We’d like to offer some clarification and explanation for the new passion system (yellow/red stars).
Before Update #11, yellow stars were just tied to the settler’s skills (like Botany, Carpentry, etc). Because of this simple link, it was easy to give/take stars away via advance customization.
Old System
With Update #11, we linked the passion system with Goal Preference. While it may look the same, the new logic is very different. Goal Preference is calculated through a series of positive and negative effects a settler gets through their Background, Pseudonym and Perks.
New System
We’ve already talked about this in one of our previous MMTs, but the gist is that with this, settlers can have both positive and negative preference for the same thing (like melee combat) and the system will calculate what prevails due to the number game.
In addition to that, as the passion system is no more tied to skills but settlers’ actions, this allows for more diversity and versatility of your settlers. In the end it should enrich the whole experience and make choosing who to accept into your settlement a more exciting thing.
Some of you were disappointed by this as implementation of this system was retroactively applied to your old saves which caused a few surprising settlers’ preferences. It might look like odds are not in your favor, but adaptation is and always was, a core of Going Medieval experience (long time players may remember the introduction of seeds to the game).
Some of you might ask why we are not keeping the old system and giving you complete control via customization. As mentioned above, the old system is bare bones and not tied to goals. The second thing is that balancing this may result in more complications.
Let’s say you are playing the game with a settler who you’ve created to be a perfect melee fighter due to you assigning stars to melee. At some point, they may get a perk “Precious” which gives red stars to fighting. Then we're faced with deciding whether to ignore that perk because the settler has been customized. And if we did that, we'd conceivably have to ignore all of the perks that settlers get during their lifetime. But then what if you get a perk that you really like but it has some small things that you don’t want? Choosing which elements to override becomes very tricky as, unfortunately, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.
We think the new system has a ton of potential. Your starting settlers can still have customized Job Preferences via Background/Pseudonym/Perk choosing. And for the newcomer settlers… Well, no human is perfect and the land in our game can be unforgiving, but nothing should stop your settlers as long as they are together.
Once modding is introduced (we don’t have a date for it yet, but are actively working on it), other players may introduce other systems that are more to your liking. For now - those that really want to control this in any way, we suggest that you go to the Perk.json file located in the Going Medieval_Data\StreamingAssets\Worker (in the installation folder) and add Goal Preference to the perks that you want. Make sure to backup your changes as each patch/update will reset that file to the default setting. Keep in mind that you are doing this on your own accord and may result in some unwanted effects/bugs.
We hope this gives you a better understanding of the preference system and the reasoning behind the changes. As always, please feel free to lend feedback through the usual channels - we always value your input!
We’ll continue with our regular MMTs once we patch Update #11 some more. Until then,
Stay medieval!
Foxy Voxel
