Ren'Py Abandoned A Robin's Flight [Chapter 2] [Aaron A. Aaronsen]

[TomWant Badass]

I believe that I have made it abundantly clear, in this thread and in my review, that the combat system is extremely annoying because it is so opaque that I am just randomly clicking buttons rather than making decisions. Do you "love it?"



The way you win fights is by having troops that have an advantage against the enemy armor type and an armor type that the other side doesn't have an advantage against. When none of my teams have that I just don't fight - go to a new day, and hope that the randomized enemy on that day meets my criteria. The more mercenaries I have, the more teams I can have optimized against more enemy types, so i can choose the best team to fight a given enemy (if none do, then, again, skip the fight).

But that got, frankly, boring pretty quickly, so I use the Ren'py Live Cheat Aid (I'm not sure where I got it) that allowed me to reduce the enemy force's HP to one, so I would win in the next round. Cheated through the battles so I could access all of the H scenes. I posted links above that allow someone to see the resulting end-game "memory" links so they could see all that is great abut this game without hassling with the combat system.

I have just noted, however, that what I dislike about the combat system is that I don't get to make interesting decisions. Maybe, if I understood the combat system, it could be fun. Maybe there's a cool strategy that I could implement if I knew what the buttons meant. I just don't know because there is nothing telling me to do anything smarter than mashing random buttons.

Thanks for you fast answer. I agree with you and the most players, the fighting system is extreemly annoying. But I dont knew why the dev make the game not more porny fucking kinky horny and better without this f...ing fighting system and more h-scenes instead of white squares with colored Triangles, more h-scenes or slaves training and fucking?

Maybe Dev is focused on fighting engine but i hope he focus more on story and animations. I allways thought discussion are very important to show problems and give the Dev the opportunity to react about major problems and make his game better and more succesful!

 

[Domi10]

Agree, while noting that we don't actually know how grindy the combats system is supposed to be if only we knew how it is supposed to work!

More H scenes are surely coming in future releases, but I would argue that this game has a lot more of them in its first release than is usual. There are six scenes with the main character (some of them extensive) and seven with other characters. The usual number in a first release is two or three.

Yes the game has a good amount of H scenes for the first release but you can only get 4 with the mc at a time because of the 6 scenes 3 are part of the advisor routes. Also the are all at the beginning after you break the first target and sleep one night you have unlocked all of them but you still have to catch and break 6 targets and also capture a city in addition you neet to perform raids to upgrate your buildings without one H scene with the mc.

 

[Joe Steel]

Thanks for you fast answer. I agree with you and the most players, the fighting system is extreemly annoying. But I dont knew why the dev make the game not more porny fucking kinky horny and better without this f...ing fighting system and more h-scenes instead of white squares with colored Triangles, more h-scenes or slaves training and fucking?

Maybe Dev dont want his game succesful or lost interest? Its a shame that dev dont react faster and answer more to the discussion in this early state of the game. I allways thought discussion are very important to show problems and give the Dev the opportunity to react about major problems and make his game better and more succesful! Last devs posting in this early state of the game is 13 days ago, this says a lot! I know other devs who post every day in games who are much older than this game!!! Like Hachigames, the dev of "hail dicktator"! He post so much that i didnt even know why his game has so much content? Maybe he is superhuman and dont need any sleep!

We need to keep in mind that this is a labor of love for the developer. He isn't asking for money, he doesn't have a forum where he is asking for player input, he's just doing his thing. He clearly has a vision for the game: it's about a rebellion (a rather mysterious one, at that) that has military, management, and political dimensions, and is going to be told in chapters. As players and commentators, we need to keep in mind that the only currency in play here is the developer's enthusiasm for the project. That's why I think that it is important to keep the criticism as constructive and encouraging as possible.

The combat system in highly imperfect, I agree. But comments like "this sucks, get rid of it" aren't particularly constructive. Clearly the combat system is the result of a lot of work and thought, and the dev wouldn't have sunk so much effort into it if he didn't think that it was important to his vision of the game. So, noting that it isn't much fun, and explaining why, is useful. Saying "drop it and just make porn" isn't so useful. We are pretty clearly the play testers of this game. Let's, then, try to be helpful and encouraging.

I wouldn't expect a dev who doesn't have any "customers" to spend a lot of time doing "customer service" postings, either. Frankly, I'd rather have him spend that time on the game. He also isn't going to be much motivated to respond to a thread that is mostly nonconstructive complaining (not that I think that your criticism is nonconstructive). I don't think his relative silence is an indication of his disinterst in the game, just disinterest in defending his game to people who are, after all, getting it for free.

