HTML Degrees of Lewdity [v0.5.2.8] [Vrelnir]

[Raf-Raf]

Seconded, whole bunch of feats I still have no idea how to unlock.

The search feautre is your best friend on that one.

 

[Fingerbib33]

This is pretty comprehensive. Thanks for putting so much thought into this.

Thanks for the response, I'm really glad you found it useful.

- Returning school to a system of tradeoffs sounds like a good idea. Although there would ideally still be a way for players that put the work in to be good at everything. Perhaps some tradeoffs would have to extend to out of school. One way I can think of this being possible is to simply make exams harder, requiring the player to spend more time focussing on raising their mark for each subject one at a time while just trying to keep the others sustained. That might get annoying, though, and would feed further into the problem of school being a same-y grind.

Yeah, there's definitely a balance to be struck in regards to how "grindy" it is. But I think part of the question is whether this is ideally a game intended for short-burst playthroughs, or for long drawn-out playthroughs. My personal feeling is that this is a game best suited for the latter, due to the sandbox nature of it, the general progression system, the variety of different scenarios and trouble the MC can find themselves in, etc. Yet right now the school system feels like something designed for short playthroughs, both due to the lack of variety and also how fast it is to attain good grades and high status and basically achieve everything there is to achieve. Grindiness can be an annoying thing, but given the nature of school and the fact that the MC is going to be going there 5 days a week for the vast majority of a playthrough, I really think the overall progression has to be slowed down. I know it's easier said than done, but the ideal situation for something as repetitive as school would be finding a good balance between short-term gratification type goals and longer-term delayed gratification type goals. I think you want the player to still feel like there are things to strive for and achieve, even if that necessitates making certain elements grindy.

- It might be worth straight up making new encounter designations, so rather than just "sex", "molestation", "stalk" and "fight", it could be "sex" for general consensual sex, "prostitution" for sex that's consensual but done for an ulterior motive, "molestation" for someone just wanting to get off quick using the player's body, and "rape" for someone taking full control and advantage of the player.
"Sex" and "molestation" would allow the player to take some form of control or appease their attacker, and perhaps even take control as is so often requested, while "prostitution" and "rape" would mean the player has to satisfy the NPC in a certain way and has little control of the situation. This could also set an actual task the player has to complete in order to get out of the situation submissively. "Fight" and "stalk" would remain largely the same, total combat rewrite notwithstanding.

Sounds great, I really like the idea of those new differentiating sex categories, with "sex" and "molestation" being more active and potentially in the player's hands, and "prostitution" and "rape" being more centered around needing to satisfy the NPC and meet their demands or suffer consequences. The key thing for me is that since prostitution pays really well monetarily, from both a roleplaying and a gameplay perspective it has to have a trade-off emotionally. Otherwise, you're basically getting paid big sums of money to lower your stress/trauma and raise your control. I really don't like that when my character gets raped my first thought is "I should head to the brothel and have sex with a stranger for money to make her feel better". It essentially means that I have to roleplay every character as a nymphomaniac, rather than someone in a bad situation simply trying to get by. At the same time, I think there's a place for maybe a "corruption" type attitude setting that could unlock at high Promiscuity for players who want to change their character's attitude to sex-work and indulge in it more positively.

- There is a lot of unused code revolving around bruising that could be revived. It might need to be a toggle, but the challenge would be there for players that want it. It could come with ways to become inoculated to repeated use that scales with bodypart skill, and maybe the player could become a client at the spa to speed up the recovery process.

That sounds great too, I'd love to see a feature like that introduced at some point. It could add another interesting layer of consequence to sexual activity that the MC needs to wrestle with.

Thanks again for the response and for taking the time to consider my suggestions!

 

[PurityGuy]

Just curious, do you know if this is because Vrel wants to backpedal on the lolisho theme the game initially had? Or he just wants to not get in trouble by repeating the disclaimer over and over?

I can't speak for Vrel, nor am I inclined to answer a provocative question asked by an account 2 days old with only 1 post. I advise you come to your own conclusions and don't bother anyone who comes to a different one.

 

[Lizettepineda]

Fair enough! I was genuinely just curious though

 

[MasterN64]

I do feel that one big change to prostitution that would help quite a bit would be something like a guy pulling up in a car and saying something like "Let me cum in your ass for $300." Then a small negotiation reliant on allure/english/reputation or whatever to change terms or pay. Failing to meet the terms would result in a random chance for no pay reduced pay another angry encounter or nothing to happen at all. [Edit] Ohhhhh this also opens options of other things like masochism or exhibitionism prostitution with a "Let me hit you" or "Go buy something from that stall naked"

I do quite like the idea of making the encounter types more granular though. As it stands the only real difference between a rape and molestation encounter is one you just have to apologize early in and then they are exactly the same.

