So anyway, for people who actually care about this game's potential and want to consider it rather than blindly defending DerelictHelmsman with shallow arguments and dodging the point like an olympic track and field athlete, what are some other low-work improvements that could dramatically improve the game? Personally, I think I'd like to detail the ones I suggested a few days ago.
Nephelym Wandering the Farm
This is actually very easy to accomplish. It requires multiple things we know the game already has (the ability to render the player's nephs, the ability to have them perform a specific animation, the ability to have a nephelym walk from one location to another.) What it would need to have newly implemented are a few new animations. Since these animations aren't multi-neph animations, it would be far less work to create one than it would be to create a sex scene. (One animation per size rather than six)
Now, this is actually not all that difficult to implement. It could be done a couple of ways. The lowest impact is creating animation points around the farm and, when the player approaches the farm or loads the game, randomly assigning some nephelym to these points. This could be as simple as leaning against a wall, lounging in the shade, or using some of the farm equipment.
A somewhat more complex setup would involve nephelym actually wandering around the farm. This would technically need to ensure the farm allows for pathfinding, but also creates a much more dynamic setup. Nephs can "leave" and "enter" their various barns, wander around, find something to "do", wander around some more, etc.
All in all, it would be a fairly low amount of work to create an experience where the player is actively rewarded for filling their barns by seeing the nephs they've captured or bred added to the farm they've worked to build.
Additional Townsfolk
This one, like the one above, has multiple levels of difficulty depending on how complex you want to make the implementation. At the most simple, you could just have a few prefab nephs standing around in the town. Not a massive improvement, but even that would make it feel more alive. Having them wander similarly to the wandering they do in the wild would also impact that.
The game already has a dialogue system in place, so it wouldn't be hard to give these nephs meaningless flavor dialogue either. That would also help turn the town into something far closer to resembling a town rather than a vaguely haunted feeling sexual theme park.
If Derelict wanted to go all-in on a relationship system, it would mostly just involve a couple of variables per NPC (favorability, possibly a timer if you want relationship decay, things like that). Relationships could be built by just talking to the NPC on the regular, or maybe gifting them fluids and/or nephelym that they like. None of this is stuff the game doesn't already have in some fashion or another.
In terms of things the game doesn't already have, townsfolk could be given a schedule. The game already has a day/night system, so having townsfolk move around depending on the time would dramatically change the experience involved. (Consider a city in morrowind versus one in oblivion.)
In terms of the ultimate reward for wooing townsfolk, it could be all sorts of things. Maybe the townsfolk have unique traits that could be passed on to children if the player fucks them (or gets them to fuck one of the nephs on the farm.) Things like special patterns, body builds, or color combinations would be fairly simple and already exist in the game.
The reward could also just be a unique sex scene (or more than one), such as the ones that already exist in the town. Perhaps beyond a certain point in a relationship, the neph might wander to the player's farm on occasion and help out, or even "help" out. All sorts of things could be done, there.
The main goal of this kind of change is filling in the world and making it feel less like a mostly empty sandbox and more like a world that the player is exploring, small as that world may be.
Adding More World Detail
So, this one could actually end up very work intensive depending on how deep you go. Map detail always is, after all. That said, it doesn't specifically need to be, nor does it need to be done all at once. By and large, Hedon Township and the player's farm are okay. It's most everything else that is fairly bland.
In terms of what I mean by this suggestion, well. It's meant as much as a tie-in to suggestions below as it is to be standalone. Basically, the idea is that increasing the world level of a specific species would "improve" the visuals of their area, and possibly add things outright. The bovaur pasture could grow some shade trees, for example. Perhaps the foxen area would grow a swathe of wildflowers on one level up.
Overall, a lot of the game's areas are largely just some degree of open field with a containing barrier of some sort. This, like the empty township, feels very temporary and "in development." These areas basically scream "I am a blank canvas! Please paint on me!"
And they get largely ignored.
Honestly, there's only so much that can be suggested for visual improvement to an area that doesn't amount to "we made the place prettier, but the cost was lag." That's why I put this forward as much as a tie-in with the lewd collectibles and encroachment ideas, below.
On its own, this idea is something of a very minor reward for leveling up an area. A sort of visual congratulations for putting in the work.
