After playing for quite awhile, I still really love this game. Thank you all for all your hard work. However, I do think there are a few changes you could make to make the game more satisfying.
1) Debates. Debates. Debates. Look at recent presidential history: the debates have been critical time and again. They decided the election, most likely, in 1960, 1976 and 1980. They provided the most memorable moments in 1984, 1988 and 1992. They were critical in Bush's resurgence in 2000 and look like they're doing the same for Kerry in 2004. Absent the debates, the game feels lacking. I've given some thought as to how the debates should best be handled, and here's what I've come up with.
At the ten week mark or so, the candidate who is leading in the national poll should offer to debate the trailer a certain number of times (1 - 3). The challenger can take or leave the offer. The debates would take place on weeks 34, 35 and 36. You could use the same questions as the TV interviews, only this time we see our opponent's responses, too, and there's an option for "Attack opponent" or somesuch which deflects any gain the opponent has made on the issue, but lowers your integrity score a bit. The week of the debate, the player sets how much stamina they want to save for the debate, and that determines the number of response options you have, and how "on your toes" you are.
Each debate should raise the nationwide awareness of both candidates by 10%, and should have the same impact as television advertising in terms of moving people towards you.
2) Awareness Issues and the 0% Vote. It really irritates me when I see a candidate getting 0% in a state. That's just impossible. John Kerry is not going to visit Wyoming this year. He's still going to get around 40% of the vote there. There should be a natural awareness that accrues over time in all states, even when we're not visiting them or running ads. Perhaps 1 point a week. Even that might be too low. But let's face it, by November 2, virtually every informed American will know who both John Kerry and George W. Bush are.
There should also be a floor on how few votes you can get in a state... say, roughly half of those who identify with your party are guaranteed to vote for you, unless your opponent has 100% awareness and you have very little, in which case you may slip down to only a third of your partisans voting for you. This would ensure that everyone gets votes in every state, which is much more real than the current situation.
This would help cut down on the way-too-common split between the popular and electoral vote winners. That's happened less than five times in American history, but it can happen easily in the game because of the awareness issue.
3) Be able to set the party in power and whether or not that party's candidate is the incumbent would be very cool, as well.
4) Conventions would be cool. At the start of the game you pick your convention state. For the non-incumbent party, the convention is in week 28, for the in power party it's in week 30. Basically you pick five issues, and a position on them, and whether or not to bash your opponent, and it's like a huge speech, only it has a major impact on nationwide views of your campaign. 15% boost in national awareness in every state, 25% boost in the host state, and major movement towards your position by the public. Also, instead of having the Veep candidate bring you a certain amount of cash, both candidates get the same amount ($5 million?) at their conventions.
5) Set candidate positions on top 15 issues at start of the game (for premade characters, these can be preset though give us an option to change them). Then, start counting off on integrity and leadership if we change those positions during the campaign.
6) There should be Character ad options which are fluff ads that make you look all "I love America" or which attack your opponent. Instead of moving issue positions, they should have double awareness impact and influence on public perceptions of integrity and character.
7) Election night shouldn't be the same order every time. States where you have bigger leads in should come in faster than states where it's closer in the same time zone. A running popular vote talley, and the option to control the speed (say, either flowing like it does now, or having us manually click "next state" or "forward 1/2 hour" or something like the old Presidential election game in the 1980s) would be quite cool.
A lot of those ideas are probably stupid, and as I say I love the game. These are just some things that I've thought of as I've played that would make it more tangibly real and fun for me. thanks again for all your hard work.
