That has something to do with distortion, different ones get it at different circumstances I guess (another unclear thing -_-). I get that when my Aversion chosen runs away after orgy ends, instead of others flying away, they are both open to surround in that manner.
Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 54] [CSDev]
Having more time to acclimate/learn and follow several suggestions/guides from others, the game turns from impenetrable fortress of difficulty right into chocolate pudding at the turning point of the Tier 2 breakthroughs. Getting there is the hardest part of the entire game which is very much the opposite of any other game design.
Right now though I'd suggest putting some heavy emphasis addressing that difficulty of a mountain that is the beginning stages of the game. It is just unforgiving (see frustrating, boring) and I can see a lot of potential support and players turning away from it because they never get to see or do anything interesting at all due to it. Which is a shame because the systems and intricacies here are really good. Once the mountain was scaled, everything felt organic and the game became fun. The interactions between the Chosen felt like a story being played out and I (Demon Lord) was the one pulling strings and breaking a team of heroes down. Targeting who I perceived to be the weakest link in the team and turning friends on each other.
One thing I can think of is to prompt the player to select their difficulty when starting a new game. With that, more information for what each difficulty adjusts would be nice.
A proper tutorial definitely will help learn the many mechanics and I hope that is in the works to be re-implemented as I understand it was removed for being severely outdated. The goals are a good source of direction but are very simple and lack any explanation to why a player should want to "Bring Hero to at least 200 SHAM damage before the end of the battle.".
Lastly just going to spitball and throw ideas out and maybe something sticks or inspires:
1. Get paid! You've created a great game. A dedicated link/button to the SubscribeStar in the bottom left or right of the interface would go a long way to getting players to support development wouldn't be scummy or intrusive at all. Please consider it. Bonus points if its a special color from the others.
2. Plots/Schemes - I would love to see more ways for the player to interact at a micro level to affect the heroes (and city citizens?). Things like maybe introducing kidnappings of family and friends. Something the Demon Lord can unlock to become a more menacing presence by using a Plot in tandem with Training Forsaken and Next Battle. A Chosen whos parents are missing might fight recklessly or hold back with the others questioning their motives. Perhaps a Plot lures a single Chosen into a true Ambush that is a countdown to when they free their loved one (instead of evacuating citizens). Or distracts the Chosen during a battle taking their attention away from evacuating citizens for X turns.
3. Targeted attacks within the city - Ex: After selecting Next Battle, select industrial/commercial/military/residential district with a range of 0-100% destroyed or corrupted. Gives a sense of conquering on a larger scale. Perhaps with a small effect on battles.
4. Expand Ambush into a system to have input from the player in how it plays out (for flavor or have actual impact to the battle).
5. I know soon there will be animalistic Chosen and as described on the SubscribeStar, "There's a whole bunch of other supernatural weirdness happening off-screen which just isn't within the focus of the game." - maybe adding a Lore section/tab in the game to provide a source would be a nice addition. I love lore within games and being able to learn just how much depth and thought the developer(s) has put into world building is a huge perk that I'd love to have access to within the games interface. It also gives an outlet for all that creativity! All the better if this information is trickled to the player as they play the game and learn more about the world organically.
6. Hive/Base system. Every villain has a base of operations and what is sweeter than a place to call home is a place you call home that improves over time. Before battle a player could select an improvement(s) and it will be completed after a certain amount of battles. Improvements could increase thrall resistance for battles or maybe a contained system on its own to resist military attacks (or a direct attack from the Chosen) and train Forsaken. Defenses could include the Forsaken, Thrall count, etc. Perhaps tied in with the above mentioned targeted attacks on districts to acquire specific resources. Maybe attacks on the base cannot occur until the military & Chosen have located a passage to it (ex. day 30; delayed to 40 if military districts corrupted/destroyed).
Right now though I'd suggest putting some heavy emphasis addressing that difficulty of a mountain that is the beginning stages of the game. It is just unforgiving (see frustrating, boring) and I can see a lot of potential support and players turning away from it because they never get to see or do anything interesting at all due to it. Which is a shame because the systems and intricacies here are really good. Once the mountain was scaled, everything felt organic and the game became fun. The interactions between the Chosen felt like a story being played out and I (Demon Lord) was the one pulling strings and breaking a team of heroes down. Targeting who I perceived to be the weakest link in the team and turning friends on each other.
One thing I can think of is to prompt the player to select their difficulty when starting a new game. With that, more information for what each difficulty adjusts would be nice.
A proper tutorial definitely will help learn the many mechanics and I hope that is in the works to be re-implemented as I understand it was removed for being severely outdated. The goals are a good source of direction but are very simple and lack any explanation to why a player should want to "Bring Hero to at least 200 SHAM damage before the end of the battle.".
