QSP Abandoned Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.2.3] [Old Huntsman + Community development]

[qwertyu12359]

Just wanna point out the contrast.

A dishonest one... You obviously have to keep living in slum for a while if you pick Johnny, because the starts doesn't give you money to realistically move day one. But if you picked the hardest possible game challenge, then there's no need to complain about the game being "too hard".

 

[Deleted member 223118]

Better to @ ImperatorAugustusTertius for this kind of balance talk

ImperatorAugustusTertius see this conversation please

Again, I had troubles in 1.7, but it was doable to progress out of the slums start into a house and have success. But right now that does not seem possible.
Ok, continuing to your points:

Just what I can say from reading a bit is... don't stay at the slums. One day we'll make viable to leave here, but for the current game balance it's currently meant to make you rent an apartment as soon as possible (to avoid exploiting the slums as a way to train your slaves reliably at a low cost).

The game is still beatable on hard difficulty with Johnny, ImperatorAugustusTertius and some players proved it many times, and this is my personal rule too (for a comparison, I want the hardest part of the game to be like Lingering Will in Kingdom Hearts II but not like Mysterious Figure in BBS). If you pick the hardest challenge of the game, it's your choice as a player, but prepare to get your ass kicked before coming up or reproducing an optimal strategy. The normal average game experience's difficulty is what I'm interested about to tweak, and staying in the slums to train your slave is not part of this normal average experience. Whether the normal gameplay is indeed too hard in 2.2.2 compared to v2.2.1... we're still assessing that.

I Have also been successful in the past (this was version `Jack-o-nine-tails (Jack-HF-1.7.3)` ) at doing Johnny start with hard difficulty, but now I'm not able to. I'll give it a few more dozen attempts, but from what I'm seeing the slaves do not do basic chores as readily, which leads to more depression spiral than what I saw in 1.7
Beyond that, housing is much more expensive than it used to be:
1.7:

2.2.2:


For a slave with stats in 1.7 you'd net

In 2.2.2 i'm getting slaves selling for:

For my previous successful hard playthroughs I pretty regularly relied on being able to find slaves I could sell. In auctions, early game I could still get hundreds for a rescued if not a thousand. (Scales up quickly with renown and guild status) in 1.7, but you have to have some sort of ranking:

Another 1.7 slave basic sell example, sells for

So slave capturing from border fogs is not a viable way of making money anymore, and on top of the lowered income, from what I can tell, you're more likely to end up with deep wounds that cost 25-50 to cure, even with being A+ fighting and strength, i've not noticed armour affect wounds recieved that much.

And again, slaves are refusing to do basic trainings more more than they used to.

Just in general, coming from the 1.7 version of game to this, the balance seems way off. Getting the special ending with Johnny was hard, but not impossible. Now it seems like a joke to even attempt

Because of the added monthly cost of income, I don't see a way to get johnny from here to there. You have to take a loan, because you have to keep living in the house you have, or immediately sell isabella which means you have to use tutors, and that is even more expense, that the slave will still refuse just like with isabella. And you have to keep living at a place that runs 150 base cost every 10 days if you wanna be able to train any slaves because you can't train them without the bath. But then we're back to my point originally about how allure seems to be really overvalued now compared to where it used to be.

 

[Gussifriz]

There are 2 points in your post but they are ressembling in one way :
- Good sandbox games are very harder to make
- Correctly have slaves managed by fear in a realistic manner is hard to simulate in games (politically correct, report of violence, sexual or not, to authorities, ..... Don't forget that IRL, as every knows, violence, rape, prostitution and slavery don't exists )

Yes you are right, I agree with you and that's why it's even more frustrating, everything is already here ! All the materials ! But I cannot denny my lack of knowledge on the matter and I have no idea how much effort it would actually take to solves this. I really hope that someday we will come to the point where it's not a problem anymore tho ! That would be crazy amazing !

 

[hhowlewd]

A short thought: I think some of the issue that I ran into as a new player is that there's a lot of complexity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but with no real ability to parse how or why things happen, and no clear understanding of the mechanisms by which things tick. Hamakabula is completely right: you are making a game where you have to master hidden back-end mechanisms to progress. Even on an easy start, I found it pretty easy to wind up in a complete failure spiral, or have things just go horribly wrong. The choices I can make aren't clear, and it's very difficult to understand if something is "wrong", pointless, or dangerous for me to do. There's a lot of false choices or trap choices for players who don't know what to do, and that's not a great feeling.

Something to consider for the devs, who I can see are active here: You're making the community version of a game that you know well, and because of that I think you're making a game for experts of the game you've devoted a lot of hours to. I know it may be difficult, but try to imagine a "new player experience", and how little the tutorial actually does to prepare you for, frankly, any of it. The game is understandable to you, both because you made it, but because you're long time fans of the game. For a new player, much of this game is nearly inscrutable.

 

[Deleted member 223118]

A short thought: I think some of the issue that I ran into as a new player is that there's a lot of complexity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but with no real ability to parse how or why things happen, and no clear understanding of the mechanisms by which things tick. Hamakabula is completely right: you are making a game where you have to master hidden back-end mechanisms to progress. Even on an easy start, I found it pretty easy to wind up in a complete failure spiral, or have things just go horribly wrong. The choices I can make aren't clear, and it's very difficult to understand if something is "wrong", pointless, or dangerous for me to do. There's a lot of false choices or trap choices for players who don't know what to do, and that's not a great feeling.

Something to consider for the devs, who I can see are active here: You're making the community version of a game that you know well, and you're making a game for experts of the game you've devoted a lot of hours to. I know it may be difficult, but try to imagine a "new player experience", and how little the tutorial actually does to prepare you for, frankly, any of it. The game is understandable to you, both because you made it, but because you're long time fans of the game. For a new player, much of this game is nearly inscrutable.

