Re: Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!
I definitely agree here. In games like this, difficulty and gameplay-based H content frequency are innately linked.
Wrong.
Dead wrong. I'd say this is the root of your conceptual difficulties, but it's fairly obvious those difficulties come from several sources. I'm not even trying to be rude, just matter-of-fact.
You do not understand what you are doing and it is hurting your development. Thankfully, this can be remedied. I hope.
To reiterate the last few posts, the problem is likely that players using Input Wait Mode aren't seeing much H content organically. I believe the culprit is being able to really easily interrupt grapples in Input Wait Mode.
No, this is not the problem. The problem is that you have given us two options that are bad in two different ways.
Bad way 1: use "wait" in which struggling is underpowered (or was when I tested ages ago), and player can't improve it; and H presentation is completely player controlled (formulaic)
Bad way 2: use "active" in which struggling is plenty powerful if the player wants to mash buttons really fast and have
no control at all over H presentation (chaotic/ephemeral).
From user feedback, I've gathered that people who choose to play on Input Wait Mode do it because they either "want time to see the H visuals", or because active mode is too hectic and thus is difficult for them. Unfortunately, (and this is where your second point comes in Slam Sector) due to how easy it is to interrupt grapples in wait mode, they effectively cut off organically seeing battle H content.
Here's that basic assumption again that mashing buttons really fast is difficult. It's
not difficult,
it's tedious. Not only is it tedious, but if I have to watch the UI (due to modern OS/latency/hardware shit, you can't 100% assume that just because you hit the button that it registered at the OS level, let alone to the app) to monitor the game state, and that distracts from the tasty, tasty H.
The catch 22 is this: these players either have lots of H content and can't enjoy it, or they have no H content but have infinite time to enjoy it.
In both cases you end up with a dissatisfied player. I know we can't please everyone, but as AltairPL says we want to make it accessible and enjoyable to as many players as possible, so it's worth investigating in my opinion.
The "catch-22" you refer to is created entirely by you. You can remove it easily--if you just step out of the intellectual hole you've dug for yourself.
I hate to say it, but I could definitely see your point about grappling. I'm a bit more used to how to deal with it now, but starting off, it was frustrating to the point where I used to actually wait for opponents to show when they'd start a grappling move and break their attack. It does allow for more strategy and timing to be involved, but I do concur with the above poster in that escaping the restrain is still a PitA to resolve, mainly because you're screwed if the attacker has a great deal of health (and you can't focus it down) or if you have low energy. If another grappler restrains your other character while that character is trying to focus the initial grappler, you're definitely screwed.
This is an accurate assessment, but as I hope I've made clear, symptomatic. All of these problems are really symptomatic and fairly easy to clear up.
@MaxiDamage: I don't really like seduction personally, but I see the merits in your idea--in addition to the ones you already chose, I think it does fit, because the PCs in the game are a bit more...promiscuous than in other games (sort of like Bitch Exorcist Rio, where if you get violated, it's sort of a turn-on for the character; in that game you also have a 'seduction' type of game as well). Of course, it does change the game not just as a mechanic but the overall feel to the game, and as you said, I'm not sure that's necessarily an easy thing to implement at this stage.
You're thinking about this wrong, E_G. While you're right that the PCs in this game are a bit sluttier than most, one of the most compelling things (if done correctly) is to create a situation where the player has conflicting incentives.
@Eromancer, for example:
Let's pretend that seduction started being a positive and active character attribute, instead of "lust" simply being an immitigable consequence of being hit by the wrong attacks that simply leads to (admittedly well drawn) gamevores[sic] (this game has a disproportional amount of vore-ish content given the utterly tiny amount of smut there is overall) due to and endless loop of being hit by lust attacks after your armor goes bye-bye. (Maybe you already plan this. If so, it exists only in your head. Nobody has actually seen it in action.)