Lastly just going to spitball and throw ideas out and maybe something sticks or inspires:
1. Get paid! You've created a great game. A dedicated link/button to the SubscribeStar in the bottom left or right of the interface would go a long way to getting players to support development wouldn't be scummy or intrusive at all. Please consider it. Bonus points if its a special color from the others.
2. Plots/Schemes - I would love to see more ways for the player to interact at a micro level to affect the heroes (and city citizens?). Things like maybe introducing kidnappings of family and friends. Something the Demon Lord can unlock to become a more menacing presence by using a Plot in tandem with Training Forsaken and Next Battle. A Chosen whos parents are missing might fight recklessly or hold back with the others questioning their motives. Perhaps a Plot lures a single Chosen into a true Ambush that is a countdown to when they free their loved one (instead of evacuating citizens). Or distracts the Chosen during a battle taking their attention away from evacuating citizens for X turns.
3. Targeted attacks within the city - Ex: After selecting Next Battle, select industrial/commercial/military/residential district with a range of 0-100% destroyed or corrupted. Gives a sense of conquering on a larger scale. Perhaps with a small effect on battles.
4. Expand Ambush into a system to have input from the player in how it plays out (for flavor or have actual impact to the battle).
5. I know soon there will be animalistic Chosen and as described on the SubscribeStar, "There's a whole bunch of other supernatural weirdness happening off-screen which just isn't within the focus of the game." - maybe adding a Lore section/tab in the game to provide a source would be a nice addition. I love lore within games and being able to learn just how much depth and thought the developer(s) has put into world building is a huge perk that I'd love to have access to within the games interface. It also gives an outlet for all that creativity! All the better if this information is trickled to the player as they play the game and learn more about the world organically.
6. Hive/Base system. Every villain has a base of operations and what is sweeter than a place to call home is a place you call home that improves over time. Before battle a player could select an improvement(s) and it will be completed after a certain amount of battles. Improvements could increase thrall resistance for battles or maybe a contained system on its own to resist military attacks (or a direct attack from the Chosen) and train Forsaken. Defenses could include the Forsaken, Thrall count, etc. Perhaps tied in with the above mentioned targeted attacks on districts to acquire specific resources. Maybe attacks on the base cannot occur until the military & Chosen have located a passage to it (ex. day 30; delayed to 40 if military districts corrupted/destroyed).
- Mar 20, 2019
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From taking a look at the screenshots, it seems like everything is working well,
Putting a chosen on a distortion plan isn’t actually putting a chosen on the distortion, it’s more of a guide to help remind you during battles and warn you of things that might ruin the distortion (in this case it’s Fortune’s T3 break) A chosen is actually on the distortion once they do their first distorted action. 1st Tempt, 1st Catatonia for aversion, 1st rampage for rampancy etc. you can tell she’s not the distortion yet as the “~” parts are still greyed out
You’re right that putting a chosen on a distortion will prevent their teammates from breaking their vulnerabilities though! You just need to actually enact the distortion, for calamity’s case, it’s doing the first truce for her.
The screenshot says that Fortune breaking T3 will mess with Calamity's distortion, which shouldn't be the case since Chosen with a Sig vulnerability cannot have their vulnerability broken between round
Right, but Calamity's DIG is a significant vulnerability. It's the Chosen with Major and Minor that have those interactions with each other if they get too out of whack, right?
- Mar 20, 2019
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Oh you’re both right! Sorry about that, I completely overlooked that part. In that case, it’s definitely a bug and you should definitely upload that save file over here for CSDev to take a look at it and fix it
- Oct 14, 2020
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Thanks for catching this typo.
Animalistic Chosen will only start showing up in Loop 5, so depending on how quickly you play, you might want to start your next playthrough a few days before the update drops. The next city conditions are only generated the first time you hit the "Next City" button at the end of each loop, so you can stop just before that point in Loop 4.
This was another bug related to adding body persistence to release 34. Sometimes a Forsaken would end up using a body that effectively "belonged" to her Chosen self. I'm working on a fix for the next version.
Looks like this is just a bug with the system that warns you about a possible break. Even after Fortune gets her T3 Dignity Break, Calamity should still remain on her Distortion path as normal despite the warning. I'll make sure to deal with this false alarm in the next version.
You're probably right that this could use more explanation in the guide. But for now, the short version is that it's harder to beat the Chosen by using Distortions, but they'll be stronger once they join your side.