I just want to add, I was what would be considered an 'expert' player of this game years ago. The new balance changes they've made, I'm hitting constant depression denial spirals without force breaking every slave so they can learn skills.. maybe it is a 'skill' issue, but as someone who knew the mechanics, however the hell I'm supposed to succeed now is not apparent. The defense of 'you can do johnny still' doesn't address my points on balance issues I've noticed in doing a start that used to be a fairly normal challenge run.

Hell I used to be able to do Johnny hard, but now I'm constantly going broke trying, or having the slaves kill themselves by refusing to do anything in a death spiral. It really does look like breaking sanity is the only real solution to reliably train slaves, but on johnny hard that will mean you go broke before the slave can be restored after training.

 

[Gussifriz]

I think you are doing something wrong... basic tasks like cleaning and cooking are easy to get through fear, unless you have a slave that hates chores with a passion.

One good reflex is to read your slave's Aura. What does it say? I hardly can believe she has lvl. 3 fear and won't do some basic lessons.

First and foremost, thank you for your answer.

I wanted to go back on a few things. I use autocasting auspex and magna magnifika to ensure my aura shines brighter than my slave and to be able to check her aura anytime. I do not actually know the amount of fear she has, but it was to the point where she'd be in tears and sobbing all day being afraid of talking to me. So I assume you know how much fear it translates for the aura.

Me, I'm also a believer that fear based obedience should be around as effective as in real life. But we have to make sure that it doesn't ruin the original game balance, for one (otherwise it'll be the only strategies players will pick, and I also don't remember it ever being the best ones in any version of the game). But there's also all the other aspects: despair, mood, slave personality, master stats... You cannot just forget about these 4 things and expect to always bruteforce your way to the first obedience barrier by simply beating and raping.

The balance is kinda broken already, I did like a few other messages I read before typing this which I mostly agree with, so I won't repeat them. But at the moment, you're locked on a nice slaver path or a depression loop and game over. So there already is only one strategy to pick !

And yes, going with fear should definitely have its consequences on the slave and the results you achieve, which should also depend on how hard on fear you went. Also, on the fear path, we'd ensure that the slave is not beaten for free. She is being beaten because I, the slaver, your master, had decided that you deserve it based on your recent behavior and results.
And the game in his current state, has absolutely no consideration for the past line. All that matter, is the slave !

The game clearly teaches you that rewards and punishments can also depend on the personality of the slave and to try to avoid mindless punishment / rewarding even tho she has the corresponding merit/guilt (why not, even if it had another layer of uncessessary complexity to me, I'll take it). The Slaver has no word on the matter ! I don't want to only have to punish/reward my slave because she feels like she deserves it. I also want a path where it's because I feel like she deserves it, and she has to understand that it's not her to judge - as a slave, a being deprived of freedom - what she could ever deserve, but her master's. And that's part of the problem when I said 'You are the slave of your slave'.

Now, the current system should be kept, definitely ! What we're aiming at here, is more flexibility on the gameplay, not replacing one with another or make it better than anything. Which I will come back on later on the message, at your IA quote.

I do agree that it sounds totally like a realistic train of thoughts.

So yeah, I want to make sure that it gets somehow translated into gameplay. But not every slaves should be tamable like this or it will be repetitive.

Most definitely, there are fearless slaves or masochistic brats or any other kinky slaves on which the fear path could even become a reward of sort and produce some countereffect.

Which reminded me of something ! I had raped a slave once on the current version, she was really obedient to begin with and liked it, there was no resistance at all she did her best to satisfy me and came during the act. Shouldn't it be just like "rough sex without much consent" for the already obedient and devoted slaves that are even tring her best and came during the act so there is no bad outcome to this ? Like, she already accepted her fate and admire you, she want to serve you in every way possible and is well aware that she is ours and is even happy with that !

IA argued with me in private messages that the game never actually had as many different paths for players. Here is a quote:

You see, the problem in this quote - well, maybe it's not the full message but - is that here is nothing related to the slave here. It's on the master's side. And yeah okay cool, there is multiple way I can raise my master's stat, I like that. But there is still only one way to train your slave.

Oh that's something I definitely don't want the players to feel. I hope everything will make more and more sense.

When it comes to items, clothings and such.. I feel like it's already pretty good. I would not spit on a few more precisions but it's already fine. It's when it's directly related to the slave that then, it doesn't make any sense anymore ! And as previously mentioned by seomeone.. There are way too many tricky mechanisms and lacks orientation as what are your options in the game. Different viable ways to make money for exemple (you devs already stated that you could live without selling slaves).

JONT back in 1.7.3 had a community that would share a lot of advices and strategies... that was cool. Now this version of the game changes everything compared to 1.7, so players have to learn again. Kind of like players from Sekiro got their ass kicked in Elden Ring; at least I hope it's what it is (and not bad balancing).

There is one thing that makes me really sad.. It's that I don't remember at all what version of the game it was, but I actually managed to complete the game on a much older version. Might have ben HF or even ealier.. At least I remember I played it, but I'm not sure.

As for Sekiro players.. Well, for a good chunk of FS fans, Sekiro is not what you'd call a FS to the root, it's too different in many ways and feels much more like a rythm game than anything. Which is fine, I liked Sekiro ! But I didn't heard a single soulsborne veteran complain about Elden Ring's difficulty yet (which, I don't consider hard myself).

Yeah it was kinda unrelated to the topic but hey, can't stop talking about From Software's game !

edit : Btw I'm french, I apologize for any weird spelling or mistakes here and there, I'm my only teacher.

 

[joeshmo828282]

Listening to you all about fear and punishment is quite interesting.

I will briefly share my experiences with it.

Even in the older versions and still in 2.2.3, punishment only rarely seemed to work. Like. When you try to do a lesson, and she says no. and then you punish her, and during the punishment the girl goes "please no ill do anything" and then you do the exact same lesson... She almost always refuses again. Which doesn't make sense. she just told me she'd behave... and then she immediately refused.

