ACT Mod [Mc Swagger] Mission Mermaiden – The Downfall of Hasumi

[Mc Swagger]

By the way, I'm guessing Curiosity was the first new status effect that you added, but am I right in thinking the second is the Parasite Seed? The original game only had the egg and the fetus from that mob so i figured that the seed effect would be the other new one, but if it isn't then I've got more hunting to do.

I counted Seed and Egg as one.

Spoiler

Weightless (Boss 3-2 and 3-4) and Curiosity are the new ones

Why have multiple people made mods for sex games where the express purpose is to avoid the sex entirely?
[...] but making it so you can't finish the game the more you have sex IMO goes against the entire point of hentai games.

Dont get me wrong: My goal is not to avoid sex scenes. You are right that this would defeat the purpose of hentai games. I am trying to balance the mod so that the player can wittness the corruption of a heroin down to the point of complete surrender. Getting fully currupted and getting bad states is part of the nominal game play cycle. Failing is part of the concept and shows the jucy bits of the game

 

[ChupacabraGonzales]

Outside of the buglocking issues with 1-2 boss I'd say you've done a good job on the difficulty. Once I beat it I managed to get all the way to 3-2 without savescumming or retrying, and the reason I stopped there was more because I was seeking out status effects rather than the difficulty being too bad. All of the enemies I have encountered so far are managable in grapples, as the first stage rarely inflicts pleasure and you can struggle out without it progressing if you make sure to go in with some willpower to spare and have figured out the struggle minigame. The instant escape from transforming provides an additional layer of security that can be used every so often, which was what I mostly used it for since I'm not totally certain what other benefits it provides. Really, i was only getting into actually dangerous grabs when my pleasure was eating up a decent amount of my willpower bar, and most sources of that outside of grabs (bullets mostly) are dodge or reflectable for the most part, with the consumables able to take the edge off what does get through.

By the way, I'm guessing Curiosity was the first new status effect that you added, but am I right in thinking the second is the Parasite Seed? The original game only had the egg and the fetus from that mob so i figured that the seed effect would be the other new one, but if it isn't then I've got more hunting to do.

I agree, after figuring out how to defeat the 1-2 boss without taking a single hit from it (since belly vore near wall hardlocks the game), I was also able to make it all the way to 3-1 or 3-2 while only losing one willpower bar (and that was lost early in area 1, probably before the 1-2 boss). I kinda started fooling around with triggering events, so I haven't progressed past that point yet.

I really enjoy how the game actually forces you to think and approach enemies slowly, always needing to be aware of your surroundings. It takes a while to get into the hang of it, but you can still just rush in and whack all enemies while avoiding all permanent damage to your character.

Some observations/things which I am not sure are working as intended:

- mini slugs restraint animation cause your character to do 360 degree spins, probably has to do with the fact you mainly encounter these enemies in levels with uneven terrain
- visor status effect + milk machine trap restraint animation: character's eyes show open through the visor
- I was save scumming through Equipment purchases just to get an idea of what kind of bonuses to expect. At one point somewhere after 2-2 or 2-3 I saved the game, spent 4 fragments to get a Tier 3 equipment, reloaded the game, purchased a Tier 3 equipment again, but when I went to equip it, the T3 equipment from before the re-load was in my inventory as well. I tried to replicate this "exploit" but was unsuccessful.

Apart from that, I really like how some of the game events are triggered by entirely different conditions than before, it keeps the game fresh and full of surprises.

 

[NotSoAvid]

Yeah, I'm not sure how, but I got another bug on boss 1-2, and got stuck underground somehow lol

 

[Avatier]

The mod would be best described as "tedious". There are a number of "bullshit moments" that generate this tedium.

tl;dr: The mod likes to waste the player's time.

Note: I understand the limitations of the modding tools and the limits to what can be altered as well as my personal taste in games. So take this with a grain of salt.

