Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 70b] [CSDev]

[dekeche]

Just going to add my thoughts to the difficulty discussion;
Let's be fair here - the difficulty curve as it currently is may be skewed towards higher difficulty cities due to the lack of "Tier 3" chosen. I would expect that the advanced species unlocked by the boss fights will have a higher difficulty weight. Which in turn means that cities defended by them should have easier overal modifiers.

As for how difficulty is currently calculated;

• Difficulty points - the currency that is used to "buy" difficulty modifiers.
  • Base is Next Loop # X 10
  • x1.1 if Splender's Triple Agent is active.
• Current bosses, Victory & Splender, cost 90 points.
• Superior chosen cost 11 points.
• Animalistic/Undead chosen cost 22 points.
• Damage mitigation is complicated, involving two seperate calculations; Initial point alocation, and resulting mitigation factor.
  • Mitigation is an inverted value, I.E. the value is stored as % damage dealt, not % damage received
    • Base value is 100.
  • Initial allocation is 1:15, or 15 "points" of mitigation per 1 point paid.
  • Damage mitigation calculation is 1% mitigation per 10 + (100 - current % dealt)/5 allocation. Rounded up.
    • So an allocation of 120 (worth 8 score) will yield a base 12% mitigation (1% per 10), or a 10% mitigation if the current mitigation is 10% (1% per 12).
  • Essentually; your current cities % damage mitigation makes it cost more score to raise the % damage mitigation in the next city.
• Luxuries (Trauma Resolution Speed): 100x1.1 per score allocation. Effectively 1.1^points, but due to integer rounding this will likely be less than expected. 10 points equalling 256%, not 259.37~%
• Final battle day (Event offset): offset = 1 per 3 points spent. Final day is 50 - (3 x offset). Effectively 1 point per final day reduction, in multiples of 3.
  • Event offset controls more than just the final day, it also controls all other events in the story - initial press release, vacation, final battle preperations, as well as the turn requirements for a chosen's introduction.

As for influence, which is how you get items, you get 10 influence per city, with a penalty appied based on the diffrence in chosen species tiers between the two cities. (1 point per tier diffrence, if picking the higher tier city. So all normal vs 2 superior will yield -2 for picking the supperior). Warp cities yield bonus influence, at the cost of not being able to aquire new forsaken.

I'll add that the damage mitigation calcualtion might actually be a bug. From what I can see in the code, it seems odd to calculate it based on a while loop, when it's effectively a direct mathmatical formula. On the other hand, if it was meant to be done using the current modifier, that'd make more sense. That could result in higher initial mitigation numbers, but it'd also make growth a logrithmic curve, rather than an exponential oscilation.

Additionally, every city is sanity checked for "distinctiveness", making sure there's variety in the point allocation between cities. In practice, once advanced chosen are added this calculation is no longer useful. Each city is required to have a diffrent number of advanced chosen. Each chosen species also counts for thier full difficulty point cost for the diffrences calculation. The required number of diffrences between cities is the sqrt of the loop#*5 - which for loop 3 is going to be ~4. By definition, loop 3 will have one city, with at least 1 more superior chosen than the other city. A total of at least 11 diffrences in difficulty allocation between the cities. A loop of 100 would have a diffrence value of only 22, and by that point each city is going to have a point diffrence of at least 44 just from chosen variety alone. - This could mean that there's a great potential for uniformity in modifiers between your two picks durring a loop that isn't eactly intended.

Now, for balance - An easy or hard mode would be fairly simple to implement within the given context, just reduce or increase the number of points granted per loop. But for a more interactive difficult level - I noticed that there's already code for custom generating your own city, maybe that would be more interesting to play around with. There's also a few adjustments that could be added to make the overal late game difficulty easier, such as curtailing the exponential growth of Luxuries (x1.05 when > 1000, as and example). I think also, reducing the point allocation after certain milestones could also help (beating a boss, -5 score). But, presonally, I think the real difficulty issues new players might have is actually the forsaken. You aren't exactly expected to complete a 30 day city with +1000% luxuries and +50% damage mitigation with a basic commander. Or even a basic forsaken. That scenario requires a good forsaken, with training, to overcome. But building a good team of forsaken is rather... complicated. There's a few guides around, but it's also extreamly luck dependent in terms of what you even have availible in a given run. I've taken to starting with a custom chosen for the Hardworking Publicist slot, due to their rarity. Perhapse the best way to mitigate this difficulty would be to add ways to aquire forsaken, outside of the loop structure?

Expanding on that point:

• Forsaken trading - spend influence to aquire new forsaken. Or sell forsaken for more influence.
• Diversions - Side battles that don't count for loop progression, perhapse with unique requirements? (Extreme time constraints, but only one chosen? Or unique win conditions, that don't involve a final battle?)
• Pokemon battle other demon lords for forsaken.
• Forsaken bonus training - Training punisher bonuses via one-off combat encounters.

Basically, some other ways to aquire good forsaken or fodder, that might have divergent gameplay compared to the base loop. There's a few endings that can occure when chosen flee the battle, I think it could make sense to add some of those stories as diversions. Like; raiding the freezer with all the pregnant chosen. Or hunting down one of the deluded serial killer chosen. Might also help to break up the monotony of the loops.