I have certainly gone in loops of
"do this"
"No"
lv 1 verbal punishment.
"im sorry ill behave!"
"do this"
"No"
lv 1 physical punishment
"im sorry ill behave!"
"do this"
"No"
lv 2 verbal punishment.
"im sorry ill behave!"
"do this"
"No"
lv 2 physical punishment
"im sorry ill behave!"
...

all the way down to her begging me to not kill her.
do the thing? I literally just want to show you how to do the dishes. please.
"no"
ok. well. RIP.


Obviously, behind the scenes the mood penalty from the punishment cancels out or outweighs the fear gain... but. Like. She just said she would. And it isnt even a hard task. Obviously this is not an easy fix... but a 100% obedience override to "forced to do it" effort given (like a broken slave) for actions after punishment, if that action was previously attempted that day might be fitting and IF she promised to be good. (If she didnt repent during the punishment, obviously there should be no forced obedience from the promise) Or. Something like that.

For something completely different, but this reminded me of it:

In the new version, I have also had (even quite obedient (+10 buds)) girls after punishment be all like "girl refuses to wear her collar, force it on her?" If I force, we always fight, and she ends up getting hurt. If I relent, I can just go back to the equipment screen, reequip the item, and she doesn't care at all that it is back on.

The game is still beatable on hard difficulty with Johnny,

Hard difficulty is not Hard difficulty. Johnny actually plays on medium, and setting it to 'hard' in the options menu may set the slave behaviors to hard, but doesn't change the rent prices to their 'hard' prices. And unlike real 'hard' you can change the difficulty back again.

 

[joeshmo828282]

And yes, going with fear should definitely have its consequences on the slave and the results you achieve, which should also depend on how hard on fear you went. Also, on the fear path, we'd ensure that the slave is not beaten for free. She is being beaten because I, the slaver, your master, had decided that you deserve it based on your recent behavior and results.
And the game in his current state, has absolutely no consideration for the past line. All that matter, is the slave !

The game clearly teaches you that rewards and punishments can also depend on the personality of the slave and to try to avoid mindless punishment / rewarding even tho she has the corresponding merit/guilt (why not, even if it had another layer of uncessessary complexity to me, I'll take it). The Slaver has no word on the matter ! I don't want to only have to punish/reward my slave because she feels like she deserves it. I also want a path where it's because I feel like she deserves it, and she has to understand that it's not her to judge - as a slave, a being deprived of freedom - what she could ever deserve, but her master's. And that's part of the problem when I said 'You are the slave of your slave'.

Hmm. I do wish there was some way to 'forgive' Like: Obedient Slaves feel guilty when they fail to alarm me to orgasm. Yea, its cause we really really overdid it last night. That is not her fault. She still woke me up. Obviously just not punishing her is sort of forgiveness, but it doesnt clear the 'guilty' feeling until the end of the day, and her mood will suffer all day for training, because she expects bad things.

Obediant slaves also feel guilty for not trying hard enough in lessons. Which... is fine, and there even seems to have some RNG element of how much they try, which is certainly new and interesting. THey also seem to try less hard if you repeat the same lesson 3 times in a row, which is a brilliant change frankly. but... There should be some way to just be like "I am not mad, just disappointed" Or " You know what you did wrong right?"

In other words, it might be nice to have a lv 0 verbal punishment. Yea, it will and should lower taming and fear, and probably also raise spoiling and devotion very slightly, and probably give her the 'not punished' moodlet. (and, if you do it twice in one day, it should probably significantly lower taming and fear, and significantly raise spoiling) But that way at least it clears the slave's guilt. And if she is a good girl, and says she will try to better, she should again actually try just a bit harder next time. (and if she is a bad girl, she should try even less or refuse outright.)

And that way I can 'punish' my S+ amazon arena champion without her turning on me for once. guh.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

So I tried the new version, and again I come to same conclusion for every version. The game is too hard.

First, thanks for trying and giving feedback!

I managed to clear the hard tutorial of this version without any problem, really..

So far so good. Tutorial uses "easy" obedience difficulty. A normal start defaults to "normal" obedience difficulty but can be set to "easy" using the in-game options menu.

I feel like fear is the biggest joke ever.. A slave can prefer to be beaten up to death and raped multiple time a day everyday than to clean the house. How can you explain me the psychology behind such behavior ? For someone who's passionate about the subject, I can't understand a single second how someone out there in the real world would behave like this. Fear is one of the strongest motivators, even if she's highly rebellious, she should still do it because she will be afraid of being beaten to death and raped. Even if that means that she tries to kill you in your sleep, or to run away (which is what anyone would legitimately try to do in such situation) at every occasion ! She should still do it.

Here, she won't. She will gladly be beaten and raped everyday instead of complying to your order and cherry on the cake, try to kill you or run away or start a fight every time your order her. And that just makes my head hurts, and make me angry at the game.

I suspect that you are confusing disobedience with lackluster performance.

I started a normal game with Blade and acquired a slave who is Arrogant, Uncertain, Intelligent, Reactive, Sensitive and Healthy. This is a slave that is biased towards being disobedient. She is also particularly resistant to doing housework because she is Arrogant and Intelligent. A slave with these attributes considers menial labor "beneath" her and therefore needs a higher level of obedience before she stops refusing to clean for you. So the one specific action we want her to perform happens to be something that she particularly does not want to do.

On day 2, after raping her three times, explaining her position once, flogging her with a belt twice, taking her on a naked walk once and spanking her once, she has two fear, five despair, no awareness, two taming, no habit, no spoil. She no longer refuses to clean the house, but she does such a poor job that she feels guilty afterwards (she expects that she will be punished).

This slave has the maximum level of despair because I raped her repeatedly. If I end the day like this with this particular slave, she kills herself (another slave with the same stats might not choose to kill herself on this particular day). If I had an assistant, I could have her supervise the slave to try to prevent suicide. If I had a dungeon, I could lock her in to prevent her from harming herself. If I had enough magic skill, I could cast Sententia Veritas and Domini Dictum on her to mind control her into feeling merit so I could give her a good reward without spoiling her. If she didn't kill herself overnight, I could let her end the day with unpunished guilt to boost her mood the next day. (This technique is explicitly mentioned in the tutorial lectures.)