 

[Joe Steel]

Yes the game has a good amount of H scenes for the first release but you can only get 4 with the mc at a time because of the 6 scenes 3 are part of the advisor routes.

This makes for replayability where you choose different advisors in each iteration, to see new scenes and plots. That seems a plus, not a minus, since it makes the choice of advisor consequential.

Also the are all at the beginning after you break the first target and sleep one night you have unlocked all of them but you still have to catch and break 6 targets and also capture a city in addition you neet to perform raids to upgrate your buildings without one H scene with the mc.

The scenes are unlocked at each stage of the story. The first two are easy, but then you need to perform increasingly difficult missions to get through the next three (trader, diplomat, countess), and then a series of difficult missions against the four archmagistra. You will need to upgrade buildings throughout to get your army to be large enough and good enough to win the more difficult battles. So, late-game H scenes are harder to get, but that's how games in general work. I agree that it would have been nice to sprinkle more H scenes with the MC in the later game, but that's maybe for the post-final-version when the dev has time to tweak things.

 

[Domi10]

This makes for replayability where you choose different advisors in each iteration, to see new scenes and plots. That seems a plus, not a minus, since it makes the choice of advisor consequential.

Yes replayability is a good thing and I am not against the different advisor routes but my point was that you get 4 scenes with the mc at the beginning each time you play through the game and it would be good if there had been some later.

I agree that it would have been nice to sprinkle more H scenes with the MC in the later game, but that's maybe for the post-final-version when the dev has time to tweak things.

Maybe but I don´t know that so I say what is good and what needs improvement in the current version.

 

[TomWant Badass]

We need to keep in mind that this is a labor of love for the developer. He isn't asking for money, he doesn't have a forum where he is asking for player input, he's just doing his thing. He clearly has a vision for the game: it's about a rebellion (a rather mysterious one, at that) that has military, management, and political dimensions, and is going to be told in chapters. As players and commentators, we need to keep in mind that the only currency in play here is the developer's enthusiasm for the project. That's why I think that it is important to keep the criticism as constructive and encouraging as possible.

The combat system in highly imperfect, I agree. But comments like "this sucks, get rid of it" aren't particularly constructive. Clearly the combat system is the result of a lot of work and thought, and the dev wouldn't have sunk so much effort into it if he didn't think that it was important to his vision of the game. So, noting that it isn't much fun, and explaining why, is useful. Saying "drop it and just make porn" isn't so useful. We are pretty clearly the play testers of this game. Let's, then, try to be helpful and encouraging.

I wouldn't expect a dev who doesn't have any "customers" to spend a lot of time doing "customer service" postings, either. Frankly, I'd rather have him spend that time on the game. He also isn't going to be much motivated to respond to a thread that is mostly nonconstructive complaining (not that I think that your criticism is nonconstructive). I don't think his relative silence is an indication of his disinterst in the game, just disinterest in defending his game to people who are, after all, getting it for free.

You are totally right, i searched for an developer Patreon account before I posted my last comment and saw that the dev didn`t have one. But I have to treat every Dev equally. I allways write my brutal honest, I dont lie because dev doesnt want money and has no patreon account. A discussion is pointless when you are not honest and dont say the dev why his game sucks. What the dev make wit this information is only his thing, but he have to know it because he should have the opportuninty to react before the game is dead.
I want that the dev knows that we have big interest in his game and that we want his game succesful. We know that he put a much of work and love in his game project We thank him for that and only want that his game gets better and has more success!

 

[Baspu]

I find the game really good, the graphics are nice, there are no endless dialogues like in other games of the same type. The interface of the companions is a bit confusing at the beginning but not complicated, you get used to it quickly!

A game focused at 90% of BDSM, that's something I'm very happy about ! The sex scenes are great and very diversified. I hope to see a lot more with more bondage, petplay and all the other wonders of the BDSM world! It will be interesting to have a option of training the slaves (the important ones and randoms) with interaction to educate the slaves with punishment, bondage, sex...

On the negative side, the combat and team management interface is unreadable and not very understandable. It is by doing a lot of random configuration that I progressed in the story. The game is quite repetitive and it's a pity that we can't train our own slaves. Mini-games or interactions with cinematic with gauges to reach (bondage, discipline, obedience) to sell them more expensive could be an interesting addition. And impossible for me (but like many others) to advance in the capture of the air mage, the fight is impossible to win.

A game that promises a lot, very eager to see more. Thank you very much for this quality work!

 

[Joe Steel]

The air mage capture bug was fixed in the update. Put a convoker in strategy, swordsman in attack, and another convoker (or a trickster if you don't have to convokers) in defense. That will win almost very time.

