Cologne and Elections, acceptable cheese or too good?

[Baines]

Previously, Cologne was a potentially useful though not necessarily amazing item. Turning most of a level friendly could be rather helpful, but it wasn't essential. I, at least, never found myself bothering to clone Cologne, buy extra bottles as a Vampire, or pick it as a Loadout items.

Elections potentially change that. If how zombie disasters affect the election gets altered, then a cautious eye might also be cast towards an "instantly win the floor" item.

And Cologne is such an instant-win item. On early floors, you can instantly get +30 or higher for that floor with a single use. In Uptown, you can instantly jump to higher than +70 for that specific floor. Even if you went on a mindless rampage, you'd still have far more than enough points to win that floor.


So, maybe Cologne is due some tweaks in this post-election world? I don't mean to nerf it into uselessness, but perhaps to give it at least a bit of a consequence... (And then I create two ideas that still wouldn't stop someone from completing a level, then firing off a Cologne right before they leave... Thus not really reducing the election benefit much at all.)

My thought: Upon using Cologne, while the majority of Neutral Residents become Friendly, a minority become Annoyed. After all, not everyone is going to like a particular cologne, and such a strong cologne may prompted equally strong negative responses.

This would not make Cologne worthless. You'd still convert the majority to your side. Those negatively affected would only shift to Annoyed, not Hostile. You could hamper yourself, maybe annoy a shopkeeper, but you wouldn't be getting jumped by random people unless you specifically did something else to push them from Annoyed to Hostile.


Alternate thought: This would change Cologne into something slightly different, and a bit more random, but it could potentially be seen as a more interesting effect... Upon using Cologne, every Resident (regardless of current alignment) will each randomly shift one step towards Friendly or Hostile, though the shift will be weighted towards Friendly. Friendly will either stay where they are or shift to Neutral. Neutral will either shift towards Friendly or Annoyed. Annoyed will either shift to Neutral or Hostile. Hostile will either shift to Annoyed or stay Hostile. Again, you'd have a higher chance of shifting towards a friendlier alignment. Cologne would not affect Loyal NPCs, nor would it be able to turn a Friendly NPC to loyal, and it might have a rather reduced chance of turning a Hostile NPC into just an Annoyed NPC.

Mind, I don't know how the game is coded. This might not even be practical idea from a coding standpoint, particularly when you'd have to process the effect of such an item on a population-dense large Uptown level.

[Iodized Salt]

Another idea, perhaps instead of making the entire level friendly it just makes a portion (1/2 to 2/3) friendly? just another idea

[Doopliss]

I don't think winning a floor's vote is overpowered at all from a "win the game" standpoint. Electability feels like a big mechanic because it shows up in every level, but you're doing all that to achieve a challenge there are already pretty easy ways to achieve. Even if you can get Cologne from a Loadout-O-Matic, you're still sinking $1000 or so into defeating the mayor where you could accomplish the same thing with a time bomb or an invisibility syringe. If you spent a fair bit of time in the city, do you really think democracy is a good idea for it? :P

Another issue is that, if cologning up a level annoys some people at random, you've still pretty much sealed that floor's vote in your favour if you've been diligent about murdering your detractors. This just means you have a few more detractors to worry about. From a fun standpoint, it feels better just to give a player the floor win and let them move on.'

Finally, if you have to choose between making cologne fair for the election and making cologne useful on the actual level, I'd rather balance it for the short term. If there's a decent chance that you won't even get permission to enter the building you want or a discount at the store you want (even moreso if you risk getting locked out of the store you want), it becomes way more dangerous for an upside that wasn't all that big a deal in the first place.

[Baines]

Originally posted by Doopliss:

I don't think winning a floor's vote is overpowered at all from a "win the game" standpoint. Electability feels like a big mechanic because it shows up in every level, but you're doing all that to achieve a challenge there are already pretty easy ways to achieve. Even if you can get Cologne from a Loadout-O-Matic, you're still sinking $1000 or so into defeating the mayor where you could accomplish the same thing with a time bomb or an invisibility syringe. If you spent a fair bit of time in the city, do you really think democracy is a good idea for it? :P

That is an issue with the election itself, not how effective Cologne can be at winning an election.

Getting the hat by winning the election is already deliberately choosing to win "the hard way."

To win the election, in addition to everything else you need to do, you have to be able to reach the Mayor's village. But anyone who can reach the Mayor's village has already shown the skill (and almost certainly has acquired the kit) to easily take the hat directly from the Mayor, without even bothering with the election. Any extra effort/resources you spend specifically to win the election is going to lose out versus spending that same effort/resources on directly taking out the mayor. That doesn't mean that you cannot ask if perhaps some method of winning the election is a bit too easy.