The first one would be the enemy tweaks, namely the shotgun blast on the gunner mooks. Normally I'd be fine if the game accounted for graze damage/partial damage but if I were playing a game and getting hit by a single pellet counted as getting hit straight in the chest by all 20 pellets I'd call BS on that. The second issue compounding on the lack of attenuating damage is the amazing ability for the pellets to curve out of the tube 90 degrees resulting in an intense amount of "OK WTF was that" and with such a powerful attack communicated with zero wind-up AND can occur at the same time as a normal attack is just bullshit since it defies logic. This isn't even getting to the heat-seeking grenades where you have less than half a second to move out of the way after getting knocked down from a shotgun blast. The insta-blocking nigh invulnerable female slave soldiers in the later parts of the game are also part of this. Having to spend upwards of 1 minute on each enemy to drop their guard is a huge waste of time since you can't flank in the claustrophobic tunnels and they don't get pushed backwards by running into them. You also run the risk of being pushed out of the map or getting caught (see stuck in their collision box) on enemies when they cluster around you. On the plus side they block enemy projectiles with their collision box.

The second is the enemy density. The school of thought it definitely in the same realm as from DS2 to DS2: SotFS or the nightmare difficulties of Fire Emblem. This school of thought is to generate difficulty by tuning the density to generate alot of "gotcha" moments. It's funny the first time, it stops being funny by the 5th. Fire Emblem on the higher difficulties have free turn enemy super archers coming out of the side to one-shot your flier because that's an obvious path/tactic that people use on lower difficulties. It doesn't feel good when you get rail-roaded and when you come to anticipate it, it just generates alot of resentment. A majority of players not being able to get past the tutorial or level 1 is something no developer should take pride in unless that was the intention (I Wanna Be the Guy, Impossible Cat Mario, etc). To add to the Scholars comparison, it's like the changes to Iron Keep. Iron Keep in Scholars is intensely much less enjoyable than vanilla DS2 due to increased enemy density and massively increased aggro range on enemies that I would consider to be "above cannon fodder". Combined with the AI tweaks this normally easy levels on the same level as trying to go through Shrine of Amana (aka Shrine of Cancer) in DS2 at Soul Level 1.

The third is the tedium with the Willpower/Stamina system. Since everything is tied to it and the resource regeneration is so slow, having to sit and drop the controls for up to 15 seconds just to be able to have a chance to get past the next encounter is just tiresome. The new struggle mini-game just becomes fatiguing and it's honestly just un-fun. For myself getting grabbed was either a restart or a "Oh just get this fucking over with so I can play the fucking game". It also doesn't help that when you take damage you are further punished by having your total resource pool being taken away from you in addition to your current pool being lowered and sometimes you can't even struggle out of a grab because struggling costs stamina from which you likely have none when getting grabbed or if you mess up the mini-game too much. Sometimes you can't even struggle out of stage 1 because it starts the bar pink long enough for you to hit the stage 2 struggle without any agency. With the increased enemy density it's a losing war of attrition if you don't play perfectly. The amount of time wasted gives the player alot of time to ask: Maybe I should play something else.

The fourth is just some of the mechanics seem arbitrary. Returning to base supposedly costs 1000 units. This encourages alot of grinding and rote memorization to be able to complete that grind. If the grind is fun, people won't mind. However the mod itself isn't fun and this becomes another penalty which takes away already scarce resources away from the player in a mod that wants to be Hideous Destructor. The mod non-stop punishes the player and it becomes a snowballing effect that just feels really bad. I found myself going back to play Darkest Dungeon after particularly intense "gamer moments" as I felt I had more control in that game than this mod.

The last point and not a "tedium" thing is that the original game and the mod are nothing alike. The original game was a fast action platformer. The mod wants to be Hideous Destructor. For those of you who don't know, Hideous Destructor is a Doom 2 mod which converts the game to be a military simulation. You have to do things like manage individual bullets in magazines, dress wounds, manage stamina, keep order of things in your pack, manage carryweight, etc. While it can work for Hideous Destructor it doesn't work for this mod. HD has multiple starting builds and you can exchange from a myriad of weapons to change up tactics and you have different map sets to play with and with the virtue of being built on a Doom souceport, allows HD to have incredibly intricate mechanics to the point where you can't tell it was the same game. Since the mod can't give enough player freedom to tackle against the difficulty it begins to feel unfair combined with all the other changes into the game.

The less control the player has in a battle the worse it feels. Dark Souls gives you a myriad of tools and abilities to deal with enemies as well as different strategies (kill all, grind them to not spawn (DS2) or run past). Monster Hunter has different weapon types depending on the match up of the monster. This mod feels like there is only one way to play and it's the only way to play. This appeals to some people sure, but not everyone is wanting to jump through the same hoops.

