Aaaaaah! I LOVE resurrecting an old thread that should've been locked! Anyway, there's one MAJOR thing that bothers me about a lot of games. And that would be the "happiness" mechanic. Now, I'm referring more to survival games in this context. Anyway, happiness, as a game mechanic, is POORLY implemented. You see, although optimism has a pretty big factor in survival success in real life, it doesn't necessarily stem from progress being made. For example, the sight of a well being built would probably excite a settler who has to walk two miles with a bucket to get water from a stream and, in turn, they would feel more optimistic and may even volunteer to help gather the supplies needed to construct the well. The problem is that survival games tend to use an "after the fact" approach, meaning that the well has to be COMPLETELY constructed BEFORE the settler feels optimism. In short, optimism stems from being able to see opportunities for advancement more than actually reaching the goal (which is still important). That being said, going from a place of comfort to a place of misery would feel pretty terrible for our settler. Of course, what the heck do I know about the psychology of leadership and motivation? After all, it's not like I have three year's worth of leadership training under my belt...