Absolutely standard traits do not feel unique. If, let's say, difference between body types is nothing but level of base constitution, then it's just boring.
Ideally every trait should be somehow unique, even if only a little. Otherwise they are not worth looking for, stats can be upgraded without gaining traits.
I think there was a misunderstanding here, too. My intention was not to suggest creating 'boring' traits -- I'll agree if the only difference was something like Constitution, it would be kind of useless. My point was more that the traits themselves, however they are made fun or unique, should be designed in such a way that modifying it afterward is unnecessary, thus ensuring that more players experience the 'same' intended behavior. Making a trait unique should not be exclude it from following a logical standard, and deviations should be documented.
In the case of body types, we can establish that going from small to medium to large body types will, at the very least, impact agility and constitution, with the medium type being the middleground for both. Whether this 'baseline' set of expected stat impacts is documented (meaning shown to the player via descriptions or somehow) is up for debate, because although it would be technically hidden, it's standard across the three body types. However, if then the small body type girl additionally has, let's say, a bonus to Luck (completely arbitrary and random example here, not saying it makes any sense) while the larger body type girl has a bonus to Defense, and the medium body type girl has a bonus to Attack, these differences should probably be documented and explained because there's no way of extrapolating these effects as compared to the agility vs constitution situation. If you then additionally have a small body type variant that also increases attack speed on top, it'll be nearly impossible to figure out who has what ahead of time.
One thing you can do here is simply separate out these 'occasional' trait variants into separate-but-related traits, or some sort of trait hierarchy. In this case, the small body type would be the base for a girl, and that body type allows the possibility for the bonus evasion or the bonus attack speed traits to be added (which require the smaller body type trait as its parent.) Once the 'base' traits are taken care of, then you can move on to a pool of 'personality' traits, and then later on, to a large pool of 'miscellaneous' traits that would make each girl more unique.
Ultimately, I still feel very strongly about making information accessible, but I believe I've proven that if I have to I'll just expose the data myself, haha.
That is what effects system for. Although, I'm not a big fan of self-restoring traits because they possibly can make many items useless.
As far as I can tell, this 'effects system' still requires you to write in ren'py code, doesn't it? Unless you're talking about a newly revamped dev version that allows you to just 'hook into' a number of 'unused' effects by linking it from the traits file. This would also go into the whole modification thing.
Regarding self-restoring traits, they can be valuable, but if done well, they won't necessarily make items useless. In the example of the Hyperactive trait restoring stamina, it would be either a few points, or a percentage bonus every turn, but if you really needed a quick recovery, you would still use the potion to restore a large amount immediately. Additionally, you could also increase the upkeep cost incurred (the girl needs to eat more to maintain the hyperactivity?) so that you're technically paying continuously for the cost as compared to a one-time cost of a potion. At the same time, perhaps we can also say that, since it reduces maximum fatigue anyway, that although she can recover stamina more quickly, she generates fatigue slightly faster than normal as well, and will hit her limit more quickly.
Alternatively, you could also create a potion that temporarily raises a girl's maximum fatigue or whatnot past the usual limit for a number of days, or have the potion reduce the amount of fatigue that a girl will generate over a few days (say, a girl will only generate 80% of the fatigue she normally does.)
Coupled with your assertion of 'unique traits' from above, I would say having these kinds of effects would add to the uniqueness of many traits, especially as you can make more traits have effects, and have these traits lock you out from others -- in this case, Hyperactive I believe locks you out of having Dawdler. Dawdler currently just increases your fatigue by a small amount while reducing agility, strip and service, but let's say instead they generated fatigue at a slower rate all the time, although it would also take them longer to recover once they're tired out. Now you have two traits that compete with each other to provide a bonus to the same 'stat' in different ways, and both have merits.
Currently, there's no real reason to have Dawdler besides the customer trait matching bonus because it provides no other benefits, and actually comes with a bunch of penalties instead. Sure, it raises maximum fatigue by 10, but virtually every girl, except the ones that have Fragile, already start with the maximum of 300 fatigue, which as far as I can tell is hard-coded and cannot be increased, so even that one bonus is effectively wasted.
Usually in jrpgs you have close to zero information about stats. While it might be an issue for some players, this genre is very popular nevertheless.
You are right, in some of the more particularly in-depth RPG's I've played, there are usually some mechanics that aren't explained well, but while I still enjoy them, it just means I have to go look up guides and wikis that explain these things all that much more. As well, most of these mechanics are generally pretty consistent once you figure out the first 'step' to them.
One of the last 'complex' RPG's I played was 'The Last Remnant.' I remember being quite confused by that game for a while, too, but one example is your skills could apparently 'swing' two different ways: They could either become 'Nimble' or 'Mighty' as you leveled them up. However, this distinction was at least labeled in the game so even if I couldn't figure it out (though, honestly, nimble and mighty are pretty easy to tell they modify the skill's speed and power, respectively) I had a starting point to search. Hiding information from the player entirely just makes this second step needlessly frustrating, as now you have no idea
and you have no starting point to look at. For TLR, you end up with guides like
this one where it's a list of things people wish they had known early on - one major thing is that leveling up and grinding like your typical RPG was a bad idea! But you wouldn't know playing the game because it doesn't really tell you the consequences of doing so until you find yourself in an impossible battle because the enemies scale with your 'battle rank' while your own stats cannot handle it (your stats don't necessarily increase when your battle rank goes up.)
You misunderstood. Of course there are games where lvl 1 fast character is always faster than lvl 100 slow character.
In our case, however, even slow character can be faster if the difference is 100 levels. But if the difference is small, then yeah, small character will have more agility because she does have bonuses to agility. Agility decided the speed, not pure traits, because unlike the main game battle engine only operates with raw numbers.
I think we are just talking about slightly different aspects here. I agree with your scenario, and yeah, a stat bonus is a stat bonus when a fight is concerned, regardless of where it comes from. My point was about the 'additional' bonus effect of attack speed
on top of the evasion bonus that they get innately from the body type, which it sounded like you said would only occasionally appear on girls with the smaller body type. My argument was that it should either come together as a package, or as two discrete bonuses that you can see, rather than as a hidden modifier.
Put another way, if I have two "small" type girls with very similar stats, which one do I send into combat? The one with the attack speed bonus of course, except there's no way for me to tell.
Xela can help with that
You better ask in the general discussion thread to make sure he notice the question.
Will do, I need to draft up the math first for whatever I plan to tackle first; Probably the dirt, fatigue and XP generation for strippers and service girls since they should be relatively simple few-line edits once I get a good formula down. I'll poke him in that thread if he doesn't respond here before then.
I should also mention that I hope you're not taking any criticisms personally here; I simply enjoy discussion, and am glad you are responding with such detail.