But I'm still in the Slums, don't have an assistant, don't have a dungeon, and don't have magic skill. Still, there are multiple other ways I can prevent the suicide. One way is raising her mood. Keeping it simple, I gave her an undeserved gift of a mini pony and dressed her in a maid outfit, hijab and soft slippers. This spoiled her but also raised her mood to melancholic and let me end the day without a suicide. (I could've also paid for a spa visit or done other things to boost her mood, but it wasn't necessary.)

The next morning (day 3), her mood was pessimistic. With this and what she was wearing, when commanded to clean the house, she did it well enough to avoid expecting punishment (she did not feel guilty). So here we have an example of successfully using harsh methods to obtain compliance. This is not an ideal situation, because she has lots of despair that needs to be addressed, but that's what happens when you rape a slave repeatedly in a short span of time. If you're going to use rape, you should know how to deal with the consequences. (If you're in a hurry, Lethe potions can be useful, but there are other ways to reduce despair.)

If you feel that your slaves should become obedient and compliant even faster in the scenario described above, you're in luck, because that feature already exists. Just set obedience difficulty to "easy" in the in-game options menu.

And the game even tells you that at some point, if you want to progress further with a slave, you must get rid of any fear she can have towards you. So you can replace it with devotion.

Where does it tell you this? That statement is incorrect. Fear goes away over time as devotion increases, but reducing fear is not a prerequisite to achieving devotion.

Because again, treat her like shit, she will only be more and more rebellious.

What exactly do you mean by "more rebellious"? Her obedience level goes down?

Bills ! Damn, that's too pricy people. I feel like it is even more so in the early game, where you lack skills to efficiently train slaves and also need to buy equipments for you and the slave.

If you're starting with a master that can't tie his shoelaces, you can spend some time in the Slums before jumping into an expensive apartment, or utilize tutors/school/Isabella to make up for it. In my earlier post I gave an example of how this can be done, but it's by no means the only way to do it: https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-7847729

I also had the opportunity to read in the thread a few things about the charisma if i'm not wrong, something with the standar of living, brand reputation and such.. It feels again, utterly complex for no reason.

The "personality" or "charisma" attribute in 1.2.1 and 1.7.x was linked to brand reputation, home quality/decor and standard of living. That's not new. What's new is that the attribute declines if you don't maintain the necessary conditions or offset the decline. The reason I did this was to make those features of the game have a purpose. In 1.2.1 and 1.7.x, home decoration and standard of living were respectively irrelevant and nearly irrelevant.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Hmm. I do wish there was some way to 'forgive' Like: Obedient Slaves feel guilty when they fail to alarm me to orgasm. Yea, its cause we really really overdid it last night. That is not her fault. She still woke me up.

You did not relieve her of the responsibility, and she was unable to complete an assigned task. Therefore, she expects to be punished.

Obviously just not punishing her is sort of forgiveness, but it doesnt clear the 'guilty' feeling until the end of the day, and her mood will suffer all day for training, because she expects bad things.

Feeling guilty doesn't impact her training performance or mood until you do something about it.

There should be some way to just be like "I am not mad, just disappointed" Or " You know what you did wrong right?"

In other words, it might be nice to have a lv 0 verbal punishment. Yea, it will and should lower taming and fear, and probably also raise spoiling and devotion very slightly, and probably give her the 'not punished' moodlet. (and, if you do it twice in one day, it should probably significantly lower taming and fear, and significantly raise spoiling) But that way at least it clears the slave's guilt. And if she is a good girl, and says she will try to better, she should again actually try just a bit harder next time. (and if she is a bad girl, she should try even less or refuse outright.)

The effects of leaving her unpunished are along these lines, so just do that.

And that way I can 'punish' my S+ amazon arena champion without her turning on me for once. guh.

Slaves already don't initiate combat against verbal punishments...

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

So I'm a returning, fairly experienced player in the game. Something has changed on the slaves being willing to do stuff.

Normal start or custom start? Which game difficulty? Which obedience difficulty?

I have realized that in the slums, there is no way to train without spending daily 3-7 money on the current bath/spa options

Hypothesis 1: It is impossible to succeed if there is too much dirt.

Fact: Bad hygiene lowers the slave's mood, but plenty of other things do too. It's not given disproportionate weight.

Fact: I've successfully trained slaves in the Slums on the hardest difficulty without daily bath/spa visits, with the master's allure at F- and with a (sometimes) Filthy house (only sometimes because the master automatically cleans a sufficiently messy home himself if no one else does, and eventually he gets good at it).

Hypothesis 2: You are not succeeding for other reasons.

Fact: I don't have enough information about what you are doing.

cost proposal for bath slums

Bath in slums has been proposed before, along with various other "upgrades" to make living in the Slums more like living in an apartment. These ideas undermine incentives to leave the Slums. As covered above, being clean while living in the Slums is not a survival necessity. Ergo, it is a luxury, and methods of getting clean while living in the Slums are already priced accordingly.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

I have had zero success with doing any other approach starting with 200 money on hard difficulty

Are you spending any points for this custom start?

Used to be you could turn a profit in the patrol border fogs, and selling, but the prices for slaves there have been nuked.

You can still turn a profit on average, particularly with the trophies from the more difficult battles, more so if you use healing balm or natural healing for minor wounds (with help from high medical skill master or assistant) instead of paying for treatment at the medical center.

Auctions don't get you anything cause it is locked to your brand ranking more than it used to be, it seems.

Charm, rating and (multiple) specializations increase bidder interest for auctions. Brand reputation is just one of the factors in charm. Check the slave's anatomy tab.

 

[Deleted member 223118]

Hey ImperatorAugustusTertius thanks for actually responding respectfully instead of telling people who are talking about what is going on to 'stop complaining'

Normal start or custom start? Which game difficulty? Which obedience difficulty?


Hypothesis 1: It is impossible to succeed if there is too much dirt.

