Discordance is really high and theres no way to truely offset it.

[boohboomagoo]

I like the new systems - I agree with the comments that it's "grindy" mostly because the game used to allow getting a staff of about 7 before things got tough to level up - although I've noticed in this new build that only about 5 or 6 on "creative casting" and then you get an automatic debuff of -25... that's friggin' steep. we're going to need better ways to offset discordance, and frankly i'd prefer if that just was tuned down a bit - because running a school with 4 staff is kinda sucky... and not fun... I want one of each caster - and I like growing the rooms and creating all the stuff - but when discordance is this high even on "relaxing" modes it's like I'm just constantly chasing ghosts and runaway students. would love it if things like "art" and sculpture could help provide moderate buffs. Like if someone is in a pissed mood and they go into a sculpture gallery room or something they get a temp buff to offset this TERRIBLE discordance debuff. there's just not a lot of buffs in the game now other than food - and the FOOD it requires a farm to be set up and a kitchen. which takes quite a bit of labor and resources (the quilted help) - but even still... I've been playing 3 days on the new settings and i've hardly had time to build basic rooms and train maybe 15 students? it's much much slower than before and I thought oh maybe more staff will quicken this up (( wrong )) more staff makes everyone suffer steep penalties - In the dev notes it was supposed to be that - staff and student ratios were supposed to be balanced. okay so for 7 staff you need 14 students or something like that - but it doesn't really play out like that... what was envisioned does not really seem to be the game. I'd be curious to get this running perfectly like my previous playthoughs but seriously it's slow. and it's grindy and I think reducing these debuffs a bit that were added would help. Cause honestly its not adding to the game it's just slowing down my development and construction of the castle. and i'm on CREATIVE... like... it's supposed to not have thunderstorms and runaways every 2 days.

[Allisonlj]

I am SO with you...

I just played on the EASIEST default settings in order to get a feel of the new changes for the first time since the last big update. I had i think 6 adults, and 3 students, mostly wand tier 2 if it gives a sense of how long i'd been at things. I rage quit a few days ago so the details are fuzzy...

Suddenly i keep getting recurring notifications that my staff are at their breaking points, but not for super long, maybe a few minutes on 2x speed. Then it'd go away and a different staff would break then maybe go back to the first one... at one point i think i had 4 at one time...

...I thought i was on easy mode to avoid this... but i didn't micromanage the settings, so i did my utmost to ensure the staff had at least shared bedrooms because i didn't have the fancy beds unlocked yet to bother with private rooms, the students had a common room and there was a conservatory.... i picked my battles so no one ever died, i ensured no one was "left out" whenever possible, and everyone was well fed twice a day.... If anything storage space is harder to manage than food on easy... and while all they had was the gramaphone thing everyone had 3 hours of rec time the lazy bastards....

So whats up with the mental state and/or enforced teacher/student balancing on EASY MODE?! Sheesh. Students still seem downright pointless to me outside of tending the animals, the rituals requiring them, and thier potential once promoted. The midrange acolytes or whatever seem like something thats for end game numbers because they need similar element tutors and then locks those adults to teaching instead of working... meh.

[boohboomagoo]

Yeah i just 100% don't agree with how the "Discordance" debuff was implemented - there's plenty of debuffs in the game already - I thought it was supposed to be directly correlated to student to teacher ratios... but then in the description is says specifically it's not- that's ANOTHER debuff they that built into the game... like seriously... way too many debuffs... and not nearly enough buffs. this would be entirely manageable if they were a bit further ahead in room development - but there's seriously not that many room buffs that you can build... and none of them really do passive buffs like the "museum" or "garden" buffs did for Oxygen Not Included - or add a bathroom lol. so at least someone is happy cause they took a Poop.. like seriously....

[Dart]

I guess the reason for "Discordance" is a penalty for running a bigger school.
If you want to have more staff, you need private bedrooms, conservatory, better food and proper schedules (because buffs are temporary). And you need to plan the relative locations of those rooms otherwise your pawns will spend 80% just running between rooms.

You can avoid all that if you just keep 2 starting mages (or rotate them). But that will turn your development into a slog and you probably won't be able to deal with negative events like cursed mana lanterns or storms.

To be honest, without the Discordance there would be zero need to even research half of the tech tree. A lot of research is focused on getting more luxury or resources to build rooms which give you morale bonuses or food that does the same.

Morale management seems to be a major part of this game.

[Errapel]

The discordance thing was the only reason I made the effort to build proper bed-chambers and rush nicer foods. I can just about keep people sane (ish) on easy difficulty with 8-9 teachers. With a better designed school it would probably be easier, and I'm making changes to speed up transport time etc... but it's certainly an added challenge. I'm not sure how I'd tweak it, but then I'm not a game dev.

It also gave me an incentive to create a painting and a sculpting room. More paintings and sculptures made getting luxury high a lot easier.

Quirks I both like and hate. I'm playing on an older save, so I'm not sure how they manifest at earlier stages in the game. I like the idea of quirks, and some of them are great/manageable. But people requiring 50+ luxury rooms must be killer early game if that comes up then.

