The new smiley face icon is far more confusing than the old representation

[⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠]

Right now... when you're choosing a governor candidate, it looks like you will only see + :) and - :( as resulting incomes. And the - 1 :( is shown in red. But decreasing discontent is a good thing!

But when you mouse over city names, you'll see things like "-3 smiley faces"

It is really hard to tell what combination of "positive symbol and smiley face" or "negative symbol and negative face" means "decreases discontent / increases happiness" and that's the only thing a player cares about.

Right now:
+ :) means good thing
- :) means bad thing
- -( means bad thing
+ :( doesn't exist AFAIK

In general, I think showing both discontent and happiness income as "incomes" and avoiding any negative symbols, or only using the smiley faces to show whether a city is *overall* happy or discontent, but otherwise, not use smiley faces at all and use a third icon that is half-smiley-half-frown for "income".

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by ⎝⧹Quirken⧸⎠:

a third icon that is half-smiley-half-frown for "income".

That would be the victim of a stroke. It would look terrible.

You are 100% on the mark about the icon confusion, though. The problem is the game uses two conflicting icons to represent one currency, like using a dollar sign and a cent sign to represent actual currency, when all you need is a dollar sign. You don't go $69.¢69, you just go $69.69.

My suggestion is a thumbs up/thumbs down icon. Cross your wrists, one hand thumbs up, one hand thumbs down, that would be your icon. + to the good and - to the bad.

I will admit it's not easy to make a tiny icon that depicts happiness that doesn't fall back on using a face. It can be done, though.

[Kyun]

I suggested this so it makes sense in the patch notes thread : the sign should belong to the same concept that that of the icon.

* happy city with negative happiness should have a happy icon with - happiness total.
* happy city with positive happiness should have happy icon with + happiness total.
* discontent city with negative happiness should have discontent icon with + discontent total. (currently - happiness total, confusing).
* discontent city with positive happiness should have discontent icon with - discontent total. (currently + happiness total, confusing).
All modifiers either are + happiness or + discontent.

In order : less of a good thing is a bad thing. More of a good thing is a good thing. More of a bad thing is a bad thing. Less of a bad thing is a good thing. It should reflect that.

When hovering over a city from the world map, total should behave like this too, with the accurate icon (reflecting current status) and sign (reflecting current tendency from icon). If you want - to always be bad, you have to get rid of negative concepts.

Maintenance is also wrong. Looking at a palace, it says :
-10% of -202 maintenance (red icon), total +20.2 maintenance (red icon)/year. It should be the opposite ; you have positive maintenance and then you have less of it.
To fix it, it should be either of these :
* -10% of +202 maintenance (red icon), total -20.2 maintenance (red icon)
* -10% of -202 gold (yellow icon), total +20.2 gold (yellow icon)