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FDR says hi.
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I was really excited to see this work-in-progress enter the Beta stage! I think you’ve struck a great balance between making it semi-realistic while keeping it entertaining and engaging in its take on politics. While I found the gameplay mechanics a bit too simplified for my personal taste, it was still very enjoyable overall. Perhaps in the next installment, there could be more diversity among the political parties. For example, the Democrats could be split into Progressives, Centrists, and Greens, while the Republicans could include Nationalists, Libertarians, and Christian Conservatives. Each group could have a percentage representation within their party, influencing how they support individual bills/decisions.
Spouse:
I really enjoyed the interactions with the three available spouses. I appreciated that each had a distinctive personality and set of goals. The “love match” spouse is family-oriented and struggles with the stress of our presidency. The wealthy spouse seeks a relationship that’s healthier than what they witnessed in their parents, and my favorite, the political spouse, is essentially our equal, driven and unwilling to be overshadowed.
However, there were a few things I feel could be improved:
- Spouses’ Causes: This choice felt largely irrelevant. Not allowing the spouses to champion a cause doesn’t make much sense, given that it’s now almost a tradition for the First Lady/Gentleman to take on a cause. The rationale for forbidding them seemed flimsy, especially since there are no long-term consequences or benefits tied to it. Perhaps, for the love match spouse, there could be an option where they are simply uninterested in championing a cause, giving the player the choice to allow it or force it. For the others, the refusal could come from more personal, “petty” reasons, like preventing the political spouse from rising further or stopping the wealthy spouse from attempting to “clean” the family’s image. The spouse’s cause should also have some impact later on in the story.
- It would add more depth if we could confess to our spouse about affairs when they happen, rather than having only the political spouse notice anything. The political spouse offering an open marriage felt off, especially since they didn’t take advantage of it for three years, making it seem more like a “pass to cheat.”
- Whether we have a good or bad relationship with our spouse doesn’t seem to affect the storyline much. We are canonically drifting apart and not on good terms for most of the presidency, regardless of the player’s efforts. It would be nice if trying to maintain a strong relationship actually had more impact. For instance, if we have a good relationship, perhaps the fallout from disagreements with our spouse would be less severe, or certain issues (like the West Wing conflict) could be dropped (at least for wealthy/loving spouse as political one could still want to furher their influance)
Pacing:
As many others have mentioned, despite having several major decisions to make, it can sometimes feel like we’re not doing much for large portions of the game. I believe this stems from the fact that many key choices are made in quick succession, followed by several pages of reading about the fallout. For example, we decide on major legislation and executive orders all on the same page, but we’re not really involved in lobbying or championing those causes to ensure their success—except for a brief decision on how much money to spend on lobbying right before the vote. It would help to break this up with more interactive scenes, like media interviews or public debates with citizens about the bill.
Key legalizations:
Granted, I’ve only played through the progressive healthcare bill, but my main issue is that it felt too easy to implement fully publicly funded healthcare. It passed without even lobbying! This should be incredibly difficult to pull off in a realistic political setting. Most Republicans would strongly oppose it, and insurance and pharmaceutical companies would likely spend hundreds of millions bribing members of the government, publishing falsified reports claiming it would destroy the economy, and paying the media to slander the bill or suppress support for it. If the government did manage to successfully pass such legislation, it should almost guarantee re-election!
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How do you win the Mid-terms? For example a republican speaker was elected and he immediately started investigating the president for the Iran spy thing. How do i get a democrat speaker?
You always lose the House (how much you lose by is up to you). You can win the Senate in two outcomes (50-50 tie with a Party VP, or 53-47 hold).
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Any tips for the debate? The best response ive gotten is basically saying MC and opponent tied.
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It’s mentioned at the beginning that MC has a younger brother and sister, but I don’t believe they have been mentioned again so far, and I’m up to the presidential debate part.
Imo you could either add them to a few scenes (like the inauguration and Camp David) or cut them out altogether and make MC an only child. 
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Less an actual suggestion and more just a general observation, but I’m never gonna stop finding it strange how it doesn’t take until after inauguration for the player to decide on their major cabinet appointments, that sort of thing is usually picked out, if not before election day, before inauguration day. That probably should stay, if only for narrative purposes, but it still feels weird to me.
