Topic

Mood unbalanced?

I've said this before, but I really get the impression that mood is pretty much useless. Mine barely ever drops to the regular happy face, let alone below it (stats as of last game close: mood at 460/480, energy at 20/480). I don't even look at my mood anymore. Because of that, I never really experience, as a gameplay feature, the detriments mood may or may not have.

Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Mood always seems to fall for me. I hardly ever drink anything. Though, it doesn't fall TOO much. I have a few emblems that I caress (that sounds creepy, lol) to elevate my mood when necessary. Though, when I "die" and go to hell, I really feel the effects of 0 mood. I get 0xp from everything! Lol.
    Posted 18 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Try making stinky cheese--that drops your mood VERY fast!
    Posted 18 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Cerulean I drink things occasionally, especially since I do a lot of mining, and drinks restore energy too. I also have meditation. However, your post says that even so, your mood doesn't drop very much (so it does seem unbalanced). You also imply that mood is only an issue when your energy has hit 0, so maybe they shouldn't be separate systems.

    @Shepherdmoon That actually used to be my primary food source, and there mood was an issue. Since then, I discovered there are much more productive foods I can make, which have a bigger energy payoff and don't have the mood drop!
    Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If I'm out in the world wandering around, I have no trouble with my mood.  But mining and/or being at home tends to drain it fairly fast. 
    Posted 18 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @WindBorn Interesting, I've never had an issue with mining and mood - though I usually drink Earthshakers when I mine, because they're easy to produce relative to how much energy (and apparently mood) they save, especially if produced in bulk.
    Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I never, ever had a mood problem until this last test, where I spent more time just standing around chatting with other players or following a high jumper than I have before.  Wow! Mood plummets when your avatar does nothing!  Feels like it's working in the sense that the game expects you to be busy doing stuff, busy little button mashers that we are. :)
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Poison a few trees and your mood will drop rapidly. 
    I was attempting to change two trees from bean to wood, and some 'helpful' people kept giving them antidote, so I ended up having to re-poison them twice, by the time I was finally done with the poisoning, clearing and replanting, my poisoners guilt took my mood down to the red.  
    Luckily the tower has so many mood drinks around (and quoins) that I just headed over there, and played through the rooms until a combo of drinks and mood quoins got my mood back to normal and the 'guilt' trip finished. 
    Posted 18 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @zeeberk Funny that the game punishes you when you're being laid-back and social. Irony much?

    @Ebil I've never done much tree-poisoning, although I have changed some trees in my backyard, but a drink or two (and the errands I ran while waiting for them to die and collecting the bean ingredients) shot it right back up to winky.
    Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • /bump
    Posted 18 months ago by Taral Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The only time I've ever had a problem with mood was in early levels since the reset. For some reason, I seemed to be bleeding mood and constantly working to replenishing it, wanting to shut up the little messages that kept saying "your mood is getting low..."  I'd be saying "I KNOW ffs, and you're making it worse!"  But for the last while, I haven't noticed mood being an issue at all.

    I always have lots of butterfly milk handy - that does the trick.
    Posted 18 months ago by Tradescantia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @RobotGymnast... the game punishes you no more when you're 'being laid-back and social' than when you are out and doing things. The energy/mood drain is exactly the same. If the math is right (and that's one mission this test) it should take you ~6 hours to die from standing around. The difference is, when you are 'doing things' you don't notice the mood drain because activities keep it full.

    @Ebil... that major drop in mood is as designed, and keeps people from raising an entire region. You can wait it out between poisons, or plant something to remove that guilt. Each time you poison while the guilt trip is still going, the mood drops incrementally.

    Editing cause I forgot the answer: The benefit to keeping your mood high - the xp per action % is attached to it. At ~80% mood, you start seeing a decrease in xp.. and an action that normally gave you 10xp will only give 9xp... all the way down to 0.
    Posted 18 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I know it's designed to be like that, which is fine with me, it's just the original poster was saying they had the impression that mood is useless, and my poisoning case was to show that it wasn't :)
    Posted 18 months ago by Ebil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not useless, but I agree it's under powered/valued. 
    As a result, the Blending and Cocktail Crafting skills are also undervalued.
    There are very few actions to significantly cause mood reductions.

    So there's the problem... not sure there really is an answer. 
    Glitch is essentially a very net positive world, which I happen to like.
    Posted 18 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was recently told by a developer that energy drops .8% every 90 seconds, which means death in about 3 hours, 7.5 minutes. 

    Mood determines the amount of XP you receive, so if you want to gain levels, it's best to keep your mood high.  For example, if I collect an XP quoin with full mood, I'll get +18, but if my mood is lower, I'll get +17 or less, depending on how low my mood is.  With enough AK skills, you don't need butterfly lotion to get milk, so it becomes easy and inexpensive to keep mood high.
    Posted 18 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Travinara I didn't mean to imply the drain was different, but rather say that when you're doing practically anything aside from standing around, the perceived drain is higher because you don't get the little boosts, so players are effectively punished for standing around chatting instead of running their errands.

    Your point about Blending and Cocktail Crafting is very true; if mood were balanced better, they would be valued higher.

    Mood is only ever an issue in, it seems, edge cases (as you pointed out in your post, there are very few actions which cause significant reductions). Mood should fall more quickly, and with more actions. For instance, rather than having a time-limit on pig-catching, it should be implemented as a poisoner's guilt system. This would add more robustness to the mood system, and take away one of the hard limits (you simply can't catch a pig for a certain amount of time) and replace it with a soft limit (you CAN, but it'll cost you in mood, and thus in experience).
    Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Heheheh... I missed *2.... .8% per 90 seconds = 1.6% per 3 min = 32% per hour = dead in a little over 3 hours, not 6.
    Posted 18 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's a neat complexity layer, but we'd need a whole new set of 'negative' actions. Most of the things that could potentially be 'downers' are actually 'uppers'... like digging, nibbling, squeezing, harvesting, weeding, tending, grinding... all mood-killing tasks to some humans, but mood lifters to every Glitch. The trouble with new 'negative' actions is that people will avoid them, since the game is perfectly playable without them.

    Not everything in a game needs perfectly balanced (though as I point out, some balance would have a game purpose)... and I'm perfectly okay with a game world being overly positive.
    Posted 18 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink