Let's talk about the confidence mechanic

Since the first release of The Fixer, the most common complaint about it has in some way to do with the confidence mechanic. This post is about gathering peoples thoughts, presenting an idea I have and generally to start a conversation on the subject to hear as much as I can before doing anything about it.

The purpose of this mechanic of to add a small sense of progression to the game so that Sammy doesn't start a new game and is whoring from day one. Other smaller aspects are to add a sense of realism to the game, some sense of character to Sammy and a bit of gameplay stat balancing. It is also meant to act as a bit of a punishment if Sammy is too bold or crazy and suffers consequences, then she is less likely for a while to repeat her crazy behaviour.

At first I thought these complaints would let up as I balanced things a bit better, but they have not. And if anything, have gotten worse since I added stat numbers to the main top ribbon. So it has become quite clear that a large portion of players do not like this feature, and even if balanced and tweaked, it would still be fairly unpopular.

The main complaint about it seems to be two fold:

1, It blocks players from the porn. Being that this is a porn game, blocking players from viewing said porn is obviously not good.

2, It takes control away from the player. Players want to guide Sammy in their own direction and are fairly hostile towards the idea of game mechanics making choices for them.

I have thought about quite a few different solutions to this topic, but so many of them end up as a different flavour of the same problem. It blocks access to porn or takes control away. With that in mind, the only workable solution I can come up with that solves the issue without introducing new ones is to basically nerf the confidence mechanic into oblivion...

My thoughts are to keep confidence as it is, but only to change dialogue or Sammy's thoughts. Regardless of a passing or failing will roll, you will still get the chance to push through it and pick the option you want anyway. Possibly at the cost of some mood. So, a small example below.

A low confidence Sammy is invited to an orgy. This is way too extreme for her and in the current design she will auto refuse and end the chain. With the proposed idea there will be some internal dialogue asking herself why she would agree to such a thing and how stupid an idea it is, but the choice will display anyway and allow the player to make her say yes (possibly costing mood). Upon saying yes, Sammy will grumble and ask herself why in the world she agreed, but will go anyway. Of course a slutty Sammy will pass the check and happily agree to the orgy.

Other solutions thought of and rejected:

Nerf a bit. Or somewhere in the middle of the above proposal and it's current implementation. Issue with this idea is it still keeps the problems of the current implementation while also losing the pacing/progression. So ends up worse than just keeping it as is.

Confidence as a currency. This will lose the pacing while also introducing some wacky behaviour where Sammy agrees to an orgy because she had the willpower cost, but then later can't muster the will to have a beer with a pub patron.

Corruption/experience mechanic. This was something I was favouring for a while. It would be something you build over time and it doesn't drop. It would still allow progression in the early game while not hampering players later game. It was mostly rejected because it would effectively eliminate meek/broken/unconfident playstyles.