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

[alan0511]

My daily question:

I am an Archmage S+ while wearing the wizard's robe. Why can't I cast Cruciato? The slave has a Guilty(3) trait. It seems I can't cast Delikacia or Adverto Servli either. The spell descriptions give no hints.

You can only use Cruciato at guilt 5/ Delikacia at merit 5. This was an arbitrary balance change at 2.2 commit 7088f3a9 and appears to be undocumented.

Adverto Servli can only be casted once per slave.

Check the tooltip on bottom left of the skill.

 

[qwertyu12359]

This was an arbitrary balance change at 2.2 commit 7088f3a9 and appears to be undocumented

Not arbitrary, that was thought through and debated in lengths between in the private dev threads.

Based on the descriptions and the overall balance, it made the most sense. And it hasn't been criticized by theplayerbase since its implementation.

 

[alan0511]

Not arbitrary, that was thought through and debated in lengths between in the private dev threads.

Based on the descriptions and the overall balance, it made the most sense. And it hasn't been criticized by theplayerbase since its implementation.

That's what I called lack of QA. Developers often fall into their own thinking set and testings are based on a lot of assumptions, where something devs think is trivial or taken as granted may not be obvious to a new player. The game has delivered next to no new content in the past few years aside from new graphics and normalized soundtracks which aren't anything worth a headline and I'm almost wondering if lack of critics is just because of constant drop of playerbase. Yo the game is balanced cuz you can survive a zero start by abusing free sparring, no, that's not how regular players see the game. If a player needs to dig into your game file to even get something going there's something terribly wrong.

I got set off by one specific commit "removing blazing neg moodlet" like, bros you can't make your cock behave and you just yeet it because you can't deal with it? Duh it made the game much easier cuz idk who thought it was a good idea doubling penalty of negative moodlet, so basically a free +2 across the board in early game.

 

[bews]

Duh it made the game much easier

IMHO the game balance is totally broken at this point and u just play for fun. So making the game easier is a good thing if you look at it from that perspective.

I played the original game and it was a lot more logical than the current latest version. At least beating did something and forced girls to do some simple stuff like cleaning (unless they got the masochist trait).

I started a new game in the current latest version, got a girl and asked her to do cleaning. She said no. I threatened her, she said no. So I beat her up on order to force her to do simple cleaning. She still said no. I beat her again to the point that she is almost ded - she said no again. So I left her to recover and planned to continue to discipline her next day, but guess what happened? She attacked me at night while she still was at 1 hp. So any landed hit was killing her, there was no way out from this stupid situation

This was totally stupid, illogical and completely broken. Anyone would agree to do a simple task in order to stop beating. Moreover absolutely no one will start attacking you while basically dying (1 hp means u almost ded).

At this point making the game easier is a good thing, at least u will have some fun before deleting it in rage ‍

 

[sillyrobot]

A more general question:

How does one not go broke? The costs and/or the rewards seem to have changed since I last played.

Game is on Easy. Custom start. Started with a house in Outcasts. Got Isabella day 1.

I have trained 2 slaves on contract (D- witch doctor and D+ gladiatrix) in the first 45 days. Pay for each was < 800 septims all-in; about 1400 combined.

I started with 6,000 septims and now have less than 5,000. A few more successes like this and I'll be back in the slums.

I don't think I'm being particularly extravagant.

My costs against the gain of 1400 septims:

• Decade rental/food cost varies widely, but I'd say it comes in around 200 on average. So those 45 days cost about 900 septims. The slaves ate dehydrated food almost exclusively. I think the witch doctor got a few days on fresh food.
• I rented a boudoir for the gladiatrix to increase nature and a lab to train the witch doctor. That's about 100 septims.
• I'm limiting clothing and gear purchases to what's actually used for the trainee. But that still clocks in between 50-100 septims for gear per slave (mainly uniforms and accessories specific for training their specialty + comfy dress and shoes + a couple of items to help increase taming). Call it 150 in total. I did spend more on the witch doctor because I thought some of the items worked like I remember (like high boots increasing temperament) -- they don't any more.
• Add the costs of spell casting, supplements + nutritionist (to get out of being feeble/weak/starved because generous food amount isn't very generous), those rewards with monetary cost (mostly hot springs, plaid and plush toy, a few walks around town), the occasional trip to the boutique for spa/appearance upgrade, and I'm not breaking even.