 

[Megaduck]

Love the concept. I really like sexy strategy games. I think the sex scenes are hot and I like the different personalities.

There are two downsides right now.

While I like the idea of the combat, at the moment it's incomprehensible to me. I'm just mashing buttons to see if I win or not. So I can't make any strategy if I don't understand what choices I'm making.

There is also no follow up the characters. The Dark Magician states "Welcome to the Team" when he corrupts people but they don't come back after that. It would be nice to see say the countess helping capture the trader for example. Or you gain new units once you corrupt an arch mage.

 

[DanLab]

Aaron A. Aaronsen Hey Dev, how do I throw some money at this?

 

[Aaron A. Aaronsen]

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Yeah the combat will be improved with every chapter. I will try to get some tool tips into the game for chapter 2. The addition of the map when going raiding should already feel much better.

Aaron A. Aaronsen Hey Dev, how do I throw some money at this?

I think Patreon is extremely often a scam. Devs make a nice demo with some flaws and keep collecting the money. People then think "They will surely fix it" or "They will surely implement my fetish" and keep paying. Just look at the two very famous exhibitionism games where two (!) devs spend half a year on optimising a crawling animation or 10 lines of text.
The other issue is when devs start to listen to their patrons. "I love furries" "We need more pregnancies" "Minigames are fun.". Changelog: For this patch we focused on our new egg-laying minigame.
And don't get me started on main characters that change their personality just so they can fit into some very specific sex scene.

So if I make some donation option available it will be after some chapters, when the game is in a good condition. When I personally think: "Oh this has some neat roguelike features, a nice story (I wonder what will happen next to characters xyz?) and I might play it again." Edit: and I will not take any monthly stuff. It will just be like some kind of tip jar AFTER you enjoyed the game.

Currently I am still rendering and building the backgrounds. So everybody hang in there.

 

[Joe Steel]

I am delighted to hear that progress continues to be made, and applaud your approach to developing games. I've often seen games abandoned because a developer let his patrons convince them to add features, a second-sex protagonist, or fetishes, that didn't fit the developer's original vision and led to frustration and withdrawal.

If you need help with anything (e.g. writing or inventing scenarios), or even just playtesting, let me know.

 

[TomWant Badass]

I find the game really good, the graphics are nice, there are no endless dialogues like in other games of the same type. The interface of the companions is a bit confusing at the beginning but not complicated, you get used to it quickly!

A game focused at 90% of BDSM, that's something I'm very happy about ! The sex scenes are great and very diversified. I hope to see a lot more with more bondage, petplay and all the other wonders of the BDSM world! It will be interesting to have a option of training the slaves (the important ones and randoms) with interaction to educate the slaves with punishment, bondage, sex...

On the negative side, the combat and team management interface is unreadable and not very understandable. It is by doing a lot of random configuration that I progressed in the story. The game is quite repetitive and it's a pity that we can't train our own slaves. Mini-games or interactions with cinematic with gauges to reach (bondage, discipline, obedience) to sell them more expensive could be an interesting addition. And impossible for me (but like many others) to advance in the capture of the air mage, the fight is impossible to win.

A game that promises a lot, very eager to see more. Thank you very much for this quality work!

You are right. I stay behind you and everything you said is the truth!

 

[TomWant Badass]

Yeah the combat will be improved with every chapter. I will try to get some tool tips into the game for chapter 2. The addition of the map when going raiding should already feel much better.



I think Patreon is extremely often a scam. Devs make a nice demo with some flaws and keep collecting the money. People then think "They will surely fix it" or "They will surely implement my fetish" and keep paying. Just look at the two very famous exhibitionism games where two (!) devs spend half a year on optimising a crawling animation or 10 lines of text.
The other issue is when devs start to listen to their patrons. "I love furries" "We need more pregnancies" "Minigames are fun.". Changelog: For this patch we focused on our new egg-laying minigame.
And don't get me started on main characters that change their personality just so they can fit into some very specific sex scene.

So if I make some donation option available it will be after some chapters, when the game is in a good condition. When I personally think: "Oh this has some neat roguelike features, a nice story (I wonder what will happen next to characters xyz?) and I might play it again." Edit: and I will not take any monthly stuff. It will just be like some kind of tip jar AFTER you enjoyed the game.

Currently I am still rendering and building the backgrounds. So everybody hang in there.