Also, What are the rules involving the electoral college when both the president and the VP are from the same state again? I can’t recall off the top of my head if that’s even allowed.
Thoughts on legislation: I’m wondering if it would actually be wise to lock out some of the more broad proposals that a player can try and push through in the first 100 days to some sort of auto fail. Stuff like the fully funded public healthcare thing, the complete and total abortion ban, in general, extremely ambitious proposals on What are rather divisive issues. As in, no matter how much the player invest into trying to get them through, they just won’t quite pass. I don’t think it should be a huge chunk of the more liberal/conservative options, but a small subset of them, maybe. The reason I say this is because it shows that the president isn’t infallible, you can’t single-handedly change the culture of DC right there and turn the country on a new path right after getting elected. Sometimes it’s better, at least, to start pushing for something you want, wedge the door halfway open, in bed yourself into the system, win a good election with a more favorable Congress, something you can do to various extents at the end of this game, and then look back and try to take another swing at it. That makes for an interesting Character/legislative arc, initial failure/partial success at what you’re looking for and then redemption further down the line. That’s Another one of those do you really want to throw in more variations sorts of things, but I like the concept.
More an aesthetic thing really, shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the priority list, but an updating log of what happens during your presidency in the stats screen would be nice to see, the major decisions, the crises, the election results, that sort of thing.
There’s probably somewhere you can drop the use of the pardon powers, there’s a lot of fun you could have with that.
During the animal testing protester thing in chapter 3, you have two options to handle the situation, damage control or ignore it, I’d like a third option, ignore it, But quietly plan to sign off on the bill if it makes it to your desk. Animal testing bans are one of those things that always seem to be floating around Congress but never goes anywhere, but it gives the player another chance to flavor their character.
During the opioid legislation, there could be more than two choices, still only resulting in two outcomes, pass or veto, but give the player different options to justify to themselves why they’re doing what they’re doing. Am I voting for this because I want to screw Cassidy over? Because it’s a good bill? Because it’s popular? Am I voting against it because I actually want to? Do I not want to piss off Cassidy? Do I legitimately think this is a bad bill? Am I going to feel guilty as hell over this? Even if the player is limited to so few options, allowing choices for the player to pick on how they feel about these situations is another way to increase interactivity.
To clarify my earlier feedback about the VP not being present, your reasoning makes sense, the vice president really doesn’t do much unless the big guy in charge directs them to do something, but it does feel like, mechanically, there’s no actual reason to keep the VP around and it’s better to select a new one during the election campaign. There should be more of an incentive to keep the vice president, hence why I feel like they should appear more often to do stuff That makes it worth it.
This is just the baseball fan in me talking, but no ceremonial first pitch?
Out of curiosity, there any particular reason you picked Delaware as one of the three states to be hit by that hurricane? Theoretically, it’s pretty badly susceptible to those, despite the Eastern shore being hit by some seriously nasty storms, Delaware itself has really been on the easy side of things since about 1851 or so. Jersey has been pummeled, us in Maryland have been hit badly a few times, then Virginia, Of course, exists.
My apologies if my constant stream of suggestions is a bit excessive, I can get rather verbose sometimes
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What affects relationship with big business? Does signing certain bills affect the relationship? What is the threshold for not vetoing the Opioid bill and Bill Cassidy being find with it? For some reason, Bill Cassidy is hostile towards me. It is because I accept his bribe at the start and did not install the person he wants? Or my family background?
Edit: Can you also make approval rating affect midterm outcome? Please
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Playing through the general election campaign segment again for improvement ideas, and it really feels like the debate was more one-sided. Every result I’ve gotten, the other opponent is perceived to have won, and from my perspective, that does seem to be the case. You don’t really get any chance to make attacks of your own, you spend the entire time defending yourself And weekly retaliating; I don’t know if that’s a narrative issue, a mechanical issue, or both.
More election things, obviously you don’t want the first presidential election to take up any time at all, but at least one or two choices more specifically on how you ran that campaign would be another way to flush out the character and maybe give them automatic approval bursts in certain areas because of how they ran and who they tried to appeal to
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Glad I’m not the only one who’s a little frustrated with the deabte lol. I’ve played every combination of choices and the best I get is neither one us won.