I looked into what a few proprietors want and will pay, but none appeared to be a better value proposition. My Jack's skills are more generalist and OK, but he's not going to be training a C+ or higher slave any time soon. I sat through a slave auction, but most of the slaves didn't appeal (feeble, poor sanity, arrogant, etc.) and I don't yet have a feel for what a more developed slave will sell for.

I don't mind working to 'git gud', but I have to understand where I'm being bad.

 

[PDP19]

IMHO the game balance is totally broken at this point and u just play for fun. So making the game easier is a good thing if you look at it from that perspective.

I played the original game and it was a lot more logical than the current latest version. At least beating did something and forced girls to do some simple stuff like cleaning (unless they got the masochist trait).

I started a new game in the current latest version, got a girl and asked her to do cleaning. She said no. I threatened her, she said no. So I beat her up on order to force her to do simple cleaning. She still said no. I beat her again to the point that she is almost ded - she said no again. So I left her to recover and planned to continue to discipline her next day, but guess what happened? She attacked me at night while she still was at 1 hp. So any landed hit was killing her, there was no way out from this stupid situation

This was totally stupid, illogical and completely broken. Anyone would agree to do a simple task in order to stop beating. Moreover absolutely no one will start attacking you while basically dying (1 hp means u almost ded).

At this point making the game easier is a good thing, at least u will have some fun before deleting it in rage ‍

There are certain people who are more defiant than others. Beatings dont work on these guys. Even real pimps know that you cant coax obedience simply from beatings. Eventually they'll either get depressed enough that they'll kill themselves, run away, or even worse, try and kill you.

The trick in Jo9's early game is to figure out what the slave would do at low obedience and slowly push from there. An arrogant slave took me 7 days to get her to D-, a spineless slave took me less than 3 days. There's no brute forcing in Jo9, which is why I appreciate the current level of difficulty.

 

[PDP19]

A more general question:

How does one not go broke? The costs and/or the rewards seem to have changed since I last played.

Game is on Easy. Custom start. Started with a house in Outcasts. Got Isabella day 1.

I have trained 2 slaves on contract (D- witch doctor and D+ gladiatrix) in the first 45 days. Pay for each was < 800 septims all-in; about 1400 combined.

I started with 6,000 septims and now have less than 5,000. A few more successes like this and I'll be back in the slums.

I don't think I'm being particularly extravagant.

My costs against the gain of 1400 septims:

• Decade rental/food cost varies widely, but I'd say it comes in around 200 on average. So those 45 days cost about 900 septims. The slaves ate dehydrated food almost exclusively. I think the witch doctor got a few days on fresh food.
• I rented a boudoir for the gladiatrix to increase nature and a lab to train the witch doctor. That's about 100 septims.
• I'm limiting clothing and gear purchases to what's actually used for the trainee. But that still clocks in between 50-100 septims for gear per slave (mainly uniforms and accessories specific for training their specialty + comfy dress and shoes + a couple of items to help increase taming). Call it 150 in total. I did spend more on the witch doctor because I thought some of the items worked like I remember (like high boots increasing temperament) -- they don't any more.
• Add the costs of spell casting, supplements + nutritionist (to get out of being feeble/weak/starved because generous food amount isn't very generous), those rewards with monetary cost (mostly hot springs, plaid and plush toy, a few walks around town), the occasional trip to the boutique for spa/appearance upgrade, and I'm not breaking even.