 

[Kackuyen]

From the Development plan, I think way of implimentiing Spendor would needs to be address soon
There is completely no incentive to unlock her ability to be use as an Actual Forsaken
To fight Animalistic, having a range of Forsaken to be use is essential so her Motivation Debuff is one of the priority to be remove
The other one is obviously the Damange Debuff base on race, that number is huge
Even after you unlock her training options, you still needs to unlock her Sus Incompetent for it to be useful
That is not to memtion the fact that she cannot be distorted like Victory makes her a liability all of the time
So even pass the point of beating both the Angel and Devil boss in the future, Spendor would likely still less useful than Victory
I hope we can either change the way she works or have much more story narative focus on her involment

 

[McHuman]

Firstly, see, it's understandable to say that not every game is supposed to be acessible to everyone and i honestly agree with it myself, some games do make it very clear at the very beginning what kind of content the game is going to be focusing on. Thing is, this game does everything it can to make sure you understand that this game is here to cater to a wide audience, from difficulty to fetishes and kinks, it even gives you an option to substitute actual violence to tickling so people that hate violence and hardcore abuse scenes can enjoy it as well.

What would really suck however, is when you gathered this many people for your community and then suddenly decided to turn the difficulty curve to a 200% and the stress curve to 186.5% without letting people adjust it without going to extremes or even disabling content (difficulty scaling). I played this game many times without the cheat system on, like i often do to see what the idea of how the battle and sex system is supposed to work, i found them interesting but not really my style, so i used a mix of cheat mode and cheat engine to have control over the time battles take as well as unlocking upgrades and achievements. Imagine for a moment, you love the content, the writing, the inclusion of many kinks and fetishes that you like and how it caters to both straight and gay content, but it's a game that turned stressful, too difficult for you to play and filled with annoying new mechanics that just gets in the way of you enjoying the things that you once liked (before the annoyance was added in). That's a serious punch in the gut, especially for the people that were here for a long time.

It caters to a wide range of fetishes sure, but the game hasn't really hidden itself with regards to difficulty (hell the game has a built in reset button to battles and you're told to take advantage of it to figure out the best way forward). Unless campaign mode didn't start with the ramping increase in damage reduction/preparedness between loops, the game has always clearly shown that difficulty would increase as the campaign goes on. This is also not exactly a well disguised spreadsheet/puzzle game, it's kinda part of the core design of the game that eventually things will get so difficult that the "puzzle" will only have a handful of solutions. Also, you cant really judge a game by it's early development, obviously things like difficulty wont be in line with what is intended early on when the focus is more on getting the game's foundations set up.

Secondly, there was a time when i believed that certain things like difficulty adjustments, inclusion of content that's dependant on several functions, etc, would take development time and great effort from the development team, but then i went into modding things myself. Many times i found that when some devs say that it would be complex, it actually was not that complex. There's tons of examples when i went into that, just to say two though:

Sure, just adding a difficulty button that will change how the damage reduction/preparedness modifiers grow between loops would be pretty easy, but that's a lot different than asking to add an entire new system like "prestige" and stuff, which will then also have to be balanced. Adding more things that need to be balanced is not a quick way to solve the issue of balance.

Also, i always go for the campaign, i love the loop system, conquering cities, recruiting forsaken, seeing the lore, fighting off the bosses, earning influence so you can get new items, training your forsaken to get stronger and go into another city with them. You can't just exclude people from that, it's a lot of content to just say "Hey, if you're a casual gamer and don't like difficulty, don't do campaign, go single instead". That's not a good thing to tell people, CSDev is doing a great job at writing the main story lore and i'm dead certain there's people always looking for more of that.

I didn't say don't play campaign, I said if you don't like how the later loops of campaign play then just don't play the later loops and instead stick to playing the earlier loops. Also... yes you can say "if you don't like difficulty don't play campaign", perhaps it's a tough pill to swallow, but campaign is obviously designed scale up in difficulty and before very hard in later loops, that's an intended feature, if you don't like that then don't play the game mode designed with that idea. if you're just interested in the "story" play with cheats enabled.

Hey, personally i would actually like to have the option to disable the "Don't increase difficulty while using cheat mode in campaign". I don't want a one-hit-kill, i don't want a instant win thing, i simply want to adjust how fast my forces gain strength in proportion to the chosen, that's why i said i always use CE with the cheat mode, that way i can control what the cheat mode cannot.

The option of "don't increase difficulty while using cheat mode" is a one hit kill button. If the Chosen don't scale up between loops then you'll just annihilate them instantly. Like, just look at Skippy's posts about the super late loops that CSdev hasn't properly designed and aren't intended to be played yet which are super unbalanced with the loops being 20 days and the damage reduction approaching 50%, and those being doable. Without difficulty increases after you get out of the first few loops you'd basically have the T4 breaks in under 10 days as long as you have a general idea of how to train Forsaken.

Also, just as a reminder, there are many, many conditions that you must take into consideration while battling against the chosen. You have aversions, you have distortions, you have relationship vignettes that ALSO trigger tier breaks against random chosen. You know, i have many custom chosen that i personally take time to set a story behind, along with carefully customizing their appearances, vulnerabilities and their picture sets as best as i can, as part of the role playing aspect of the game. So when i go into the game, and i meet one of the chosen that i created and customized, i try to go and corrupt them the way i set them with their personal story. Sometimes i wish i could disable distortions because they can get in the way, especially with relationships also being able to trigger breaks on other chosen, but it's okay and i won't bother CSDev with this request, because i know the importance of strategic decisions in a game like this, it's part of its charm.

