Honestly I might be one of the few autists here that want to make the game harder.
Took time to read and think, and damn, I can't help but agree. Okay hear me out guys, the difficult part of learning the game is the begining, the steep slope(as far as I understand/remember) and this has little to do with extra mechanics like forsaken, species, items, achievments, bosses AND distortions. So, distortions are extra, what now? Well if it were to be more difficult than classic way, then a) it would not impact the newbies and b) would fit the theme and balance.
The classic way is a way of brute force, break them with overwhelming trauma, corrupt them with sheer depravity. But distorion is subtle manipulation which gives less bonuses in a short run, but gives you a handy backdoor access to their will to fight on the final day, so to say, pun included. So it makes sense that it would not be easy. Aversion and Rampancy rely on you ability to get surround levels, which can be hard. Negotiation is the hardest(out of first 4) with 1G angst being high bar to clear, and on top of that it gives you a weak resolve damage action...like come on, I could do literally the same thing with slime spit...funnily enough the optimal way is to spit first and then finish her off with words. But tempt is certainly the easiest, with low bar of 100k that after crossing once pretty much gives you the chosen. The EE you get is quite a thing to consider too, but I can't judge it cause I don't fully get the breakpoints and numbers for it.
One thing that can maybe be done is that tempt is not immediately effective but require a certain duration
Disscusing the possible changes, I'm on the fence, in the final fight the bar for clearing tempt being high circ. is unique, so maybe changing that is not the way. I don't think distortion should be something that makes it hard in the final battle, it is opposite. Hard to reach, easy to finish off. I think flipping the progression scale for repeated temp actions is brilliant, it would need some changes to intial values and progression, but it preserves the identity, while making it harder to reach easy victory for the final battle. Tbh I think the same treatment can be done to aversion. It's like "the more you corrupt them, the harder it is to corrupt them further", even something like a unique text for reaching next level of tempt breakpoint would be nice to see. Like at first she "dances and teases thralls" then she "lets them touch her" then she "services them willingly" etc. etc. Same with aversion, but less and less "there", maybe even hint at the fact that her personlity is splitting and she acts diffrently, cause the sudden forsaken change didn't really catch on to me at first.
The negotiation...maybe make it less...bad in the final fight? Like maybe if she is alone you can instantly convince her to give up, or to give meaning for repeated meetings, instead of(or along with) giving the resolve dmg ability, make her surrender when under certain resolve. Bcs the base idea with meetings is fire, love it. But as distortions go, it's weak and requires many days to waste on it.
Rampancy is fun and makes it quite a challenge to juggle this ball of anger, when you reach the breakpoint, so it's perfectly fine.
No suggestions on last two distortions as well, they are great. Except maybe despair being a bit redundant after getting the ability to spare forsaken, unless i'm mistaken somewhere and they are diffrent.
my main issue with it would be that it completely ignores any of the other mechanics the game has
And as far as this goes, I'm not sure it is a problem, or even if it is, that there is a solution. But if I were to spitball a solution, maybe connecting the requirment to DISG trauma, or maybe make part of the progression(mentioned previously) extra breakpoints like T3 for plea. Of course it's already quite far from what we have now so maybe it's a long shot, but I do get the idea of making tempt path not the one all be all, for easy victory against any type of team in any town.
