Others Corruption of Champions II [v0.7.27] [Savin/Salamander Studios]

[Daken9]

Seeing yall talk about the gameplay in such depth almost makes me want to pay attention to it. I'm a fairly big RPG guy, like i've recentely spent 30 minutes farming literal shit (amongst others) in Elden Ring so that i could craft items i'll never use because i might need them later, yet for some reason in this game my go-to tactic has always been to have my raging barbarian shove vulnerary in musclegirls' mouths and just strongly encourage them.

In all seriousness though (not that any of the above isn't true), i guess i wish the battlelog was a bit cleaner - and perhaps turns too - so that it wasn't such a headache to work out who did what. Hits, misses and all that should be data easily attainable at a glance imo, so maybe splitting the numbers from the narration would have made the whole thing more accessible.

Also, yeah, I didn't actually realize just HOW bloated the game is with Horse People. Like, not only they are the most represented race in the game, but they also get their big ass city that is vital to the main plot. I doubt it was intentional and the developers aren't aware of how lil bit silly that is when you think about it, but still. Probably just a temporary phase.

I just think that's a bit of a funny argument, 'cause if my numbers are right then 19 (of which 14 written by Wsan, and not counting Brienne/Brint) of the 37 minotaurs presently in the game are in Khor'minos - hence, they came out in the last year. Compare and constrast with boreal elves who have 23 to their name of which 5 in their capital (mind you, not counting Ryn but counting her sister and her grandma's ghost), and it seems to me that the problem doesn't lie with Khor'minos itself but rather with everything that came before, and the lack of organization therein.

Like, to make it brief, maybe in the last year there's been an overabundance of cows, or maybe they're simply where every race would be at if there hadn't been a collective pulling of feet for years on end, and/or if each city had been assigned to one writer and actually been treated like a project.

 

[Skandranon]

I just think that's a bit of a funny argument, 'cause if my numbers are right then 19 (of which 14 written by Wsan, and not counting Brienne/Brint) of the 37 minotaurs presently in the game are in Khor'minos - hence, they came out in the last year. Compare and constrast with boreal elves who have 23 to their name of which 5 in their capital (mind you, not counting Ryn but counting her sister and her grandma's ghost), and it seems to me that the problem doesn't lie with Khor'minos itself but rather with everything that came before, and the lack of organization therein.

Like, to make it brief, maybe in the last year there's been an overabundance of cows, or maybe they're simply where every race would be at if there hadn't been a collective pulling of feet for years on end, and/or if each city had been assigned to one writer and actually been treated like a project.

I don't think this is it, though, from what Ive seen discussed and what they still have planned. They didn't skimp on other areas due to lack of organization, they just always planned KM to be way bigger than everything else. They've said pretty often the game is going to be 8 total explorable zones, and the difference between KM and other hubs is that KM is a zone by itself.

KM is going to encompass the entirety of Act 2, apparently. Of three. So KM is going to be a third of the game pretty much by itself.

So KM isn't comparable to Winter City, so much as Winter City+Glacial Rift (and maybe the forest?).

Harvest Valley+Centaur Village+Marefolk Village is all one zone, etc.

Now why they decided this, idk; I suspect it's both author and audience bias towards certain archetypes though.

But I don't think any other area was actually intended to be a city.

 

[Daken9]

But how can it be author bias when more or less 20 of 30 new characters in Khor'minos are written by one guy alone? Like, it's not a group effort, it's one guy being properly in charge of one block. And that's my point. Let's say Wsan pulled his feet and no one picked up the place, suddenly we have a grand total of 10 sexable character in the whole city/outskirts of which 5 of them cows, which means minotaurs are suddenly as worse off as elves. Like, literally, 23 to 23.

So yeah undoubtedly no fuck was given about all the other hubs, but that's the main problem in my opinion. I guess they could have spread out Khor'minos' content a bit better, but again when the elven city and the two mare villages put together have had a grand total of 10 interactable characters for years on end... maybe it's a case of poor planning (see how long it took for the Wayfort to get picked up), maybe it's intended like you say, but either way it's dumbassery and i find it hard to say the one hub that's actually looking decent is overperforming.

