Author Topic: Advertising... change proposal  (Read 7741 times)

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Offline Dagoth

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Advertising... change proposal
« on: May 20, 2010, 08:51:18 PM »
I really don't like how advertising currently works, with girls working at raising your advertising level and it only going up, costing more and more. I've thought about it and I believe I've got a more sensible way of handling advertising.

First, bring back the ability to set the advertising level for each brothel, except the appropriate amount of gold will have to be paid for each girl you have doing the advertising job for the brothel (100 gold advertising level with 3 girls doing advertising = 300 gold spent).
Then, each girl that does the advertising job will use the provided advertising money to the best of their ability to bring in more customers for that week instead of increasing your advertising level. The number of customers brought in will be a multiplier of the advertising money used with a combination of the girl's stats and/or skills. Primarily, I'm thinking Charisma would be the main factor.

So, the amount of money spent on advertising is up to the player for any given week, and different girls can do a better job of advertising based on their stats.

Does that seem like a sensible system? Any suggestions for improving it?

Offline sgb

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2010, 09:39:42 PM »
The faults of the new system was something I briefly mentioned in the bug thread as well, so yes I agree a change would be good here.  This system seems to make the most sense; you should have to keep someone working to maintain your advertising.  While I realize the new jobs are still heavily in the works, I find there's rarely a use for more than ~10 girls or so per brothel in the current patch as there really isn't much benefit beyond 7-8 whores, a matron, and 1-2 girls to handle catacomb runs, beasts, and security as needed.  Requiring 2-3 full time advertisers would certainly help keep those extra girls useful.

One small issue though; there's no way to see a number of stats currently, charisma included.  As more jobs get added that require more than just looks, sex and combat skill, I think the UI needs to be expanded to list ALL stats.  Love/hate/fear can remain hidden beyond the general description.

Offline crazy

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2010, 11:32:22 PM »
Well would it be possible to also add a 4th way to get girls though Advertising i mean you can walk the streets and find girls and ask them to come work for you.  But why cant the girls come to you and ask for a job? Your advertising for people to come to your whore house so why wouldn't a girl see that and say "Hey i can make some money there ill go see if i can get a job there" and usally your whore house will become the talk of the town or higher in fame so it would only make sense that girls would come to you looking for work.  Just an ideal i really think we could use a few more ways to get girls.

Offline Mehzerz

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2010, 10:01:40 AM »
Makes sense to me muncy. I'd just hope it doesn't happen often, getting constant requests for employment could get annoying fast. Just like any random occurrence. GTA4 was a major victim of annoying random calls. Hopefully if such a thing was implemented, it wouldn't share a similar fate.
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26 girls, 18 to go

Offline sgb

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2010, 12:13:26 PM »
I like muncy's suggestion as well.  Maybe have the occurance linked to fame as well.  It never made sense that I still have to go out in person to get any new girls even when my business is renowed throughout the city.  But yeah, make it a small chance; like 1% per 'level' of advertising and 1% for each level of fame would make sense.

Offline DocClox

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #5 on: May 29, 2010, 01:11:30 PM »
if I was coming into the game as a newcomer, I think I'd expect advertising to be based on the amount of cash you spend monthly, and I'd expect that to be under player control.

being able to send girls out to get the punters in is great, but it shouldn't cost anything, at least not above the lost earnings from having them on their backs. And when they stop, the bonus should go away.

Offline FurryFanatic

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #6 on: May 29, 2010, 02:17:42 PM »
If you're worried about too many random contacts from girls who would be interested in applying to your establishment, a limit could be set up to determine how many girls would be allowed to ask you to hire them.  You could set the application limit like the random gangs that can show up in the gang hiring window.  You could also set the chance you would get girls asking for a job, but that's all up to the developers and their interest in adding something this awesome.  8)

Offline sgb

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #7 on: May 29, 2010, 06:21:21 PM »
Quote
if I was coming into the game as a newcomer, I think I'd expect   advertising to be based on the amount of cash you spend monthly, and I'd   expect that to be under player control.
This way makes sense and is easy to understand, but is uninteresting.  In 1.29, I would just set the slider to max as soon as I could afford it, and forget about it.  It becomes an issue of 'why is this in the game?' since it adds nothing to it and money still flows like water once you get established in WM.  It was like housing costs; technically under player control, but adding nothing to the game due to the simplicity of it.

Quote
being able to send girls out to get the punters in is great, but it   shouldn't cost anything, at least not above the lost earnings from   having them on their backs. And when they stop, the bonus should go   away.

I see this as an issue of whether the devs think the free girls are your property or not once you've met them.  Having to pay them for non-whoring jobs (which you set their pay via house% and tips) implies that they are employees who have no reason to work for you if you aren't paying them wages.  Having them do jobs for free implies they aren't actually much more free than the slaves.  The direction of 1.30 seems to be nodding towards 'employees'.  Slaves doing work for free makes more sense, but there need to be more carefully considered drawbacks to having slaves.  Even in 1.30, there's still little reason not to brand everyone you can for 100% house percentage and lowered rebelliousness.

Offline Dagoth

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2010, 10:18:23 PM »
if I was coming into the game as a newcomer, I think I'd expect advertising to be based on the amount of cash you spend monthly, and I'd expect that to be under player control.
Well, the idea would be that the advertising level could be set by the player again to whatever level they like, and it would be clearly indicated there that it's how much you'll be spending for each girl who's advertising.

You do have a fair point, though. It might be better to have each advertising girl just boost the effectiveness of advertising money spent by a certain factor based on the girl's stats; for example, girl A is really charismatic and boosts advertising effectiveness by 30%, while girl B isn't and boost it another 15% for a total of 145% effectiveness. Free girls would still be paid for their advertising work as well, of course.
Yeah, I actually like that idea better. Probably simpler all around, and a sensible enough setup.

Offline DocClox

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2010, 10:41:00 PM »
This way makes sense and is easy to understand, but is uninteresting.  In 1.29, I would just set the slider to max as soon as I could afford it, and forget about it.  It becomes an issue of 'why is this in the game?' since it adds nothing to it and money still flows like water once you get established in WM. 
The solution for that is a non-linear scale for advertising. if 10 gold a week is enough to pull in you one extra customer on average, then 100 gets you 2 and 100 gets you 3, for instance. (that's a little crude, but you get the idea). I'd make it  possible to spend more on advertising than you could recoup from increased trade, but not too-obvious where the break-even point was, just so the player has some scope for fiddling with the setting.

Free girls would still be paid for their advertising work as well, of course.

I sometimes forget that not everyone enslaves everything in sight.  Certainly, free girls would want paying.  :)

Offline Dagoth

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Re: Advertising... change proposal
« Reply #10 on: June 01, 2010, 10:08:56 PM »
The whole slaves vs. free girls discussion has been split off to here:
http://pinkpetal.org/index.php?topic=389.0