Fact: Bad hygiene lowers the slave's mood, but plenty of other things do too. It's not given disproportionate weight.

Fact: I've successfully trained slaves in the Slums on the hardest difficulty without daily bath/spa visits, with the master's allure at F- and with a (sometimes) Filthy house (only sometimes because the master automatically cleans a sufficiently messy home himself if no one else does, and eventually he gets good at it).

Hypothesis 2: You are not succeeding for other reasons.

Fact: I don't have enough information about what you are doing.


Bath in slums has been proposed before, along with various other "upgrades" to make living in the Slums more like living in an apartment. These ideas undermine incentives to leave the Slums. As covered above, being clean while living in the Slums is not a survival necessity. Ergo, it is a luxury, and methods of getting clean while living in the Slums are already priced accordingly.

I'll double check the cleanliness of the house next time, but I'm fairly certain they were still refusing basic tasks there.
I can attach a save file once I get another start going, so you can see yourself.

Are you spending any points for this custom start?

Originally I was spending fewer points, but now the start looks like:

Main focus is just D- stats, but I've been bumping the primary trait stats trying to get slaves to obey at all.

You can still turn a profit on average, particularly with the trophies from the more difficult battles, more so if you use healing balm or natural healing for minor wounds (with help from high medical skill master or assistant) instead of paying for treatment at the medical center.

It has been a while since I played. Any info on perks the trophies give? From what I recalled it gave some boost to master fighter skill?

As far as healing balm, with slum start, not available.
With natural healing, the slums, without a bath is hard to manage hygine, and as above i wasn't aware medic actually increased healing rate. if that is the case, I'll figure out how to add that in to my start to see if it makes natural healing more viable.

Charm, rating and (multiple) specializations increase bidder interest for auctions. Brand reputation is just one of the factors in charm. Check the slave's anatomy tab.

yeah these were just freshly caught slaves, so nothing special going on there. I tried a few times in the current game to buy a lot of aesthetic improvements, but didn't get much value out of it from what I saw. I'll give it another go though.

Thanks for all the questions and feedback! Appreciate ya not goin "don't complain, you're on hard difficulty. don't play in slums" when people are just pointing out their own issues and saying balance feels off. I'll attach a save to another post if I keep having failure spirals with everything else looking right from what I can tell.

 

[Hamakabula]

I suspect that you are confusing disobedience with lackluster performance.

I started a normal game with Blade and acquired a slave who is Arrogant, Uncertain, Intelligent, Reactive, Sensitive and Healthy. This is a slave that is biased towards being disobedient. She is also particularly resistant to doing housework because she is Arrogant and Intelligent. A slave with these attributes considers menial labor "beneath" her and therefore needs a higher level of obedience before she stops refusing to clean for you. So the one specific action we want her to perform happens to be something that she particularly does not want to do.

On day 2, after raping her three times, explaining her position once, flogging her with a belt twice, taking her on a naked walk once and spanking her once, she has two fear, five despair, no awareness, two taming, no habit, no spoil. She no longer refuses to clean the house, but she does such a poor job that she feels guilty afterwards (she expects that she will be punished).

This slave has the maximum level of despair because I raped her repeatedly. If I end the day like this with this particular slave, she kills herself (another slave with the same stats might not choose to kill herself on this particular day). If I had an assistant, I could have her supervise the slave to try to prevent suicide. If I had a dungeon, I could lock her in to prevent her from harming herself. If I had enough magic skill, I could cast Sententia Veritas and Domini Dictum on her to mind control her into feeling merit so I could give her a good reward without spoiling her. If she didn't kill herself overnight, I could let her end the day with unpunished guilt to boost her mood the next day. (This technique is explicitly mentioned in the tutorial lectures.)

But I'm still in the Slums, don't have an assistant, don't have a dungeon, and don't have magic skill. Still, there are multiple other ways I can prevent the suicide. One way is raising her mood. Keeping it simple, I gave her an undeserved gift of a mini pony and dressed her in a maid outfit, hijab and soft slippers. This spoiled her but also raised her mood to melancholic and let me end the day without a suicide. (I could've also paid for a spa visit or done other things to boost her mood, but it wasn't necessary.)

The next morning (day 3), her mood was pessimistic. With this and what she was wearing, when commanded to clean the house, she did it well enough to avoid expecting punishment (she did not feel guilty). So here we have an example of successfully using harsh methods to obtain compliance. This is not an ideal situation, because she has lots of despair that needs to be addressed, but that's what happens when you rape a slave repeatedly in a short span of time. If you're going to use rape, you should know how to deal with the consequences. (If you're in a hurry, Lethe potions can be useful, but there are other ways to reduce despair.)

Thanks for giving us an example of harsh training and acknowledging that all the extra bells and whistles (Magic, a well trained assistant, a dungeon etc) are simple not available at all times.

Still, it doesn't seem like an example of actually "successfully using harsh methods to obtain compliance". In the end the solution is still to switch to playing nice and "bribing" her into compliance with gifts. The dynamic that many of us are talking about - realisation of slavery and an attempt to obey out of self preservation - is not there. Girls will rather kill themselves or kill you before doing basic chores unless given gifts.

And this temporary mood boost from gifts galore will probably be gone the next day anyway, leaving you stuck in the downwards spiral again. With rent due in a few days you then can't help but feel like this clearly was the inferior option to the sundress routine, which brings us to the issue of forced gameplay.

Doesn't matter if a path is technically feasible if you know all the tricks in the book, it's about wether it is viable.

Then also there's the elephant in the room: costs of living.
I disagree with gifts being the gold standard of slave training - I'm her master, not her sugardaddy - but oftentimes I simply can't even AFFORD them. Upkeep in anything but the slums will easily be 700+ so I'd be constantly forced to cut corners and scrape together income wherever. There's no room to experiment, there's no room for error or choice, you have to nonstop ace it (and made all the right choices outside of slave training too, like having gladiatrixes and ponys for passive income) or cost of living will mercilessly grind down your funds until there's nothing left.