Bruising also sounds like a fun mechanic.

 

[shade555]

The combat UI itself isnt even that bad currently. Its simple and easy to use even if its not pretty. The main issue is that combat is kind of stale.

These are separate. Combat UI, even when in radiobutton-columns, is hidden deep below the text and graphics, and graphics can be deep below the text. It just screams for dedicated areas.
As for the game being improved in all aspects, including combat scenarios -- I'm totally onboard. Having more scenarios that develop via multitude of paths would definitely be nice.

As for my 2c on the sexual part of combat, NPCs are mostly 'obsessed' with a single orifice. They can't pull out of MC's mouth and insert it somewhere else, which might be OK with rape encounters, but is definitely lackluster for consensual ones, especially during prostitution or with love interests.

And making school more interesting involves just that -- adding more content for school, first and foremost. The player should definitely gameplay around new obstacles, sandtraps, pitfalls and whatnot to keep them on their toes instead of clicking through the lessons with occasional molestation attempts (which turn into sex for whatever reason). Tracking at least molesters and sexual partners would also help. Even some love interests might be hidden that way or even made random-generated ones.

PS: and when I see the built-in graphics, I immediately remember Lilia's Livelihood for some reason and think of how it can be a bit different...

 

[Amhran]

School system: One of the downfalls of a game that has an open "beta" (or whatever you want to call DoL's current status) for many years is that players will obviously experience what already exists the most. Someone who's put a thousand hours into the game will naturally find certain things a lot more annoying and tired than brand new players...such as the school system. This isn't strictly the fault of the content in question nor its general level of quality or implementation, it's just a natural function of having put too many hours into one game, learning all there is to know, and having done it all so many times that it's become rote and stale. Over-consuming something, even something you originally found great, has a tendency of ruining whatever that is for you, which is why I generally recommend people try taking breaks from hobbies when it seems clear and obvious that they need one. Though I guess some people are able to watch shit like The Office a gazillion times and never ever get tired of it no matter what, so maybe this rule is more or less applicable to certain people. Anyways, point is, if the development cycle of your game is going to be five or more years long, it's going to be very tough to always be on top of certain content getting 'old' for your most loyal playerbase, and I'm not exactly sure what you can do about it outside of frequently adding on to or re-doing work you've already done.

Difficulty: I'm in favor of the game getting more difficult generally speaking, though at times I find the monthly payment to Bailey a bit burdensome once its reached its max of 4000. It's not that it's impossible to make that by any means, but rather that it starts funnelling you into certain ways of playing that maybe the player would rather ideally not go down (or at least stick with) if they didn't have to. When something becomes too difficult, it often becomes a game of "what works is not very fun, and what's fun sadly doesn't work". Once you've reached that maximum monthly payment, the player necessarily becomes more constricted and loses a bit of their agency to be able to interact with what they wish to interact with - unless they find a way to break the money system entirely, of course. But some level of challenge is good, so becoming a bazillionaire is not ideal either. It's a tough balance to perfectly strike: I want to struggle, but not so much that I feel like I can't afford the time to do random jobs while wandering the streets between all the different things I'm already supposed to be doing, you know? I don't think there's necessarily any fix for this, pretty much all singleplayer games with some kind of money system are exploited and broken by the player sooner or later, and I don't see DoL being able to magically fix that age-old problem.

 

[rezaf]

School system: One of the downfalls of a game that has an open "beta" (or whatever you want to call DoL's current status) for many years is that players will obviously experience what already exists the most. Someone who's put a thousand hours into the game will naturally find certain things a lot more annoying and tired than brand new players...such as the school system. This isn't really the fault of the content in question nor its general level of quality or implementation, it's just a natural function of having put too many hours into one game, learning all there is to know, and having done it all so many times that it's become rote and stale.

I disagree, at least when it comes to school. I did maybe four playthroughs of DoL over the years, if you even want to call it playthroughs, as you cannot really "finish" the game. The boredom that is the school system becomes evident even before the first term finishes. As your skills/fame increases, some new events pop up that can make the second term at least somewhat interesting again, but soon enough, even those are boring. I think I described the flaws of the school system fairly accurate in my post a couple of pages back.

My other point about there being no endings was received less well, but I feel having some sort of endgame, which put a close to this particular playthrough, would only benefit the experience. You could easily get the option to keep playing, but then without being able to unlock feats or something.
I do, however, agree that this very idea goes a little bit against the games premise. Many players like the grimdark scenario of the game which is highlighted in the first post: You're always the victim. But in the last couple of pages, many people described how that is actually not really the case. The game puts you into misery scenarios, which with a little experience the player learns to easily cope with. Yes, it can be kinda difficult at the beginning, but quickly enough, dealing with woes becomes a trivial affair - a mere backdrop.
Then you just start fooling around doing whatever - hardly anything has REAL consequences anyway, and - in my case, this usually results in me losing interest in the game for the time being.

