On Morale
Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2024 1:29 pm
This is something of a spin-off from viewtopic.php?p=41180, but it felt like enough of a tangent to warrant its own thread.
In short, I really really dislike the current Morale system. It's easily my least favorite thing about Clok/COGG. Low morale feels far too punishing and high morale feels far too necessary. It makes it feel like "happy and smells nice" is a core part of my character's build just because of how necessary and low-effort having high morale is.
Let's look at some numbers. Here's an Anydice program showing low/zero/high morale. This is basically going to be a rehash of the old "value of a reroll" post on the COGG BBS, so feel free to skip if you're already familiar.
Assuming zero base rerolls and rolling a d100, you would expect equal likelihood of rolling any number. You'd have a 50/50 shot at above/below 50, 25/75 of above/below 75, and 75/25 of above/below 25. On average, you'll roll 50.
Introducing rerolls does two things: It skews your average roll and makes your rolls more consistent. Consistently bad in the case of negative rerolls and consistently good in the case of positive. For average roll skew, a single reroll will shift your average from 50 to 33 for negative or 67 for positive. This change to roll average alone feels huge, but it's not the whole picture. If the same distribution was maintained, you might expect the new average to simply be the new 50/50 point, but it's actually worse. With one negative reroll, the 50/50 point is in actuality 30, and 70 for positive. Why the extra skew? It's because the rolls are more consistent, and weighted in the reroll direction. A roll of 50 becomes the 25/75 point - A die with a single negative reroll will only break 50 25% of the time, while a positive reroll will result in an over-50 result 75% of the time.
All this is to say that the positive/negative reroll from the Morale bonus has a huge impact. Especially for tasks that are near your skill level and considered "challenging," one reroll can be make-or-break. So we're incentivized to keep our morale as close to 5.0 as possible for that fairly-consistent bonus reroll. This is really easy to do, even without "sleeping" in a comfortable bed. Taking a bath regularly easily restores morale faster than it depletes. It's so trivial to maintain that having 4.0+ morale has come to feel like the "baseline" for my character to feel "right." I assume most other players operate in much the same way. Even 0.0 morale feels punishing when you've gotten used to having that extra reroll most of the time.
On the flip side, having -5.0 morale feels absolutely debilitating. Almost any mob I fight will either trounce me or isn't worthwhile with respect to either skill practice or loot. Even activities that don't involve a specific skill but still have a roll involved, like butchering, aren't worth doing when you only see a handful of meat hunks from a deer when you usually have to count on both hands and both feet. So the activities available at low morale feel very limited. You can mostly just chill and RP.
But wait, jerc! I thought morale is "really easy" to keep high! It's easy, yes, but it's time-intensive, and not even the fun/active kind of time-intensive. The things that raise your morale are few and far between, zero-interaction, and are on timers. You can't just spam them and get your morale back to max; you have to wait until their cooldown expires to get them again. These cooldowns are on the order of hours - at least one, maybe two for tasty food/ bath with soap? I only know of one other fairly-expensive way to gain morale quickly. All in all, you can gain something like 2 morale per hour if you're really trying and hitting all of those cooldowns asap. So let's say you've just used all of those cooldowns and accidentally walk 10 leagues in the wilderness with your bag closed. You're now at -5.0 morale with no way to regain it. You're looking at 3-4 hours just to get back to 0.0 morale, which already probably feels like a punishment. More like 5-7 hours to get to the +5.0 which is what feels "normal" now.
None of this feels like a good mechanic. A "bonus" shouldn't be so trivial to maintain that it feels like the "baseline," and its inverse shouldn't be so debilitating and easy-yet-time-intensive to reverse that it just feels like a time-out rather than an additional challenge.
I don't quite know how I'd like to see it actually work though, as removing it entirely would feel bad, since we'd lose that sweet sweet 5.0 morale reroll. Setting that aside, one thought I had was to make it more like WoW's "rested" bonus, maybe with a negative multiplier if you managed to tank it. Something that would still let you progress, albeit more slowly. In my research, I even found that this is similar to how it worked at one time in Clok's past: viewtopic.php?p=38005.