Most players said the game is nice and the fightings are shitty. I would like to say you the truth, your fighting system is BS. The rest of the game is awesome, maybe it is better to remaster this shitty fighting system?? You have good renders, good animes and a good story, that makes a good game. Only a bad fighting system could destroy the fun, and the fighting system is no fun to be honest!

 

[Joe Steel]

I disagree. It's not possible to properly evaluate the combat system because so much of it is opaque (even reading the file that governs it), but it's certainly not much, if any, worse than the standard combat system in RPGMaker. There is clearly a rock-paper-scissers element to it that I have partially cracked just by playing it a few times. Combats last too long before troops get experienced, and it isn't always clear how you should put together teams, but that is salvageable.

I agree with the dev that there needs to be a combat system to make this a game about a rebellion (which is the core story), but I don't think a player can tell yet how much the combat system needs to be improved to make it work for the story. Better explanation of the troops, abilities, and tactics would allow a better evaluation of the core system.

But that can wait until the next version is ready. I'd rather play a longer game with an imperfectly-explained combat system than the existing game with a perfectly-explained combat system.

 

[TomWant Badass]

I disagree. It's not possible to properly evaluate the combat system because so much of it is opaque (even reading the file that governs it), but it's certainly not much, if any, worse than the standard combat system in RPGMaker. There is clearly a rock-paper-scissers element to it that I have partially cracked just by playing it a few times. Combats last too long before troops get experienced, and it isn't always clear how you should put together teams, but that is salvageable.

I agree with the dev that there needs to be a combat system to make this a game about a rebellion (which is the core story), but I don't think a player can tell yet how much the combat system needs to be improved to make it work for the story. Better explanation of the troops, abilities, and tactics would allow a better evaluation of the core system.

But that can wait until the next version is ready. I'd rather play a longer game with an imperfectly-explained combat system than the existing game with a perfectly-explained combat system.

Maybe you are right. To be honest, in the game "Mist" I enjoyed the fighting system. But there are easy short fights in which you only chose the right weapon.

 

[caxapok1253]

IDK why combat system is hated THAT much. It clearly isn't perfect, but all core elements are there. Only things being really annoying are lack of information (even critical, like, how much points each skill requires) and those pesky multiline damage explanations. Which were addressed by the dev in the earliest posts and are being fixed right now.

Also, I still wasn't able to trigger that scene after defeating four magisters. Is there anything interesting?

 

[Joe Steel]

IDK why combat system is hated THAT much. It clearly isn't perfect, but all core elements are there. Only things being really annoying are lack of information (even critical, like, how much points each skill requires) and those pesky multiline damage explanations. Which were addressed by the dev in the earliest posts and are being fixed right now.

Also, I still wasn't able to trigger that scene after defeating four magisters. Is there anything interesting?

Do you mean you couldn't trigger the hypnosis of the magisters? If so, then you need to wait until; you have enough mushrooms (you can just click sleep a bunch of times or shorten the wait by building up the mushroom farm).

If you mean that you couldn't trigger the "capture the duchess (or whoever)" and capture the province, then you need to talk to the spymaster and set a trap, then beat the final army a few times. There is no scene where you break the duchess yet.

 

[TomWant Badass]

IDK why combat system is hated THAT much. It clearly isn't perfect, but all core elements are there. Only things being really annoying are lack of information (even critical, like, how much points each skill requires) and those pesky multiline damage explanations. Which were addressed by the dev in the earliest posts and are being fixed right now.

Also, I still wasn't able to trigger that scene after defeating four magisters. Is there anything interesting?

Why the fighting system is hated that much? Are you kidding???

Because the fights are 3 times to long and way to heavy! (and superboring)
You didnt have to be Jesus to see this Problem! Make your fighting system so difficult, that 95 % of the players fail in first attempt and they hate your game. Thats "no hate", thats normal gamer reaction very easy to predict for every person!

The game dev wins every fight because he news everything of his game and knows how to win the fights!

It is devs job that all players win the fights! And winning without reading the complete f95 discussion and all wannabe cheats and developer console who doesnt open on my Rig.

Ingame Cheats and Hints are needed, when players loose fights, the game is Shit!
(cant say it often enough, the fights are 3 times to long and way to heavy)

 

[Joe Steel]

Disagree completely that it is the dev's job to make sure that the player wins all the fights. There'd be no point to a combat system where the player can't lose.

The dev needs to make sure that the player CAN win fights (true here) and knows how to make the decisions that allow for victory (missing here), but the dev should absolutely avoid creating a system where the player trivially DOES win all the fights.

Losing battles is a learning experience. Anyone who hates a game just because they lost a fight in it isn't a player the dev can satisfy in the long term anyway; if not combat, they will find something else to hate.