Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!
This is an accurate assessment which actually is based on a lot of problems and potential tweaks:
-Grapple attacks are unblockable and always succeed, instead of being based upon current HP/arousal
-There is no (obvious) way to reduce arousal except for healing stations. This makes arousal a kind of "second HP" that cannot be restored on the fly. It makes sense that defending would also reduce arousal.
-Grapple attack finishers should reset arousal
-The struggle mechanic is broken, especially since the action meter resets on a grapple attack. Grapples are nearly impossible to break out of without a great deal of luck.
-The damage res bonus to grappled enemies makes no sense AT ALL (if the enemy is "occupied" by holding a char, it should be MORE vulnerable, not less)
-Non-grappled PC assist attacks should be 2-3x more effective in breaking a grapple than they are now.
-To mitigate some of the above, clothing damage should be better separated from arousal to allow enemies to grapple low-arousal characters with damaged clothes.
Other issues:
-The art is nice, but the H-"animations" aren't actually animated. There's already a glut of fake screen effect "animations" out there.
-The puzzles seem tedious, given how slowly the PC moves when running.
-A lot of objects are way too finicky about where you have to stand to interact with them
-The "sex = lose" mechanic makes this feel, as Allsop mentioned, like a game-over rape game than an H-ARPG. There should be options to use sex against the enemies somehow (perhaps low-arousal characters can actually use the grapple attacks against their attackers, while high arousal chars simply let themselves be h8fucked to unconsciousness)
-Why are all of the poses that Neon stands in so unrevealing? In general, there should be separate idle stances for non-aroused, low arousal, and high arousal for both chars.
While I certainly appreciate the feedback and the chance to make something productive out of it, please try to remember this is a work in progress! Some of your suggestions are on the to do list or have been discussed pretty extensively in previous posts.
The battle engine is basically a total rewrite of RPG Maker's, and a lot of features still aren't in place yet. This naturally affects our ability to balance combat quite severely. It would also be a huge task to re-balance combat every build since a lot of the mechanics aren't even finished yet.
I'd like to respond to some of your points however, as I feel like you're missing some points of the bigger picture.
- Grapple attacks are unblockable and always succeed
This is definitely not final. While their success rate can be balanced later quite easily, there will definitely be skills designed to actively defend against or even counter H-attacks.
- There is no (obvious) way to reduce arousal except for healing stations. This makes arousal a kind of "second HP" that cannot be restored on the fly.
This is completely intended, and your second sentence explains why. Lust is the real parameter to watch out for, and allows for carrying a build up of H-related effects between battles. If you could reduce Lust on the fly, then you'd simply never see H content unless each battle was very difficult. This is a huge problem with most H-RPGs out there, as once you are capable of defeating enemies in an area then they pose no threat at all since you begin each battle refreshed.
-The struggle mechanic is broken
I'm not sure if you're being literal here or not. The manual struggle mode actually
was broken in V0.041 as some of the UI graphics were not displaying, but was fixed with the hotfix located here:
You must be registered to see the links
-The damage res bonus to grappled enemies makes no sense AT ALL (if the enemy is "occupied" by holding a char, it should be MORE vulnerable, not less)
The idea here is that the Resist category of skills has more importance placed on it since an enemy can't easily be killed during an H attack. I disagree with the idea that being able to easily kill an enemy that performs an H-attack would be a good thing.
-The puzzles seem tedious, given how slowly the PC moves when running.
See post #1044, you'll be pleased I think
.
There should be options to use sex against the enemies somehow
I agree! Remember, just because it's not in the game now doesn't mean it won't be. This is an idea I've discussed in the interview found here:
You must be registered to see the links
-Why are all of the poses that Neon stands in so unrevealing? In general, there should be separate idle stances for non-aroused, low arousal, and high arousal for both chars.
Different map sprite graphics for H-related effects are actually planned, but aren't really of the highest priority right now.
Some of your other suggestions were discussed heavily in this topic around the release of V0.03 (early November I believe)
EDIT: Sorry, I meant the public demo... mid February. It's very easy to take what you see at face value, but realize the current demo still only covers very low level play, and isn't intended to be representative of the final game. Instead, it's meant to represent what's possible with the final game.
