Wow,
after a few sessions now I have to say this is easily the most interactive and interesting estim experience on this website, and probably anywhere. Having never played a "pure" rpg like this before, I was initially worried it might be a bit bland; but I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging the gameplay is. Nonetheless, I have a some feedback for thinks I feel could use some improvement:
1: Estim/Calibration
The Estim files imo. are good. I wouldn't call them revolutionary, and especially some of the Restim-based triphase scripts are significantly better, but I don't feel like they are hindering the experience in any way. The only part I'd like to see implemented differently is the callibration.
As it is implemented currently (starting from 0 intensity, and having a limit of 60% for the low intensity pleasure), it encourages people to turn their stimbox up very high, and ending up with very low calibration volumes. My first calibration for example resulted in volumes between ~10% for low pleasure and ~20% for high pain. This - imo is not ideal and borderline dangerous.
If, for any reason, the box now receives a "loud" signal, the resulting intensity can be extremely painful.
I experienced this three times, once after windows decided to unmute my system sounds, and two times when an assumed bug in the game caused the combat volumes to rise during a fight (
- Spoiler: show
- this was in the maze under the well in the city; fighting a fire witch type enemy
).
I also noticed that when loading my settings, my "current" intensity is something like 10,20,30;70,80,90. I definitely never configured this, so I assume these are some default settings in the code. For a unprocessed box, a 50% volume swing between high pleasure and low pain seems insanely high, so I would probably adjust that preset.
As for a better calibration system, I would suggest the following:
Don't start at 0% volume. Let the player select a initial volume that will be used for low pleasure (60-70% might be a good suggestion), let them adjust their box / balance to that volume, and then calibrate the other volumes from there.
Remove the arbitrary "max" limit for different volumes. Warn them about the possibility of clipping, and recommend re-calibrating with a lower initial value if they reach 100% volume during calibration.
2: Pacing / Playtime
While the game is engaging, I feel like progress is a bit slow, with individual quests in both
- Spoiler: show
- the graveyard and the maze
taking me ~3+ hours to complete. This, in my opinion, mostly comes down to "movement speed" in hostile areas, and the size of these areas.
My main gripe is AP usage in these areas. When going through areas I have already explored, I tend to rush until my AP is empty, and then have to stand around doing nothing for what feels like eternity. I see a few options for resolving this:
1. Reduce AP usage out of combat, increase regen
2. Add a "rest" feature that might have a chance of an enemy encounter, but instantly restores AP and Health
3. Remove AP usage out of combat.
The size might also need some adjustment. I think both areas I have mentioned earlier could do with being ~10-20% smaller. They already have repeating art, so that wouldn't go to waste, and traversing/exploring them would be a bit quicker if some of the dead space was removed between points of interest.
3: Junk Items / Carry weight
This basically comes down to one experience: I sold Items I had tons of that was marked as "Junk" once, only to learn shortly after that a quests "recommends" I bring as many of them as possible (
- Spoiler: show
- skulls for the portal quest
).
Carry weight obviously makes sense in an RPG, and even if every item required for random quests was marked as such, you probably couldn't carry all of them around with you forever. I think what is missing (and should be available early on) is some kind of item storage. Maybe give us the ability to rent a room at either the brothel or tavern, add a bed for a slight "well rested" bonus and add a chest for storage.
4. Interface
Most of my gripes are limitations with webteases themselves, so I wont mention them here, but there are a few minor things that could be improved.
Fast combat text: Basically, the normal text speed is so slow I tend to spam-click through it, but fast combat text shows all messages instantly, which leads to me skipping past relevant information. I would like an option in the middle, that still behaved like the standard text, but had a much shorter pause between each message.
Shop Interface: I think the screen showing you stuff like "bought 2 potions for 40 gold" could be used as a "confirm purchase" screen. You don't see the price total before here, so it might make sense to add the option to cancel a purchase.
It might also be cool if we could sell / order multiple things at once by separating the number for each item with a comma. Especially for selling specific junk items, that would speed up selling them tremendously.
