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[praguepride]

So, first off I understand why recruitment was nerfed and I completely support limiting how many people a person can talk to every day. Older versions, recruitment was broken as you'd be talking to hundreds of people a day it seemed like.Add to that being able to talk them out of $50 to $100 and there was no shortage of funds after going on a lengthy talking spree at the co-op or crack house.

HOWEVER the new system I think swings things past the point of "challenging but fun" and into the "frustrated, why the hell is it doing that!" sort of spectrum.
 
The way I understand it, new people have priority over older people, and if you miss a single meeting, they never come back again. I think that one or both of those issues needs to be addresse dto help make the game more balanced overall.

#1: Random meetings: What do you mean I don't get to decide who I get to talk to? It makes no sense why I'd rather talk to a homeless guy then my carefully nurtured Hangin' Judge who's just about ready to fight! Let me decide who I have time for.

Basically the game would list out all the people you have planned to talk to (adding jobs & status like determined or ready to fight would be bonus) and then you'd get X slots to use. X being random number + persuasion + juice (higher juice means less need for sleep.

#2: If the above can't be done, let it go in reverse order. So the people I've been talking to for days or weeks get higher priority then the newcomer I chatted up just to get them to look away as I stole their stuff.

#3: Forgiveness: Basically just because you blow off a meeting doesn't mean they're lost forever. Perhaps each level gives you one "freebie". So at "humoring" or "someplace else" if you blow them off they're gone. But at "curious or determined" you can miss a single meeting and they'll come back tomorrow. And at "ready to fight" you would get a couple chances to talk to them before they're gone forever.

[jasonred79]

Shouldn't you put this under the "Things to fix or do in the next release " thread? ... well, I'll leave it  to you or coronel or jon to shift this over or not.
 
Anyhow, recruitment through persuasion is very very "grindy" at the moment. It has shifted from "talk to many many people in 1 day" to "talk to 5 people a day... for many many days". Same dif, but just spread over time.
 
but, praguepride.... you're doing it wrong.
 
#1. Basically, the current system, if you have been talking to a couple of hanging judges and carefully nurturing them... STOP talking about issues with homeless guys! Problem solved. Basically, if you already have a few guys who you badly want to recruit, you're supposed to stop recruiting new guys.
 
#2. I don't get the problem of getting people to look away if you want to steal... I just move 1 step left, then 1 step right. Done. However I have talked to greenies just before I open fire and shoot up a bunce of reds.
 
#3. Yeah, it's a bit frustrating when this happens. But, again, it can be said it's your own fault for "talk"ing to so many people. Heck, if you find this bad, "seduction" should be killing you. I get frustrated when my person with 14 seduction gets ambushed for trying to date 2 people at once. And TWO people is very very easy to do by accident, since you can date 1 person on Monday and have them "see you tomorrow" then you forget about it and press "seduce" on Tuesday.
 
Currently, it's not so much illogical and frustrating. It's UNFORGIVING. The current system, as long as you don't do something that "breaks the rules", you won't get in trouble.
 
Basically, as long as each recruiter does not "talk" to more than 1-2 people a day, or if you talk to 5 people on 1 day, you don't talk to anymore people at all until those 5 are dealt with, you should be fine.
 
 

[praguepride]

How about the ability to refuse to someone BEFORE meeting with them.

Sometimes you just accidentally talk to someone or you need them to look away before you do something illegal, or maybe you're just grinding your persausion. It just seems highly illogical that I don't get to have any decision on what order people come and go at.

However, I can see the arguement that as an "elite liberal" you view EVERYONE as equally valuable for your time, but then that should be the case. EVERYONE should be pooled and then randomly pulled out, not a "last in, first talked to" sort of deal.

Second, persausion should be less grindy if there's such a huge penalty associated with "over-talking". Maybe if you gained more then .01 persausion per person talked to it wouldn't seem so imperitive to talk to as many people as possible.

Finally, it'd be nice to get a good approximation of how many people you can talk to based on your skill level. With seduction you can have lovers equal to seduction skill I believe, so that gives you a good idea of how many people you can have going on at once. I know there's a huge random factor to it but then again, seduction is far more powerful then persausion, especially early in the game.

Maybe something like INT + JUICE LEVEL + PERSAUSION - WOUNDS = approximate # of people per day

[jasonred79]

Second, persausion should be less grindy if there's such a huge penalty associated with "over-talking". Maybe if you gained more then .01 persausion per person talked to it wouldn't seem so imperitive to talk to as many people as possible.

Maybe something like INT + JUICE LEVEL + PERSAUSION - WOUNDS = approximate # of people per day

Agreed on persuasion being too grindy. Talking to people also grind law, science, religion, so it's really really grindy. Ech.

Hah. So, someone with 9 int and 9 pers could talkto to 18 people a day? +/-
That's very much higher than current levels. Currently, it's probably "safe" to talk to 5 people a day. Anyhow, with recruitment caps so low, why do you WANT to talk to 18 people a day? Just to grind up persuasion and skills?
 
Seduction, even with 14 seduction skill, you can be ambushed for dating 2 people at once. The safe number is ONE PERSON at a time.
 
From that point of view, with a soft limit of 1 for dating, a soft limit of 5 for persuasion seems ok...
 
It took me a while to get used to the system. (a few weeks of in-game time?) but once I got used to it, I was fine. Just STOP TALKING TO PEOPLE for no reason.
 

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Reverse order and forgiveness both sound easy and very reasonable, selecting the order would be a little more complicated and would add extra steps to the interface to do something most people wouldn't need to do or even care about though, so I'm somewhat less keen on doing that.

[praguepride]

Reverse order and forgiveness both sound easy and very reasonable, selecting the order would be a little more complicated and would add extra steps to the interface to do something most people wouldn't need to do or even care about though, so I'm somewhat less keen on doing that.

At the very least reverse order would be wonderful. That way instead of just straight up losing people you worked for, you'll have a greater chance of ignoring the people you just talked to.

Seduction is already powerful and needs to have a huge downside, but persuasion as is seems like difficulty for the sake of difficulty without any reason behind it. Considering how little spamming talking to people really gets you (compared to bluffign/radio shows etc.) it just would make the grind a little easier.

[jasonred79]

heh. If you accidentally talk to like 20 people, you lose a few of them. Big whoop. (IIRC you can safely talk to 8-10 people, no problem... and I don't see why you would need to do so)
If you accidentally try to seduce 20 people in 1 day, you will almost definitely be ambushed by them.
And 20x -5 = -100 juice. That's a pretty stiff penalty/downside!

Really, I only ever encounter praguepride's problem when I am starting a new game... at that point, my founder can hire 6 people, so talking to more than 10 in 1 day is quite a good idea.
Other than that though, I don't even understand why you are getting the "double booked" message. Why do you talk to so many people anyway?

[EuchreJack]

I agree with Praguepride and Jonathan on the reverse order and forgiveness.

I will often talk to a liberal before I attack a convervative, so they do not get in the crossfire.  Or talk to the moderate factory workers so I can smash the machines.  Etc.

It really is a viable strategy. 

Also, the easiest way to quickly raise persuasion is to talk to liberals about the issues.  And it is the only way for liberals with rap sheets to build persuasion without training or the risk of getting busted.

It can also be easy sometimes to go overboard with the recruitment, especially for those of us (who make up a majority of the community) in the "pre-4.0" era.