To me it's like saying the objectively decent arc of an overall poorly constructed game/movie/whatever should be worse so that the rest might look better. Just, no. Fuck that. Make it all better.

 

[Skandranon]

But how can it be author bias when more or less 20 of 30 new characters in Khor'minos are written by one guy alone? Like, it's not a group effort, it's one guy being properly in charge of one block. And that's my point. Let's say Wsan pulled his feet and no one picked up the place, suddenly we have a grand total of 10 sexable character in the whole city/outskirts of which 5 of them cows, which means minotaurs are suddenly as worse off as elves. Like, literally, 23 to 23.

It's author bias because it was planned this way from the beginning. KM was always planned to be roughly a third of the entire game when they outlined the game. They didn't plan the elves, or the orcs to be that big....thus, bias.

The fact that Wsan is the one doing it doesn't really matter. If he didn't do it, it would have been one of the other full-timers.
Tobs, for instance, is pretty good at pumping out a bunch of content...imagine that reality.

So yeah undoubtedly no fuck was given about all the other hubs, but that's the main problem in my opinion. I guess they could have spread out Khor'minos' content a bit better, but again when the elven city and the two mare villages put together have had a grand total of 10 interactable characters for years on end... maybe it's a case of poor planning (see how long it took for the Wayfort to get picked up), maybe it's intended like you say, but either way it's dumbassery and i find it hard to say the one hub that's actually looking decent is overperforming.

I'm saying you're looking at it sideways. KM isn't a hub. It's a whole zone. Everything up to Winter City was all of Act 1, so it's going to be approximately the size of ALL of that.

It's kinda like comparing Midgar to any other city in FF7. It's way bigger, because its damn near a whole disc by itself. It represents an entire story arc of the game, not just a single location.

To me it's like saying the objectively decent arc of an overall poorly constructed game/movie/whatever should be worse so that the rest might look better. Just, no. Fuck that. Make it all better.

It's more like saying "There's only gonna be one actual city in this game, let's make it a big one."

 

[MoneyMan181]

It's author bias because it was planned this way from the beginning. KM was always planned to be roughly a third of the entire game when they outlined the game. They didn't plan the elves, or the orcs to be that big....thus, bias.

The fact that Wsan is the one doing it doesn't really matter. If he didn't do it, it would have been one of the other full-timers.
Tobs, for instance, is pretty good at pumping out a bunch of content...imagine that reality.



I'm saying you're looking at it sideways. KM isn't a hub. It's a whole zone. Everything up to Winter City was all of Act 1, so it's going to be approximately the size of ALL of that.

It's kinda like comparing Midgar to any other city in FF7. It's way bigger, because its damn near a whole disc by itself. It represents an entire story arc of the game, not just a single location.



It's more like saying "There's only gonna be one actual city in this game, let's make it a big one."

I see what you're saying, but I do think they could've handled the other settlements better. Or at the very least the Winter City. It's really sad that the last city of boreal elves has basically 0 content inside of it. It's an infinitely more interesting place than just "Cow city that's engineered tap water", and I wished the devs could see the potential it has. If I wanted ANY lore in the game, it'd be about them. I think it'd be neat to see what the average citizen there feels about their situation, even if it's just one NPC. It just feels a bit unfinished if I'm being honest. Like there's more stuff to do at a random marauding orc camp for some reason?

Personally I don't have a problem with KM being so big, but I hope they add some more variety in the NPCs there. KM is supposed to be a pretty big deal in the world at large, so I can't see why they wouldn't be able to put a larger mix of races in it. As much as I like cowgirls, it's getting a teensy bit out of hand imo.

 

[Kroenen12]

How many were in the game pre KM? Brienne, the two at the Pupperidge farm, the alchemist in the Marefolk village and....that's it, I think.

uhhhh

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[Skandranon]

I see what you're saying, but I do think they could've handled the other settlements better. Or at the very least the Winter City. It's really sad that the last city of boreal elves has basically 0 content inside of it. It's an infinitely more interesting place than just "Cow city that's engineered tap water", and I wished the devs could see the potential it has. If I wanted ANY lore in the game, it'd be about them. I think it'd be neat to see what the average citizen there feels about their situation, even if it's just one NPC. It just feels a bit unfinished if I'm being honest. Like there's more stuff to do at a random marauding orc camp for some reason?