Endings you could try to achieve could give players a lot of motivation and a sense of urgency. For example, if it was much more difficult to become good at school, there could be a (heresy!) positive ending where you leave orphanage and town behind thanks to your academic performance. But only if you haven't been too lewd...

 

[TheRascal]

This isn't strictly the fault of the content in question nor its general level of quality or implementation, it's just a natural function of having put too many hours into one game, learning all there is to know, and having done it all so many times that it's become rote and stale.

I agree with what you say, however I don't think it applies to school. If we were talking about something like LIs, jobs or locations what you said is true and it can be circumvented by using alternatives since there are plenty of them to choose from. But school is different, it's mandatory and there are no alternatives.

I found the game not too long ago and haven't played that much, there is a lot of content I haven't seen yet but during my first playthrough I found school tedious, repetitive and mostly barren of content. Like some people mentioned before I quickly found myself spamming the same options in quick succession just to get it over with and go find content elsewhere. I can safely say that mine is not a case of burnout, there's a lot for me to see and school is just a hurdle I need to get through.

 

[Amhran]

Well, if the school system's design/content was already lacking in the first place, it's definitely going to feel grating sooner rather than later for players who stick with the game. I don't personally find it as severe as you two do, as I like the school...but I do agree that the actual class-going does tend to demand a little too much of your time while also being predictable and grindy, which is a combination that will lead to a lot of skimming and skipping just so that you can stay on top of it while getting back to what you're currently trying to accomplish. I could only be delighted if more content were made for it (much more, in fact!) and the systems tweaked and expanded in other ways, so I suppose I really oughtn't argue for my own good here.

 

[Zerorox]

School system: One of the downfalls of a game that has an open "beta" (or whatever you want to call DoL's current status) for many years is that players will obviously experience what already exists the most. Someone who's put a thousand hours into the game will naturally find certain things a lot more annoying and tired than brand new players...such as the school system. This isn't strictly the fault of the content in question nor its general level of quality or implementation, it's just a natural function of having put too many hours into one game, learning all there is to know, and having done it all so many times that it's become rote and stale. Over-consuming something, even something you originally found great, has a tendency of ruining whatever that is for you, which is why I generally recommend people try taking breaks from hobbies when it seems clear and obvious that they need one. Though I guess some people are able to watch shit like The Office a gazillion times and never ever get tired of it no matter what, so maybe this rule is more or less applicable to certain people. Anyways, point is, if the development cycle of your game is going to be five or more years long, it's going to be very tough to always be on top of certain content getting 'old' for your most loyal playerbase, and I'm not exactly sure what you can do about it outside of frequently adding on to or re-doing work you've already done.

Difficulty: I'm in favor of the game getting more difficult generally speaking, though at times I find the monthly payment to Bailey a bit burdensome once its reached its max of 4000. It's not that it's impossible to make that by any means, but rather that it starts funnelling you into certain ways of playing that maybe the player would rather ideally not go down (or at least stick with) if they didn't have to. When something becomes too difficult, it often becomes a game of "what works is not very fun, and what's fun sadly doesn't work". Once you've reached that maximum monthly payment, the player necessarily becomes more constricted and loses a bit of their agency to be able to interact with what they wish to interact with - unless they find a way to break the money system entirely, of course. But some level of challenge is good, so becoming a bazillionaire is not ideal either. It's a tough balance to perfectly strike: I want to struggle, but not so much that I feel like I can't afford the time to do random jobs while wandering the streets between all the different things I'm already supposed to be doing, you know? I don't think there's necessarily any fix for this, pretty much all singleplayer games with some kind of money system are exploited and broken by the player sooner or later, and I don't see DoL being able to magically fix that age-old problem.

Yep, in terms of difficulty it's not really Bailey payments that is problem, you're sayin' max 4k but it's really players choise to Pay for Robin, not mentionin' there is slider we can lower payments to 0% or play like Me with x3 Iron Man Mode with blocked slider with max 12k/week.

I think noone Will disagree it's balance issue, some Jobs are useless with minimal progression, some are overprofitable even without progression.
For example waiter job progression is Just boring (nothing happened, 5 bucks... 5-10 times in raw, meh...) if I've not known it's opening buns makin' job I'd never bothered workin' there.
Barman - pfft, waste of time.
Striptease job gives miserable profit even with max dancing and high allure, useless without prostitution events. (even shitty strip dancers in my poor country get much more money)
Dogs... 5-15/h bruh, used only to lower dogs agression and needs a lot waste of time even for that.
Office - not much useful with low grades/stats, worthless by the time You have high grades/stats
Ask for work in apartments, docker job - same as with office.