I looked into what a few proprietors want and will pay, but none appeared to be a better value proposition. My Jack's skills are more generalist and OK, but he's not going to be training a C+ or higher slave any time soon. I sat through a slave auction, but most of the slaves didn't appeal (feeble, poor sanity, arrogant, etc.) and I don't yet have a feel for what a more developed slave will sell for.

I don't mind working to 'git gud', but I have to understand where I'm being bad.

Here's my two cents.

- not sure why youre trying to improve a gladiatrix's nature, its not only hard but also completely unnecessary
- In the early game where you dont have the cash you dont need to buy all the better clothing for your slave. In most cases I'd start a slave with rubber gloves, leather collar, and slippers + a crown of thorns. All that comes at 14 sparks.
- Save scum the slave auction to get better slaves.
- Aim to sell your slaves to the residences, that'll sell for more money than contracts
- Losing money is normal, especially when your slaver's stats are poor. Once you can train up C+ slaves more easily you'll be making money then.

 

[sillyrobot]

Here's my two cents.

- not sure why youre trying to improve a gladiatrix's nature, its not only hard but also completely unnecessary
- In the early game where you dont have the cash you dont need to buy all the better clothing for your slave. In most cases I'd start a slave with rubber gloves, leather collar, and slippers + a crown of thorns. All that comes at 14 sparks.
- Save scum the slave auction to get better slaves.
- Aim to sell your slaves to the residences, that'll sell for more money than contracts
- Losing money is normal, especially when your slaver's stats are poor. Once you can train up C+ slaves more easily you'll be making money then.

Because to qualify for gladiatrix specialty you need a Nature and Temperament minimum of B+. She had the temperament, but not the Nature. I wanted to get the 50ish points of improvement in a reasonable timeframe to get the fast delivery bonus and limit the time spent doing little else. I was getting 3 Nature a day between a sparring match, a trip to the hot springs, and sleeping in the boudoir.

I can cut back on gear, but I'd be saving maybe 50 septims per slave.

I won't bother to save scum much. I'm not against the tactic per se, but if the game relies on it it's broken in my opinion. A dev shouldn't rely on the player cheating. Besides, it's boring especially since I don't really know what I'm looking for yet.

I'll look into the resident slave pricing. I tried the shops mostly. They paid about the same as the contract all-in but I'd have the cost of slave purchase and generally more extensive training times.

I'll only be making money then if I manage to survive until then. Not looking terribly good at the moment. If I keep losing a few hundred per slave, I won't be in business for long.

 

[PDP19]

Because to qualify for gladiatrix specialty you need a Nature and Temperament minimum of B+. She had the temperament, but not the Nature. I wanted to get the 50ish points of improvement in a reasonable timeframe to get the fast delivery bonus and limit the time spent doing little else. I was getting 3 Nature a day between a sparring match, a trip to the hot springs, and sleeping in the boudoir.

I can cut back on gear, but I'd be saving maybe 50 septims per slave.

I won't bother to save scum much. I'm not against the tactic per se, but if the game relies on it it's broken in my opinion. A dev shouldn't rely on the player cheating. Besides, it's boring especially since I don't really know what I'm looking for yet.

I'll look into the resident slave pricing. I tried the shops mostly. They paid about the same as the contract all-in but I'd have the cost of slave purchase and generally more extensive training times.

I'll only be making money then if I manage to survive until then. Not looking terribly good at the moment. If I keep losing a few hundred per slave, I won't be in business for long.

If you want to increase nature/temperament of the slave you can just get her sparring and win more fights. In a manner of speaking, that should resolve itself without a need for a boudoir, which at the early game is rather expensive.

The game really doesnt depend on save scumming because the intention (at least I think so) is for the players to adapt their gamestyle to the various slaves stats they randomly get from the auction. Unfortunately, sometimes you can get screwed with an unworkable set of slaves and forced to write a day off. Save scumming here is merely to invalidate that. Youre not guaranteed a good slave either way.


