So, I ended up stuck for quite some time on the Katara (Love) questline, due to, IMO, an issue with game design.
Specifically, I was at a point where, in order to progress, I clearly needed to advance my relationship with Katara, specifically to the point of having sex with her, but I couldn't find anything that would let me get father:
- Her Affection score was above 30. I could keep increasing the numerical value, apparently without limit, by hunting mooselions, but given the Affection progress bar on the stat screen had maxed out at 30, I was pretty sure there was nothing more to unlock that way.
- Her Respect was 15, but I could find no further way to advance it. The village elders were out of town, so I couldn't talk her up to them, and ordering her to walk around in skimpy clothing was no longer doing anything.
- My Waterbending was maxxed out, and possibly-imaginary-naked-Katara would kick me out if I tried to train.
- I'd finished every quest I could find and nobody was offering me any more.
Now, the correct next step, as I eventually discovered by checking a walkthrough, was to petition her for sex and be rejected a couple times. It never occurred to me to try this, because every previous sex act with her, from first kiss to blowjobs, had worked the same way:
- Once I met the requirements, the next time I visited Katara's house in the appropriate timeslot, a scene would spontaneously trigger which would culminate in the first instance of that sex act
- After that first time, I could use the menu in Katara's House (Night) to repeat the act. The repeat performance would be very similar, but not identical, to the first; for every act except kissing, there was also a 3rd version, more adventurous than the 2nd, which would trigger after I met additional requirements.
- Trying to use that menu to suggest any act that hadn't yet triggered automatically would do nothing but waste my night action and get Katara mad at me
Thus, the game successfully trained me away from doing the one thing that would, at a later point, be required to progress. I visited Katara's house many times, day and night, to see if I'd passed some magic Affection threshold or otherwise met the requirements to proceed, but I never bothered clicking an option that I 'knew' would only have negative effects.
I can see a couple ways to fix this:
- Add a hint to clue player in that, in this one case, they need to ask outright. Maybe someone muses that Katara seems to like him plenty, but is too shy to take the next step for herself.
- The source of the hint could either be the MC thinking to himself or a conversation with another villager
- There are a number of options on whento deliver the hint:
- Easiest would be as soon as the player has otherwise met all the requirements for it to work, but this might feel rather hand-holdy to some players
- Alternately, the hint could be triggered a certain number of in-game days after meeting the requirements, and only if the player hasn't tried it yet, to give them time to try to figure it on their own
- Finally, if you just want it as a final fallback option, you could trigger it only when the player is in the same situation I was: they've maxxed out Affection and Waterbending, and finished every available option for progression that isn't gated behind the sex scene
- Alternately, make suggesting sex acts less punishing, so players aren't trained to avoid them. Something like this, maybe:
- Before the MC and Katara start dating (with 'start dating' being either the first kiss or the first handjob), suggesting any sex act makes Katara mad and gets the MC kicked out, just like the current behaviour
- After that, suggesting the first sex act in the list that you haven't unlocked makes Katara blush and say something like "I'm not quite ready to go that far... yet...". The player is returned to the Katara's House (Night) menu and can try selecting something else.
- Selecting something further down the list makes her go red-faced and triggers a more forceful rejection, followed by her saying she's no longer in the mood. The player is returned to the village screen and can't return to Katara's house that night, but they don't lose their action and they don't have to appease her before speaking to her again.
- Alternately, those options just aren't allowed at all; clicking them makes the MC think 'Better not risk it' and returns the player to the Katara's House (Night) menu.
A semi-related issue: The thing where you can tell Katara to wear various different skimpy outfits while walking around town is interesting, but the implementation is flawed:
- The more risqué options are gated behind your relationship progression, and selecting an option you haven't unlocked yet costs you your action and offends Katara. However, there's no way to tell which ones she'll accept other than trying them.
- You can't even tell which options are more risqué than others. Some are obvious - 'nude' is clearly going to be pretty high on the list - but others are not, especiallysince you can't actually see any of the options before proposing them, or even after proposing them if she says no.
- For example, 'swimsuit' seems like it ought to be much more palatable than 'see-through shirt', until you actually get her to wear it and discover it has holes in it that expose the nipples and crotch.
- Meanwhile, 'fire-nation style hair', offered on the 'tops' list, sounds like it should be a Lady-Godiva-style 'topless but covering the boobs with long hair' option, which would naturally be pretty extreme, but it's actually just the default bra with a different hairdo.
- There's also no obvious sign as to what exactly new options are gated on - Affection score? Sex acts unlocked? - and thus no way of knowing when it's worth retrying things she previously rejected to see if she'll accept them now
Thus the only way for a player to engage with this feature thoroughly is to try
every option, at a cost of two actions per wrong guess (the lost 'walk in public' action itself, and a hunting action the next day to get back in Katara's good graces), and then do it all again at random intervals.
The solution to this one is simple:
- Make sure each list of options goes from least to most risqué and that the player knows that
- If the player picks the least-risqué of the unacceptable options in a given list, Katara refuses, but doesn't get mad and doesn't kick you out; you just have to pick something else.
This would allow the player to experiment without being punished as long as they're smart about it.
(BTW, does anybody know if the dev read this thread? Failing that, if there's anybody here who subs to the dev's Patreon, feel free to pass on my comments.)