Jobs needs more balancing, profit/danger/time consuption/skills

And Yes, I can agree Bailey's payments progression is unbalanced overall, but it must be changed simulationally with Jobs

 

[Zerorox]

I agree with what you say, however I don't think it applies to school. If we were talking about something like LIs, jobs or locations what you said is true and it can be circumvented by using alternatives since there are plenty of them to choose from. But school is different, it's mandatory and there are no alternatives.

I found the game not too long ago and haven't played that much, there is a lot of content I haven't seen yet but during my first playthrough I found school tedious, repetitive and mostly barren of content. Like some people mentioned before I quickly found myself spamming the same options in quick succession just to get it over with and go find content elsewhere. I can safely say that mine is not a case of burnout, there's a lot for me to see and school is just a hurdle I need to get through.

School is grindy and boring... fuck, that's perhaps most realistic aspect of the game

 

[Sensei Thor]

It's a pity the animations don't seem to work on mobile during scenes, this is for the 0.4.0.9 version too

 

[whitefalcon87]

The search feautre is your best friend on that one.
View attachment 2575782

I tried that, but nothing with all feats came up. Could you help by giving me the precise keywords or something?

 

[rezaf]

I tried that, but nothing with all feats came up. Could you help by giving me the precise keywords or something?

There's also the

You must be registered to see the links

.

 

[mehmeme]

It's a pity the animations don't seem to work on mobile during scenes, this is for the 0.4.0.9 version too

check your settings, there was a bug with the animation setting being set to off which should now be fixed.

 

[ladguru]

Yep, in terms of difficulty it's not really Bailey payments that is problem, you're sayin' max 4k but it's really players choise to Pay for Robin, not mentionin' there is slider we can lower payments to 0% or play like Me with x3 Iron Man Mode with blocked slider with max 12k/week.

I think noone Will disagree it's balance issue, some Jobs are useless with minimal progression, some are overprofitable even without progression.

Yes of course. But balancing is hard.
Development goes on for some years now. There are additions and contributions at different stages of development.
There are different playing styles, virgin or slut (or even both!!), defiant or submissive, criminal or not, exhibitionist or not, etc.
Yes, some style maybe (or should be?) harder than another, but they should still all end up roughly in the same ballpark.

Getting all this together is really hard. It's much easier to make it worse than make it better.

For example waiter job progression is Just boring (nothing happened, 5 bucks... 5-10 times in raw, meh...) if I've not known it's opening buns makin' job I'd never bothered workin' there.
Barman - pfft, waste of time.
Striptease job gives miserable profit even with max dancing and high allure, useless without prostitution events. (even shitty strip dancers in my poor country get much more money)
Dogs... 5-15/h bruh, used only to lower dogs agression and needs a lot waste of time even for that.
Office - not much useful with low grades/stats, worthless by the time You have high grades/stats
Ask for work in apartments, docker job - same as with office.

Barman? The VIP or "listen" option can be quite profitable, but not very often... It's mostly a pass time to keep the wraith away^^.

Striptease? That's really an easy and reliable source of cash. It's a bit random, I haven't figured out if or how it is controllable. I think my high score is about £800 without "private room". With "private room" and robbing it's almost impossible to leave with <£400 per session. Yeah sometimes you leave with just £50. Still better than nothing.

Dogs and Office? Hmm, that's just some additions. I don't know what to make of it.

Docker? I was here, when it was added. Back then it was a nice pass time for weekends and holidays. If you put enough work into it you can even get a decent amount of cash. But nowadays there is no reason to put that much work into it and there is a lot of other stuff to do on weekends and holidays. Did I mention that balancing is hard? Easy improvement here: lift the restriction and make the job available on all days!

The "knocking at the door" jobs are mostly meant to get some petty cash in the early stages of the game. Everything is fine here, IMHO.

And most of these jobs have the side effect of honing some skills. It's not always about money.

 

[eddardbolton]

Why does it needs to be "school" anyway? I think "University" sounds better. Just like the "orphanage" - it would be better to completely rename it to "dormitory" and "orphans" to "refugees". Bailey might just send away disobedient ones, back to France or something.

 

[ladguru]

School is grindy and boring... fuck, that's perhaps most realistic aspect of the game

Yeah, school was already boring and grindy when I first discovered this game.
It's got better in the meantime. There is now a lot more stuff happening at school.
But still, after reaching A* in all subjects school is getting just a nuisance.

There should be something more, dunno what, maybe employ MC as a kinda substitute teacher after 3 A*?

 

[esoom]

I hope they do sort the balancing issues with jobs out, really all the high paying stuff for someone who has no skills should be highly risky, but as it is now there's no reason not to make cream buns.