Dont get discouraged by the losses, its entirely natural. I blew 3k trying to get my slaver stats up whilst struggling trying to get C+ slaves consistently. The moment I could do that I was on the up and never looked back. Even a mere B+ slave sold to residences usually guarantee profits in excess of 2k or more per slave. Until the final spark is spent youre still in the game, just keep your head up.

 

[sillyrobot]

If you want to increase nature/temperament of the slave you can just get her sparring and win more fights. In a manner of speaking, that should resolve itself without a need for a boudoir, which at the early game is rather expensive.

The game really doesnt depend on save scumming because the intention (at least I think so) is for the players to adapt their gamestyle to the various slaves stats they randomly get from the auction. Unfortunately, sometimes you can get screwed with an unworkable set of slaves and forced to write a day off. Save scumming here is merely to invalidate that. Youre not guaranteed a good slave either way.


Dont get discouraged by the losses, its entirely natural. I blew 3k trying to get my slaver stats up whilst struggling trying to get C+ slaves consistently. The moment I could do that I was on the up and never looked back. Even a mere B+ slave sold to residences usually guarantee profits in excess of 2k or more per slave. Until the final spark is spent youre still in the game, just keep your head up.

Like I wrote, she was short 50ish points of Nature. Sparring was giving its share, sure. I didn't want to wait 5 decades before turning her in. Sparring more than once a day runs a calorie deficit even on generous food so I could either pay for a boudoir or a nutritionist.

One of my issues is I literally can't know in-game what the various ranks are expected to sell at. As an experiment, I bought a really cheap slave from the market auction, spent a decade improving her and sold her at the next branded slave auction. She went for less than I paid originally. The prices of the low-ranked slaves are wildly lower than the older version of the game.

It's good to know higher ranked slaves may become break-even or better. Gaining more ranks in skills to allow the creation of higher ranked slaves is likely to be time-consuming, unfortunately. I made the mistake of creating a generalist rather than a specialist. Gaining low ranks in a skill looks a lot easier than gaining the last few ranks does. I had forgotten there is no training available for the trainer. All that is available is the experience from training a slave in the skill.

I looked at the resident slave requests for the area my home is in. I'm looking at probably selling at a loss there too. The worst was D+ for 750 which is, once you add in the cost of acquisition, lower than the contracted payment from the slaver's guild. The higher end wasn't better as it was 1,000 for a C+.

I'm not discouraged so much as I am assuming I'm doing something wrong. The first step to 'git gud' is to understand where you're not.

 

[sillyrobot]

Another foolish question:

My newest slave is corpulent Physique F -5 (+10 / -80). The game description suggests you need to keep a slave at a healthy weight and calories should balance activity.

So, I restricted her food intake and increased her physical activity to force her to lose weight. I note the counter is moving in the wrong direction. After several days of starvation, she's now Physique F -21 (+10 / -80).

Is that expected? Should I be ignoring the description and simply trying to improve her physique or trying to force the weight loss? The description and game mechanics appear to be at odds.

 

[PDP19]

Another foolish question:

My newest slave is corpulent Physique F -5 (+10 / -80). The game description suggests you need to keep a slave at a healthy weight and calories should balance activity.

So, I restricted her food intake and increased her physical activity to force her to lose weight. I note the counter is moving in the wrong direction. After several days of starvation, she's now Physique F -21 (+10 / -80).

Is that expected? Should I be ignoring the description and simply trying to improve her physique or trying to force the weight loss? The description and game mechanics appear to be at odds.

Seems to be correct. You need to reach -80 to get her weight lowered to chubby.

Far as I know, weight is diminished by the total calorie gains on the top left corner. e.g.



If you want your slave to lose weight, just make sure this is negative when you end the day. Vice versa.

 

[sillyrobot]

Seems to be correct. You need to reach -80 to get her weight lowered to chubby.

Far as I know, weight is diminished by the total calorie gains on the top left corner. e.g.

