Worblehat
Planter
With Maru's Y2 birthday coming up in my game, I've been thinking about the birthday mechanic. As it stands there's no reason (other than RP) to give anyone a birthday gift once you've reached max friendship with them. That might be OK (sort of) for most NPCs, but as someone who has been married in real life, I would venture to say that ignoring one's wife's birthday would be both weird and unwise. I know, going out on a limb there, controversial opinion...
Suggestion: giving someone a birthday gift when you're already at max friendship with them increases your Luck for the following day. Karma, basically. Mechanically, I'd suggest the increase be 0.025 for a Loved gift, 0.0125 for a Liked gift (and I guess -0.0125 and -0.025 for Disliked and Hated, if people want to try to engineer bad luck days for some reason...), doubled if the recipient is one's spouse/roommate.
That could still get mildly weird - "It's the day after the wife's birthday. To Skull Cavern, bombs away!!!" But that's considerably less weird than the status quo, "I'm at 14 hearts and talk to her every day, why would I give my wife a birthday gift?"
Suggestion: giving someone a birthday gift when you're already at max friendship with them increases your Luck for the following day. Karma, basically. Mechanically, I'd suggest the increase be 0.025 for a Loved gift, 0.0125 for a Liked gift (and I guess -0.0125 and -0.025 for Disliked and Hated, if people want to try to engineer bad luck days for some reason...), doubled if the recipient is one's spouse/roommate.
That could still get mildly weird - "It's the day after the wife's birthday. To Skull Cavern, bombs away!!!" But that's considerably less weird than the status quo, "I'm at 14 hearts and talk to her every day, why would I give my wife a birthday gift?"