can often be almost completely ignored.  (Environmental debuffs like Popped Eardrums and Soggy Feet can make them somewhat relevant, though.)

Interestingly, the old "Nice Bathroom" and "Ate in a Meal Hall" stress buffs have been removed in favor of a flat QoL-based boost.  A met QoL provides the same net buff as a combined "nice bathroom" and "ate in a meal hall" buff from Cosmic and before, and it's actually a more persistent, since the Meal Hall buff only lasted 1 cycle but was visited every 2 cycles.

However, there's one big, glaring problem thus far with the QoL system - food has an overpowered/overweighted impact on a Dupe's QoL expectations.  For example, Stuffed Berry gives +12 QoL points and Pepper Bread gives +16 QoL - the latter of which are individually worth more QoL points than can be obtained by getting every other QoL buff I've found during a single break period.  (The former?  It 'only' matches that combination.)

I'm fine with Tier 6 jobs requiring either BBQ or Pepper Bread to manage QoL, but it seems a bit extreme to require anything beyond a +1 quality food for Tier 4 jobs.  Why?  Because that's what unlocks Ranching, which is the earliest possible in-game way to somewhat sustainably get +2 quality Omelets.  Unfortunately, I only seem to be able to reach 11 total QoL with +1 quality food, and even then that 11 won't be obtained every break period without making a lot of Lavatories.

The list:

• Duplicant:  +1
• Nice Bathroom:  +1
• Slept in Bedroom: +1
• Danced:  +2 (from the new Phonobox)
• Mess Hall: +3
• Ate Poor food for my last meal: +1  (Poor = +1 quality)
• Took a Break: +1  (did a recreational activity)
• Talked with Friends: +1  (from the Water Cooler, though no Water is consumed)

I did find that another +2 can be obtained from the Arcade Cabinet, but that would require a Dupe to have enough time to complete three break-time activities; presently, that would likely require a Dupe to start break time near a Lavatory and be the first to use it; otherwise, the interruptions that result from current break-time mechanics often will prevent a Dupe from completing two - or even one - break-time recreational activity.

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My suggestions:

Regarding the impact of food

• I suggest making room tiers - bonus requirements for a room that allow it to provide an enhanced QoL buff.
  • Examples:
    • "" (average) - the base requirements for a room have been met
    • "Nice" - the environment is within a dupe's "comfort range":
      • Temperature is within the 20 - 40 C range
      • Atmospheric pressure is within the 1 - 2.5 kg range and is Oxygen at the Dupe's location.  (Within tolerance, because of recently-exhaled Carbon Dioxide.)
      • Decor is over +50 at the Dupe's location.
    • "Luxurious" - the decor at the Dupe's location (as above) is at least +200.  (This requires extreme decor measures, such as metal tiles, costly pets, and/or tons of art.
      • Alternatively (or additionally!):  room has +150 decor, a Bluff Briar, and a pet with decor over +50.  (Basically, advanced-tier Shine Bugs or the Longhair Slickster)
• Each additional tier would add +1 QoL point.
  • Example:  a Dupe who used a Luxurious Lavatory, Meal Hall, and Barracks gains a total of +11 QoL from these rooms, rather than +5.  (Since Meal Hall's base is +3.)
  • Using this, a food's QoL bonus could instead be merely twice its quality.
    • Pickled Meal = -2 QoL
    • Gristle Berry = +2 QoL
    • Stuffed Berry = +8 QoL
    • Barbeque = +10 QoL
  • If a Dupe got all three luxurious room buffs, talked with friends, danced, and ate Gristle Berry, that would total to +16 QoL - enough for a stress-free Tier 5 job.  However, getting the three luxurious buffs would be very difficult to accomplish in the early-game.
  • To be more realistic, if the three rooms were instead only "Nice", that would yield +13 QoL, enough for stress-free Tier 4 but not Tier 5.
• A new difficulty setting could be added that adjusts the required QoL values for each job tier.
  • "Hard" might boost the required QoL by +4 for each job, etc.
  • Note that this difficulty setting would compound with the Duplicant Mood setting - a truly "brutal" game might require +10 QoL per job and a Fatalistic Duplicant Mood.  (with a moderately stronger and longer "New Hope" boost that slowly degrades to make the very beginning possible)
    • With the above suggestions, Tier 2 would require a total of 14 QoL, which could be obtained by the following:
      • Duplicant: +1
      • Slept in nice bathroom:  +2
      • Nice meal hall: +5
      • Nice bedroom: +2
      • Took a break: +1
      • Danced: +2
      • Talked with Friends: +1
      • Ate Terrible Food: +0  (0 quality food)
    • Tier 5 (at now 26 QoL) could be obtained by upgrading each room to "luxurious" and using quality-5 food for a net of +27 QoL.
    • Tier 6's new QoL requirement would be impossible to permanently maintain with this "brutal" mode, making geyser analysis difficult.

Benefits:

• It's more realistic.  People care about the quality of their homes/possessions as well as their food.
• This set of suggestions is designed to be relatively simple and consistent by reusing existing mechanics to allow the game to be a little bit more complex.  Keeping the requirements for each room tier consistent across the rooms helps to avoid unnecessary/unintuitive complexity.
  • At present, this most obviously borrows from current farming mechanics.
• It requires more overall maintenance.
  • Tier 5 jobs no longer can be fully sustained by simply feeding a Dupe quality-5 food and calling it a day.  (It's currently +16 QoL from the food alone!)
• It facilitates the early-game...
  • Tier 3 and 4 jobs become easier to maintain once the "Nice" thresholds have been met, allowing a smoother transition into ranching and the necessary tasks for the highest-tier foods.
• But complicates the late-game, since failing to manage heat or maintain a proper atmosphere can instantly degrade a "luxurious" room down to an average room, dropping a Dupe's QoL significantly.
  • As far as gameplay goes, this is a "good thing," as it incorporates an already-existing mechanic (from farms) and provides an extra way to detect when things are about to go downhill... or are already going downhill.  (Whichever way you view it.)
• This could be used to pave the way for further ranching changes.
  • Critter "comfort range" could be modified to provide extra "happiness" buffs to groomed critters, depending on whether or not the critter is in its "comfort range" in a manner analogous to a Duplicant's QoL.

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Alternatively, regarding tier 4 jobs...

I feel like it is quite reasonable for Tier 4 jobs to require what is currently termed +1 quality food - Gristle Berry or Fried Mushroom.  To rely on both means farming either Dusk Caps or Bristle Berries, both of which require significant base progress; the former requires a steady supply of Slime, while the latter requires constant plumbing and electrical power.  Completing this milestone is a reasonable 'gate' to allow stress-managed access to Ranching and use of the Farming Station.

To achieve this without any other alterations - even excluding the suggestions above - I believe that one of the following changes should be implemented:

• Tier 4 jobs should require 10 total QoL, not 12.
• +1 quality food should provide +2 QoL, not +1.