Others Corruption of Champions II [v0.7.32] [Savin/Salamander Studios]

[M0nte]

But we do lack in goblins. I do want a goblin slave to breed and abuse. Atani was sweet little piece of ass.

 

[Belphegor007]

Man I wish they did this combat balance update years ago, but still happy it happened eventually though.

 

[NaturalEnclave]

The problem with resolve is that it requires you to use full manual combat, since by default your companions always use regular damaging attacks. If you're attacking resolve, but everyone on your team is attacking HP, then you're essentially not doing anything.

The other issue is that resolve is like a second health bar that's harder to restore, so it just makes some encounters overly tedious/dangerous depending on your level/difficulty settings/party composition, especially the more ganky encounters like the tainted witch at the river crossing, or the imps in the Frostwood. Granted it's not as turboshit broken as lust is in TiTS, but I still felt like it was a poorly thought out/implemented mechanic.

Honestly, Resolve feels like an interesting idea that just wasn't all that thought-out for this game. Having a secondary health bar that is depleted by being a horny bastard sounds like a decent idea for a porn-RPG. But as you said - it really is just an additional healthbar that is harder to manage and control that doesn't really help with anything.

One way to maybe make it a bit better would be to steal one aspect from Lilith's Throne which is the fact that it's restored every time you exit combat. Or maybe just cap it at 100% so that it's an alternative way of defeating enemies that uses a completely different scaling system compared to health. Maybe that way it could also have unique effects on combat. Like getting enemy to 50% resolve would cause them to get accuracy penalty or something.

But that stuff is honestly difficult so I don't blame them for an easier option of just removing it.

 

[muschi26]

Honestly, Resolve feels like an interesting idea that just wasn't all that thought-out for this game. Having a secondary health bar that is depleted by being a horny bastard sounds like a decent idea for a porn-RPG. But as you said - it really is just an additional healthbar that is harder to manage and control that doesn't really help with anything.

One way to maybe make it a bit better would be to steal one aspect from Lilith's Throne which is the fact that it's restored every time you exit combat. Or maybe just cap it at 100% so that it's an alternative way of defeating enemies that uses a completely different scaling system compared to health. Maybe that way it could also have unique effects on combat. Like getting enemy to 50% resolve would cause them to get accuracy penalty or something.

But that stuff is honestly difficult so I don't blame them for an easier option of just removing it.

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.

 

[NODOGAN]

So been playing for a while and gotta say, I LOVE they got rid of Resolve, I HATED IT before because it almost always locked me with Bolstering Dance to keep myself & my party alive against teasing enemies since resolve-healing was not a thing unless you had a very specific team, also now is EASIER THAN EVER to steal powers from enemies using Mirror Stance since again, I DON'T HAVE TO BE ON HEAL-BOT DUTY AND CAN SWITCH MY AT-WILL POWER WITHOUT FEARING A RESOLVE TPK! (Also this game is heavily inspired in DnD and now Charmers feel even more like Bards by hitting the enemy's HP with their tease damage.)

BTW did they changed Cat Call quest or something, I recruited Cat on the option after tutorial to save time and that shit hasn't moved since, does it change once I reach Evergreen or something?

 

[IcemanR]

I don't hate the observer like most of you guys do but one thing that bugs me with his writing style......why does every conversation feel like a matching of wits? Why does everyone have to in some way prove the other person doesn't quite understand some meaningless point or prove their intelligence. Who the flip sets a mood for sex with that type of banter....

 

[MoneyMan181]

I don't hate the observer like most of you guys do but one thing that bugs me with his writing style......why does every conversation feel like a matching of wits? Why does everyone have to in some way prove the other person doesn't quite understand some meaningless point or prove their intelligence. Who the flip sets a mood for sex with that type of banter....

Maybe he thinks people debate the usage of "who" versus "whom" when they have sex, who(m) fucking knows man. You're really questioning the logic of a guy who wants to do some shitty cultural critique of Japan through a fantasy analogue in a porn game? Though I'm surprised of all things, THAT'S your problem with his writing.

How I wish I could be so blessed.

 

[IcemanR]

Maybe he thinks people debate the usage of "who" versus "whom" when they have sex, who(m) fucking knows man. You're really questioning the logic of a guy who wants to do some shitty cultural critique of Japan through a fantasy analogue in a porn game? Though I'm surprised of all things, THAT'S your problem with his writing.

How I wish I could be so blessed.

He's not Wsan or William so I typically don't read his content for the sex as he is white toast bland but I do like his character building with Kiyoko Herthia etc. I heavily disagree with his choices for Kinu and some of the Rindo content but I genuinely like the premise of ALL of those characters. Great characters with complexity but seriously iffy execution.....he simply needs someone to reign him in. The sad part is the toxicity that seems to be the base behavior of the dev team so.......it is what it is.

 

[MoneyMan181]

He's not Wsan or William so I typically don't read his content for the sex as he is white toast bland but I do like his character building with Kiyoko Herthia etc. I heavily disagree with his choices for Kinu and some of the Rindo content but I genuinely like the premise of ALL of those characters. Great characters with complexity but seriously iffy execution.....he simply needs someone to reign him in. The sad part is the toxicity that seems to be the base behavior of the dev team so.......it is what it is.

Eh, I don't really see any complexity in his characters behind some pretty surface level things. I admit they have/had potential to be complex but they just fall flat every time. Like I said in an earlier post, he could lean more into Kiyoko being fucked up over spending so much time in the pocket dimension but she seems like a regular person after that ordeal. Nakano could actually be a decent melancholic character if he wasn't such an uptight dickhead and opened up to the PC. Kinu could have mixed feelings about you not being in her life as much as she wanted but still loves you and cares about your opinions(even though she shouldn't be aged up so this shouldn't be a thing in the first place). I can't say anything on Rindo since I gave up on his content before doing much with her.

All the others seem pretty one-note to me and I really don't like Hethia. She's just a stereotypical uptight tree-hugging fantasy elf as far as I can tell.

The general premise of his characters have a lot of potential, but he just pisses it away every time. It seems like he has decent ideas, but he really just can't write with a degree of competency for the life of him.

 

[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.