A product decision, not a bug. Charisma's trait-visibility payoff is tuned so low that most players will never see it fire.
economy.json sets traitVisibilityPerPoint: 0.01, so each trait's reveal chance is charisma × 0.01:
| Charisma |
Chance per trait |
| 5 |
5% |
| 10 |
10% |
| 20 (the stat cap) |
20% |
With 2–4 traits per NPC, most negotiations will show zero trait badges — even for a maxed-Charisma character. The entire trait-visibility system, and the UI built for it, is effectively invisible.
Note on the "spec"
PR #62 briefly raised this to 0.10 and then reverted it in a later commit with the message "revert traitVisibilityPerPoint to 0.01 per GDD spec".
There is no such spec. The GDD says only that "Charisma determines the probability of each trait being visible" — it names no number. The revert was made in deference to a constraint that does not exist.
The question for the PM
What should a Charisma investment actually buy the player here? At 0.01 the answer is "almost nothing". 0.05–0.10 would make Charisma legible as the social/read-the-seller stat that the GDD describes.
From the 2026-07-13 code audit (Researcher). Verified against main @ b8e0d70.
A product decision, not a bug. Charisma's trait-visibility payoff is tuned so low that most players will never see it fire.
economy.jsonsetstraitVisibilityPerPoint: 0.01, so each trait's reveal chance ischarisma × 0.01:With 2–4 traits per NPC, most negotiations will show zero trait badges — even for a maxed-Charisma character. The entire trait-visibility system, and the UI built for it, is effectively invisible.
Note on the "spec"
PR #62 briefly raised this to
0.10and then reverted it in a later commit with the message "revert traitVisibilityPerPoint to 0.01 per GDD spec".There is no such spec. The GDD says only that "Charisma determines the probability of each trait being visible" — it names no number. The revert was made in deference to a constraint that does not exist.
The question for the PM
What should a Charisma investment actually buy the player here? At 0.01 the answer is "almost nothing".
0.05–0.10would make Charisma legible as the social/read-the-seller stat that the GDD describes.From the 2026-07-13 code audit (Researcher). Verified against
main@b8e0d70.