Having a set of internal play testers is fine initially but the problem is that they become habituated to it. Having public play tests are the best way to gauge what the general populace enjoys. You can't please everybody. Lets take Warframe as an example. Veterans know the mechanics inside and out because they were there during their introduction and their refinement. A new player would be completely overwhelmed at the amount of mechanics and untold interactions in Warframe today. If you intended for the mod to be liked by a small audience then the general public really doesn't matter. Seriously, if you have a vision then stick with it but be aware of the consequences of taking that stance. (IE being out of touch or pandering to casuals argument)

For an H-game, sure you should punish the player but you shouldn't cripple them on every little mistake. A game like Ryona-RPG allows you to cripple character stats but you can always swap characters for a fresh one if you cripple them too much, can keep your inventory and each character has a different set of tools to deal with problems. The corruption is also a very slow build up and doesn't affect combat stats unless they were forcibly equipped with cursed items. A game that comes similar to this mod would be Lona-RPG. The difficulty is more accepted in Lona-RPG because the game was built from the ground up to be hyper unforgiving and there is no pre-existing notion of how the game should originally work and the game expects you to play in a particular way as the other play styles just pale in comparison. You can argue that's poor balance but that's for another day.

Alot of the mod's mechanics would be better served in a new game built from the ground up so it doesn't have the baggage of the original game to live up to. If the intention was to NG+ to get more power, it would serve far better in a Roguelite. A game like Binding of Issac can still be completed on the first run but failing to do so the game will hand you out more tools so you can eventually beat it and in a timely manner (Fail fast, fail frequently, retry quickly)

Note that I have completed the mod and I feel bad for getting good to beat it. This is mostly to prove a point to some of the folks that tell others to "git gud". I have counted zero moments I had fun through the entirety of the mod and I didn't even get that masochistic kind of fun I have with Dark Souls. The mod itself feels as if it was custom tailored to be a special challenge run much like the Master Quest series of modes for Legend of Zelda and it feels like it's sacrificing fun for complexity.

 

[Bart255]

Been playing for about 6 hours now and i really like the changes so far. It makes the game a lot more challenging and interesting to play. I would give this mod a 9 out of 10, if it where not for one major flaw. There is absolutely no way to remove corruption. The game becomes absolutely unplayable REALLY fast because of the permanent willpower decrease. This ruins the gameplay so much for me that i actually have to give this mod a 1 out of ten. PLEASE ADD A WAY TO REMOVE CORRUPTION!!!!! I really love everything else and want to play this more but it's just impossible now.

 

[ChupacabraGonzales]

Been playing for about 6 hours now and i really like the changes so far. It makes the game a lot more challenging and interesting to play. I would give this mod a 9 out of 10, if it where not for one major flaw. There is absolutely no way to remove corruption. The game becomes absolutely unplayable REALLY fast because of the permanent willpower decrease. This ruins the gameplay so much for me that i actually have to give this mod a 1 out of ten. PLEASE ADD A WAY TO REMOVE CORRUPTION!!!!! I really love everything else and want to play this more but it's just impossible now.

You're supposed to lose and start all over but keep your equipment.

 

[RobynRed]

I want to chime in with saying that I've been having a blast with the game so far. I was so sad that the original game had so much great content that was so easily breezed through its amazing to see that same content get used in an interactive way!

I'm not sure if its a bug report or intended but I'm running into an issue when maxing out on corruption. When the game restarted to stage 1 I kept all the status effects on me, one of them being a maxed out Slave Hack so now whenever I transform (which happens periodically automatically, I believe due to creepy collar status) I instantly lose and am sent to the game over scene from area 3. After that progresses the game sends me back to the start of stage 3-1. Is it intended that when you max out on corruption and the game restarts that you keep all status effects? As it is now, I think I'm soft locked out and have to restart with a new profile.

 

[blood mane]

wait so you have to remove both the parasite & egg AND the fetal parasite? bc then removing the fetal parasite alone would just make it so it would develop again next time you step on a stage... i think the cost should be way lower if that's the case.. or remove parasite and egg if you are progressing fetal parasite

 

[IShallRemainNameless]

I have played through the first world now, and I see what the mod was going for, and to be honest, I kind of like it (both from a thematic and gameplay standpoint). If I were to give some criticism...

