I'm not sure what the last version you played before the current demo, but the art has improved a lot by my judgement. Or, it'd be more accurate to say a lot has been added. Alicia's sprite was overhauled in addition to animation frames for falling and stopping and such. A few tilesets were improved, and one of the bigger additions that I don't know how you could've missed is parallax backgrounds. Not to mention the UI being dramatically better. There's also a new H-CG artist (whether it's "better" is gonna be entirely subjective).
The lord doesn't like spoilers
For your complaints about the art, I'm going to basically mimic what Jesus said. The cave tile comparison you mentioned is by far the smallest visual update we did, so I can't blame you for not seeing the differences there, but everything else changed dramatically from the last public version, and the only way I can imagine you could've missed them is if you haven't played the old demo in a while, and you're just misremembering the old graphics being better than they were. Here's a few comparisons so you can see what I mean:
So sorry about that! I'll make sure to spoiler tag them going forward, I hadn't considered that people might want to keep up with the game without seeing the H-content before they play.
This is exactly what was happening, alongside my aforementioned blind eye to art. The side-by-side comparisons make it painfully obvious, but also the explanations of the extra movement animations has rejogged my memory, as I now think that is what was causing the gameplay to be so much smoother and intuitive. I now remember wondering if extra frames or animations were added in the general movements.
I can understand the reasoning behind not causing bosses to reward upon a loss, but with the lore of your game world, where the atmosphere is turning men lust crazy, it makes no sense for the big bad, main enemies to not lewd you upon a loss, as surely the environment would effect them heavily as well. Unlocking a scene where you did lose makes no logic when compared to when you did lose and nothing happens except a fade to black or whatever. Maybe an alternative scene is unlocked when you win, which shows a prolonged or "after" scene of the boss' scene when you're defeated? Aka "a long time later"-eque scenario.
After seeing the truth behind how much the art style has changed, the fact it's not revamped is reason enough, I falsely thought it could've still fit in. As someone that loved the BE, I can admit that the lack in movement was tough, especially when it came to collecting all the BE variant scenes, so it's no surprise you wanted to revamp that mechanic too.
I always hated the cumshooters more than the latchers because I often found them more annoying than the latchers... Also I thought them being hard to see was intentional. An idea on what latchers could do if you ever brought them back, have them act the same way I assume you want BE to be, and not cause mobility issues but instead cause something else. Maybe have it so multiple can be latched on at once and the more that are attached the more effects happen?
Same here, it'll be interesting to go beyond all the revamps and see what new ideas come up.
That's fine, you don't have to agree with it or like the changes, but the changes are staying. I understand the appeal in game over content, but it's not the type of game or content I want to make, and I haven't wanted to for a while - the only reason we ever used it was because Crisis Point wasn't originally going to be such a big game, it was more of a creative outlet and I didn't put much thought into the initial plans, I just did what every other action H-game does, which is sex on loss. While I understand the disappointment in us changing our content - that's why I wasn't going to change it until the Patreon ToS change forced my hand, despite me being unhappy with it - the argument of there not being many games that do that content doesn't really hold up. Almost all action H-games do sex on loss. I know that doesn't remove the disappointment, and I would never try to invalidate anyone else's feelings about the changes - all I ask for at this point is that people have respect for the fact that this is how the game is now, because this is how I as a creator want it to be, and that people give us time to flesh out the changes before making kneejerk reactions and saying "the game is gutted" or "fuck you for bowing to Patreon" or "this game is worthless now". There's still a person behind this game, not some faceless robot, and knowing that making one small change can cause my most ardent supporters to spew hatred and toxicity at me, even knowing that these changes make me happier as a creator.. there really aren't words to describe it.
Yeah, that would just be way too much work, even if I wanted to do it. I said a few posts ago that I plan on making it so Alicia masturbates when you run out of HP, which will mean you DO have sex on loss with regular enemies - but for boss fights that function is disabled, and I DEFINITELY don't want to give unique content on loss, because then we're back to the problem of people throwing themselves against a new enemy every time they find one just to see the porn content, then having to reload, which absolutely kills the pacing of a game and introducing a new enemy.
They'd still have the issue of being near impossible to see with the new art, unless I revamped their design - but making them bigger would make them stand out in a negative way imo, and at least off the top of my head, I can't think of a mechanic I'd be interested in giving them that wasn't mobility reduction. Plus, unless I just gave them a generic "sucking" animation that just overlayed on top of Alicia, they'd require an absurd amount of art effort to implement, since they'd have to have an animation to match up with every animation Alicia has. I'm not saying it's literally impossible, but I honestly have no interest in bringing the Latcher's back right now, sorry.
