Comments for Clout: The Game

Chat logs only last for a day. That's how Kang views it, but I wouldn't take a couple people in chat as being indicative of the views of the entire playerbase. Also, removing that would be fairly unrealistic as Congress in real life sets its own salary.

Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, the complexity of the game at high-level play makes it very difficult to introduce new players to all facets of the game. I've tried to lock out as little as possible at CT1 since otherwise people get upset about not being able to access things. The new players experience in general has been improved significantly over the last couple weeks and the game now retains the vast majority of players, usually only failing to interest the ones who create with names like "asdfjkli1212". Even those people sometimes ask for a name change because they didn't expect to like the game but did...haha.

This is how it was originally going to work... but I couldn't think of much of a point in doing it that way as opposed to the way it is now.

I wouldn't... the game doesn't explain everything that clearly. It's pretty complex.

stress decreases once per day at the end of the day. It does not decrease incrementally throughout the day.

Gaffing occasionally is no big deal. Also, each bill is customized with respect to every ability, so it would be infeasible to list everything out. On top of that, even if it would be possible to do so in a readable format... I don't think I would. It's intentional that you put some thought into what you're playing instead of just throwing out random abilities. If you thought about something and it still doesn't make any sense... might want to report it. Some bills probably have mistakes, especially new ones.

If you end a day with >25% stress, you definitely won't reduce to 0. That's a normal feature of the game. The 25% is also reduced by 1% per active bill you have in Congress.

I looked into your character history, and it looks like you got the daily message, meaning your stress went down. Your current stress also doesn't seem to be exceptionally high. Did you end the day with more than 25% stress? That's the most that will naturally decrease in one day.

We're getting reports that developers the world over are recanting their energy-related ways in the wake of LordBucket's prophetic vision. They just didn't realize what they all NEEDED to do until he came along. A new era of prosperity and good-will for all has come about in the days since this glorious revelation has swept the globe, and word is that he's being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now? Limited energy systems in games predate graphical MMOs. The purpose of an energy system is to balance casual players against active players and foster inter-character interaction because you can't do everything yourself. The purpose isn't to annoy you because you "have to come back". You personally may prefer games you can finish in one sitting, but many people prefer having a persistent character in a persistent world. For example: about 3600 people have created a character, while I think the grand total of 2 or 3 people had some kind of problem with the energy system as a whole like you do. So I'm pretty sure developers world-over don't "need" to stop making these games because internet user LordBucket doesn't approve.

Clout Tier 3. However, it's not implemented yet because party/team chats aren't really active enough for it to have a point. I'll put it in when it has more of a point.

lol... clearly it's a result of all the stress from the time I spend developing :P

Presently, they look pretty. Eventually, the president will veto stuff randomly in accordance with his party, and the vice-president will replace the president should the president be assassinated. The justices/legal side of stuff will play into court challenges on binary bills (not yet implemented), and the state/defense secs will have something to do with foreign relations (barely implemented). The Speaker Of The House is the only player-held office, and they will have special powers related to committees when one is finally elected (at EOM. Was planned to happen last EOM, but I think christmas screwed that plan).

Ah. I see. I could theoretically implement something like this, but I'd have to flesh out the idea a lot more first to make it all make sense. It's honestly probably not something I'll add for quite a while, as I intend to finish up a couple features with this game, move it to V1.0 and then focus my development efforts on The Lobby, a "companion game" to Clout. I will still maintain and develop Clout as necessary (since The Lobby ties into Clout, this will be frequently necessary), but there will definitely be a gap in any major development until The Lobby is well underway.

No problem. I'll try looking into that issue with IE again, but as I said for now you can just punch in your message and hit enter. That should work.

Ah... yeah. You should be able to hit enter to chat once you enter text. I believe that works in IE. I have no idea why it hides that button. Everything is specified to the pixel. Sometimes IE just does wacky stuff and I can't figure it out.

That's odd.... what browser are you using?

That is correct. Some people are unfortunately confused by this, but I couldn't think of any better way to put it. "Renewable" wouldn't really cover it due to the variety of topics the bill is intended to cover.

Stress or energy loss? No... but every bill affects the nation stats seen in the World section.

It erases the scandal from the game, which will not only prevent it from being discovered in the future, but also effectively take it away from anyone who may have already discovered it as their leads and sources dry up and whatnot.

One person playing many characters. It's a big problem for turn-based games, since it's very easy to do. There are various ways to prevent it, but most will sometimes catch legitimate players in a situation that appears to be multiboxing.

Not unless you do it via Kongregate. I have plans to add some sort of messaging feature, as well as the ability to crony people who are not your kongregate friends (or facebook friends, for the facebookers).

Thanks for the feedback and support! I always find it kind of lame when it just says "come back at level 2" or whatever for no apparent reason in a game... so I tried to add some flavor to it in order to have it make a bit more sense.