1) Stamina systems are objectively bad. This one is no different. If the regen rate was doubled, maybe tripled, it could be bearable, but right now it's just atrocious. Getting halfway through a boss fight by burning all your stamina pots just to have to sit around and....wait....for.....it.........to.............come.......................................back.................................................................
...is not fun. Especially when surviving the boss's mechanics often involves attacking to reflect projectiles, so you don't even have an opportunity to refill stamina. And if you happen to get grabbed, all that time waiting was wasted because struggling to break the grab will consume all your stamina. And not get you out of the grab anyway.

2) The struggle system is...well, I'm not sure I want to say it's bad, but I don't like it. I get that it's more interactive than the original Mission Mermaiden struggle system, but I'm not confident that makes it better. The amount of time you spend in a grab that is not physically possible to break out of is really frustrating. On top of that, tying it to the stamina system doomed it to be hated from the start. MAYBE this would work if it wasn't tied to stamina in any way...but playing red light green light when the destination is constantly getting farther away from you isn't very fun. It makes getting caught tedious rather than scary, because you know if you happened to have swung your stick in the past thirty minutes you won't have the stamina to break out and so might as well just sit around and wait for the animation to finish.

3) Costing Stain to get back to the world map is asinine. Unless you're grinding for something, the cost will never be an issue...and if you're grinding for something, the cost will never be an issue. The cost is irrelevant so it just makes you feel bad that you have to pay it. I'm...strangely okay with the Stain cost to remove status effects. The consumables are never going to matter because of the three item cap on going into a level, and with how many of them are scattered about, you'll never really be buying them. I feel like the cost to remove status effects is as much as a useful function you'll get out of stain, so putting a trivial cost on going to the world map is just irritating and doesn't really add any sort of meaningful decision making.


Overall I've had fun so far, and will probably try to clear the whole thing. Though I'll probably do it slowly, because I'm still waiting for my stamina to regen.

 

[MetroidSuperFan]

Here's my feedback so far:

This is far better than the base game. I am loving the general idea of the mod. I think it just needs a few balancing tweaks.

First, the price to return to base seems kind of steep. I'd be in favor of reducing it.

Second, it would be nice if there was some function to "skip" the pleasure meter building up. When it's impossible to resist the enemy, you don't want to have to sit there doing nothing at all while slowly waiting for gameplay to resume.

Finally, not sure how big a fan I am of equipment being randomly generated. Especially as it sounds like there's a bug that crashes the game if you buy more than enough equips to overflow inventory? If that's going to be a thing, there should be a way to get rid of equipment you don't want (if there isn't already and I'm just a moron for not seeing it).

Overall, I'm very happy with what you've done, and I think with a few adjustments it would be extremely good.

 

[gent777]

I can't play this mod. I followed the instructions, starting with making a backup of the OG game so that this one uses the mod. I overwrote the files in their proper location, but when I start the game, I get a weird filter color and I can't progress further than trying to select a new game file to start.

 

[Eyri Purpur]

So I've played partway through and have been having a good time for the most part, but wanted to chime in with some feedback!

Stamina
The stamina system is annoying, but I definitely don't think it's unworkable. I think significantly reducing or even removing the delay before stamina regen starts would go a long way to making it feel like the player doesn't have to just stop doing anything and disengage as often. If you wanted you could even tack on those seconds onto the regeneration time, keeping the time it'd take to regen from empty to full functionally the same!
This would make it so you can still take an occasional swing to deflect a projectile or hit a singular enemy and not have to wait a few seconds to get ANY stamina back. Cause currently the only good way to regen stamina is to just disengage from combat completely. This is the thing I feel most strongly about in my feedback as I really think this simple change would enable players to be more active while waiting for stamina regen.

Corruption
I think the corruption is fine, but there should be a way to clear it at base for a cost or something. If there's no easy way for you to implement that then I'd re-enable the plant. It feels really weird to deliberately kill myself because I messed up and don't wanna bother going into going into the next area half dead. I've honestly I've just taken to cheating the value back down to 0 to spare myself the tedium and I'm not even half way through the game yet.