Distortions... if you don't like them don't use them? One does not accidentally trigger a distortion, those things require a lot of deliberate effort to set up. The only Distortion I can see someone accidentally triggering is Rampancy because it's pretty easy to do a 10 turn surround with HATE higher than INJU without even thinking about it early on. But Temptation and Negotiation can only happen with a deliberate press of a button, and getting a 10 turn Orgy for Aversion will probably come pretty late, so the odds of you somehow not doing the T1 DIG Break yet would be insanely unlikely. Relationship vignettes are not random, they happen between the two Chosen that share a Vulnerability as their Core and Minor (so the Chosen with Core Morality and the one with Minor Morality will have the Morality relationship vignettes happen between them). If you're getting annoyed with distortions and relationship scenes getting in the way of your roleplaying, then it's pretty easy to just avoid triggering Distortions and the T3 rivalry vignette.

Not easy mode, no. Like i said previously, if i were looking for an easy mode, i would be even easier for me to do so by myself. I can't speak for others of course, but for me personally an easy mode would just ruin it (with the strict restrictions on distortions and things like Humiliate causing confidence break instead of dignity). I suggested alternative ways that reward players for effort and playing the game besides cheating or a prestige system in previous posts, from construction single strategic buildings on cities, to developing cities in some ways and a research system based on your performance after doing a loop, making use of evil energy instead of influence. The reason i did this was because the ever growing difficulty matched with the current mechanics and conditions that have to be met carefully with the chosen have started to give me cause for worry. Pair that with the worry that if the player gets too strong, it would cause a mess with the breaks and conditions.

The changes you suggest aren't a "balance update", they're the inclusion and entire new gameplay mechanics and systems, which would then require a lot of balancing to work with the game without making things too easy or the systems too worthless. The game could use a balance update, but it doesn't need an entire new system to add an out-of-campaign upgrade system to make things easier, you can already do fine in later loops as long as you understand how Forsaken work. If anything I think a proper tutorial for Forsaken would do a lot more for helping with later loop difficulty than some major balance patch, since understanding Forsaken is the big wall between doing fine in later loops or getting bodied by your first Superior Chosen.

 

[Shasou]

Just going to add my thoughts to the difficulty discussion;

.......

Read your ideas and i like your thinking, you have good points, maybe we'll get some clarification in further logs from the dev?

It caters to a wide range of fetishes sure, but the game hasn't really hidden itself with regards to difficulty (hell the game has a built in reset button to battles and you're told to take advantage of it to figure out the best way forward). Unless campaign mode didn't start with the ramping increase in damage reduction/preparedness between loops, the game has always clearly shown that difficulty would increase as the campaign goes on. This is also not exactly a well disguised spreadsheet/puzzle game, it's kinda part of the core design of the game that eventually things will get so difficult that the "puzzle" will only have a handful of solutions. Also, you cant really judge a game by it's early development, obviously things like difficulty wont be in line with what is intended early on when the focus is more on getting the game's foundations set up.

Not really no, but sure, if you want to think so go ahead. As far as i feel from playing it, currently at least, it has a nice system set up for battles, it can get obnoxious from having to do things "exactly" as distortions requirements want you to do, but it's not really a true puzzle game, it's just planning your strategy during a battle. The timer not being able to be extended is quite a nuisance though. Secondly, i actually can judge a game by it's early development, yes. That's called feedback, especially for features that are supposed to be tested for balance, bugs, if it's clear to be player what it's supposed to be, on and on. This also includes what is good for the people playing it, like for example, players that want more difficulty, players that feel that the difficulty is just fine and players that want to have an easier time. It's all part of the feedback process, dev gets to gauge how things are currently received by all types of crowd. Then finally it's up to the dev to strike the hammer, some will be displeased and leave, some will stay. It's all part of the process.

Sure, just adding a difficulty button that will change how the damage reduction/preparedness modifiers grow between loops would be pretty easy, but that's a lot different than asking to add an entire new system like "prestige" and stuff, which will then also have to be balanced. Adding more things that need to be balanced is not a quick way to solve the issue of balance.

The whole idea of a prestige system is to start at 0% extra additions to calculation or bonuses. It's meant to always increase by a small percentage, like 3% or 5%, so the player can add it themselves how strong they wish to start their next campaign. Its them that's doing the balancing, not me, you or the dev. That's the whole idea of it. I didn't say the dev would have to keep testing it for balance, it's meant as a tool to let themselves tip the scales to where they want, from increasing damage, barrier growth rate to total extermination bar value. Every time they lose, they gain a prestige currency they can use to get a little stronger, like for every 1 loop completed, get 10 points or something. "Here you go, go spend it to get extra bonuses if you want."

I didn't say don't play campaign, I said if you don't like how the later loops of campaign play then just don't play the later loops and instead stick to playing the earlier loops. Also... yes you can say "if you don't like difficulty don't play campaign", perhaps it's a tough pill to swallow, but campaign is obviously designed scale up in difficulty and before very hard in later loops, that's an intended feature, if you don't like that then don't play the game mode designed with that idea. if you're just interested in the "story" play with cheats enabled.

That's basically what you're telling the players to do though. You're telling them that they'll eventually have to stop playing a game mode filled with content, including the lore, to stop playing it and go play a single-round mode or something else. The campaign is where you'll find the most content of the game, including the story, just because you don't like the idea of discussing for a way to reach a compromise, so we can all have a middle ground to be able to enjoy the main game mode, which also has city conquering, forsaken training, all the content the game has to offer? Was there an attempt at finding a compromise? Were there discussions if could be done or are we just declaring it without even trying "Nah, we're not gonna do that, can't be done, no way." ? And we're talking about difficulty here of all things.