Lewd Collectibles
So there's a few ways this could be done, all of which involve creating or buying new models for the game. The two core ideas I'd put forward are farm/town decorations and gatherable "ingredients" of some description.
So, considering the first idea. It wouldn't be incredibly difficult to make objects like lewd statues, posters, and even just general decorations. The game already has plenty of those baked into the map anyway. The idea with this suggestion is that you can wander around the world and find out of place decorations in unusual places, such as that cave just outside your farm that goes nowhere. Pick them up, and they show up on your farm or in the town, instead.
Overall, that would be a minor reward for exploration that allows the player to actually "improve" the town and/or farm. It hooks into the game's progression automatically, because you would need to get access to an area before you can explore it for hidden goodies. It could also be hooked into the world detail bit above, by having new goodies become available as the player improves an area. For example, maybe a particularly lewd appearing flower appears, and can be collected. Or an astoundingly lascivious stalagmite. The ideas are limited only by imagination, really.
Now, the second variation of this idea is a bit more work. It would involve creating "harvestable" objects that get scattered around the world. Most of those should have two variations, one ready to be harvested and one already harvested. They'd need a variable to track when they were picked, and a check would need to occasionally be performed for them to "re-grow" again. It's not actually a lot of work, but I'm detailing it so people know what's involved.
As for what they do? Again, limited only by imagination. On the simple end of the spectrum you have just "store and sell", similar to fluids. Perhaps they could be used as an alternative to or extension of the fluids systems in terms of luring new nephs. Maybe they could actually have special effects, such as temporary or permanent transformations. We already have a canon berry that grew a blessed nephelym's ass so much she got stuck in a hole, after all.
Going back to the suggestions above, townsfolk might be fond of specific items and reward you for collecting them. Some things might only appear (or become more prevalent) if you upgrade an area's world level. For example, imagine upgrading the slime's waterfall area and acquiring mystery globules that temporarily give a nephelym slime sheen instead of their normal coloring. Or perhaps you upgrade the bovaur's pasture area and get berry shrubs that boost or restore lust. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Overall, this would be a feature that serves to help integrate several current and potential game mechanics and reward the player for exploring and improving the world. It gives them reason to explore those hidden nooks and crannies that Derelict added in, and creates its own feedback loop that complements the existing run around and capture nephelym loop rather than competing with it.
Unlocking Areas Create Global Changes
This is the last of those suggestions I made a few pages back, and also one of the most abstract. What did I mean by "global changes"? A lot of things, actually.
So, most nephelym areas actually have a specific theme to them, as is clear while you wander. Some of them are pretty desolate and could stand more decoration, but that's a matter covered above. The idea here is that unlocking an area allows it to "spill out" past the gate, to an extent. Maybe some of its theming shows up in hedon township or on the player's farm. Maybe plants and decorations specific to the area can grow past the gate. Maybe the nephelym from that area can occasionally wander out and through the world.
There are plenty of ways to do this, and they can easily be tied into every single one of my suggestions above. If nephs can wander out of their areas, they could wander into a farm and interact with your nephs in the farm, maybe even using some of the idle animation markers on the farm. They could wander into and through the town itself, possibly interacting with what you have there.
Maybe unlocking an area would allow some of the blessed nephelym in the town to keep normal nephs from that area with them, in the town. Maybe it could add more blessed nepthelym to the town as well. All relatively simple implementations that would go a long way towards integrating the current mechanics.
In terms of world levels, it could also affect this. If you upgrade the level of a specific nephelym, you might see it more often. You could also unlock nephelym subspecies and/or variants, tho that's a bit more work. The decorations of an area could "spill" further out the gate at higher levels, too. Maybe gatherables could spread from an area into its surroundings. Again, possibilities are mostly limited by imagination.
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So anyway, those are some detailed explanations of things that could be added to the game. They're all fairly low effort and make use of skills Derelict has already demonstrated having. They're suggested in ways that would work with the existing game and use minimal new assets, comparatively. Reasonably speaking, all of these suggestions are far less work than adding a new body type, like serpentine nephelym.
Seriously though, the imagination is the limit with this game and my biggest disappointment is that so many people are content with an empty sandbox and actively willing to defend it.