Thank you for the feedback! I am trying to improve the way the game explains itself to the player. I think it's working better now than ever before, but there's clearly a lot of room for improvement. The main problem with the original tutorial was that it lacked context. Without some guidance on how to play the early game, players would never end up in the tutorial situation of having a strong commander. And without some guidance on how to play the late game, players wouldn't be able to see how the actions taken in the tutorial could support a winning playthrough. A truly thorough tutorial would have to basically handhold the player through an entire 50-day loop, and it would feel a lot less satisfying to complete a 50-day loop on your own after that. This is why I think that the current system of incorporating the tutorial into the regular game is the way to go.
But you're right that the lack of explanation isn't great. The early goal progression currently goes "Reach 200 trauma"->"Buy upgrades"->"Save up for commander"->"Reach Lv 2 EXPO"->"Initiate Defiler action". I've thought a lot about adding another goal or two somewhere in there to make the path to T2 Breaks more clear, but I haven't been able to come up with a natural one. Maybe I should just add some extra text where it currently just says "goal complete"? Something about how 200 trauma is enough to ensure a sinful action to get EE, then something about how upgrades let you do more per battle, then something about how saving up EE can be a good idea, and then a bit of battle strategy explanation? It'd basically just be the same points from the guide, but having it show up in-game at relevant points might be an improvement.
When you're dependent on the goodwill of the playerbase for your income, there's a very delicate balance to strike between letting them know where to donate and annoying them so much that they don't want to donate in the first place. I don't want to clutter the already-crappy UI with a button that serves no purpose other than self-promotion, especially since the people who actually donated would still have to look at it. I guess I could make it a little more obvious that there's a link to the SubscribeStar in the main menu, though.
This is something I (and a lot of players) have wanted to see in the game for a long time, but I haven't been able to find a good gameplay niche for it, and I'd definitely want it to be gameplay-relevant rather than pure flavor like vignettes. If it's something you can always do, then it stops feeling special. But if it's only randomly available, then it feels unearned when you get it and unfair when you don't. Tentatively, I'm trying to work it into the collectible/relic/artifact system which is itself tentatively planned for campaign mode. So, you'd find an "abductor-type Demon egg" relic at the end of a loop and from then on you'd be able to do a once-per-loop special hostage battle, and so on.
Right now, the line in the sand that I'm drawing for myself is that I don't want to add extra complexity to loop 1 of campaign mode, so any extra gameplay-relevant systems should be things that only come into play later on. That said, I could see something like this being unlocked in later loops, or it could be scaled-up so that by attacking a city with, say, an influential media headquarters, you get bonuses in later loops. It's an interesting idea.
Here also, I'm wary of adding more up-front complexity in the gameplay. But I could see it playing into the above two ideas.
I definitely have a lot of lore I want to express, but I think that both the lore and the players deserve better than to have it all crammed into some sort of thick codex on the main menu. Half the reason I want to add a collectible/artifact/relic system is so that their descriptions can do some worldbuilding. There'll also be some important characters getting intermission scenes alonside Crown and Basis very soon.
This has the potential to change the feel of the game a lot. I think it's important that, in general, the player is the active force and the Chosen are the reactive force. But I want the boss fights to shake things up a bit, and one option for that is to make one of them (or maybe all of them) put the player on the defensive.
Those goals are very misleading. Before reading this thread I never realised they are supposed to be a tutorial teaching you what to do
At first I thought they are bonus objectives giving you EE, but that was not the case. Then I thought they were things triggering those post battle scenes, but one day they just disappeared and scenes kept going on. So I was like "Huh, what was that green stuff all about?" And I actually went out of my way to complete them even though I didn't need it and wasted couple of days (the goal wanted me to break T2 of a girl I wasn't working on IIRC, so I already did an orgy before goin for her T2 and moving goals forward).Add info on what you need to do to hit next EE increasing treshold to info screen, that is still very unclear. That information alone is enough to point in the right direction.
Btw, as long as info goes. Thing I really miss is something like this:
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As for the new players, I think the best advice is just replaying first 10-15 days over and over instead of trying to do a complete run. That's a good thing to learn the game. Good goal is "break all core T1s before day 15". It's an easy enough thing to achieve if you know how to play, but very hard if you don't, so try until you do.
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Maybe you could have it be tied to one of the remaining Distortion routes? Like, we already have the Retreat action which is flavoured around abducting people in the way that would cause the most despair so maybe you could have a Blackmail distortion which would be triggered by using a Retreat that would normally make you gain a lot of EE but instead abduct one of the Chosen's loved ones?
Okay, let me know if a relevant save file would help, but I'm pretty sure you've got a good mental picture of what's causing it.