View attachment 3202650

If you want your slave to lose weight, just make sure this is negative when you end the day. Vice versa.

That was my first impression, but I'm afraid if I hit -80, the score (F in this case) will decrease and she'll die. After all, I'm trying to increase the score to B or A from a game mechanic point of view.

There used to be a specific separate weight-control sub-system that seems to be gone now. Understandable, it was cryptic, clunky and caused no end of confusion.

In the end it was moot -- I completed the contract before it resolved.

 

[bews]

The trick in Jo9's early game is to figure out what the slave would do at low obedience and slowly push from there.

Yeah, that was exactly the problem - she refused to do anything, even the simplest tasks. Instead she just attacked me nonstop.
Even if I didn't beat her, she just attacked me again and again and result was the same - she died all the time from self-defense. Obv I didn't have any weapons since it was a new game, but it still was impossible to calm her down - the outcome was the same all the time. Even if u win the first fight, she would attack again immediately after with 1 hp and kill herself.

If u think this is somehow realistic, welp, good for u. To me it's a totally broken game balance, so I'm all in to make the game easier.

 

[drafite]

Yeah, that was exactly the problem - she refused to do anything, even the simplest tasks. Instead she just attacked me nonstop.
Even if I didn't beat her, she just attacked me again and again and result was the same - she died all the time from self-defense. Obv I didn't have any weapons since it was a new game, but it still was impossible to calm her down - the outcome was the same all the time. Even if u win the first fight, she would attack again immediately after with 1 hp and kill herself.

If u think this is somehow realistic, welp, good for u. To me it's a totally broken game balance, so I'm all in to make the game easier.

My go to strategy whenever I get a new slave is getting her a spa and massage in white town. You need her to be at least calm before you can do anything. Encourage to get hopeful or optimistic mood, then explain her situation. Quick save and start training her with artist skills. Imo those skills are the less likely to be refused. If she does refuse, try servant skills. The goal is getting her at least 2 merits, so you can reward her with a sundress. Giving her clothes is the number 1 thing to do after getting her. Not having clothes will kill her mood, so get her the clothes even if she refuses training in the first day.

In the case she does refuse to do anything, leave her alone. You dont have to kill her, or beat her into submission the very first day, you know. As long as you set the rules properly, her awareness, taming will still rise, while her spoil would go down. Keep encouraging and explaining her situation. Threaten if needed. Try training her artist skill again after each day, until she starts listening.

Like, I know the game is hard, but it's not that hard. Not, unless you want to play as Johny...

 

[qwertyu12359]

That's what I called lack of QA. Developers often fall into their own thinking set and testings are based on a lot of assumptions, where something devs think is trivial or taken as granted may not be obvious to a new player.

We don't intend to run polls for every tweak. Nonetheless, we don't do things arbitrarily: we have thousands of messages (public and private) full of debates. We are often conservative with changes no matter what. And we don't double down on shitty changes out of ego; a few features were reversed if they made things worse.

We do get feedbacks, a lot more now than in 2019. Back in v2.2.2, we received dozens of comments criticizing the new balance changes, but there weren't a lot more overall messages back then. We changed it listening to everyone's expectations, from that we released v2.2.3, then the messages of complains immediately ended. After a year, we infer that the silent majority is in general happy.

The game has delivered next to no new content in the past few years aside from new graphics and normalized soundtracks which aren't anything worth a headline and I'm almost wondering if lack of critics is just because of constant drop of playerbase.

Thanks for shitting on everyone's work for this game until your arrived.

People did their best with contributions on their free time. And it's more than what you claim (changelog can tell).

May this frustration you have with what the game "lacks" fuel your drive to do better...

... But I'm worried of the end result. Your comment reminds me of nowadays writers full of pride, who get their hands on established series but dynamite everything, until the thing loses its essence. They failed to see what made the original thing great in the first place, because they didn't come from a place of respect.

Well it's open source, so you'll have free reign to prove me wrong.

