Consider for example event child_personality.1012. In this event, the child you're educating has become lazy. You have three options:
-Let them keep lazy.
-Make them instead craven, at the cost of 30 stress.
-Make them instead arbitrary, at the cost of 30 stress.
This is (usually) not an interesting decision. The difference between three negative traits is pretty minimal. While you could construct situations in which one of the three is a deal-breaker, most of the time it doesn't matter. It's basically the same as if the child gained a random trait, but with the added annoyance of having to click to say I don't want stress.
Not every education decision is like this - some are a mix of good and bad traits, which can offer the more interesting decision of trading stress for a better trait. These suffer from the issue that when the child is already getting the good trait, the options to take stress to instead give a bad trait are even more meaningless.
Certainly we can't have a system in which every trait event lets you spend 30 stress for a good trait. That would mean that for 90 stress, your heir could always have 3 good traits. But we do want a system where each provided option is at least tempting.
One way to balance this might be to offer stress for the chance to get a better trait. If your child is turning out lazy, you could spend some stress for a shot at making them, say, diligent instead, but if you lose the ensuing coin-flip, you've spent stress for nothing. Another possibility is to offer stress relief for letting them get a bad trait - you look the other way on their behavior, and you get to relax instead. In addition to charging stress to the parent, the child could also be charged stress. It's a lot of work to break bad habits, or pick up skills you're not suited for!
It might be that this system is basically unchangeable - the file of child educated events is, unbelievably, 7500 lines long. If someone sat down and wrote all that out, it's probably too much work to change it. But if that's automatically generated (all the events are basically the same structure but with different sets of traits), it should be easy enough to revise.
In one of the early dev diaries, it was expressed that the goal was to make fewer no-brainer events. While this has been achieved in many areas, child education stands out as a failure point. A few simple changes (assuming they can be automated) would greatly enhance the experience by making all options viable.
-Let them keep lazy.
-Make them instead craven, at the cost of 30 stress.
-Make them instead arbitrary, at the cost of 30 stress.
This is (usually) not an interesting decision. The difference between three negative traits is pretty minimal. While you could construct situations in which one of the three is a deal-breaker, most of the time it doesn't matter. It's basically the same as if the child gained a random trait, but with the added annoyance of having to click to say I don't want stress.
Not every education decision is like this - some are a mix of good and bad traits, which can offer the more interesting decision of trading stress for a better trait. These suffer from the issue that when the child is already getting the good trait, the options to take stress to instead give a bad trait are even more meaningless.
Certainly we can't have a system in which every trait event lets you spend 30 stress for a good trait. That would mean that for 90 stress, your heir could always have 3 good traits. But we do want a system where each provided option is at least tempting.
One way to balance this might be to offer stress for the chance to get a better trait. If your child is turning out lazy, you could spend some stress for a shot at making them, say, diligent instead, but if you lose the ensuing coin-flip, you've spent stress for nothing. Another possibility is to offer stress relief for letting them get a bad trait - you look the other way on their behavior, and you get to relax instead. In addition to charging stress to the parent, the child could also be charged stress. It's a lot of work to break bad habits, or pick up skills you're not suited for!
It might be that this system is basically unchangeable - the file of child educated events is, unbelievably, 7500 lines long. If someone sat down and wrote all that out, it's probably too much work to change it. But if that's automatically generated (all the events are basically the same structure but with different sets of traits), it should be easy enough to revise.
In one of the early dev diaries, it was expressed that the goal was to make fewer no-brainer events. While this has been achieved in many areas, child education stands out as a failure point. A few simple changes (assuming they can be automated) would greatly enhance the experience by making all options viable.
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