[Shot]

Easy mode should not have discordance. got the game and played the game as a sitback and relax type game. had to start over and still having problems with it. but it also seems like im at end game so not sure what more to do. I could tear down everything and rebuild a bit better but think games still too unbalanced for that to matter.

[boohboomagoo]

Agree - I tried going the route of do better rooms better everything - but it just didn't work with discordance at -60 there's literally nothing you can do to buff their happyness the whole school literally starts the day with a bad day- and it snowballs into 3 or so deaths a day.... the revival is nice... but then they get ANOTHER debuff i just can't undo the debuff spiral and i'm serving +10 food in perfect rooms... it's just... not fun. not creative and not relaxing. and no... I don't want huge limits on staff unless i turn it on. I think the discordance should be about 50% softer. Either that or give a buff like... "throw a party" and the whole school can get a positive buff for the week or something... so if you're starting to go on a downward spiral you can spend extra food or something to push the vibes back up.

Again. there's not a reasonable way to get the buffs back after -60 unversal debuff. frankly i think it would be fun to turn it on and off. like creative mode you get slower drops or less high end materials or whatever - but seriously... the -60 debuff is not fun and killed half my staff that took 2 days (real human time) to train and hire... that's... not cool...

[Jilocasin]

It is a frickle thing to balance growing your school and fulfilling the needs of your mages. I am more or less ok, how it works right now. Only thing I am annoyed about is the recreation. It decays so fast and it is difficult to build up I usually need more than 3 hours of recreation time to stop them from craving it. ANd there isn't an advanced rec room for staff. Only getting the 5 conviction Bonus for staff is a bit low.

[Aldehydra]

I like the idea of the mechanic, but I think there should be more ways of mitigating it. Having very high luxury in various rooms, more varied recreation, etc.. Right now it's a good incentive for cooking better food and giving your staff nicer quarters, but not much else. This could also fix the fact that the higher levels of the research tree are pretty much all just stuff for advanced class rooms.

[Whimsical Little Creature]

Ye I don't like it either. Take into account my experience with sim/managerial games is basically non-existant (i'm really bad at them lol), but I entered MoM with the mindset of wanting to learn what was basically a fairly simple game at the end of the day. I find it still is to a certain degree, mechanics aren't too complex to learn and understanding the answer to your problems is pretty straightforward, but I get the constant feeling of being in a battle with a wall. Like, my resources don't seem physically enough to both: 1) get enough staff (as initiate are practically useless) to go around and tend to all aspects of my school, Discordance ♥♥♥♥♥ me up so bad I am forced to choose wheter I should retain my electric staff to research or forsake it for my nature staff that helps in the garden, and 2) deal with the pletora of random events that pile on top of the base ones like corrupted mana lanterns (which worsen my already compromised Conviction), even more students from the fog (which would be a really happy surprise if not for the fact that I won't be able to turn them into staff unless I want to kill, metaphorically and non, the existing troupe) and quality food (because god forbid I let them eat the berries, they get up to -20 from a single meal for upwards of hours if not days, and major discordance is a -25 for reference). I think the problem is one entirely made of high numbers so we should have it fixed nice and easy in the next updates, it's not that big of a deal especially considering it's an early access, but ye I haven't really opened MoM in the last weeks because whenever I do people break, die, get resurrected and due to the penalty spiral down into even faster breaks and deaths. All while I am desperately trying to do something to offset the base Discordance (which I really can't). Just halve the numbers or let me have at least one of each element as staff on a medium/low Discordance so that I can have a functional academy without getting axed.

[Oljum]

Love brooms- makes fastest travel.
But how to paint now?

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Oljum:

Love brooms- makes fastest travel.
But how to paint now?

You need an easel, and you need to be able to promote a student to an Apprentice (and train them afterwards). Only Apprentices can paint or sculpt in the current version.

[handyprint]

I agree with you all. With the game in this state it is unplayable.
Apart from lowering the debuff we should have MORE TIME before the mages go on a rampage.

[mixedtupperware]

Tangentially related question, does the founder ghost count against discordance, and can you make it go away by shrinking their grave and putting it in a box for later?

[n3mes1s]

Yup this is what happens when you keep adding things to the game with the only purpose of making it to last longer, but avoiding actual-endgame. Ive said it plenty of times already. The game was amazing in the beginning, and the only thing it needed was good end-game. Thats all. But the devs kept filling it with nonsense mechanics and has lost all meaning for me.

[Nokturnal]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Yup this is what happens when you keep adding things to the game with the only purpose of making it to last longer, but avoiding actual-endgame. Ive said it plenty of times already. The game was amazing in the beginning, and the only thing it needed was good end-game. Thats all. But the devs kept filling it with nonsense mechanics and has lost all meaning for me.

Yea I'm really trying to enjoy the game and I enjoy combat the most, but the amount of obnoxious micromanagement on just hiring good staff alone is just so tedious. Some people might enjoy tedious micromanagement, like people who enjoyed Oxygen Not Included, but I was hoping for a more chill experience than that one with a focus on some Mage Combat.

Sadly the Underschool is just really bland combat and the Fog Combat just shows up out of nowhere giving you no time to prep for it.