I just personally want to say that i like the Praise/Gripes system. I think its a shame that it is hidden (Town Info ‘i’ > Journal tab) the way it is right now. It didnt’t make much sense the way it was previous either, as a sort of a log. However if it could be displayed like a speech bubble in a comic or how the hunger bubble appears when its time to eat it would make more sense to look at. It would make it easier to develop personal relations to the cute AIs that are the hearthlings. It would make me go, “well Alton Edessa, if you took the time to actually look around you would see that there ARE other foods in camp besides berries” etc when you see such nonsense 
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Also, on a side note I think there should be a similar bubble to the “food time” for “sleepy time” so that when stamina is about to run out you see the Zzz-bubble instead of them falling over flat out of exhaustion, and then they go to sleep as normal 
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nice ideas! i miss having the general town chatter scrolling up my screen…
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Yeah, me too! But it didnt make much sense as it was, it felt so disconnected as to whomever was speaking when reading the log.
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I think the little thought bubble idea is great. Or maybe we could have a Mayoral Inbox, where every X days, the 4 most common praises/complaints are “sent to the mayor” for us to read. Make it more of an interaction between hearthlings and player.
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Well as long as you get a face to the phrase so to speak. In the log it was all out of context. Someone had something to say and if you wanted to know who then you would have to click through the hearthlings, not even sure if it perhaps was the trapper way out in the wilds, a blacksmith that is located near the mines or a random worker harvesting berries as a few examples, with a thought bubble you could geographically see it easier.
This could also be used as a way to S.O.S the player when the hearthling was under duress from enemies, imagine you hear the combat music starting and you look around to see who is being hunted. Then you see this red speech bubble running off into the forest, perhaps showing through the trees, and you direct your party of footmen towards the hostiles.
If you are looking for downsides to this I guess it could mean could get cluttered during say lunch or so when everyone seem to have an opinion on the food being consumed, but as long as devs keep that in mind it should be no worry.
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Absolutely. It shouldn’t be too difficult to snapshot each hearthling so that in the little report it had a face, in a sort of “speaking action pose”. It could be a thing that happens when a hearthling arrives or takes a job or armor. The “photo” gets updated, and then is used for reference later on when the game has the letter or whatever.
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I like the speech-bubble-over-head idea, but clutter can be amended by having only one speech bubble show at a time.
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Or only when you select the hearthling? Like, making him/her active gives our all-knowing selves insight into their minds.