diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
Randomness is something present in Hero Corruption, but not the way you think, I agree that some runs can be frustrating due to bad luck, but as we've already talked, I don't want it to be a purely skill-based game, Hero Corruption is not meant to be a competitive game.
Replayability is something very present in the game and removing or decreasing randomness will only make restarts even more boring, which is one of the points you mentioned.
I really appreciate your feedback because it's always honest and straightforward, but I often get the feeling that we're talking about two different games, where you portray a linear game and without a lot of surprises and twists, which is a very good concept, but not is my plan for this particular game
I know your sentiment in the past is that we have different visions of the game that take it away from your goals. I honestly don't think so and it makes me want to rephrase my statements. I think your game should be difficult, I think it should have discovery, I think it should have fairly high randomness, and I don't think there need to be any major changes to fulfil what is on my personal wishlist for your game. "A little bit goes a long way" will be the theme for my following opinions/requests/argument.
I get the sense that you think randomness creates variety on replays. While this is true, it is my argument that choice will have a greater impact on those replays. This is so much so that I regret highlighting randomness to the extent that I did in my prior post, I think it took away from this message of wanting to increase player choice and reaction. While I currently hold to the opinion that what happens to you is more impactful than what you decide to do, this can be affected in both directions and doesn't take much.
I hold true to the opinion that increased choice will actually add to the replayability that you seem to desire. I have a laundry list of things I would suggest if you want to hear ways. Please reach out to me by PM on discord, it would probably be a better format to discuss. I've spent about a decade in game design and would love to talk about systems and how to forge them in ways to better accomplish the goals and vision you already have.
The other thing about randomness is that it doesn't take a whole lot to make things FEEL really random. You have a whole system now about peak hours to find girls but in my last playthrough, I found the ghost on day 8 which pointed to Laura. It took me until day 13 to find and defeat her because she either did not show up during those times, or other events like wishing well, boxes on the ground, or potions kept happening. This happened because of the intersection of a lot of random elements that on their own are reasonable along with a bit of bad luck.
diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
Reducing the initial enemies' health and their gold would accomplish nothing really,
the player would have to face more enemies to compensate for this readjustment and consequently, the game would become more repetitive. Starting a new version can be a little time consuming, but after two or three runs you'll be running over the first few enemies without too much trouble.
I think that you believe it won't accomplish anything is that because you are probably thinking of decreasing their health by say half and then decreasing their defeat rewards by the same ratio. Yes, this would actually increase the number of clicks required. But my suggestion instead was to not keep the same ratio. The better way to solve the root cause of what I speak of is to lower the resource costs of the "gates" that are somewhat required to get to the next zone. Chiefly the cost of the deep forest map and forge. Imagine cutting deep forest down to 10 gold cost and forge to 20 gold. Now a player is not forced to click through the forest so many times to progress.
Now imagine starting forest health bars reduced by 75% without decreasing their rewards. Now the click requirement goes down both by how many it takes to defeat them and by how much rest is required by the player. You could then increase the amount of damage they do in return if you want to keep the forest difficulty set where it currently is. With additional thinking about this since my first suggestion, I actually would not decrease the forest rewards if I were you. To further reduce clicking, resting when critically injured or lusty could give a bonus % to make it more "push your luck" and an easy way to give decision space while keeping it random.
diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
I agree that player actions themselves are limited, but I seek to bring diversity to battles not through player actions, but through the way enemies interact with the Hero (Addiction checks, status effect, gold manipulation, special moves, etc), rather than flooding the player with hundreds of choices just to create the illusion of choice, when in practice, they will only be used to reduce the enemy's HP value.
That being said, I have a feeling that I could improve a lot more in this aspect, a great observation brought by you is the "Wait" button which, for the most part, has no practical effect. I tried to circle this issue in the battle with Kitty,
- Spoiler: show
-
if the player chooses to wait, Kitty's lust will decrease and the hero can use this to control the battle and keep Kitty in a stage that is most beneficial for him (Kitty's stages change according to her lust and each stage is focused on a different addiction)
In other words, you can literally manipulate Kitty's attacks in order to have an easier run.
This kind of interaction is reinforcing my previous point, although many fights seem simple,
there are some things going on the background that you might not have noticed, If anything should be improved in this aspect it's the transparency of such mechanics, for sure, there's no point in having this kind of diversity in battles if the player can't see them
To be clear, my request for more decisions is not at all hundreds of buttons. At most it would be to
1. Make wait have more of a purpose
2. MAYBE once you are happy with every other system and things are flowing well to give button that lets you increase the girls lust. This could also be incorporated in the wait function.
Making the wait function have more of a point would go about 80% of the way towards my choice concern in battles. Currently getting a lot of lust is my favorite thing in the game because I have those dreams to look forward to.(even if those could use a few more pictures, low hanging fruit and all)
Imagine if the wait function gave me that same choice of handicapping myself further, seeing the girl do different actions that weren't possible without wait, and making my run through harder by doing so. And potentially your waiting is increasing the girl's lust creating a new avenue to defeat the forest enemies and opening up a new playstyle for high lust runs while at the same time finding out which girls this "works" against. Doing this along would explode your current replay-ability even if it is more work. I also suggest this because I feel like your current system is setup to do exactly that but it doesn't do that.
diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
Though the new Anastasia is an improvement, why not have both versions for variety? You already put the work in for the previous one, why throw it away? (Plus each region is lacking variety already in my opinion) I think it would be fun to see a girl in a different outfit sometimes.
I specifically removed her because you said the early fights were very repetitive without much complexity, and she seemed to fit your description exactly. I also remember you commenting on Anna, who also got a new move.
What made you change your mind?
Anyway, I agreed with your previous position and that's why it was removed, but I have nothing against the same enemies in different situations. I actually didn't like repeating enemies before, but I've been liking the idea more and more.
I am so sorry if I gave you the impression that I was asking you to remove either despite me finding them both so repetitive. I just wanted either more encounters or more "things to do or see" in each encounter. I only suggest repeating Anastasia because the work was already done and it could fix some of my issue by just bringing the OG encounter back. New girls will always be more fun for the effort put into making new encounters.
diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
I have no idea what "aroused" does without looking at your game code.
There is a description for every status effect in the Codex, was it too confusing there? Maybe I should rephrase?
While I admit I didn't originally go to the codex to find out what it does, it highlight a deeper concern. If that game state is not as obvious (or example dominated where your dmg is cut in half or being naked where I didn't need to look at the codex), does it need to be in the game? Consider making it more impactful as to make it obvious and a rare thing to be feared. That all being said, I looked at the codex again and it isn't mentioned.
The gabby 3 way scene triggers the failure loop way too early randomly sometimes which ruins an entire run.
diogaoo wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 3:00 pm
You meant the "dominated" attack? It is not random either, you need to attack her at the right time to avoid this move
Yes that is an example of something that was not random that appeared random. Simply communicating the players oversight better would go a long way in making it not feel random. A badly written example: "Ha! You were so distracted attacking Gabby that you let me sneak up on you!"
Thank you so much for taking the time to state twice that this kind of feedback was welcome. For a while it was making me feel like I went too far in this community considering I don't see anyone else doing this and I was going to do the rest through PM. I also wouldn't spend hours trying to figure out how to help if I didn't think you both had something good but that also through adjustments could be so much more. While I get the feeling that TOTS isn't for you (It's honestly not my type of "game" either) I welcome you or anyone else to be as critical as they want. I am practically starving for more actual critical feedback of what didn't land or kept so many people from seeing the deep systems before giving up and wanted to help you in that way.