Return to Base Cost
I think I get what you were going for with this, I really do, but I don't think it has the desired effect on gameplay. It's basically a tax on the player's funds and encourages running multiple levels in a row. Seems neat on the surface cause then you might have people taking risks to get more money, but I think the outcome is more of "I'm going to repeat the first 2-3 levels a dozen times until I have all the money I need and then clear all my status effects at once". I think this just encourages memorization of levels, which while it is certainly a skill that can be worthwhile to test players on, there's nothing encouraging players to ever grind anything but the first few levels. Making it an exercise in tedium.

Slime Status
I miss being able to run around cum covered all the time. It slows me down too much now though. ;~;
(Would be nice to have a way to have it on continuously, maybe with less speed reduction though)

Fun tho, I'm gonna keep playin' and am really lookin' forward to 1.1!
EDIT: Thank you for giving me an excuse to play this again

EDIT2: Hey, after a bit of testing I think I've realized that having arousal (the pink bar) makes the duration the struggle bar is pink increase? If that's correct, I recommend removing that, as it's double dipping into the stamina and makes low stamina which already feels bad feel even worse. It really incentivizes players to play in an overly cautious way and is a mechanic that isn't communicated clearly which may lead some people to think it's just the system in general that is messed up. In my experience making games I've found that double dipping with punishment mechanics needs to be done exceedingly carefully otherwise it leads to frustration really quickly. Better to just go with one of them but harsher if you really want it to be punishing but still feel okay.
(I could be wrong about arousal doing this and thus this entire paragraph though w)

 

[RobynRed]

I can't play this mod. I followed the instructions, starting with making a backup of the OG game so that this one uses the mod. I overwrote the files in their proper location, but when I start the game, I get a weird filter color and I can't progress further than trying to select a new game file to start.

View attachment 42052

This happens when you are not using the most up-to-date version of the game. I was getting this when I was using a free download version I thought was the most up-to-date, but then I bought the full version and it stopped.

 

[Oreno]

- What I disliked:
1.) The Willpower recovery system is very slow to the point that it feels very detached to the combat system. More than half of the time of a stage / boss fight is spent on Hasumi standing around / dodging to regain Willpower. If programmable, maybe implement a crouch system that enables her to recover Willpower faster (or something along those lines).

2.) Going back to base at a cost of 1K.

3.) I like the reinforcement of the "Corruption" idea because of the author's works, but the system needs some kind of a removal system. They stack way too easily given at how certain enemies still have unforgivable hit / grab detection and the buff to solider enemies. Tying it in with the "Restart Campaign" system, it's almost unforgivable. With a Corruption system that isn't removable, players are inevitably going to have to restart. I think implementing a Stain system to remove Corruption at a cost in place of the "Going back to base" could be an idea.

4.) "Restart Campaign" system needs to be removed or be an option for players. Without the removal of Corruption, this system will inevitability hurt progression and replayability.

- What I liked:
1.) I like the new Equipment attributes as they seem meaningful, I think they can be organized cleaner (?) I've reset for Tier 3 effects and they seem to largely vary from one another despite all being the same tier.

2.) Transformed Hasumi deflecting projectiles is awesome given at how accurate the soldiers / projectiles are in the mod.

3.) I actually like the Willpower / Pleasure gauge-in-one, fighting against each other (which to me, accurately reflects her will to fight vs giving in) with the whole Corruption play / idea. In my opinion, it makes the struggle a bit impactful when you see she has less Willpower vs Pleasure.

4.) Certain enemies can control her Hypnosis effect is kind of cool. Having the percentage on the effects is also very cool.

- Maybe add (?):
1.) A way to vacuum enemy-defeated Stains (not stage-placed Stains) from a certain distance around Hasumi. Looting those individual, small falling Stains are a pain.

2a.) More invulnerability after escaping enemies so she doesn't get chain grabbed (ties in with 2b).

2b.) Have her stay in place after escaping an enemy instead of her jumping / getting flicked awat from the enemy (escaping from a domino of Jellyfish enemies lined up above each other is.... not fun)

===

Overall, I feel like the Corruption / Restart system is what ruined most of the fun. I can deal with patience of recovering Stamina slowly, but to have to re-Load a save because Hasumi took too much Corruption is very tedious. For what I liked about the new changes, I really liked them. I think it gives a better perception of how these individual "Conditions" can affect Hasumi's behavior, which I think makes sense for lore. I can understand why players could find this system undesirable because it robs control away from the player. But for all of changes that took place, it does feel like I'm not playing the same game again and it's refreshing! I look forward to the future updates / changes!

