HTML Female Agent [v1.20.1p] [Crushstation]

[Power Broker]

I share the concerns that many here have about the development of this game. It's one of the few games that have a real good and creative story that feels like it could really happen.
Implementing a random scene builder contradicts the strenghts the game has as of now. It's not the first game that tries to have sex scenes based on text snippets that are mixed together to tell a story, but these mechanics are not worth it imho. I prefer to have few, but well written sex scenes than tons of scenes that are all similar. The second approach leads to boredom and skipping all the text just to get over with it.

On the other hand, handcrafted scenes where the player only makes few, but important decisions (not clicking 20x on "give bj") are very much more to my liking. The scenes with the Swedish weapon dealer were good and enjoyable. The scenes in the bar where you pick up a guy were boring- you just click through the framework, skip the same texts over and over again and glance at the two or three words that are important. However, the surrounding idea wasn't boring. In my opinion the "test missions" would benefit much more if you would have two or three different, handwritten scenes per test, so only two or three possible partners instead of dozen of partners who obviously are just a collection of traits and variables, but no real characters.

Random generators and sex scene frameworks only make sense if you use them often in a generic fashion. This game lives from a well written story where scenes matter. That's a contradiction. It's no use to code something big for only a few scenes and it's boring to have too many scenes of the same kind.

It's the same with the relationships from her past: I would be fine to just click on the options "She had 2/7/132 different sex partners in college" instead of creating half a dozen forgettable random guys. And I think creating a feature that isn't benefical (and maybe even disadvantageous) for the game is just a waste of time and resources.

 

[Joe Steel]

I share the concerns that many here have about the development of this game. It's one of the few games that have a real good and creative story that feels like it could really happen.
Implementing a random scene builder contradicts the strenghts the game has as of now. It's not the first game that tries to have sex scenes based on text snippets that are mixed together to tell a story, but these mechanics are not worth it imho. I prefer to have few, but well written sex scenes than tons of scenes that are all similar. The second approach leads to boredom and skipping all the text just to get over with it.

On the other hand, handcrafted scenes where the player only makes few, but important decisions (not clicking 20x on "give bj") are very much more to my liking. The scenes with the Swedish weapon dealer were good and enjoyable. The scenes in the bar where you pick up a guy were boring- you just click through the framework, skip the same texts over and over again and glance at the two or three words that are important. However, the surrounding idea wasn't boring. In my opinion the "test missions" would benefit much more if you would have two or three different, handwritten scenes per test, so only two or three possible partners instead of dozen of partners who obviously are just a collection of traits and variables, but no real characters.

Random generators and sex scene frameworks only make sense if you use them often in a generic fashion. This game lives from a well written story where scenes matter. That's a contradiction. It's no use to code something big for only a few scenes and it's boring to have too many scenes of the same kind.

It's the same with the relationships from her past: I would be fine to just click on the options "She had 2/7/132 different sex partners in college" instead of creating half a dozen forgettable random guys. And I think creating a feature that isn't benefical (and maybe even disadvantageous) for the game is just a waste of time and resources.

Hear, hear!

I'm not really interested in random sex descriptions, and I've subscribed to this game because of what it offers outside the random sex scene content. Give me the few meaningful moments and let the unmemorable moments pass in a few lines of text. The strength of the game has always been the memorable moments, and it is a waste of developer time to try to flesh out the non-memorable moments.

Crush, please reconsider your priorities. Refocus the game on the story you started out to tell, and only add the mechanics needed to tell that story. The story is what counts, not the mechanics of a given blowjob or the appearance of a dress or whatever. Plenty of time to add chrome when the story is done, if you want.

 

[ynyn]

Hear, hear!

I'm not really interested in random sex descriptions, and I've subscribed to this game because of what it offers outside the random sex scene content. Give me the few meaningful moments and let the unmemorable moments pass in a few lines of text. The strength of the game has always been the memorable moments, and it is a waste of developer time to try to flesh out the non-memorable moments.

Crush, please reconsider your priorities. Refocus the game on the story you started out to tell, and only add the mechanics needed to tell that story. The story is what counts, not the mechanics of a given blowjob or the appearance of a dress or whatever. Plenty of time to add chrome when the story is done, if you want.

I mean, at the very least they could at least try to balance creating more actual content and following their roadmap. I certainly don't mind a variety in sex scenes but not at the expense of content! I can only repeat myself: the fact that after 2 years (I think?) of development time the character creation has more meat to it than the actual game is a joke. I really really want to see this game succeed and everything, because I do like it, but the way things go I just don't see it happening. How much patience do they think their patreons have? So little content in so much development time, in my eyes, is bad advertisement for patreon. Just like what Splendid Ostrich is doing with New Life. The way things go, I expect Bangkok around the end of 2020 earliest, which is disappointing. Absolutely disappointing. I honestly don't understand why they think doing all that jazz for the character creation first is the way to go. What good is all of that stuff for me when I can't even get anything out of it because there is nothing to do beyond that?

