Could someone please try to explain Willpower to me?
In trying out the game I made two starts, both cursed schoolgirl. In one I went with Jock -> Runner and Sveta had hundreds of willpower (871 springs to mind, but it was hundreds) so that she could go to the community centre gloryhole and work it all night. Yet in the other Outcast -> Slut Sveta only had 50 willpower and could barely manage to be there for an hour, yet she was meant to be the bimbo/slut of the two... Surely it is the sex-obsessed Sveta rather than the sporty (somewhat more intelligent) one who should have staying power at the gloryhole?
(And it's not just the gloryhole, bimbo Sveta was frequently lacking willpower enough for just about any sex act, one blowjob earlier in the day preventing her from inviting Kolka into the shower, etc.)
More generally I just don't get it and can't find a good explanation of it, neither here nor on tfgames, the wiki, or the git faq. What is the conception behind the willpower mechanic that lets it produce such a strange result?
The first one sounds like you played it after we first introduced willpower and there was a bug with it. As willpower at the start should range from 50 to 150 depending on your start from what I remember, Max willpower is 200, which is very hard to hit but you can. Anything above that is a bug and should be reported as such.
Also how much you do something decreases the cost or increases it depending. So for example give a lot of BJ's and it gets easier to do things like use the gloryhole, and it gets harder to resist boys that suggest you give them one.
Willpower is mostly about resisting things or forcing someone else to do something. Sometimes forcing yourself to do things, but keep in mind seeding willpower took us about 3 months in RL. there is at this point over 1k files and something like around 1.3 million lines of text/code in the game. So it was all hands on and with a lot of people being involved you are going to have some people have slightly different idea's on where to add willpower.
Finally it is a catch all system, since we don't know exactly how someone will play their Sveta. Which is why the costs will change over time based on how much you do something and once we add traits to the game they will also impact it. For example with the slut start she will have a trait that will make all sex acts easy to force herself to do and very hard to resist someone else wanting her to have sex. But at the moment we don't have traits.
Kevin who posts here can likely explain it better, as he is a coder and was one of the main people that built the willpower system. I am just a writer that knows some basic code, so hopefully my explanation helps.