So let's imagine that the player has more control over lust, and how it works--certain attacks might raise lust, or even lower it; once the PC has high enough lust, she could begin to use various sex attacks; eventually, at high enough levels, the PC might ONLY be willing to use sex attacks (which could either be useful or very very bad--or have a chance of both). This would certainly make the effect of lust seem more "interesting" if you actually had different move sets at different stages of lust.
In that case, there might be consequences to lewd acts, either willing or not (say, pregnancy--not "realistic" pregnancy, but say being forced to carry some inhuman spawn for the next 5 battles that progressively reduces physical and mental abilities until the player gives birth or finds a heal station). This leads to more fetish potential (if the authors want to include pregnancy/birth stuff), or can be downplayed (generic swollen stomach variations to paperdolls + some "implied birth" crap after the 5th battle), plus an interesting "unchaining" dynamic since once a certain "trick" has gotten the player pregnant, there's no reason not to keep using it until she gives birth.
Other consequences might include simple stat debuffs ("fucked to exhaustion") or mental statuses ("pussy full of weird aphrodesiac gook makes thinking hard"). Ideally you'd use every option at your disposal, from eggs to impregnation to various types of sluttification and bimboification, or even outright parasitic infections of various sorts. Depending on how much drawing you're willing to do, the sky's the limit (especially since the underlying programming for all these various things doesn't have to differ all that much if done correctly). As long as you don't half-ass it, every fetish you add is more sales. Assuming you can keep up on the artwork.
Next problem: grapples.
Grapples are not difficult, but they are tedious. They're tedious because they use a surrogate for difficulty (button-mashing) which is the same basic reason why SSBM was popular and Tekken was not: nobody likes overly complicated bullshit.
On the other hand, you could make grapples/struggling more tactical and they would suddenly make sense. Currently, having monsters have a defense buff while they are completely preoccupied by a grapple
makes no fucking sense: "Hey, I'm holding onto this person with all my arms and legs and tentacles and can't possibly move out of the way of an attack in time or use my hands/limbs/tentacles to defend against it, yet somehow I'm fucking invincible."
lolwut?
Not only is this illogical, but it gets rid of another source of (good) contention: imagine that you might deliberately put one PC in a compromising position so that an enemy is more vulnerable to attack--if your gambit succeeds, you win. If not, you have a dead/impregnated/crippled partner and you still need to win that battle. This might be useful in any battle, but especially if the enemies in question are, say, extremely hard to hit. If it's some stringy little mass of tentacles that's nearly impossible to hit because it's only 2" wide and keeps moving, tricking it into staying still by offering it a warm pussy might be just the ticket to tearing its head off.
Anyway, I was talking about tactics: usually when you're in a specific type of hold, there's only 1-2 really good ways to get out of it (depending on a number of factors). For example, if someone has my hands, but not my feet, I may (depending on position) be able to kick him off--or not. Or vice versa.
So instead of having one bullshit "struggle" option with a button mashing dynamic to give it fake difficulty, you should have like 3 struggle options - something like "hands", "feet", and "body" where you either try to kick free, try to flail free with your arms, or try to squirm free. Obviously each grapple would be stronger or weaker to different struggle types, and might even change at different stages (and in some cases, doing the wrong struggle type might even make it WORSE for the player--"thanks for squirming when you were right about to fall into the trap--I get a free move!" type stuff)
You should also have ways to provoke a grapple ("Hey boys--come get it!"), and, as I said before, there should be consequences for various penetrative sex acts voluntary or otherwise.
Putting it all together:
You currently have a game with a shitload of orthogonal non-intersecting gamplay elements that all act to make the game experience weird and annoying. All you need to do is
synergize--either by the method I described above, or something else. But first, get rid of the "mash a button pointlessly to resist!" quicktime bullshit. Then make it so that grapples are a liability for players AND monsters, instead of just being a one-sided bullshit contrived thing that makes no sense. Then give the players ways to get out of grapples that involve some amount of logic and problem solving (and in active mode, reflexes) instead of simply trying to give your players carpal tunnel.
Also, less vore, more fucking. Seriously.
!