I spent HOURS in the Dev version perfecting speed training until I was pumping out D+/C- slaves *every week*. Thought I had finally gotten the gist of it but then the guild contractor would sometimes suddenly cut the price in half because I had not considered some inane background stat and my meagre profit would turn into a crushing loss, putting even more pressure on the next training etc.
Not to mention that it was mind numbingly unfun to perfect a single routine over and over and over and over and over just to survive. My dayjob is more fun than this


How about making the "3x costs 1/3 gains hardcore survival mode" an option, rather than the default. Some people might be into that, but based on the comments here lately most people clearly aren't

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

I always considered the Arena a side gig, that you can explore if you are into that kind of stuff, same as ponygirl racing etc, not an essential part of your income.

It's a porn game and we all have different kinks. Making some a hard requirement for financial survival is a bad move

They're not essential. But, if you choose not to supplement your income in any of the multitude of ways that you can do so, the implication is that you will need to have savings to cover your expenses while training, because if your only income is a periodic sale then you are living on the proceeds from your last sale(s) until the next one.

This might mean that you need to spend some time living in the Slums and saving up sparks before you move into an apartment. How long it takes you to produce a saleable product and how much you can get for that product will determine how much you need to save.

Minimizing training time and maximizing value are goals that pull in different directions. The more time you invest, the higher the value can become, but some slaves take more time than others to reach the same level.

D and C ranked slaves are not very valuable. A B+ slave is valued 3.5 times more than a C+ slave. Therefore, once you have enough savings to cover your expenses for training a slave to B- or B+, investing the time to do so will give you more sparks and more time for the next project.

Also the game seems to weigh the "nice" path much more favorably than the cruel one now. One gives you a good chance of quickly lowering resistance and achieving training cooperation and stat increases / rewardable behavior while the other will just instantly lock you into a pointless spiral of beatings and depression.
JoNT always had a mechanism to discourage just beating them into submission - the Bruises. It didn't need another one.

Example here: https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-7851927

The effectiveness of punishments varies depending on the master's skills, the slave's attributes and traits, and the punishment type. In general, punishments increase obedience faster than rewards, so there's reason to use both. Enforcing rules on disobedient slaves is also a powerful tool for building obedience faster. However, punishments or forced rules impact the slave's mood negatively, and if you don't compensate for that, the slave will gain despair. Despair is an original JONT gameplay mechanic. It is manageable, and it needs to be managed if you want to avoid breaking the slave. The impact of negative mood depends significantly on the slave's empathy attribute, a fact that is clearly stated in the help text for that attribute. "a less sensitive slave is hardened against depression and endures suffering"

Consequently, using a one-size-fits-all approach to slaves will tend to yield lower cashflow (income over time) than using an adaptive approach tailoring your approach to each slave. If your average cashflow is less than your average expenses, you're heading for a game over.

You are compelled to pay the costs of feeding the master. Almost all other expenses are discretionary.

Handing out dresses, cat ears and chocolate doesn't spell slave trainer to me. It can be one way to do it, but it shouldn't be the only viable one. (Which it currently seems to be because from my experience with the Dev version NOT giving them a sundress or something would usually already make them hate you simply for being naked to the point of refusing basic orders).

Leaving a slave naked has benefits as well as drawbacks. Whether it's better or worse depends on the slave, the master, and what else you're doing. By itself, it's not decisive.

It just feels SO repetitive doing the "encourage -> explain position -> give sundress -> forbid masturbation and orgasm but nothing else" routine with *everyone* as to avoid the death spiral of depression and rebellion you'd otherwise face
[/QUOTE]
If it feels repetitive, try doing something different. It's not the only way, nor the best way.

I'd even be fine with the violent approach being less efficient if the game would afford us the time to walk that path, but since Living expenses are up to basically 1 decent slave sale PER WEEK you just can't.

Living expenses can be reduced. If you find that you don't have enough savings to pay the bills for more than one decade, then you can cancel the rent until you save up enough to cover your expenses for a longer project. Producing more valuable product will increase your cashflow, so you can afford more expenses. Supplemental income also helps, but again, is optional.

And if I sound frustrated now it is because I (and others) raised the exact same points that Gussifritz did with the Dev version weeks ago and they clearly weren't considered then (in fact you made it worse with lowered sale prices in addition to keeping the insane rent)

They were considered, and in response the rental costs were reduced for normal and easy game difficulty.

Take for example the training example that Imperator Augustus posted a few pages back. By making very specific choices (e.g. sending her to school over training her himself) he managed to have the slave perform in a way that she could be rewarded, having further positive impact on her mood, her resistance, her stats, further training etc. If by some other choice she would have performed poorly she would have had to be punished, lowering her mood, making her perform more poorly in the next task, asking for more punishment and so forth.

Essentially the game rn runs on two self-reinforcing loops now, a positive and a negative one and if you don't do your damndest to catch the positive one you are screwed.

Are you familiar with the idiom "flogging a dead horse"?

You don't need to only punish, or only reward. You can do both. If the slave's mood drops too low, recognize that can lead to despair, a fact which is clearly stated in the tutorial and other places in the game. If you don't want despair, then do something to raise the slave's mood. For example, let them go to sleep with unpunished guilt, or punish them less harshly than they expect, or give them a break from some of the rules they dislike, or give them a break from assignments they refuse, or ask how they feel and consider how else you can remove negatives or add positives.

No one is forcing you to choose a particular interaction with your slave. Act in ways that will give a result you want. A slave feeling guilt is an outcome that you can elicit when you want to punish her; a slave feeling merit is similarly an outcome that you can elicit when you want to reward her. Sometimes a slave will surprise you, but you should be able to predict the outcome more often than not.

In order to fix this the "bad" path needs to be made viable again. Even a depressed or scared slave should try to perform well in her tasks (if only out of fear of punishment), so she can actually get into reward territory again and break the cycle. Which is what would happen realistically.