Anyway, curious to hear other players' thoughts and ideas!
In short, I really really dislike the current Morale system. It's easily my least favorite thing about Clok/COGG. Low morale feels far too punishing and high morale feels far too necessary. It makes it feel like "happy and smells nice" is a core part of my character's build just because of how necessary and low-effort having high morale is.
Let's look at some numbers. Here's an Anydice program showing low/zero/high morale. This is basically going to be a rehash of the old "value of a reroll" post on the COGG BBS, so feel free to skip if you're already familiar.
Assuming zero base rerolls and rolling a d100, you would expect equal likelihood of rolling any number. You'd have a 50/50 shot at above/below 50, 25/75 of above/below 75, and 75/25 of above/below 25. On average, you'll roll 50.
Introducing rerolls does two things: It skews your average roll and makes your rolls more consistent. Consistently bad in the case of negative rerolls and consistently good in the case of positive. For average roll skew, a single reroll will shift your average from 50 to 33 for negative or 67 for positive. This change to roll average alone feels huge, but it's not the whole picture. If the same distribution was maintained, you might expect the new average to simply be the new 50/50 point, but it's actually worse. With one negative reroll, the 50/50 point is in actuality 30, and 70 for positive. Why the extra skew? It's because the rolls are more consistent, and weighted in the reroll direction. A roll of 50 becomes the 25/75 point - A die with a single negative reroll will only break 50 25% of the time, while a positive reroll will result in an over-50 result 75% of the time.
All this is to say that the positive/negative reroll from the Morale bonus has a huge impact. Especially for tasks that are near your skill level and considered "challenging," one reroll can be make-or-break. So we're incentivized to keep our morale as close to 5.0 as possible for that fairly-consistent bonus reroll. This is really easy to do, even without "sleeping" in a comfortable bed. Taking a bath regularly easily restores morale faster than it depletes. It's so trivial to maintain that having 4.0+ morale has come to feel like the "baseline" for my character to feel "right." I assume most other players operate in much the same way. Even 0.0 morale feels punishing when you've gotten used to having that extra reroll most of the time.
On the flip side, having -5.0 morale feels absolutely debilitating. Almost any mob I fight will either trounce me or isn't worthwhile with respect to either skill practice or loot. Even activities that don't involve a specific skill but still have a roll involved, like butchering, aren't worth doing when you only see a handful of meat hunks from a deer when you usually have to count on both hands and both feet. So the activities available at low morale feel very limited. You can mostly just chill and RP.
But wait, jerc! I thought morale is "really easy" to keep high! It's easy, yes, but it's time-intensive, and not even the fun/active kind of time-intensive. The things that raise your morale are few and far between, zero-interaction, and are on timers. You can't just spam them and get your morale back to max; you have to wait until their cooldown expires to get them again. These cooldowns are on the order of hours - at least one, maybe two for tasty food/ bath with soap? I only know of one other fairly-expensive way to gain morale quickly. All in all, you can gain something like 2 morale per hour if you're really trying and hitting all of those cooldowns asap. So let's say you've just used all of those cooldowns and accidentally walk 10 leagues in the wilderness with your bag closed. You're now at -5.0 morale with no way to regain it. You're looking at 3-4 hours just to get back to 0.0 morale, which already probably feels like a punishment. More like 5-7 hours to get to the +5.0 which is what feels "normal" now.
None of this feels like a good mechanic. A "bonus" shouldn't be so trivial to maintain that it feels like the "baseline," and its inverse shouldn't be so debilitating and easy-yet-time-intensive to reverse that it just feels like a time-out rather than an additional challenge.
I don't quite know how I'd like to see it actually work though, as removing it entirely would feel bad, since we'd lose that sweet sweet 5.0 morale reroll. Setting that aside, one thought I had was to make it more like WoW's "rested" bonus, maybe with a negative multiplier if you managed to tank it. Something that would still let you progress, albeit more slowly. In my research, I even found that this is similar to how it worked at one time in Clok's past: viewtopic.php?p=38005.
Anyway, curious to hear other players' thoughts and ideas!