Wait, really?! Because I could have sworn certain events always gave penalties. For instance, across multiple games, if I try to enter the Treasury and fail both checks, my Royal Decorum and Economics skills take a major penalty hit. I guess it's possible that my mood is always the exact same at that point in each game, but I wouldn't think so.hanako wrote: The only things that are affecting your bonuses and penalties is your 'Current Mood' status and the related skills you've studied. I have no idea what you mean by events and actions.![]()
Is the last mood point gained what affects skill bonuses and penalties rather than where the heart is on each spectrum?

Yeah, I've encountered that. In that case it was actually pretty clear what was going on, i.e. Elodie stating she wouldn't be able to do anything "strenuous" for a while, then seeing the -3.00 penalties in all the Physical skills.hanako wrote: (There are some rare circumstances where a game event can leave you in a special mood called 'Injured', but in that case the mood screen will still display your current mood as Injured.)
I understand all that. I just don't know WHAT mood effect is in place. Like should I make Elodie more Cheerful to remove this penalty, or does she need to be more Willful?hanako wrote: It's all a matter of math. A fractional amount of the learned skills in each subset gets added to the subset bonus. An even smaller fractional amount of the learned skills in each category gets added to the category bonus. Any time that the numbers don't match up, there's a mood effect in place.
And sometimes it seems the penalties or bonuses just reset for a category after certain events - like the Treasury event I mentioned above. If I fail that event, the penalty to Royal Decorum and Economics is ALWAYS -2.00, regardless of what it was before.
Well, something in game to tell me what mood Elodie is being affected by at the moment (on the skills screen) would be great.hanako wrote: There could be a marker by them indicating that they're being affected by a mood at the moment, but there's nothing else to breakdown! The problem isn't that it's not transparent, the problem is that it's a lot of data and people's minds have trouble dealing with it. Making the display more complicated might make that problem worse.
The amount of data people have to keep up with in their head is indeed the trouble. There are so many skills, and so many moods, that even if you figure out which relates to which, it is still very difficult to remember that information.
Making that information easier to see in game - even if it is just telling us which Skill Category is affected by which Mood Spectrum would be a big help. If I could just see on the Skills Screen that the Conversation category of skills is affected by the Cheerful/Depressed Mood spectrum, I could tell by the penalty or bonus in place which direction I would need to take that mood to remove or gain the bonus or penalty.
Or simply have the mouse-over say "+1.0 from Cheerful" or "-1.0 from Depressed". That would tell the player very quickly what part of the bonus is from fractional skill gains and what part is from the mood AND what that mood is.
I think icons would indeed complicate the display too much, and with 8 moods that would mean 8 symbols or icons to keep straight on top of everything else. I do think one way to do it might be to have an "information" icon on each skill category that gave the information I suggested above when moused-over or clicked.
EDIT: I think because Skill gains and Mood Manipulation are the "core" of the gameplay, this really needs to be as user-friendly as possible.