All of that sounds good. However as someone who has done dozens of playthroughs, I had no idea the happiness mechanic was this deep. I just thought the smiley faces just gave a slight increase to cash or something.
This definitely sounds more interesting than I thought it was. Definitely going to try the gifts costume now, before it gets nerfed.
Oh I'll tell you exactly what it does.
1) Happiness acts as a bonus that adds on to money. Think of Happiness as a percentage that is multiplied by a bonus that gets added on to money at the end. At high levels, this can be quite a large difference.
2) Happiness acts as a coefficient that multiplies directly with reputation and influence gain. So, whatever you'd gain in rep or influence at 50 happiness, is doubled at 100 happiness. And 200 gives you double 100. And so on. The girl's skill is also a direct multiplier--this is why in Vanilla you don't see much gains at all in rep early on if you have a lineup of 300/0/0/0/0/0/0 girls. This is also why, in Scramble Mode, I automatically start girls with 10 in all the skills their openness allows, so that they always have some ability to get this ball rolling out the gate.
Happiness is increased every tick based on the skill of the girl (but NOT popularity) and as well, by the level of the gift you give. In vanilla, this never mattered because with the 3000 dollar tier gift bonus, you could more or less hit the cap of 100, which meant anything else that contributed to happiness didn't matter. So while Happiness has always been 'strong', it's always been trivial.
Happiness is STRONG in Happy Hour (in fact, that's why I named it Happy Hour). It will still be strong after the nerf, but it won't be 'Holy crap I am taking the gift buff costume every run' strong. Hopefully, you'll still want it as a reliable costume that does give gains, but you'll be motivated to switch to other costumes when needs present themselves. And with Investments, those needs may, in fact, present themselves.
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Another change in the pipeline. I'm going to be consolidating Foreplay and Oral Enthusiast into one trait, and Sex and Group Enthusiast into one trait. This is going to make them more powerful, however, this is also going to make Enthusiasts a little less common, which means they're going to be less reliable and more valuable, particularily in Scramble Mode. Weaker traits are going to have additional functionality added.
Eager Student will increase booth skill gains. As well, there is a possibility that Investments can make the class mechanic super strong and remove some of its limitations.
Hustle Queen is going to also affect the Investments mechanic;
High Society Fixer (the trait that reduces the time in Broker) is also going to be expanded to get extra money from Politicians (connections) and the new client type that comes with Investments. (in testing this can lead to massive gains, this is not a small value trait now)
Introducing a new trait (Booth Bunny) which forces a client to upgrade to a higher tier sex act if the girl is capable of handling it.
Introducing a new trait (Snob) which can be very detrimental if used incorrectly, however, it can be VERY useful if used tactically.
If there's any other traits that people aren't 'feeling excited about' let me know.
As well, I'm working on the main club screen a bit, trying to enhance grokability, and helping tutorialize it through direct play.
For example: The ability to buy costumes doesn't appear until you unlock it improvements right now. I'm a fan of this type of function, so I'm making it so that you can't open the Policies menu until you've unlocked the Stage in improvements, as well as making it that you can't access the Staff list without a recruit, or access the daily planning page without a stage and a girl to work it.