Please adjust your roadmap and try to balance content with your 'vision' for the character creation, Crush.

 

[Crushstation]

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback, guys, I appreciate it. I've had a couple of really long dev days so I haven't had time to reply properly yet, but I will soon.

 

[gobbet]

I just wanted to throw out a counter opinion that I really like the direction you're going, and I'm willing to wait for a really cool experience over a rushed one.

 

[Joe Steel]

I just wanted to throw out a counter opinion that I really like the direction you're going, and I'm willing to wait for a really cool experience over a rushed one.

Your opinion isn't counter to anyone's here, as far as I can tell. Absolutely no one is calling for "a rushed one," so your argument is a straw man.

 

[DrackDrap]

I actually prefer the customization options, lifepaths and "personal" scenes that we get in games like this and like NewLife. I guess it's not to everyone's liking but that was my main draw to this game and to becoming a patron on top of the art to go along with all the customization.

 

[Jaster42]

Your opinion isn't counter to anyone's here, as far as I can tell. Absolutely no one is calling for "a rushed one," so your argument is a straw man.

I think (and I don't know, so hopefully gobbet will poke back here), that his intent was to say "I like the random element additions, counter to what Joe Steel is saying". Full stop (hence the comma moving to a new point). Then goes on to add they (like many of us) are willing regardless to wait for the polish.

Aside! on your point Joe Steel, while a single narrative path is of course valuable, games like this (CoC, TiTs, etc) of a more open nature tend to need those randomly generated story bits, as that's the feature that allows random encounters, without it all events must be scripted and any choice is limited to the constraits of the designer. And again, stuff like that is good (or at least, can be with a good writer), I've never had the impression that's what the design intent was with Female Agent, though Crustation of course can say to that (and/or change their mind about it either way). Using only scripted events largely shifts it into more of a Visual Novel, though in this case without much of the visual (interactive novel? Choose your own Porn novel?).

Which, assuming this is the path they're opting to develop along, might just mean the games core may not be for you.

 

[Ripe]

Imagine the sex scenes in Female Agent being more like the fight scenes in a normal roleplaying game. A hero in an RPG might fight hundreds or thousands of enemies during a campaign. The DM or game designer doesn't hand script every move in every fight; instead they set up a fighting system, create the characters who will fight in the system, and then rely on PC/NPC decisions and a random element to create unique scenarios.

The problem is that almost nobody scripted every move in a fight... not in P&P versions and not in digital ones. The only fights that can be scripted fully are with boss monsters. That is because the actual fight is not the goal, it's the obstacle on hero's path to achieving a goal. In the end fights don't matter... yes you need to defeat the monster to free the princess, reach some treasure and whatnot, but if you can achieve that without defeating the monster most DM's would actually award you more XP than you'd get by defeating the monster!

Some people might think that sex scenes in a game could never be as interesting as fight scenes in a game. But I think they could be in Female Agent. You'll get strategic choices, a gambling element (the dice rolls), rewards in the form of XP and (in the brothel) literally loot, character development as she levels up in a direction her parents most certainly never intended for her, and rewards in the form of sexy text descriptions and avatar images.

Fight scenes are rarely interesting... they can be intense, difficult and whatnot but in the end, they're are just a mean to the end which is something else. In Female agent sex is a mean to an end (just like combat is in regular RPG), but the end goal is capturing Devilfish. How much sex she had while infiltrating the Hard Cock brothel and waiting for Devilfish to show up is ultimately up to agent herself.

Version 1.4 laid the foundation for this system by introducing version 1 of the SURPS ruleset. Version 1.5 gets us ready to provide visual rewards (like spank marks and O faces). The random NPC upgrade will give the NPCs SURPS stats, which will allow us to write the Sex Engine that can actually produce sex scenes you won't want to always skip through (but will also support Jaded Hooker mode for the times you do).

I feel that every player will enter "Jaded Hooker" mode sooner or later... especially on subsequent playtroughs where we'll test things to see if we can achieve the ultimate goal (capturing Devilfish) in some other way.

 

[Ripe]

Hey Ripe: thanks so much for the feedback, I do take it very seriously and I appreciate you giving me things to think about.
I guess I don't quite get the thrust of your criticism. If you think that Bangkok can only ever be grindy, why do you want me to implement it next?

Is it that you just don't think any of the systems I'm trying to build to make it less grindy will work? Are there different ways I could solve the problem?

Or do you want the story in Bangkok to focus more on crafted story events (like the wet t-shirt contest at Oceana) than the repetitive bump and grind of the brothel?

Or is it something else? Help me understand where you're coming from.