 

[Someone92]

How do you escape grabs in this mod?!?

Do savegames from the original game do not function with this mod? No patience to replay the boring few first levels.

 

[ChupacabraGonzales]

How do you escape grabs in this mod?!?

Do savegames from the original game do not function with this mod? No patience to replay the boring few first levels.

The grab system uses some sort of inertia mechanic. When the bar is green you rapidly tap left-right to build up the vector towards escape. Once the bar turns purple you need to stop tapping otherwise you'll get penalised.
From my observation there is a point in the progression where bar turns purple but and you can still somewhat tap left/right, but once the bar flashes and there's a purple particle effects animation on it, any tap will cause you to lose a chunk of progress.

 

[Mc Swagger]

Fuck up of the Month: I never intended to reset the whole game after corruption death. I just wanted to reset the world so you would only need to replay 3 stages max... Well fml! I was pretty sure that I communicated this plan to the alpha testers and implemented it, but the code says otherwise. I am sorry that this must have slipped through... Pretty awkward that I realises this 2 Days after the launch

Costing Stain to get back to the world map is asinine. Unless you're grinding for something, the cost will never be an issue...and if you're grinding for something, the cost will never be an issue. The cost is irrelevant so it just makes you feel bad that you have to pay it.

I think I get what you were going for with this, I really do, but I don't think it has the desired effect on gameplay. It's basically a tax on the player's funds and encourages running multiple levels in a row. Seems neat on the surface cause then you might have people taking risks to get more money, but I think the outcome is more of "I'm going to repeat the first 2-3 levels a dozen times until I have all the money I need and then clear all my status effects at once"

The reasoning behind this "tax" was to prevent grinding, but I see that this has back fired! Gonna change that, but I am not sure how. If the player can access the world map for free it would pretty much encourage replaying old stages and grind stain. I see no way to prevent this though...

EDIT2: Hey, after a bit of testing I think I've realized that having arousal (the pink bar) makes the duration the struggle bar is pink increase? If that's correct, I recommend removing that, as it's double dipping into the stamina and makes low stamina which already feels bad feel even worse. It really incentivizes players to play in an overly cautious way and is a mechanic that isn't communicated clearly which may lead some people to think it's just the system in general that is messed up. In my experience making games I've found that double dipping with punishment mechanics needs to be done exceedingly carefully otherwise it leads to frustration really quickly. Better to just go with one of them but harsher if you really want it to be punishing but still feel okay.

Yes your Suspicion is right. The Interval decreases with less willpower. Your Idea is interesting. I ll try that out and see if it can be balanced, but you are right: simpler mechanics are often better

 

[ChupacabraGonzales]

Fuck up of the Month: I never intended to reset the whole game after corruption death. I just wanted to reset the world so you would only need to replay 3 stages max... Well fml! I was pretty sure that I communicated this plan to the alpha testers and implemented it, but the code says otherwise. I am sorry that this must have slipped through... Pretty awkward that I realises this 2 Days after the launch

I just wanted to say that "Game Over" (Visor hack, Creepy Collar) events appear to be working correctly, aka restarting your progress from current world. But I believe the collected fragments do not reset in these scenarios.
I have not died to corruption yet since finishing World 1, so these event game-overs made me suspect that perhaps corruption reset would work the same.

 

[Raaage]

Already beat the mod. I like it although it is pretty annoying if you bug out and are forced to restart since the mod encourages you to play slowly. The bosses die faster in the mod though if you have items that reduce willpower use + chain attack unlock + boss damage(basically reload and craft til you get the right items) which is actually quite nice since the bosses really take a long time to die in the original game. Good rework on the 2-2 boss too cause it was a shame how it only used the magnet attack twice in the original game.

 

[Avatier]

The reasoning behind this "tax" was to prevent grinding, but I see that this has back fired! Gonna change that, but I am not sure how. If the player can access the world map for free it would pretty much encourage replaying old stages and grind stain. I see no way to prevent this though...

The base return cost system also creates issues post game. Return to base gets re-enabled post game but is immediately lost again when you complete any level which results in the campaign flags being reversed back to that point in time (Minus level unlocks).