Ah damn, now I'm getting dragged into this more and more...
It also took a lot of reading to confirm the facts of the matter in some cases and even then I could probably use more reading.
Not going to comment on too much but I do want to talk about something.
I might be misremembering but I believe this is somewhat misleading as data. There are actions that were not about improving Jinx's stats but are about improving her loyalty that were arguably an investment into her, including actions that were not child actions.
I don't consider these actions as actual improvements for Jinx. The thread made a major effort to convince Jinx to become Cassandra's second-in-command, but that didn't lead to any meaningful growth for her.
You argue that this was "arguably an investment in her," but I see it more as securing an existing investment rather than actively improving her. In a broad sense, you could say that securing an investment is still a form of investment, but I'm not in the mood for that talking point..
Here's a breakdown of what the thread did with Jinx to try and build her up ignoring the personal actions for the first ten turns they had her
- Turn 11: recruited her
- Turn 13: attempted to buy Jinx a pet to get her to be more fond of LexCorp
- Turn 14: Educated Jinx about writing and literature
- Turn 16: Attempted to build a dedicated living space for Jinx (they failed but the thread attempted this in five turns, not 7)
- Turn 16: Educated Jinx about writing and literature
- Turn 17: Educated Jinx on acting
- Turn 18: Educated Jinx about writing and literature
- Turn 19: Attempted to build a dedicated living space for Jinx
- Turn 20: Educated Jinx on acting
That's a small snippet of things but on turn 11 to turn 21, not counting personal actions, the thread spent 8 actions in 10 turns trying to improve Jinx in some capacity (I'm not counting turn 11 where the thread recruited her). I haven't gone and checked everything but people regularly tried to improve Jinx at least in the beginning.
Alright, let's go through your list:
- Turn 11 – Recruited Jinx.
- Turn 12 – Had Marie hire a tutor for her. This was actually the first time people seriously considered creating living quarters for Jinx, despite claims that it happened five times before. Notably, they hired a tutor she didn't like and took no action to address it for a long time.
- Turn 13 – Took a 0-DC throwaway action to buy Jinx a pet, which auto-failed. This required no real investment, and Jinx herself was assigned elsewhere. The action was chosen specifically because it didn't need Jinx and was the easiest option among those.
- Turn 14 – Taught Jinx literature with Emily. That's one meaningful action. The plan to build her a room was discussed again but fell through.
- Turn 15 – Put Jinx on the bone formula. The room-building plan stalled in discussions for the third time.
- Turn 16 – Successfully passed a planning stage to build her a room for the first time, but the action itself failed. Assigned Jinx another literature lesson. That's two meaningful actions.
- Turn 17 – Educated Jinx on acting. That's three.
- Turn 18 – Jinx studied more literature on her own. That's four.
- Turn 19 – Assigned Lisa and Jinx to building Jinx's room. Looking through the planning phase, Lisa was only assigned because the other Rogues took a stewardship action and Lisa was considered useless elsewhere. Finally hired a tutor for Jinx. This took seven turns (from Turn 13 to 19).
- Turn 20 – Scored a big win with the new tutor on acting.
This breakdown makes it pretty clear that Jinx's development was
inherently deprioritized. Whenever possible, players preferred not to deal with Jinx. Even when building her a room, actually putting a hero unit on that task was effectively a last resort after a series of failures, and even then she got table scraps (Lisa isn't a Stewardship powerhouse to put it mildly)
The claim that people "never gave a shit about Jinx" is patently false, and demonstrably so. The thread wasn't necessarily good at developing Jinx or doing so in the most optimal manner, but I think the fact that in the first ten turns since getting her, there were 8 separate non-personal action attempts to make Jinx better in some way is a solid rebuttal to that claim.
Edit: You can argue that people aren't doing enough for Jinx, but when you compare Jinx to most hero units, the quest has sunk in significantly more effort into improving her than most other units.
No, it's not patently false, and I don't think that's a strong rebuttal. In fact, looking at the full context of the examples only reinforces my point.
In every example you listed, no actual hero unit from the roster was specifically assigned to work with Jinx or teach her. The only reason they even hired a tutor was because they didn't want to allocate additional resources to improving Jinx, as Cassandra was already considered too demanding (people were opposed to adopting her due to not wanting other players to "nag" them even more about improving Lex's children than they already had. Even Cassandra wasn't always popular.) Any time someone worked with Jinx, it was only because they weren't needed elsewhere. She was consistently deprioritized, and most of her progress came from her tutor, mainly when she wasn't required for other tasks due to her low stats.
Notably, after Jinx succeeded in a major action on turn 20 and her stats improved, she only took two self-improvement actions between turns 21 and 28 (excluding her trip to Zatanna). During turns 12-28, only once was a hero unit assigned to train her that wasn't her dedicated tutor. Even then, it only happened because
you mentioned that magic becomes harder to learn with age, causing people to panic over it and wanting Jinx to sort her own situation ASAP.
Additionally, Jinx's improvement was partially due to the way child actions were made available. Specifically, how they were "cheap" and "easy." Because of this, people felt comfortable investing minimal resources into them, much like they would with other low-DC actions. Plus, since these actions could be chosen later and didn't count against the total number of available actions per turn, they didn't compete with higher-priority tasks. Without that incentive, Jinx would have received even less support.
My main point is that not once did people actually make sacrifices elsewhere to improve Jinx. The only big action (in terms of resources) that had to do with Jinx was about convincing her to become Cassandra's number two woman, and even then I'd argue that it was at least partially because you warned people that Jinx would resist that action.
TL;DR I really can't agree with your conclusions.