The option of "don't increase difficulty while using cheat mode" is a one hit kill button. If the Chosen don't scale up between loops then you'll just annihilate them instantly. Like, just look at Skippy's posts about the super late loops that CSdev hasn't properly designed and aren't intended to be played yet which are super unbalanced with the loops being 20 days and the damage reduction approaching 50%, and those being doable. Without difficulty increases after you get out of the first few loops you'd basically have the T4 breaks in under 10 days as long as you have a general idea of how to train Forsaken.

Correct, and your issue with giving me the option to choose myself, a player, if i want it enabled or not in my game is?

Distortions... if you don't like them don't use them? One does not accidentally trigger a distortion, those things require a lot of deliberate effort to set up. The only Distortion I can see someone accidentally triggering is Rampancy because it's pretty easy to do a 10 turn surround with HATE higher than INJU without even thinking about it early on. But Temptation and Negotiation can only happen with a deliberate press of a button, and getting a 10 turn Orgy for Aversion will probably come pretty late, so the odds of you somehow not doing the T1 DIG Break yet would be insanely unlikely. Relationship vignettes are not random, they happen between the two Chosen that share a Vulnerability as their Core and Minor (so the Chosen with Core Morality and the one with Minor Morality will have the Morality relationship vignettes happen between them). If you're getting annoyed with distortions and relationship scenes getting in the way of your roleplaying, then it's pretty easy to just avoid triggering Distortions and the T3 rivalry vignette.

That's strange, because sometimes they "do" trigger accidently on my games, and not only rampancy. Good to know they don't happen to you though, nice. That's fine by me though, it's not that big of a deal for me, also they're part of strategy planning for the battles as well as the charm of the game, so i can do fine with them the way they are.

The changes you suggest aren't a "balance update", they're the inclusion and entire new gameplay mechanics and systems, which would then require a lot of balancing to work with the game without making things too easy or the systems too worthless. The game could use a balance update, but it doesn't need an entire new system to add an out-of-campaign upgrade system to make things easier, you can already do fine in later loops as long as you understand how Forsaken work. If anything I think a proper tutorial for Forsaken would do a lot more for helping with later loop difficulty than some major balance patch, since understanding Forsaken is the big wall between doing fine in later loops or getting bodied by your first Superior Chosen.

Good, you got it. They're "suggestions" for the dev to take into consideration, as well as your feedback, it's also your personal suggestion and take on this matter. That's why we're discussing this particular shitstorm of a debacle, isn't it? We all here have suggestions, different takes and stands on balancing something. Some people want it harder, some like it just fine the way it is, some want things easier. It's always like this when the discussion turns into "proper balancing". Either way this goes is fine by me, whatever the dev decides i know i'm not gonna start a flame storm here in the thread. Will i be disappointed that the game turned into more of a stressful experience with too many disadvantages on my side that takes the enjoyment out of the game for me? Yes, especially when you invested into it so much. That's fine, there are other projects to follow, i'll move to another one just fine. But you know what truly is always a true sack of shit that annoys the hell out of me every time? Especially in a game of this genre? It's how when you suggest "possible", Key word here, "Possible", alternatives se we can all find and reach a compromise, a middle ground so everyone can find a way to enjoy this game together, people just point fingers at one another, throw shit at one another, attack one another, all the fun stuff. In the end, it turns out it's an impossibility to share the fun, people leave and voila.


Regardless of how this shitstorm's gonna end, the dev's gonna be reading all of our takes, suggestions and analysis of how loops are working out. Skippy's being doing good work on that part. So we'll see what the dev finds impossible to do, what cannot be done, what could be done and what is planned to be done in the future.

 

[SuperSkippy]

• Pokemon battle other demon lords for forsaken.

Triumph used Strip!
It wasn't very effective...
In all seriousness I'd be totally down for conflict with other Demon Lords in some way.

From the Development plan, I think way of implimentiing Spendor would needs to be address soon
There is completely no incentive to unlock her ability to be use as an Actual Forsaken
To fight Animalistic, having a range of Forsaken to be use is essential so her Motivation Debuff is one of the priority to be remove
The other one is obviously the Damange Debuff base on race, that number is huge
Even after you unlock her training options, you still needs to unlock her Sus Incompetent for it to be useful
That is not to memtion the fact that she cannot be distorted like Victory makes her a liability all of the time
So even pass the point of beating both the Angel and Devil boss in the future, Spendor would likely still less useful than Victory
I hope we can either change the way she works or have much more story narative focus on her involment

The goal for Splendor is that after you've beaten 4 other bosses, all her debuffs become buffs. The fact that there aren't 4 other bosses is a function of campaign being incomplete. The fact that later loops have so much difficulty (if you read any of my loop 16+ playthrough) is a function of not having any higher-tier chosen than Animalistic/Undead. So, this is the very definition of a future problem to be solved, and we'll see how loops 10+ look after Devil Chosen (and Forsaken, I assume) are implemented--if the balance is off, like, that gets fixed. I have no idea how strong a fully converted Splendor is.

Read your ideas and i like your thinking, you have good points, maybe we'll get some clarification in further logs from the dev?