On a related note, I wonder how many people went out of their way to use cologne previously? I mean besides people that just used whatever cologne they found. I mean how many people would pick it as a loadout, would buy extras as a Vampire, would clone it, or would buy it if they found a shopkeeper selling it.

[Doopliss]

That's a fair point. Possibly I'm cynical about the election in general because I don't see an entertaining way of winning it. My current not-particularly-tryhardy experience is that you can only really win the election if you have a semi-consistent way of improving people's relationships with you. If you play the game normally, befriend everyone (kill slavers/jailors, complete sidequests, bribe bouncers) and kill everyone you alienate, it's still a wash whether you win or not. I guess you'd need to befriend everyone and then do some *serious* population correction, or just hire people for no reason, both of which seem kinda tedious.

And realistically, if I could auto-win the election as either vampire or comedian, vampire seems like the more challenging of the two.

I definitely didn't consider cologne to be worthwhile unless I had one sitting around. I find the trespassing rarely ever comes up and the discount is kinda tiny.

[Baines]

Honestly, I didn't even figure out that Cologne was useful at all until I decided to do an Election run with it. It does make some quests go quicker when nearly everyone on the level considers you a friend.

Even there, cologne managed to feel both cheesy and not amazing. I just don't find it to be an interesting item. With a single button press, you make nearly everyone on the level Friendly. This is beneficial, and more so as you get to larger levels with more people and more stuff to do. At the same time, it does nothing for the people you'd most want to affect, those that are already annoyed or hostile. So in some ways, it isn't even as "valuable" as a random weapon you picked up off the ground.

And now we have elections, which Cologne trivializes. At least you have to spend a modicum of effort to abuse Necronomicon-induced zombie apocalypses. If you want to make friends through normal means, you have to give items to a bunch of office drones and bouncers, and even then you have to be careful about how many others you upset (and leave alive). With Cologne, you just press a single button and you "win" the floor (unless you go through extreme efforts to "lose" it). You can even use it to "win" time-sensitive Disaster levels that you might have otherwise lost.

[Doopliss]

I guess this is part of my reason not wanting to nerf cologne for electioneering reasons. It's far from the only way to abuse elections, and while the other methods take more effort and attention, they don't really take more skill or creativity. For example, I still maintain that comedian is an easier "win the election" playthrough than vampire, because you get to eat food (and you're paying through the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nose if you try to cologne-cheese without loadout-o-matic access). They're not more challenging than cologne usage, just more tedious. In my experience, the vast majority of time spent cleaning up those who don't like you doesn't add challenge so much as it requires you to beat up defenceless people. So I don't have a lot of interest in preserving it as a challenge run, at least in its current state. Nor do I think goofy game abuses are a bad thing in and of themselves, since it's kind of on flavour for this city of psychopathic idiots.

Maybe I should make a thread complaining about the election in general and stop bullying your thread. Sorry about that.

[Baines]

Originally posted by Doopliss:

Maybe I should make a thread complaining about the election in general and stop bullying your thread. Sorry about that.

You aren't bullying this thread. :) Besides, I was just asking the question, as I myself am not sure whether Cologne either should be or needs to be changed.

Though there probably should be a separate thread specifically about the election in general, at least if you want a chance for more people to read about general election concerns, rather than keeping it inside a cologne-specific thread.

[Kajnake]

It allows you to auto get +1 to city voting. If you clone it every level i think moni waste balances with it

[Ｂｏｏｂｓ]

imo the potential fixed would be cologne expired when you go to the elevator and any friendly status revert back to how it was

[Aquillion]

Originally posted by Baines:

Even there, cologne managed to feel both cheesy and not amazing. I just don't find it to be an interesting item. With a single button press, you make nearly everyone on the level Friendly. This is beneficial, and more so as you get to larger levels with more people and more stuff to do. At the same time, it does nothing for the people you'd most want to affect, those that are already annoyed or hostile. So in some ways, it isn't even as "valuable" as a random weapon you picked up off the ground.

It sounds like the issue is just you not liking cologne and are using this as an opportunity to ask for it to be replaced, not that it's overpowered.

Because... I mean, it isn't overpowered. It's one floor. The impact is minimal compared to what you could accomplish with almost any other high-value consumable in the right time at the right place. If you want to win the election, you need to either have cologne for the majority of floors (which is a massive investment, enough that you deserve to win the final battle if you somehow swung it), or already have a separate strategy to win the vote, in which case the cologne is just a minor boost.

[Gravity Action]

heres the thing just dont mess with it let people cheese if they want then they realise its kinda boring and dont do it or they like finding ways to cheese games and find it fun or just find it fun no reason to change it (you dont have to use it if you think it makes it to easy)