Personally I don't have a problem with KM being so big, but I hope they add some more variety in the NPCs there. KM is supposed to be a pretty big deal in the world at large, so I can't see why they wouldn't be able to put a larger mix of races in it. As much as I like cowgirls, it's getting a teensy bit out of hand imo.

Oh I totally agree about Winter City. It could definitely stand more content.

My point isn't that the other areas shouldn't be bigger, just the reasoning behind it. I don't personally think wasn't a lack of of organization or planning; they seem to have planned everything out pretty well ahead of time. Almost the whole game was outlined in a public doc back when the game launched and I'm pretty sure they've stuck to it pretty well so far. I think the bigger issue is simply that they don't want to spend too much time making this game, and that's why they made a lo of the decisions they did.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure there will be more of a mix of races deeper in. There's a salamander bar planned at least, I know, and the arena would probably involve people from all over. And the whorehouse in the slums might too.



Here's a puzzler when it comes to racial distribution: lupines are supposed to be the most populous race in the Frost Marches. Where are they?

 

[Skandranon]

uhhhh

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Forgot about Spectral Smith and Hirrud.
But yeah, it looks like cow people were actually on the lower end pre-KM. What a comeback.

 

[Daken9]

It's author bias because it was planned this way from the beginning. KM was always planned to be roughly a third of the entire game when they outlined the game. They didn't plan the elves, or the orcs to be that big....thus, bias.

The fact that Wsan is the one doing it doesn't really matter. If he didn't do it, it would have been one of the other full-timers.
Tobs, for instance, is pretty good at pumping out a bunch of content...imagine that reality.



I'm saying you're looking at it sideways. KM isn't a hub. It's a whole zone. Everything up to Winter City was all of Act 1, so it's going to be approximately the size of ALL of that.

It's kinda like comparing Midgar to any other city in FF7. It's way bigger, because its damn near a whole disc by itself. It represents an entire story arc of the game, not just a single location.



It's more like saying "There's only gonna be one actual city in this game, let's make it a big one."

I'm tripping, dude. I think you're talking about the overall project and what they're trying to accomplish with Khor'minos, while what i'm trying to argue is that it's there that the fault lies and not on the city itself.

uhhhh

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Holy shit my numbers are bad. Hell did i miss 9 cows

EDIT: After checking it seems there are some i didn't know about...

 

[Skandranon]

I'm tripping, dude. I think you're talking about the overall project and what they're trying to accomplish with Khor'minos, while what i'm trying to argue is that it's there that the fault lies and not on the city itself.

Well yeah, we pretty much agree then. I was just trying to say that the issue wasn't the lack of a plan, and more that this was the plan.


I think they could have probably cut down KM by quite a bit and expanded a few other areas so that it wasn't so lopsided. Winter City was really a bit deflating.

More so because the events and such that do happen there are pretty good! The ball in Winter City is great, and really scratches my itch for getting to hang with companions in a non-sexual way, and the ghost quest was pretty good too.

 

[mrttao]

If you just limit it to 100 though, you get the TiTS system, where even your max-level, full end-game gear character can still lose in 4–5 lust attacks (which can happen in like 2 turns if you're against a group of enemies). Similarly, it can make encounters too easy (especially bosses), so enemies have to be balanced out with either high lust resist, or the ability to lower their own lust gauge, such that it kind of evens out with regular damage. I also think it's just bullshit from a roleplaying perspective: why does my 100% straight as a pole male barbarian take lust damage from a femboy wagging his horse dick around? A lot of the time they handwave it with "pheromones" and stuff, but still.

I think a better implementation of lust or resolve would be to have it as a debuff bar, as you suggested: lower resolve would lead to lower strength, defences, etc. (all within reason, of course), down to zero, which would give the biggest penalty. I think being able to score a takedown purely with lust damage has been demonstrated to be simply too hard to balance.