With English not being my first language I sometimes have problem expressing myself fully... I don't think Bangkok will be grindy. What I do think (know) is that Hard Cock scenes will be grind. Because no matter what you do, no matter how many different variations of the scene you write those scenes will not be memorable and will be something that players will start to skip rather fast.

To use your analogy between combat in other RPG's and sex in Female agent... which combat scenes do you remember? The ones with the boss monsters or the ones with throwaway dime a dozen monsters? What you're doing with NPC generator and scripting scenes for Hard Cock Cafe is focusing on throwaway monsters. Something that don't matter and will never matter other than being a way to achieving ultimate goal.

It's not that I think that systems you build to make it less grindy will fail... it's that no matter what you do it will still be grind. Nicely polished and potentially good looking grind, but in the end grind is grind.

So yes, I do believe that it would be far better if you spend your time crafting unique events (like someone who knew her from college entering Hard Cock) then on random NPC generator and scenes involving those characters.

 

[HeelsMaiden]

I think a solution would be to allow players to entirely skip/auto-resolve the generic sex scenes somehow. Which I think Crush has already mentioned but maybe expand it even further and allow players to skip the entire day shift or even activities with a single click.

 

[Joe Steel]

I think (and I don't know, so hopefully gobbet will poke back here), that his intent was to say "I like the random element additions, counter to what Joe Steel is saying". Full stop (hence the comma moving to a new point). Then goes on to add they (like many of us) are willing regardless to wait for the polish.

Aside! on your point Joe Steel, while a single narrative path is of course valuable, games like this (CoC, TiTs, etc) of a more open nature tend to need those randomly generated story bits, as that's the feature that allows random encounters, without it all events must be scripted and any choice is limited to the constraits of the designer. And again, stuff like that is good (or at least, can be with a good writer), I've never had the impression that's what the design intent was with Female Agent, though Crustation of course can say to that (and/or change their mind about it either way). Using only scripted events largely shifts it into more of a Visual Novel, though in this case without much of the visual (interactive novel? Choose your own Porn novel?).

Which, assuming this is the path they're opting to develop along, might just mean the games core may not be for you.

But I am not arguing to do away with random elements entirely, simply that there is a finite amount of lifespan any designer can spend on a game, and that time spent on fleshing out elements are are, ultimately, unimportant to the all-important story is time that will never be spent on the story itself.

Let me give an example: the character is at university, and has [1-3, elect one] relationships with [generat some names and background] and the player chooses the level of intensity of the relationship, plus whether it was oral only, cheating, and/or included anal. Why do I, as the player, care? Do I remember these a moment after clicking "next"? No. It is just time taken away from my playing the game. Let me pick if the character is willing to engage in anal, restrict sex to mostly oral, and is willing to cheat, and tell me the outcome of those decisions. I don't care what the names of partners were, or whether they were biology students or philosophy students, and I won't remember it even if the game tells me.

This wouldn't be so bad if it was some optional chrome added when the game is done, but it's taking developer time that could be spent on the story. Remember the rule of Chekhov's Gun: if it doesn't add to the story in some fashion, don't include it.

Some random elements can add to the story, and should be included. But only at the depth that it adds to the story. The Operation Lioness stuff is good, for instance, even if it includes a lot of random elements, because it allows us to directly shape the main character, and because we can predict the consequences of decisions.

Excessive detail should be avoided and the game should focus on telling its story, because it is an exciting one with lots of possibilities.

 

[Joe Steel]

I think a solution would be to allow players to entirely skip/auto-resolve the generic sex scenes somehow. Which I think Crush has already mentioned but maybe expand it even further and allow players to skip the entire day shift or even activities with a single click.

I agree with this but think that, given that we all have finite time to spend on this, the dev's time should focus on the story, and add the chrome last, rather than first.

 

[gobbet]

Your opinion isn't counter to anyone's here, as far as I can tell. Absolutely no one is calling for "a rushed one," so your argument is a straw man.

What argument? I was stating my opinion that I like the way Crush is going with development, which is quite obviously counter to a number of other posters who have been grumbling away. I'm not trying to persuade anyone of anything, just letting Crush know that I, at least, trust his judgment and development process.

 

[Jaster42]

This wouldn't be so bad if it was some optional chrome added when the game is done, but it's taking developer time that could be spent on the story. Remember the rule of Chekhov's Gun: if it doesn't add to the story in some fashion, don't include it.

Chekov's gun isn't a rule, as these sorts of experiences don't have manditory rules. Yes, cutting out uncessary plots can help, but particularly in games and stories more than just the actions happening, these extra elements can flesh out worlds, characters and moods, even if the direct object isn't used (discounting Red Herrigns, which are ABSOULTELY useful within the contexts of mystery). In his noted example of the rifle (If you note a rifle upon the wall in the first act, it must be fired in the second or third act), said rifle can be used to imply the type of person who owns the house. Someone who displays a firearm, either for defense, pride in hunting, a former soldier, etc.