Plus, when you chose to attack your opponent on the debt question they always cut you off.
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The convention is also another one where it’s not evident how to get the best outcome the best I could get was a minor bump
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Before I get to some specific points, I wanted to let you all know that I’m hoping to release the first update to the public beta tomorrow. I’ll include a full list of changes when I send it out, but chiefly among them will be making the election (and debate) easier to win, and incorporating your approval rating and other stats into the calculation for midterm results.
This is true but unfortunately is just one instance where narrative purposes have to outweigh realism a bit. I figured a jam-packed first day of the Presidency was a better way to kick off the story than a meeting months before the inauguration to pick out members of your cabinet and staff.
You’re 100% right here, electors cannot vote for a President and Vice President who are from the same state (12th Amendment). In reality, most campaigns avoid picking a VP nominee from the same state for this reason, but it isn’t impossible for a VP pick to just change their residence to avoid a lengthy legal battle. In 2000, for example, Cheney (W. Bush’s VP) changed his residence from Texas back to Wyoming.
Another fun legal quirk is that this residence qualification doesn’t come into effect until the Electoral College meets after the election is held, meaning a VP could easily purchase an apartment in another state to change their residency temporarily. TLDR: I thought that just skimming over this qualification was better than explaining this whole mess for the fairly unlikely case that the character is from the same state as their VP.
I did think about this but decided against it (again a case of narrative vs reality). I thought it better to allow bigger legislative proposals to pass rather than locking people out. I know another person mentioned that being able to somewhat easily pass universal healthcare felt too easy, so I will likely make some proposals much more difficult to pass (maybe you need to have PAC money from Cassidy or some other mix of difficult choices), but I don’t think I’ll make any of them impossible to achieve.
I actually like this idea – I’ll start brainstorming good places to include this kind of decision.
It is on my to-do list to give a bigger buff for sticking with your VP (after all, this is what happens historically). I’ll also be adding in some kind of strategy decision for how to best deploy them after the convention is held to keep them a little more relevant.
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I think the easiest fix would be to switch VP home states if they are the same as PC’s home state (ex. Hill is based out of Georgia if PC is from Florida). The check is made when PC selects HomeState. Same if PC is AG of Indiana/Governor of Pennsylvania (since there are only one AG and one Governor per state, and VP candidates Henson and Williams have those positions).
Maybe make some of them give neutral Approval and possibly a Party relationship drop (reflecting the public reaction and/or lobbying (both the good and the bad), as well as the feeling that the party is disunited (since universal healthcare is one of those that can pass in a 50/50 vote))? And up the PAC money cost needed to unify the Party?
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I’m glad to have been there at the beginning. My life has changed a lot since this started so I’m sorry that I haven’t been the most consistent of fallowers, but I’m glad to see it come through. It’s crazy how this was being worked on while being trapped in what will hopefully be the worst place I’ll ever have to go to.
I am especially happy to be alive for the public beta, even if it is a bit tough to have gone through and think about, but that ain’t exactly your fault so I hope it goes well.
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This is absolutely great! Just one small nitpick - when we have the family get away why aren’t any of the President’s siblings or parents involved?
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I just have one problem and it’s the midterms.
It is absolutely impossible for a MC with low relationship with business to win if you don’t accept the bribes. You will still get the worst result even if you pick moores at the fund raiser. And even after that 25,000,000 investment into campaigns you will still get the worst result.(You will have net 1 in the midterm variable which is the worst result)
At that point it’s better not to invest anything in campaigning and save it all for the general election.
I feel like there should be another way to increase you chances in the midterms for MC who aren’t corrupt.
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On the one hand one of the themes of this is how good people lose elections. On the other hand it’s better to have more choices so I could go either way, maybe some sort of co-economy type thing? I understand your criticism but I’m not sure how it would be addressed while sticking to it’s guns.
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That’s a… good point, I’m pretty sure their parents are as dead like in Disney so that solves two problems, but if I remember correctly it’s said that you took care of them if you chose to be the oldest in a poor background so I’m not sure? Maybe they had information leading to the aresst of Hillary Clinton or something?
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I don’t know what evidence Hillary Clinton has, but there is certainly evidence to convict Bill Clinton of contempt of court and adultery. lol
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