Aye, getting the balance right is difficult. I want the game's world to feel dangerous, but you should still feel like you have the tools to cope with it.
I mean, I totally have the tools to cope with it. I'm just having trouble finding a line between 'doing lewd stuff' and 'not getting mentally traumatized' that I like.
Edit: On a separate note, I noticed that there doesn't seem to be much change in what an action does with regards to your stats? As an example, even if you have maxed exhibitionism and just purposefully stripped yourself in the toilet, sneaking around school naked or having people talk about having seen you naked will increase your stress; and even if you happen to an absolute caste angel who's completely innocent about sex, doing lewd things will raise your 'sense of control and self-worth' which feels somewhat odd to me.
It's also caused me some difficulty in the past when I was trying to do 'safe' lewd things to lower my character's trauma and raise control, and I'd get situations where I'd first get lowered trauma/increased control, then immediately get raised trauma and stress, and so on. I'd assume that since my characters stats where X, they'd be more comfortable with this or that, except they really weren't, and I'd sometimes end up resetting days worth of trauma/control management.
I guess it could be a game balance or workload issue, in which case I can't really say much about it, but I think it would be nice if different actions had different effects depending on your stats, like some lewd acts raising stress and trauma when you're very pure/innocent like a 'I can't believe I would do such a thing!', while some lewd acts not increasing your stress/trauma anymore because the main character is used to it/enjoys it.
And going on that line of thought, an idea for a new stat: Self-worth/confidence. Increases if you go a long while without getting raped/molested, and when doing defiant actions and helping people/winning fights, etc. Lowers when raped/molested, when you avoid helping people, etc.
When it's high, control recovers faster and decays slower. Trauma reduction is also increased, but so is trauma gain. When it's low, control recovers slower and decays faster. However, trauma increases slower, though it also reduces slower.
I thought it might be nice to have a bit of a 'buffer' of sorts so you could potentially wander around with a traumatized character, or to help people get out of loops of trauma->attacked->asylum without having to have their character basically hide in a room all day. Also thought it might be cool for a character to have slightly altered scenes depending on their self esteem, but realized that that was probably going to be a ton of writing needed for that, so...
Side note: So apparently, school is
really traumatizing for a unpopular character who already has mental issues. The first time I had my character revisit school after her asylum trip, it took several tries for her to even get through the day without passing out during class.
Not sure if it's because I just have no experience of mental trauma, but this feels like the best in-game representation of ptsd I've seen yet.