Further, Chekov's principles on writing apply best within things relatable to his wheel house, which is to say short stories. Which is why they apply to movies well, as those are largely paced in the same way. Games however are NOT short, and their story structure works differently. Particularly games in which player choice is a major element, his ideas simply don't work well, and trying to force them to work is a sure fire way to fuck yourself either narrativly or mechanically. Think of if the Witcher cut out the uncessary parts? No sidequests, no open world, none of those are parts of the narrative. Hell, combat could be cut entirely. But you don't really have a game then. You have a visual novel (where Chekov would be apt and useful). Even in the case of what could be argued as VN's, things like Walking Sims, how different of an experience Gone Home would be if it was litterally just a hallway with narration you didn't look for.

Then you look at other authors, particularly in Sci-Fi and Fantasy will just talk about a thing within their setting because it is there. Not may help the reader have better contex as to what's going on, but often it just informs the world, even if it's not relevent at hand to the plot. I don't want a world in which Tolkien or Douglas Adams didn't just randomly espouse shit about their world or their happenings outside of the matters at hand. Did I need to know the history of the grove Frodo and Sam are walking through? Did it even help me understand their mood, current plight, or inform me of their choices? Not even a little. Was it cool and interesting? You bet! I also can get a lot of enjoyment out of the hodge podge actions being built by a number generator inspiring a strong theater of the mind in similar games, giving just a little frame work

In games, you need interaction, particulary in a game like this, in which player choice is taking center stage, you need a way for non-player actors to intract with the player of the style of the medium (in this game, that's fuckin', at least part of the time, of course chases / fights / planning / converstions will also be included, but that's not what your point is totally focused on).

And again, the thing you are suggesting dramatically changes the core of the game at hand. And while I won't say VN's are bad, I don't get the sense Crushstation planed on making a VN (Nor are they ignoring feedback and plowing face forward with their 'vision', but a creator keeping their core ideals in mind is important for a lot of reasons).

The other element that random fights like this adds an element of wild unknown for the player. And for some players such an unexpected turn and having to roll with it, adds a LOT to the experience (or is in fact the entire core of the experience). And while you as a player discount these, others don't. Heck, tons of the random shit that happens in moments like these become the most memorable to someone like me. The dozens of wacky shit that I've had happen purely because of the mechanical elements or random elements.

The narrative shifts in CoC depending on what happens during a fight, including the descriptive elements of the game (which also had more stable, writing, but just as you seem to skip through the generated 'story' of these piecemeal events, I knew in CoC if I lost to an Imp, it was skip time, as it wasn't different, so I stopped caring about losses, just didn't do anything except I'd skip one page of text. It in fact for a while became the right choice, as it was 2 clicks for victory, as opposed to 1 for losing (and the lost money stopped being relevent during that build at the time).

Excessive detail should be avoided and the game should focus on telling its story, because it is an exciting one with lots of possibilities.

TL;DR - Well that's just like, your opinion man.

 

[Joe Steel]

Jaster, yo seem to have substituted my comments about relating to the story with something about relating to the plot. Plot and story are not the same. The plot should serve the story, but so also should character development, world building, and dialogue. Your comments regarding plot may well be true, but they are completely irrelevant to my point, which wasn't about plot at all. The plot seems to me to be just fine; it's the the time spent developing extraneous and irrelevant detail that I think is ill-considered.

 

[Jaster42]

If you think I've referenced Tolkien because I like his plot, you've miss understood. And you're aruging against a game mechanic by saying it impacts the story negatively, but these mechanics reinforce these elements.

Random events reinforce a core element of a basic element of this story, which is giving up a portion of control. The agent is placed in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar situation, as such the game's thematic element of putting the player in situations they will struggle to predict and must roll with and respond to as they arise reinforces this story.

It honestly feels like you're dressing up an arugement because you like VN's narrative style, rather than a twine style CoC thing, but don't just want to say "Man I'd prefer it if this game was an interactive novel instead of what it is." Which is a fine opinion to have, don't get me wrong.

This is my main point.

Nothing else.

Which you've not addressed, excet assuming I was talking about plotting (I'm not, the plotting for this game isn't even clear yet save the first act hook, and for all I know it isn't even done yet, or even thought about yet). A games mechanics can inform the story, feel and charateriztation, not everyone agrees that it's a bad mechanic (Like me, I rather like a well built system.)

 

[Joe Steel]

Since what you are claiming I said has nothing to do with what I actually said, Jaster, I think we are done.

 

[triggererofretards3]

imagine getting this worked up over a porn game's demo

 

[Jaster42]

imagine getting this worked up over a porn game's demo

If that was directed at me, I'm not worked up, just able to discuss (and busy trying to not work on stuff I should be working on ). I can also be passionate about discussing writing and game design as it's sorta my focus.