A slave with depressed mood can be made to perform tasks well enough to earn merit. Fear contributes to this, as does her clothing and (in case of lessons) who is teaching her. But despair makes it harder, although even maximum despair can be overcome, as shown here: https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-7851927

But rn failure invites punishment which invites a mood drop which invites more failure which invites more punishment. Punishment doesn't seem to achieve ANYTHING at all other than making the slave miserable and inefficient. Which is unrealistic. Fear is a damn good motivator and both paths should have their pros and cons.

Again, punishment effectiveness depends on various factors, with the master's skills and attributes being an important element.

It is important to distinguish refusals (obedience) from inadequate performance (diligence). Mood is an important factor for diligence, and it's one that is fairly easy to boost. While it's possible to get adequate performance with a stick-only approach, switching from stick to carrot when the slave stops outright refusing can save a lot of time.

For example I clearly remember "Spoiling" being a big problem in the original version, where being too nice could screw you as much or more as being too cruel.

This is a master/slave relationship after all so girls should be more taken aback by you showering them in gifts than by being asked to do housework....

Giving lots of gifts already does spoil slaves. If you're not seeing this happen in a situation where you think it should, please give a specific example.

 

[sarinee]

It has been a while since I played. Any info on perks the trophies give? From what I recalled it gave some boost to master fighter skill?

The boost is one thing, you are winning a better slave with good attributes after defeating elite enemies.

As far as healing balm, with slum start, not available.

Healing balm is a little cheaper than the medical center, not very much.

With natural healing, the slums, without a bath is hard to manage hygine, and as above i wasn't aware medic actually increased healing rate. if that is the case, I'll figure out how to add that in to my start to see if it makes natural healing more viable.

Your medic skill, the cost of taking bath in slum, your slave's housekeeping, a lab and a skilled slave who can brew potions, trade-offs need to be done. But in an early game, immediately curing yourself in the medical center is always a good choice.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

I'll double check the cleanliness of the house next time, but I'm fairly certain they were still refusing basic tasks there.
I can attach a save file once I get another start going, so you can see yourself.

That would help, thanks.

Originally I was spending fewer points, but now the start looks like:

Main focus is just D- stats, but I've been bumping the primary trait stats trying to get slaves to obey at all.

On hard game difficulty, the obedience difficulty is locked at "hardcore", and the effect of that setting is to make slaves more rebellious (literally, their obedience starts at a lower level). It also has other effects, for example limiting the impact of punishments on a slave's pride attribute. Effectively, this makes slaves that would be pushovers on normal or easy obedience difficulty much more resistant, and it makes challenging slaves even more so.

For normal starts or normal/easy custom games, there's also an override for the diligence formula (how well the slave performs a task); if the slave's obedience OR mood is positive, they will usually perform tasks adequately, regardless of other factors. On hard, there's no override.

It has been a while since I played. Any info on perks the trophies give? From what I recalled it gave some boost to master fighter skill?

Sorry, by "trophies" I was referring to the "trophy slaves" you get after the battles, not the victory trophies displayed in the trophy room.

With natural healing, the slums, without a bath is hard to manage hygine, and as above i wasn't aware medic actually increased healing rate. if that is the case, I'll figure out how to add that in to my start to see if it makes natural healing more viable.

I use natural healing for the master if his injuries are at "slightly wounded" and otherwise I treat them either with balm or the medical center to avoid the strength drain of more severe injuries.

yeah these were just freshly caught slaves, so nothing special going on there. I tried a few times in the current game to buy a lot of aesthetic improvements, but didn't get much value out of it from what I saw. I'll give it another go though.

When you say auction, do you mean sell to Farid or sell at guild auction? My comments were about the guild auction. Either way, F- slaves are not considered very valuable.

 

[sarinee]

Still, it doesn't seem like an example of actually "successfully using harsh methods to obtain compliance". In the end the solution is still to switch to playing nice and "bribing" her into compliance with gifts. The dynamic that many of us are talking about - realisation of slavery and an attempt to obey out of self preservation - is not there. Girls will rather kill themselves or kill you before doing basic chores unless given gifts.

And this temporary mood boost from gifts galore will probably be gone the next day anyway, leaving you stuck in the downwards spiral again. With rent due in a few days you then can't help but feel like this clearly was the inferior option to the sundress routine, which brings us to the issue of forced gameplay.

The carrots and sticks principle, fearness from threatening or torture is an effective driving force, but also temporary rather than longlasting, it's the "sticks", the gift is also a part of rewards, essencially profit-driven compliance which is longlasting in comparision, it's the "carrots".

Extreme and long lasting fearness will eventually end up into driving them angry and even mad, struggling to overthrow your rule and kill you, whatever the cost and outcome. This is how "despair" works in the game.

 

[Deleted member 223118]

On hard game difficulty, the obedience difficulty is locked at "hardcore", and the effect of that setting is to make slaves more rebellious (literally, their obedience starts at a lower level). It also has other effects, for example limiting the impact of punishments on a slave's pride attribute. Effectively, this makes slaves that would be pushovers on normal or easy obedience difficulty much more resistant, and it makes challenging slaves even more so.

Yeah I was familiar with that, which is why I used to play on difficult all the time. Just feels like things are harder and I was speaking off the cuff about how I felt as a returning player on those points. And who knows, I might have been getting so carried by other stuff I was able to more easily mitigate some of the harder parts of hardcore without realizing it, looking back. I've got my old version running again, so once I have a few successful trainings I'll take a look at the old version and take more detailed notes.

I wanna say your posts on the mechanics are great (reading your other replies), your two on obedience, devotion, and depression are stellar.

I use natural healing for the master if his injuries are at "slightly wounded" and otherwise I treat them either with balm or the medical center to avoid the strength drain of more severe injuries.

I gotcha, yeah I'll try that a bit and see how it works out for me, the moderate wound seemed to heal really slowly and I don't think it is worth the cost of investment when you're also losing strength for not eating, or spending a spark a day to at least eat while waiting on healing.

When you say auction, do you mean sell to Farid or sell at guild auction? My comments were about the guild auction. Either way, F- slaves are not considered very valuable.