Not really no, but sure, if you want to think so go ahead. As far as i feel from playing it, currently at least, it has a nice system set up for battles, it can get obnoxious from having to do things "exactly" as distortions requirements want you to do, but it's not really a true puzzle game, it's just planning your strategy during a battle. The timer not being able to be extended is quite a nuisance though. Secondly, i actually can judge a game by it's early development, yes. That's called feedback, especially for features that are supposed to be tested for balance, bugs, if it's clear to be player what it's supposed to be, on and on. This also includes what is good for the people playing it, like for example, players that want more difficulty, players that feel that the difficulty is just fine and players that want to have an easier time. It's all part of the feedback process, dev gets to gauge how things are currently received by all types of crowd. Then finally it's up to the dev to strike the hammer, some will be displeased and leave, some will stay. It's all part of the process.





The whole idea of a prestige system is to start at 0% extra additions to calculation or bonuses. It's meant to always increase by a small percentage, like 3% or 5%, so the player can add it themselves how strong they wish to start their next campaign. Its them that's doing the balancing, not me, you or the dev. That's the whole idea of it. I didn't say the dev would have to keep testing it for balance, it's meant as a tool to let themselves tip the scales to where they want, from increasing damage, barrier growth rate to total extermination bar value. Every time they lose, they gain a prestige currency they can use to get a little stronger, like for every 1 loop completed, get 10 points or something. "Here you go, go spend it to get extra bonuses if you want."





That's basically what you're telling the players to do though. You're telling them that they'll eventually have to stop playing a game mode filled with content, including the lore, to stop playing it and go play a single-round mode or something else. The campaign is where you'll find the most content of the game, including the story, just because you don't like the idea of discussing for a way to reach a compromise, so we can all have a middle ground to be able to enjoy the main game mode, which also has city conquering, forsaken training, all the content the game has to offer? Was there an attempt at finding a compromise? Were there discussions if could be done or are we just declaring it without even trying "Nah, we're not gonna do that, can't be done, no way." ? And we're talking about difficulty here of all things.





Correct, and your issue with giving me the option to choose myself, a player, if i want it enabled or not in my game is?




That's strange, because sometimes they "do" trigger accidently on my games, and not only rampancy. Good to know they don't happen to you though, nice. That's fine by me though, it's not that big of a deal for me, also they're part of strategy planning for the battles as well as the charm of the game, so i can do fine with them the way they are.







Good, you got it. They're "suggestions" for the dev to take into consideration, as well as your feedback, it's also your personal suggestion and take on this matter. That's why we're discussing this particular shitstorm of a debacle, isn't it? We all here have suggestions, different takes and stands on balancing something. Some people want it harder, some like it just fine the way it is, some want things easier. It's always like this when the discussion turns into "proper balancing". Either way this goes is fine by me, whatever the dev decides i know i'm not gonna start a flame storm here in the thread. Will i be disappointed that the game turned into more of a stressful experience with too many disadvantages on my side that takes the enjoyment out of the game for me? Yes, especially when you invested into it so much. That's fine, there are other projects to follow, i'll move to another one just fine. But you know what truly is always a true sack of shit that annoys the hell out of me every time? Especially in a game of this genre? It's how when you suggest "possible", Key word here, "Possible", alternatives se we can all find and reach a compromise, a middle ground so everyone can find a way to enjoy this game together, people just point fingers at one another, throw shit at one another, attack one another, all the fun stuff. In the end, it turns out it's an impossibility to share the fun, people leave and voila.


Regardless of how this shitstorm's gonna end, the dev's gonna be reading all of our takes, suggestions and analysis of how loops are working out. Skippy's being doing good work on that part. So we'll see what the dev finds impossible to do, what cannot be done, what could be done and what is planned to be done in the future.

Ok, but again, you have Cheat Engine. You think a particular multiplier works better than the one that's in game? Change your numbers so you get it. Change the state of the game so that it reflects what you think should have happened. You think an Orgy should reset Extermination? Make that happen. You're in control. You think Slime should have a corrupting, weakening influence? Make it lower their damage resistance.

 

[Celerarity]

Guys if you keep feeding him attention he's going to keep posting

 

[Shasou]

Triumph used Strip!

It wasn't very effective...

In all seriousness I'd be totally down for conflict with other Demon Lords in some way.



Ok, but again, you have Cheat Engine. You think a particular multiplier works better than the one that's in game? Change your numbers so you get it. Change the state of the game so that it reflects what you think should have happened. You think an Orgy should reset Extermination? Make that happen. You're in control. You think Slime should have a corrupting, weakening influence? Make it lower their damage resistance.

I'm also down for conflict with other demon lords, dekeche offered some interesting ideas. Regarding Cheat Engine, it's not as simple as you make it to be. It's not something that gives the complete control you think, maybe if you're an experienced user you could make those things happen, but yeah, it's no substitute for an actual feature. By the way, is that a He-Man reference? I think that's a He-Man reference, but the guy looks like a Transformers character

Guys if you keep feeding him attention he's going to keep posting

That all you do? You treat other people with different opinions than yours as a troll? Think it's a free excuse to attack others because they dare to voice their opinions on a matter?