Don't even worry about it man, you were perfectly respectful in your comments and that's the most important part! It's definitely hard to understand what goes into making something if you haven't done it yourself, that applies to every kind of creative endeavor, not just games, so I don't fault you at all for it. On the contrary, I commend you for being open to discussion and bringing up your disappointments in a respectful way - it makes it a lot easier to want to open a dialogue and see if we can find a solution, compared to people who start the conversation with aggression/yelling. (Not pointing any fingers at anyone here with that, btw - there's just been a LOOOOT of toxicity in recent weeks from people all over the place and it's really wearing me down. I don't know why it's only just starting now when the changes happened like.. almost a year ago.)
Enemies do heal you on sex, yeah. I'm not a super huge fan of the idea of limiting what enemies you can have sex with, especially since many enemies have duo scenes, which would mean you'd have to find two prime enemies together to be able to see their duo scenes, and there's also BE scenes, which is a status effect you can only get from certain things. Randomizing enemies being prime also means I have less control over encounter design, and more prime enemies as you get stronger means that enemies "level up with you" so to speak, which IMO has always made it feel a lot less meaningful to get stronger. I'd also have to put more time into artwork for prime enemies, since at the very least they'd need some kind of defining trait/effect that clearly marks them as prime.
I will say that I did have plans for the way BE would work once we redo it, part of which involves completely removing the movement debuff so Alicia can get around easier. Beyond that, I have ideas but nothing so set in stone that I'm not willing to hear ideas - that said, the biggest flaw I can see in your idea is that having sex would function both as a way to activate AND deactivate BE in those areas, which would put control of being in BE completely in the player's hands - which also comes at the negative of the player constantly being forced to watch H-scenes if they want to switch for whatever reason, and also makes it so that BE is no longer a factor in your gameplay, since you can swap out of it on command. It might be worth considering removing the idea of BE having a penalty, and maybe make it a time limited buff instead - or maybe give it both a positive and a negative in some way?
I'd assume people may be blind to the meaning behind changes shown in a blog, and only become aware once those changes are implemented into the actual update, where they can interact with it and then go "oh, I don't like this".
A buff is hard to imagine for BE, besides a sexual one.
That one tiny difference is why I no longer back the dev on Patreon. It lost my interest so fast.
I really hope it does, but do understand that I'm still up for feedback regarding our H-content, I don't want it to feel tacked on - I just want people to be open to the new context and give us some time to flesh it out before deciding if the game is "worthless". And again, I wasn't referring to your comments as much as some other people I've had to deal with recently who were significantly more disrespectful. As far as why sex heals you, I intended that to be sort of like "getting temporary relief from her urges", whereas if she ignores them until it hits a breaking point (running out of health/"willpower"), even having sex won't satisfy it, and she becomes consumed by her lust and unable to continue her mission. I can see how it could be interpreted both ways though, maybe I'll try to add in some flavor text or something to describe it ingame. Having sex DOES reduce your libido back to 0, so once libido is a more common mechanic it might be a little clearer that that's the angle I'm going for.
Like I said, I understand completely why some people are disappointed - again, it's the entire reason I wasn't going to change things until I felt like I had to to protect my income, despite being unhappy with it. I had already decided my future games weren't going to have GoR, but I wasn't going to change it in CP:E until that fact explicitly because I know it would disappoint people, and believe it or not, I didn't want to disappoint any of my fans. I fully understand why GoR is a huge fetish to some people, which is why I've reiterated that point several times - it's just not what I want to do with my work, and precious few people seem to be able to respect me enough as a person to accept that without throwing a temper tantrum and cursing me out for it. Managing forums and chatting with communities over the past month has basically boiled down to dealing with somebody bitching at me every other day over it, and I'm getting awfully close to just ignoring posts like it from now on - when a person's ability to talk to me without getting pissy ends as soon as I do one thing they don't agree with, even though it makes me happier with the work I'm making, then it's pretty safe to say they don't actually have any respect for me as a person/creator, if that makes sense, and I don't really have time to deal with that shit day in and day out.
Sorry to disappoint you, but in the interest of saving you the time and effort, I recently discovered thanks to some user testing that the method I use to generate encrypted save files actually makes it impossible to share saves. I'll spare you the particulars, but you won't be able to download someone else's save and use it right now. I want to fix this as soon as I can, since I had no intention of trying to stop people from sharing saves, but I'm afraid for now it's impossible.