Yo the game is balanced cuz you can survive a zero start by abusing free sparring, no, that's not how regular players see the game. If a player needs to dig into your game file to even get something going there's something terribly wrong.

I believe the game is balanced because story mode in normal difficulty is not particularly more difficult than the same thing in 1.21 or 1.7.5. At least that's the goal.

Zero start, if doable, is balanced. If people do zero starts, it means they like the challenge. I'm not against tweaking that further so it's more fun and fair (as long as the tweaks introduced don't mess up with the overall balance). But complaining that the hardest self-imposed challenge is hard doesn't make much sense. Unless it'd be above Kingdom Hearts II's Lingering Will level of difficulty (different game style, but it's a reference that KH players have for being the threshold of very hard but still fair difficulty, as opposed to Terra vs Mysterious Figure which is so hard and weird it became a meme).

I got set off by one specific commit "removing blazing neg moodlet" like, bros you can't make your cock behave and you just yeet it because you can't deal with it? Duh it made the game much easier cuz idk who thought it was a good idea doubling penalty of negative moodlet, so basically a free +2 across the board in early game.

Not sure I understand exactly what you mean.

 

[ReC3KS]

Yeah, that was exactly the problem - she refused to do anything, even the simplest tasks. Instead she just attacked me nonstop.
Even if I didn't beat her, she just attacked me again and again and result was the same - she died all the time from self-defense. Obv I didn't have any weapons since it was a new game, but it still was impossible to calm her down - the outcome was the same all the time. Even if u win the first fight, she would attack again immediately after with 1 hp and kill herself.

If u think this is somehow realistic, welp, good for u. To me it's a totally broken game balance, so I'm all in to make the game easier.

I completed the game on maximum difficulty and spend more that 100h playing, I can assure you that it is not that difficult once you get the trick. You only need start with a slave with the trait "brony" since is literally the best and the most broken trait, it give you money, and you can order her to wear clothes with a lot taming and she will even be happy.

Start choosing a girl with low temper, pride, nature, intellect , because it will be easier and thats how obedience works.
If you want train someone like wilhelmine, the best way to do is literally lowering their attributte, like punishing and forcing her to follow rules, once her attributte are low enough, she will start to follow rules.

The problem is that girls like wilhelmine with high temper, pride, nature and intellect is the most difficult type of girl to train, if you are able to train girls with the similar attributte at the start then you literally can train any girl and the game won't be fun.

 

[sillyrobot]

I never looked at modifying a QSP app in the past. Is there a place to start? (The QSP documentation in the OP is a dead link)

I'm colorblind and have difficulty with the red/green/black stars of energy especially when it is a half-star. Would it be difficult to convert to either different shapes for positive/negative (stars and squares, for example) or to just display a number?

 

[qwertyu12359]

I never looked at modifying a QSP app in the past. Is there a place to start? (The QSP documentation in the OP is a dead link)

The url in the modding guide indeed doesn't work. Here is the untranslated one:

You must be registered to see the links

I'm colorblind and have difficulty with the red/green/black stars of energy especially when it is a half-star. Would it be difficult to convert to either different shapes for positive/negative (stars and squares, for example) or to just display a number?

This used to be text in the QSP but now they are images. Fetch this directory: \game\content\pic\ui overhaul\energy

Then edit them how you see fit in paintdotnet, Gimp or Photoshop.

You can share afterwards if you're happy with the result, it might become a "colorblind mod"

 

[sillyrobot]

The url in the modding guide indeed doesn't work. Here is the untranslated one:

You must be registered to see the links

This used to be text in the QSP but now they are images. Fetch this directory: \game\content\pic\ui overhaul\energy

Then edit them how you see fit in paintdotnet, Gimp or Photoshop.

You can share afterwards if you're happy with the result, it might become a "colorblind mode"

Thank you! The wiki isn't particularly helpful for me as I don't read Russian and google doesn't think the page is translatable for whatever reason. However, I found and will modify the images.