This Grand Life 2 News

To qualify for certain activities in This Grand Life 2, you need to pass a threshold of accumulated experience and qualifications. I think the best way to explain how this works is with an example.



Let's say you want to become a Software Developer. To qualify for the position, you can either have 8000 programming XP (about 4 years full-time worth), a Computer Science degree or some combination of both.

You can gain programming XP by coding at home, which is free but takes longer than studying a degree at university (and also has different preferences).



If someone has both 8000 XP and a degree, then they would be 200% qualified for the job and more likely to be successful in a job interview.

The "value" of experience and qualifications decays very slowly each month. This means if you obtained your degree 5 years ago, it would only count about 70% towards becoming a Software Developer. You would have to make up for it with XP to reach the 100% threshold to be considered for the job.



You won't have to do the math yourself, it's all conveniently calculated and displayed in each character's statement and in tooltips.

A side effect of decaying experience is a career-focused character that works as much as possible will become qualified for their next promotion relatively faster than someone who works at a leisurely pace.

From a game design point of view, I can adjust the thresholds so some qualifications are absolutely required to reach 100% qualified for a job. For example, you must have a Doctor Of Medicine to become a General Practitioner.



The above image shows the most you can get from doctoring XP is 95% qualified. The other 5% must come from a medical degree. No one wants to be treated by someone who never graduated medical school!



The same system is applied to children going through school. If you neglect your child character's education and they don't gain enough schooling XP, they might be unable to complete their high school diploma by the time they reach adulthood.



It's not the end of the world though. Once that child becomes an adult, they can always take remedial education classes to make up for missing schooling XP and eventually complete a high school diploma.

The economy in This Grand Life 2 is made up of industries. Each industry keeps track of its own inflation rate, which is how quickly prices are increasing or decreasing over time.



Almost every single price in the game is affected by a subset of these industries. Some examples:

• House sale/rental prices affected by residential property industry
  
• Electricity bills by energy industry
  
• Delivery driver wages by transportation industry
  
• Groceries by agriculture and food service industry
  
• University/trade school fees by education industry
  

Items that perform similar functions can be affected by different industries as well, which plays into your decision-making.

For example, the price of a home fridge is affected by the retail and residential property industry (consumers spending money and buying new homes pushes up the price of fridges). On the other hand, the price of a commercial freezer is affected by the food service industry (more restaurants opening means higher demand for large freezers).



You can buy a commercial freezer for your home or a home fridge for your restaurant if you want, there are no restrictions. However the specific characteristics of each item affects its suitability.

A commercial freezer takes up a lot of space, uses more electricity and is more durable so would be better suited for the restaurant. However if the energy industry inflation rate is high (meaning high electricity bills), maybe you want to start your business with the home fridge until you actually need something bigger.

The inflation system can make for interesting decisions when combined with other gameplay mechanics. Some other choices that might crop up depending on the state of the economy are:

• Do you pursue the career best suited to your character's preferences, or get a job in a booming industry that's currently paying lots of money, even if your character hates the job?
  
• Should you buy a car, or use public transport instead if fuel prices are high?
  
• Should you wait for the education industry to crash before starting that expensive degree?
  
• Interest rates are low but the commercial property market is rising! Should you take out a loan, leverage yourself to the max and hope it all works out?
  

[h3]The central bank's role[/h3]

All the individual inflation rates are combined into an overall inflation. The central bank looks at this overall inflation when deciding whether to raise or lower interest rates every month. In turn, this interest rate affects the cost/return on loans, mortgages or fixed interest investments you might have.



Since the central bank only looks at overall inflation, this means sometimes you'll have situations where a booming industry will get pushed even higher by central bank policy while the rest of the economy is doing poorly. It's just like some of the speculative bubbles we've seen recently in real life!

Last time I talked about the preferences system and how activities affect people differently depending on their likes and dislikes. Today I'd like to talk about status conditions, which stack on top of preferences to create even more powerful feelings.



There are broadly two categories of status conditions:

1. Very low probability but high-damage or permanent changes like arthritis.
2. High probability but temporary changes like getting agitated or getting a hangover.

All conditions have a set of preferences. For example, if you get the agitated condition you'll have a stronger dislike for working or authority but be more receptive to caffeine or alcohol.



An agitated person's dislike for work means their fun would fall faster than normal while working.



On the other hand, someone who might normally dislike alcohol would gain more fun from drinking at the bar while in an agitated state.



This leaves you with a choice - do I force the character to work through the pain and then use alcohol to recover their fun? Or avoid alcohol and accept the penalties that come with having a negative fun need? Or skip work altogether and hope the performance hit doesn't get them fired?

Every status condition will come with its own set of changes that you will have to consider.

[h3]How are status conditions gained?[/h3]

Status conditions are gained or lost at the start of every month and there are a number of sources.

If your fun need goes negative, the risk of gaining the agitated condition starts to increase. If your fun need goes beyond the maximum, the risk decreases.



Some actions can also change the risk of conditions appearing. A run in the park will increase the risk of gaining a body smell, while a shower will reduce it.



Finally, you can gain conditions simply from getting older. Every month that passes increases your risk of things like arthritis or diabetes. Certain activities might increase these risks as well (e.g overeating can lead to diabetes) but everyone has a small chance to randomly gain these conditions over time.



I was planning to talk about how you can mitigate these risks but this is already getting too long, so until next time thanks for reading!

How can some people work two jobs, while others struggle to get out of bed in the morning? What compels one person to shower twice a day, and another to consider personal hygiene completely optional?

To simulate this variety in human behaviour, I would like to introduce the Preferences system. Every character in your household feels allergic, hate, dislike, like, love or addicted towards different aspects of life.

To use an example, let's look at a theoretical character Bob Baker:



Bob loves sleeping and hates hygiene. He loves sleeping so much that in addition to the base needs of hunger, energy and fun, he has a 'sleep' need to satisfy.



His sleep need is fairly straight forward to take care of - just sleep on a bed.



The image above shows he recovers +800 energy from sleeping, but also +90 fun from loving sleep and +120 fun from liking comfort. On the flip side, his hatred towards hygiene means he actually loses fun when forced to take a shower, as seen below.



It's this balancing of needs and choosing priorities for activities that forms the core of This Grand Life 2's gameplay.

Maybe you want to roleplay a character who is allergic to authority and becomes unhappy when interacting with the government. Such a person would be upset when applying for a transit pass at the Town Hall.



Activities like jobs and education also have a set of preferences. A lawyer would not have much fun if they hated paperwork, while a delivery driver who loves driving would find work much more tolerable.

You might even get opposing preferences for the same job. For example, someone who dislikes working but likes being social would feel mostly neutral towards working as a food server.



You could even create absurdly overpowered characters with an addiction to work who can maintain multiple jobs, only stopping to eat and sleep. However, a drawback is that if they ever stop working, their work need won't be fulfilled and they will suffer penalties.

This leads us to the next topic on health, happiness and milestone birthdays, which I will discuss next time.