 

[McHuman]

Not really no, but sure, if you want to think so go ahead. As far as i feel from playing it, currently at least, it has a nice system set up for battles, it can get obnoxious from having to do things "exactly" as distortions requirements want you to do, but it's not really a true puzzle game, it's just planning your strategy during a battle. The timer not being able to be extended is quite a nuisance though. Secondly, i actually can judge a game by it's early development, yes. That's called feedback, especially for features that are supposed to be tested for balance, bugs, if it's clear to be player what it's supposed to be, on and on. This also includes what is good for the people playing it, like for example, players that want more difficulty, players that feel that the difficulty is just fine and players that want to have an easier time. It's all part of the feedback process, dev gets to gauge how things are currently received by all types of crowd. Then finally it's up to the dev to strike the hammer, some will be displeased and leave, some will stay. It's all part of the process.

If you could extend the timer that would basically remove all difficulty. Also when I said you cant judge a game in early development I obviously meant in the context of difficulty, you cant judge the intended difficulty and stuff of a game when it's so early in development where balance is naturally not going to align with what's intended as it's constantly getting thrown off as the game is rapidly changed between versions. Just cause a game is easy early in its development doesn't mean it's intended to be easy. Also "some will be displeased and leave, some will stay. It's all part of the process.", does this not apply here to you? The game is clearly intended to become quite difficult as loops go on, so by your own words if that displeases you you should go.

The whole idea of a prestige system is to start at 0% extra additions to calculation or bonuses. It's meant to always increase by a small percentage, like 3% or 5%, so the player can add it themselves how strong they wish to start their next campaign. Its them that's doing the balancing, not me, you or the dev. That's the whole idea of it. I didn't say the dev would have to keep testing it for balance, it's meant as a tool to let themselves tip the scales to where they want, from increasing damage, barrier growth rate to total extermination bar value. Every time they lose, they gain a prestige currency they can use to get a little stronger, like for every 1 loop completed, get 10 points or something. "Here you go, go spend it to get extra bonuses if you want."

If you just want a prestige system to allow the player to fine tune the difficulty on their own, then just do what you already do, use the cheat option and cheat engine to do it.

That's basically what you're telling the players to do though. You're telling them that they'll eventually have to stop playing a game mode filled with content, including the lore, to stop playing it and go play a single-round mode or something else. The campaign is where you'll find the most content of the game, including the story, just because you don't like the idea of discussing for a way to reach a compromise, so we can all have a middle ground to be able to enjoy the main game mode, which also has city conquering, forsaken training, all the content the game has to offer? Was there an attempt at finding a compromise? Were there discussions if could be done or are we just declaring it without even trying "Nah, we're not gonna do that, can't be done, no way." ? And we're talking about difficulty here of all things.

I'm telling them to restart their campaigns when it gets too difficult for them. Also the only content in the game locked behind campaign is the story stuff and looping/city conquering, everything else can be done in single-play, even Forsaken training. The looping/city conquering though isn't really a relevant loss though considering you can replicate the effects through the custom team option. As for "compromise", compromise can only be reached if CSdev wants to make the game easier or give options to do so outside the cheat option. You can petition for it if you want, but if CSdev isn't personally interested in doing so and the core audience doesn't care for it, they're likely not going to bother to divert development time to something like that unless it's a donation request.

Correct, and your issue with giving me the option to choose myself, a player, if i want it enabled or not in my game is?

Gonna be honest, that was my bad and I just misread what you said. I don't use cheats in campaign (or at all unless I'm testing something and not genuinely playing) so I didn't realize enabling cheats removed difficulty scaling from campaign and thought you were suggesting adding that as a cheat option. Not that it was already a thing and you were saying to add an option to disable it.

That's strange, because sometimes they "do" trigger accidently on my games, and not only rampancy. Good to know they don't happen to you though, nice. That's fine by me though, it's not that big of a deal for me, also they're part of strategy planning for the battles as well as the charm of the game, so i can do fine with them the way they are.

Then either you just overlooked something or it's a bug, cause Negotiation outright can't trigger during a battle, Temptation requires selecting the Tempt option during a surround, Aversion requires a 10 turn Orgy, and Rampancy requires a 10 turn surround with HATE at a higher level than INJU. They are not suppose to be able to trigger outside of those situations, if they are then that's a bug.

Good, you got it. They're "suggestions" for the dev to take into consideration, as well as your feedback, it's also your personal suggestion and take on this matter. That's why we're discussing this particular shitstorm of a debacle, isn't it? We all here have suggestions, different takes and stands on balancing something. Some people want it harder, some like it just fine the way it is, some want things easier. It's always like this when the discussion turns into "proper balancing". Either way this goes is fine by me, whatever the dev decides i know i'm not gonna start a flame storm here in the thread. Will i be disappointed that the game turned into more of a stressful experience with too many disadvantages on my side that takes the enjoyment out of the game for me? Yes, especially when you invested into it so much. That's fine, there are other projects to follow, i'll move to another one just fine. But you know what truly is always a true sack of shit that annoys the hell out of me every time? Especially in a game of this genre? It's how when you suggest "possible", Key word here, "Possible", alternatives se we can all find and reach a compromise, a middle ground so everyone can find a way to enjoy this game together, people just point fingers at one another, throw shit at one another, attack one another, all the fun stuff. In the end, it turns out it's an impossibility to share the fun, people leave and voila.


Regardless of how this shitstorm's gonna end, the dev's gonna be reading all of our takes, suggestions and analysis of how loops are working out. Skippy's being doing good work on that part. So we'll see what the dev finds impossible to do, what cannot be done, what could be done and what is planned to be done in the future.