One thing I think is missing in this RPG focused on character interactions as the primary content is the ability to get by without combat. TiTS has some of this, but it's 95% all about being a sub and taking it up the ass from everyone, so a bit more variety would be nice. The thing is, I don't find this combat system very engaging: enemy resistances hardly matter, and you can't take advantage of them anyway because unlike e.g. a Final Fantasy game, you only have 4 highly-restricted spell slots; there's not much gear and it doesn't have much impact on stats; and in general nothing interesting happens during combat (e.g. sex grapples or something where you temporarily incapacitate an enemy—and yourself—while getting some action as a bonus), etc., etc.

I agree with almost everything you said. but one thing I disagree with is that sex grapples are interesting.
RPG sex combat just ruins sex by making it boring, repetitive, and forcing you to perform actions based on their combat efficacy instead of actual fetish. Nothing ruins sex faster than sex combat mechanics.

 

[Deleted member 135775]

AYOOOOO HOL UP, HOL UP
COMBAT REWORK!!1??

>*difficulty setting: story*
>*combat mode: auto*
>*battle tactic = qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq*
fuck that.

 

[sluttica95]

Ryn is such a fucking gross character, shes like anti-porn. Take the fucking cage off already its just abuse and torture. Forced fetish nonsense she has so much content and that cringe is front and center at all times.

 

[Skandranon]

Skandranon are you ok I'm not even trying to be mean at this point I'm actually getting concerned about you. You post on this thread multiple times daily just to talk about the game this is very unhealthy.

Posts tale like two minutes apiece, man. Not exactly a huge portion of my day off.

 

[Deleted member 1660801]

Ryn is such a fucking gross character, shes like anti-porn. Take the fucking cage off already its just abuse and torture. Forced fetish nonsense she has so much content and that cringe is front and center at all times.

no idea if this is bait or not but I'll bite

I fully understand what your saying but personality the cage didn't feel like "cringe". It felt more like a shitty situation for her character to overcome. Is it still is a terrible situation? Yeah and trust me I hate the damn cage just as much as the next person but from my understanding the Rynquest is coming up soon. So just a little more patience

How Savin handles the Elthara/Ryn pregnancy feels WAY more concerning then actually getting the cage off.

 

[pollia]

The bar for "coherent and organized" when it comes to porn games is fucking rock bottom. I used to complain about how slow/nonsense updates were back during the original CoC days and whatnot.

After being around this "industry" for a while now, its obvious that its actual rare for a team to release content that both isn't either disappointing or shitty and at a pace faster than an hour or two of content every six months to a year.

So, to your answer your question, maybe? But the fact that either project still produces anything at all is impressive in a sad way.

Ive always been pleasently surprised when a decently big project just keeps trucking along instead of shitting the bed in some form or another.

Like Ravager is slow, but its pretty consistent in its updates and doesnt go off on wild tangents that break the dev cycle entirely. Or something like Westanes The Company. Some of the recent stuff isnt my cup of tea, but they've progressed at a pretty steady clip for years now with clearly defined goals.

But games like that are extremely out of the norm. Like, think about some of the biggest games on this site. Young Maria completely and utterly gutted its content to redo the whole thing. Summertime Saga hasnt gotten a substantial update in what, a year+ now? TiTS redid its entire engine and essentially stalled out on story content for how long now? Or like, look at how fuckin awful the development of Subverse has been or Something Unlimited that is more or less the same game from years ago.

 

[Coaxmetal]

Skandranon are you ok I'm not even trying to be mean at this point I'm actually getting concerned about you. You post on this thread multiple times daily just to talk about the game this is very unhealthy.

Idiotic post. What business is it of yours who posts and how much? And to aim this at one of the few people who try to have a reasonable conversation about the game is beyond stupid.

 

[Coaxmetal]

^ Ignored. Sorry for feeding the concern troll.

 

[User0115]

I will watch your progress with great interest

 

[Clone501]

i found a bug when i go to fight the corrupted unicorn the game crashes i have brian and cait in my party but haven't tried it with other companions yet