Humans are notoriously bad for the environment. Also, all of the win condition bills are quite extreme (Abolish All Laws and Declare Nuclear War On Russia are two other examples)

haha... yeah, waaaaay too many European countries to list them all out. That was my quick solution.

I'm not sure what you mean? If you've found that your stress increased unexpectedly, there was some kind of hacking done early this morning that made a couple people get hit with phantom missions. I've fixed the exploit, shored up protections against such things in general, and have been restoring those affected. So if your stress is weirdly high for some reason, let me know and I'll fix it.

Not exactly. You only lose CSP for campaign contributions if you take one outside party lines. In that case it's sort of like an "instant scandal". But if you take contributions to introduce stuff you'd support anyway, nobody bats an eye.

Because you were not hit by a mission. You experienced a bug. It's now fixed.

Thugs did not put you at negative health. They cannot do that. A bug did.

Whoops. I modified a script to change how missions finished and it had a typo. I fixed it, and everyone has been given an energy restore.

You can't die from thugs. Their max damage is too low to do anything but put you in a hospital. There are also a variety of auto protection measures in place for violent missions. Once you get hit by one, you get a level of police protection depending on the type (assassinations garner more protection than thugs). Being in the hospital also confers significantly increased difficulty to missions run against you (even if they were prepared prior to your hospitalization/etc). I may still add hireable protection of some sort, but I haven't worked out how that should work yet. Realistically it's pretty hard to die from skullduggery. It's much more likely to temporarily remove you from the game with lots of stress/a coma.

Not exactly. There's a Facebook page that points to the Facebook interface for the game. There's a wikia page somebody made, and there's this page on Kongregate. That's about it. You're probably best off directing them here, as the game loads with a little ad for the game if you're not registered on Kongregate.

Thanks for the feedback and support!

Nope. Since the game isn't coded like shit (most games are), all character data is referential and is therefore "updated" automatically as anything changes with your character.

That isn't a bug, really. Entering or POSTing non-numeric characters into a field like that can be a POST hack designed to damage the database or alter the outcome of the usage of a control. At most, I may add a javascript block to entering non-numeric characters. This would limit the catch on the back end to people disabling the block or doing a direct POST hack. It would probably take me about 10-15 minutes to implement and test a front-end javscript block for non-numeric characters.

Contributions for passing a bill are paid when the bill is actually put into effect at the end of the day. This is stated in various places in the game.

Thanks for the feedback! The tutorial gives you an energy refresh and some further instructions if you finish it. Not sure if you mean above and beyond that.

Thanks for the feedback and support! I think such a random element would probably mostly piss people off. If I were to add something like this, I would do it in a predictable way such that you would be able to see what constituents from your supposed "district" preferred and act accordingly. Perhaps you would even need to spend cash to gain insight into what people preferred via polling and such. It's an interesting idea, but a lot of effort. It's something I'll keep in mind for the future perhaps.

Well, as long as you can always pay for more, you'll never experience withdrawals! Of course the downside is you'll rack up quite a few scandals this way and potentially get unelected someday.

Thanks for the feedback and support! I think. Sorry if you experienced that message in apparent error. Some mundane actions such as accidentally double-clicking a button will be construed as a POST hack by the server.

Yes. Some people miss this, but please pay attention to new messages. Especially if you're new. Some are superfluous for more advanced players, and an exclamation point will come up next to the indicator to alert those players of more serious messages that might be drowned out by the expected message indicator.

As the lynx has pointed out, there is a warning. A red exclamation point will appear by the message indicator in the case of particularly important messages.

That does tend to happen when you take a lot of amphetamines. Wait a couple days without feeding your addiction and you'll go through withdrawals and will no longer be addicted. Withdrawals will give you stat penalties, drug dependent.

The amount of Clout you have has no direct impact on anything in the game. It's sort of a conglomeration of experience points and a currency.

Thanks for the feedback... but I can't draw, and the game doesn't make enough to pay anyone to do so. Sorry.

It seems this happens to people that have really high charisma and attractiveness sometimes. I think it may be awarding too much bonus clout, which doesn't get recorded right in your lifetime stat. I'll have to look into this as it could seriously affect gameplay. Luckily not that many people seem to be seriously affected.

PM me the exact error message you're getting. That's either an IP conflict or Kongregate failing to auth properly.

That's odd. Did you go further negative than one ability play's worth? (5 or 10 energy usually) Because that shouldn't happen with any ability multiplay like that. Sorry if it did, and I'll look into it.

I assume you mean for assassinations? Those are not affected by anything except how many violent missions have recently been run on your target, and whether or not they're currently in the hospital. It's unusual for someone to die from full health due to an assassination, but it has a good chance of putting them in a coma and taking them out of the game for a day or two, and the stress it causes will be a major issue unless they're a frequent druggie.

The United States Federal Congress, mostly. It's got a very satirical bent, though.