This is hardly some attack on you or your ideas, I just disagree with them and am replying with my opinions. If you are taking that as an attack then that was not my intention.

 

[Shasou]

If you could extend the timer that would basically remove all difficulty. Also when I said you cant judge a game in early development I obviously meant in the context of difficulty, you cant judge the intended difficulty and stuff of a game when it's so early in development where balance is naturally not going to align with what's intended as it's constantly getting thrown off as the game is rapidly changed between versions. Just cause a game is easy early in its development doesn't mean it's intended to be easy. Also "some will be displeased and leave, some will stay. It's all part of the process.", does this not apply here to you? The game is clearly intended to become quite difficult as loops go on, so by your own words if that displeases you you should go.
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Ah, now i feel bad for saving over my previous run, if that was a bug i should probably have taken a screen of that and reported it, damm. Well, i'll try to replicate again, with some luck i'll be able to trigger it once more and post the save here.

I see some misunderstandings happened, i don't take your points of view as attacks at all, we are simply discussing difficulty aspects in a game. When conversing in text we might misread how we are expressing ourselves, so we might get the impression of hostility or attacks, but it's all good. I respect your take on this matter as well as your stance, i would also like to apologize if my approach gave you the impression of hostility or personal attacks, those were not how i was approaching you.

When you said judge a game in early development i did not understood that you were only focusing on the difficulty aspect of ED. Yes i do agree with you, the game will obviously go through changes on that particular aspect, the increase in difficulty will be pretty obvious as more mechanics are implemented. As you said, there's no way of knowing what CSDev wants on this, all our talks here are just for their own benefit of gathering information, what they'll end up doing is completely up to them, as it should be. So obviously, depending on how the game'll end up going regarding difficulty i might leave indeed.

 

[SuperSkippy]

I'm also down for conflict with other demon lords, dekeche offered some interesting ideas. Regarding Cheat Engine, it's not as simple as you make it to be. It's not something that gives the complete control you think, maybe if you're an experienced user you could make those things happen, but yeah, it's no substitute for an actual feature. By the way, is that a He-Man reference? I think that's a He-Man reference, but the guy looks like a Transformers character

I know programming, I know what CE gives you in Java games. Java garbage collection goes om nom nom and you've got to go find stuff in totally different memory addresses. Still, if you know what you're looking for, everything I said is doable, especially if you learn how the game represents things internally like say, resistances.

I forget that I'm older than the average user here, that's Captain Planet. He's saying "The power is yours!"

 

[Shasou]

I know programming, I know what CE gives you in Java games. Java garbage collection goes om nom nom and you've got to go find stuff in totally different memory addresses. Still, if you know what you're looking for, everything I said is doable, especially if you learn how the game represents things internally like say, resistances.

I forget that I'm older than the average user here, that's Captain Planet. He's saying "The power is yours!"

Captain Planet was the one cartoon i never got to watch, i totally got him confused with a He-Man character or Transformers xD

That's very informative, i didn't know CE could do that much in the game. I'm not an experienced user at CE, i use it as best as i can, but even then it's very limited to me. I'm still able to change a few things in battle though so that's good enough for me.

 

[Nemo de Nemo]

Since the topic of difficulty has been raised.
I'm gonna throw out a suggestion of adding an additional cheat toggle to campain mode:
Having the option to turn on/off the ramping difficulty multipliers of later loops.

This would let players that want to tip things in their favor, but not outright remove the struggle of later loops do so while reducing the impact those experiences have on the genuine play experience of a no cheats campain run. If that makes sense.

 

[Celerarity]

Since the topic of difficulty has been raised.
I'm gonna throw out a suggestion of adding an additional cheat toggle to campain mode:
Having the option to turn on/off the ramping difficulty multipliers of later loops.

This would let players that want to tip things in their favor, but not outright remove the struggle of later loops do so while reducing the impact those experiences have on the genuine play experience of a no cheats campain run. If that makes sense.

Without those modifiers the ramping power of Forsaken, items, and the demon lord will very quickly make the campaign as easy as a cheat run, so while I don't see a specific reason that shouldn't be done, I find it hard to see what it offers that just turning on cheats does not.

 

[McHuman]

Without those modifiers the ramping power of Forsaken, items, and the demon lord will very quickly make the campaign as easy as a cheat run, so while I don't see a specific reason that shouldn't be done, I find it hard to see what it offers that just turning on cheats does not.

Turning on cheats already disables those modifiers, what they're saying is to add an option in cheats to not disable the modifiers when using cheats.

 

[Celerarity]

Turning on cheats already disables those modifiers, what they're saying is to add an option in cheats to not disable the modifiers when using cheats.

Oh I didn't know that, sounds like a good idea.

 

[dekeche]

Found a bug! Triggering a rampage while nobody else is in battle freezes the game.
Version: 47 - updated to 47b, still occurs.
Save is C2-Ongoing
Steps to reproduce: Next Battle -> Shadow | Slime,Taunt,Surround.

 

[dekeche]

Is soul Liquefaction good/bad?
On one hand, it's just a really bad investment. Why spend 10 EE on an item to get +1 EE, when you could spend that on a commander? Even if you don't need to spend it on a single turn, early game where that's relivant you should be saving up for key upgrades anyways.
On the other, it's basically free EE per turn when you are dealing with undead. They can't get to any energy invested, and the investment will increase your passive EE gain. But... Not sure how useful that is compared to other items. This is a game about snowballing, and this doesn't exactly help getting that snowball rolling down the hill.