I think that the actual process of achieving both LVL 1 and LVL 2 breaks needs more direct instruction, somehow. Something like the original tutorial needs to come in at that point, because that process of which numbers to raise first is daunting. "Would you like a step-by-step for how to make Faith give in to her desire to fight back?", on the day players send out a 5 EE commander. That'd basically require writing an AI, though it wouldn't have to be very complex.
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Agree on all of this. One quick suggestion that doesn't require coding graphics: you can make all references to their names show up in the color of text they use. That would probably be an easy change to make. Even something as simple as that would help keep things straight.
That one would be especially helpful for when their civilian name are used, I doubt I'm the only one who never remember these
Made a second revision of useful data, text only.
Almost everything in one place - names in colors they use, defense lvl when escaped, damage lvls, circumstances that are currently being worked on and circ lvls allowing for defiler action are highlited. Only vulnerabilities are missing, but can be squeezed in by shortening names of traumas and circs. Looking at this panel now, not even examining all three girls will give such a nice cross reference, I always overlook something when my screen is flooded with all the details examine displays. So something like this quick reference will be very handy.
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Since we've all forgotten to do that:
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(34c)
I think adding additional text to the Completion would be a good way to clarify what exactly is going on and why.
This would also be very helpful, it is more heavy handed sure but keep in mind this is for Loop 1 and could be an option to enable when playing from Loop 1. Because of the complexities and information within the game, I don't think you can avoid a heavy handed tutorial that holds the players hand for those first 15 days. The later game doesn't need to hold a players hand so much since by that point you've snowballed and can achieve without struggle. Even so far as once the first 15 days are complete it becomes "Now keep breaking them down bit by bit" which is the core gameplay loop. A tutorial won't need to explain much more since the player can at that point determine their own direction.
I'd at least get a beat on your player base's opinion regarding this with a poll or something. Personally I wouldn't find it annoying in any regard to see a static button on the interface so long as it is separated somehow from the regular buttons to prevent accidental clicks. But the info is currently hidden which is a disservice to you the creator. Soon as I am able I plan to donate to the cause because this game has a lot of creativity in it and you talk to your playerbase like human beings and that gets my respect. To add; the moment I understood the gameplay loop and finished day 50 I immediately looked for "OK so now how do I support this dev asap" and had to dig for it.
To points 2, 3, & 4 - I agree adding complexity to Loop 1 would be too much and any additions should be saved for additional loops.
Very happy to hear you're looking into ways to incorporate lore and world building. A good point to not want to clutter or cram it into one place but I'd also retort to remember that information is entirely optional and flavor to the player so a thick codex would also be entirely optional to them to flip through if they want (which I want,lol).
If boss fights put the player on the defensive, something like the base/hive could provide small incremental bonuses (1-2%) to be less intrusive or change the feel of the game in any drastic direction if it was something to be implemented. I do agree to keep the player as the Active force primarily and like the idea of boss fights shaking the gameplay loop up to put the player on defense.
Here is where I would say some initial information is needed as haksaw experienced it is the same as what I experienced on my first playthrough. The green text told me to do it, I did it, it told me next thing. But I had no idea why or what it achieved short of "Now do this" and lacked context.Those goals are very misleading. Before reading this thread I never realised they are supposed to be a tutorial teaching you what to do
Anyhow thanks for taking the time to reply CSdev to not only myself but to everyone else. I've zero expectations to any suggestions or dialogue I've provided. This is your game and its direction is by your hand. Don't be afraid to try implementing something small or great as a teaser, or to test systems that are part of a more complex system you have in mind. I'd even suggest creating separate trial versions (separate .exe) of systems with scenarios for the player base to try out and provide separate feedback (ex: boss fights, kidnappings, etc) on what works, what doesn't, what's straightforward, what's confusing. If you wanted to limit that to your donors, that'd be legit (or maybe not, I don't know). Anyhow, hope the feedback from others and myself helps the creative juices flow easier.
- Jun 20, 2017
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Small immersion/accountability thing:
This would be fine, except that I used a Forsaken to do the Total Innocence Break and not a Commander. This is the after-battle scene after a Total Innocence Break, should be easy to find/fix.
- Sep 24, 2017
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Thank you so much for your answer. I completely forgot to thank you. I read the guide, but I really couldn't do it. but your explanation clicked in my head. Thank you.
- Mar 20, 2019
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I can definitely see name being a bit misleading, maybe it would be better if the System was called "Guide" or something like that, since newcomers would see that and assume it to be the tutorial, and players returning after a missing a few updates wouldn't confuse it as an additional modifier or somethingThose goals are very misleading. Before reading this thread I never realised they are supposed to be a tutorial teaching you what to do