Most of the pictures I posted were comparing selling to Farid.
There was only one auction picture I posted and that was of a F- slave without any work done to her, but the slaver did have some renown and other stats. It was just an example of how easy it was to earn money back then on selling slaves, and how much easier value you could get back in the old versions.
My response you quoted, I was trying to auction as a new slaver -- had no renown or otherwise, but the slave was D+ and spent some on the slave's beauty + exotic to the amount I could afford. But ran out of money money and that slave sold for like 30 sparks at auction. Was about 1 level off on the strength to being a gladiator I could properly sell, which was my original goal.

EDIT: I've since tried another 2 runs on getting a start going from the slums by capturing and selling slaves to Farid on hard difficulty. Used to be a valid strategy, and I've yet to have it be successful. I've not gotten a single slave to sell for more than 40, and with only 400 starting money,I haven't been successful. I also tried taking a loan so I could get a better beating stick with a secondary beating stick for other opponents, but most fights leave me with injuries, and some are heavy injuries, almost none are light injury.

If I try a loan, I just see my money dwindle over the month from ~300 to nothing, even with slightly better gear. I haven't been able to utilize the medic skill but for one injury over two failed runs that lasted 20 days without a loan, and 30 days with.

I don't see how you can turn a profit fighting the bogs anymore.

 

[Hamakabula]

They're not essential. But, if you choose not to supplement your income in any of the multitude of ways that you can do so, the implication is that you will need to have savings to cover your expenses while training, because if your only income is a periodic sale then you are living on the proceeds from your last sale(s) until the next one.

Yeah well I'm playing a slave trader so I don't think slave trading being my only source of income is unreasonable. Supplementary income should be just that: supplementary.

It was like this in previous versions too and it was fine, the issue is with how high costs of living have become versus how little money you're making with anything but high class slaves. I was playing M'Lord here, a high skilled slaver with money in the bank, but still I was heading for bancruptcy eventually because by default you will lose money if you produce less than a D+/C- Slave per week.

To me a slaver is a pretty cushy job, very high income with lots of leeway in terms of working hours. Like most unsavory jobs, pimps etc. The benefit you get for doing a job that most people won't do. Then you can do it poorly and live an ok live or ace it and make mad bank. But outright bancrupcy should be something you only face when you blow all your money on coke and gold watches.

You seem to want it more in line with a precarious gig worker, always facing destitution. Eviction and bancrupcy always only a paycheck away, needing savings and a 2nd or 3rd job just to survive, with only the very best being able to break the cycle and thrive.

In the end it's a balancing and atmospheric choice and I would have made a different one.

Enforcing rules on disobedient slaves is also a powerful tool for building obedience faster.

Not my experience. If I would make rules other than masturbation and orgasm denial (and very rarely housework for slaves that were meek out of the box) I would get a rebellion increase and a mood decrease, starting the downward spiral. If I'd punish them I'd get despair, if I wouldn't they'd keep refusing an I'd lose obedience. Either way, it'd be a loss.

Leaving a slave naked has benefits as well as drawbacks. Whether it's better or worse depends on the slave, the master, and what else you're doing. By itself, it's not decisive.

If it feels repetitive, try doing something different. It's not the only way, nor the best way.

Again, not my experience. Them being naked would always lead to a mood drop, a diligence decrease and the ol' downward spiral. Every single time. Whereas giving them a sundress would always do the reverse. It may not be decisive by itself, but it is a factor in the first few days where you're usually facing a depressed naked chick that hates you, hence why it feels forced to make her less naked and less depressed asap if you want any chance to turn her into something sellable in the few days you have.

You don't need to only punish, or only reward. You can do both. If the slave's mood drops too low, recognize that can lead to despair, a fact which is clearly stated in the tutorial and other places in the game. If you don't want despair, then do something to raise the slave's mood. For example, let them go to sleep with unpunished guilt, or punish them less harshly than they expect, or give them a break from some of the rules they dislike, or give them a break from assignments they refuse, or ask how they feel and consider how else you can remove negatives or add positives.

Ok now this is actually something where our understanding of psychology just seems to differ fundamentally. If I'd not punish rebellion, or even reward it with lenience, behaviorism would not expect gratitude and behavioral change, it would expect more rebellion. Because you reinforce the rebellious behavior.
If this is indeed how the background mechanics work then I understand better why I'm running into so much trouble.

Again, design choice, again, I'd do it differently.

No one is forcing you to choose a particular interaction with your slave. Act in ways that will give a result you want. A slave

Also not my experience. The result I want is a slave that does the things I tell her to do. And there are very few interactions that I found that lead to that (or to be more precise: very few interactions that I found that lead there *fast enough*). Hence why the gameplay feels forced, and not just to me

Again, punishment effectiveness depends on various factors, with the master's skills and attributes being an important element.

Again, playing M'Lord. Good skills, good attributes, so I would expect punishment to have the desired effect: a more obedient slave. My experience however was that it would give me a more depressed and less diligent slave. Her obedience might also increase in the background, but in terms of performance that would be far outweighed by the other negatives, so I would not get the outcome I want. What good is an obedient slave that's unable to increase her stats (and thus sales value) because of mood problems. And so we are back to being forced into sugardaddy mode


But I feel like we are going in circles here. You are clearly an absolute master at this game and know every single trick and mechanic there is. You'll look at a slave and see numbers, knowing exactly what to do to increase what and what threshold would be needed where, to make X happen.

As such, no matter what I say or complain about you will always find an example of how to overcome that particular situation so to you the games balancing seems fine. Maybe easy even.

But consider for a moment that not everyone, in fact barely anyone, knows the game as deeply as you do. Most of us are just winging it with the information thats on the screen (not in the code) and common sense knowledge about things like behavioral psychology (which, as mentioned above, I do think the game violates). And that makes us constantly run into walls with the ever looming threat of bankcrupcy just days away. Which is simply not fun

Not sure what else to say. I'll leave it at that and come back in a few months to see if the game is once again enjoyable for me