Feedback on the Negative Perk system

[karma827]

I wanted to spend some time with the new negative perk system before providing my feedback around it. For anyone who hasn't messed around with the negative perks, they are: (I think this list is complete, but I'll add to it if I find more)

• Drama Queen - Loses Stamina twice as fast.
  
• Derelict - Perks are neutralized when underpaid.
  
• Fraud - Falsifies ability rating and all perks are neutralized. (My test maiden lied about her 86 skill, and claimed it was really 480 after gaining this perk!)
  
• Red hand - Steals from your Tavern. (In my experience they steal around 150g, up to 3 times in a month)
  
• Couch Cabbage - Stays in the staff room almost all the time. (In my experience, this sounds way worse than it really is)

The idea is, when you reject a staff member's raise request, instead of immediately quitting, they will instead gain a "negative perk", randomly from the negative perk list. They will let you deny their request three times, gaining a negative perk each time. On the fourth denial, the staff member will quit.

As a note: Once, when I rejected a handyman's second raise request, no negative perk was gained. Another time, I rejected a clerk's first raise request for the very first time, and they gained two negative perks. I reported this as a bug, because I think it is, but if it's not a bug: Whooooooo boy, watch out for 'double negative perk day'! What's crazier is that particular clerk is already overpaid. https://gyazo.com/16c1f7ab109fa80c734c9ed81160b25e

Having this new negative perk system makes me realize something: I don't feel equipped to make informed raise decisions. On the raise window, there's no info about the staff member's performance, how they affect my bottom line, how quickly they move guests (where applicable), or any of that kind of information. It's very difficult to flip between two windows that do have information on the staff member (the mail, and the staff member's window, or Manage window). Further, it seems like negative perks are gained when raise requests are denied, regardless of rather the staff member actually deserves a raise, which leads back to not being able to really understand if staff truly deserve a raise based me being their manager.

In summary, I feel like the negative perk mechanic is really interesting, but it's entirely too harsh at the moment. Especially when you take into account the level's difficulty rating (e.g. Easy). Also, there's no way to remove a negative perk at this time, so it's especially painful to have a negative perk on someone you've been training throughout the level, not to mention that thieves won't ever stop stealing once they start. Ultimately, this causes one of two things:

1. Either we're right back into (or keeps us from leaving) a situation of automatically approving staff raise requests;
   
2. Or it keeps us from training our staff (or makes said training impractical) because we need disposable staff.

I think another approach might be better for long-term gameplay.

• What if negative perks either cancel out existing perks, so you could re-train them later, or if no perks exist for that staff member, maybe it gives them a negative version of a perk that applies to their role, that would be first cancelled by training, and then the positive version could be added by training again.
• Being able to remove negative perks would go a long way to mitigating the long-term negative game play affects.
  
• Adding better ways to understand when a staff member is really underpaid, compared to the value they bring to the tavern, would go another significant distance in helping us to make informed decisions. This would also allow us to better ensure we're giving our staff raises or replacing them, as appropriate.
  
• Scaling the impacts of making a rejection decision based on if that staff member is currently overpaid, or underpaid, and by how much. A staff member who is somewhat overpaid, and asking for a raise, should not have nearly the same negative impact as a staff member who is severely underpaid and asking for a raise.
  
• Take into account the difficulty setting of the level. Easy levels should have way less of this type of behavior than super hard.

I think those are all my thoughts for now. I'll add more as I continue to play around, but honestly, I think I'll be trying to avoid negative perks for my staff.

[Peter]

Sorry I forgot to reply to this post, but I have taken this post very seriously and have implemented few things since (Now negative perks can be removed)

I've also introduced a difficulty scaling wage satisfaction meter so that even when underpaid, some staff will still be happy.

Let me know what you think.

[karma827]

I'll look forward to checking out the updates! Are they live on the Dev Build already?

[Peter]

Yes :D