This item would be really good if you could take EE invested between cities(How I read it at first), or if undead consumption was automatically invested, instead of being consumed.

 

[Maiuw2]

Hello there, been ages since I've last played, and it seems I'm fking terrible at this game once again.
I remember really liking this game once I got used to it, but It's difficult getting back into it.

Could someone give me Tech Tree guidelines (order of what to spend EE on)
As well as how to actually get super high angst + breaks?

My first goal is a char with
Core Morality and Innocence
Minor Confidence
Significant Dignity.

 

[dekeche]

Hello there, been ages since I've last played, and it seems I'm fking terrible at this game once again.
I remember really liking this game once I got used to it, but It's difficult getting back into it.

Could someone give me Tech Tree guidelines (order of what to spend EE on)
As well as how to actually get super high angst + breaks?

My first goal is a char with
Core Morality and Innocence
Minor Confidence
Significant Dignity.

Core Morality and Innocence? Ugh, that's ruff. You'll be able to get good circumstances on them, but you'll have a harder time getting trauma. Which means less surround durations overall, in turn reducing the amount of circumstance damage you can actually deal. I'd start with the chosen with Core Dignity, then move onto the others afterwards.

As for the tech tree? An advanced strategy could be to ignore psychic reading for the battle and damage boosting upgrades, making battles take longer to draw in the other chosen earlier. You can use the retry button to feel out chosen for their weaknesses, rather than using psychic reading to get the precise numbers. In any case, I think the purchase order is the same as it used to be: Causality Projection (Bonus EE) -> Networked Consciousness (better surrounds) -> Reality Sealing (advanced demon upgrade) -> Synthesis (HATE+INJU+EXPO Commander). The two 5EE battle extenders go somewhere in that unlock path. I usually pick up Human collaborators before Causality Projection, and Nursery Hives before Reality Sealing. The 20EE extenders I'll pick up after Synthesis, using the bonus EE I generate from sending out the first "breaker" commander (3 capture, HATE+INJU+EXPO, duration = Next chosen appears at-1.).

 

[McHuman]

Hello there, been ages since I've last played, and it seems I'm fking terrible at this game once again.
I remember really liking this game once I got used to it, but It's difficult getting back into it.

Could someone give me Tech Tree guidelines (order of what to spend EE on)
As well as how to actually get super high angst + breaks?

My first goal is a char with
Core Morality and Innocence
Minor Confidence
Significant Dignity.

When it comes to the tech tree there are 4 main goals you want to work towards, well 4 + a sub goal making 5.
1 - Get all the 1 and 2 EE Cost upgrades, you basically cant do anything without them. Also once you get all of them start using 4 turn duration - 2 capture commanders. Ideally you'll want your first 4-2 Commander used on Day 12, as without items Day 12 is the earliest day you can do it assuming you get 1 EE from every Chosen the day they arrive.

2 - Get Networked Consciousness, this will make your surrounds significantly stronger and is one of the bigger gates to bigger surrounds, as it allows a 4 turn surround on a second Chosen (from a 4-2 commander) to target every circumstance while still having time to re-surround the first Chosen and benefit from FEAR openings (you can use a 5-2 commander, but that is 7 EE vs 5 EE and having to take an extra turn can result in the extermination ending before you can re-surround the first Chosen, giving you 1 less surround for the fight). The upgrade path for this is, after the 1-2 cost EE upgrades: Lust, Anger, Hunger, Human Collaborators, Casual Projection, and Dominance, for a total of 49 EE and should ideally be gotten no later than day 20.

3 - This is that sub goal I mentioned, after getting Networked Consciousness is around the time you'll want to start picking up extra commander upgrades and evacuation/extermination limit increases when you have the extra EE to afford them and actually make use of them.

By this point you're basically set for much of the mid-game until you start throwing around Defiler/Suppressor Commanders.

4 - Reality Sealing, this is good for doing something useful in the downtime in a battle, like in the opening turns when using a commander with some combination of suppressors/defilers/punishers which makes it so you cant do anything until other Chosen arrives, or when doing an Orgy before the extermination finishes for the same reason. It also gates off one of the Punishers and Resolve attacks, and Antipathy which is super useful for if you've made the Chosen hate each other. When you get this really doesn't matter as much as Networked Consciousness as you wont get tons of use out of it until fielding those aforementioned commanders or Orgies, but it is worth working towards, especially since most of the prerequisite upgrades are commander upgrades you'll want to pick up anyways.

4a - This is more a note than anything, but while you can be a bit more relaxed with getting Reality Sealing in Loop 1, in later loops when you'll have Forsaken it's better to try getting this sooner after Networked Consciousness as Forsaken fall in the same category of commanders with suppressors/defilers/punishers that leave you with nothing to do for the first several rounds.

5 - At this point all that's really left is the late game upgrades like Punishers and Trauma+ attacks, and that point in the loop is pretty variable based on the exact team of Chosen, so there really isn't any upgrade advice given beyond working towards the Punishers for the T4 Breaks you're working towards and the associated Trauma+ attacks, and pick up Antipathy and/or Empathy based on how much the Chosen hate and/or love each other.

As for your current goal, if you're struggling to break her with a 4-2 Commander just hold off on breaking her and focus on other Chosen.

For extra help here are 3 guide posts I've written: early game guide, explanation of some mechanics and slight expansion to guide, very basic explanation of loop 1 item picks.