- Apr 12, 2021
- 290
- 146
My monitor size is small, a laptop you know, so blurring borders looks quite well for me.
QSP Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.3] [ImperatorAugustusTertius / qwertyu12359]
- Sep 11, 2018
- 42
- 60
So I tried the new version, and again I come to same conclusion for every version. The game is too hard.
Only veterans with a lot of knowledge and experience of the game can somewhat manage and even here you can see multiple people still pointing out the difficulty. This game is the antithesis of beginner friendly (and I don't even consider myself being one) ! And while I can appreciate some difficulty.. Here it quite often means forced gameplay to overcome your current problem. It's supposed to be a "sandbox", but to be honest, 50% of the time I fell like I have to, I must, do this or that. If I don't, I'm screwed !
I managed to clear the hard tutorial of this version without any problem, really.. But I don't think I ever managed to last more than 3 decades on normal difficulty. Every single thing in this game feels like a real struggle ! I already tried like 10 games on the current version, all were incridibly pitiful. I'm a veteran From Software player, I'm in love with Bloodborne and can beat in bl4 with not problems (no lvlup), and aside from that, you can play how the hell you want at 100%.
But when I play JoNT, everything seems utterly complicated for nothing. To the point it's really frustrating ! I want to enjoy this game because I know there is something special about it that will always drag me to it, I can't delete it.
But I'm also super frustrated about how it works and I already suprised myself being really angry about how things were designed. Like fear.. 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.
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. And while it makes sense that a devoted slave is indeed better in every aspect than a fearful one, it makes relying on fear to force your way through at the beginning of the training to make her behave and create some habits near impossible. Because again, treat her like shit, she will only be more and more rebellious. And whether she fears you or not, it doesn't matter if she's rebellious because she will refuse to do anything anyway. So you have to go easy, and that's where I feel that it loses on the "sandbox" aspect and that we come back to what I previously said, 50% of this game feels like forced gameplay.
I want to be able, if I ever want to, force my way and make her comply with my orders, at least the basic ones. Like, okay you don't want to be fucked by a monster, act like toilet ? It's fine ! But clean, cook, and wash ffs !
I want to be able to tame her through fear to make her go to the realization that "Oh, yeah, I'm a slave, now I get it." And after that, reward. Then she realizes that if she had obey from the start, everything would have been easier.
If she's not euphoric about it, I don't care. I'm also not talking about breaking her, but just make her realize her place and start accepting basic orders through fear without having to make sure that I don't treat her too harshly because otherwise she refuses everything. And after that point, making sure she's well treated to go for the devotion path.
Playing this games sometimes feels like being the slave of the slave. She is the one to dictate how you must treat her in order the achieve great results and completely blocks some paths.
So now to adress a different matter then specific behavior..
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. 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.
And as for assistant weight management, I feel the same as people have already expressed, we shouldn't have to manage the manager. I'd be favorable to not having to worry about my assistant when I already have my hands full with my slave.
Overall, the game is great and shows incredible potential, but to me lacks true sens of liberty. There is a numerous amount of things you 'must or have to do/buy' in order to do this or that and there is an obvious lack of comprehension of behaviorism (which can be somewhat okay to a certain extent, especially the other way around, it's a game afterall, but this is just too much).
If you every felt that something was extremely off with what I'm saying, please kindly point it out and guide me. At this point I feel like the only way to beat the game is not to actually use common sens, but understand the code. So I'm ready to learn how things are working instead of trying to rationalize, I don't want to give up on JoNT again.
Thank you for your work on the game and not giving up either !
Only veterans with a lot of knowledge and experience of the game can somewhat manage and even here you can see multiple people still pointing out the difficulty. This game is the antithesis of beginner friendly (and I don't even consider myself being one) ! And while I can appreciate some difficulty.. Here it quite often means forced gameplay to overcome your current problem. It's supposed to be a "sandbox", but to be honest, 50% of the time I fell like I have to, I must, do this or that. If I don't, I'm screwed !
I managed to clear the hard tutorial of this version without any problem, really.. But I don't think I ever managed to last more than 3 decades on normal difficulty. Every single thing in this game feels like a real struggle ! I already tried like 10 games on the current version, all were incridibly pitiful. I'm a veteran From Software player, I'm in love with Bloodborne and can beat in bl4 with not problems (no lvlup), and aside from that, you can play how the hell you want at 100%.
But when I play JoNT, everything seems utterly complicated for nothing. To the point it's really frustrating ! I want to enjoy this game because I know there is something special about it that will always drag me to it, I can't delete it.
But I'm also super frustrated about how it works and I already suprised myself being really angry about how things were designed. Like fear.. 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.
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. And while it makes sense that a devoted slave is indeed better in every aspect than a fearful one, it makes relying on fear to force your way through at the beginning of the training to make her behave and create some habits near impossible. Because again, treat her like shit, she will only be more and more rebellious. And whether she fears you or not, it doesn't matter if she's rebellious because she will refuse to do anything anyway. So you have to go easy, and that's where I feel that it loses on the "sandbox" aspect and that we come back to what I previously said, 50% of this game feels like forced gameplay.
I want to be able, if I ever want to, force my way and make her comply with my orders, at least the basic ones. Like, okay you don't want to be fucked by a monster, act like toilet ? It's fine ! But clean, cook, and wash ffs !
I want to be able to tame her through fear to make her go to the realization that "Oh, yeah, I'm a slave, now I get it." And after that, reward. Then she realizes that if she had obey from the start, everything would have been easier.
If she's not euphoric about it, I don't care. I'm also not talking about breaking her, but just make her realize her place and start accepting basic orders through fear without having to make sure that I don't treat her too harshly because otherwise she refuses everything. And after that point, making sure she's well treated to go for the devotion path.
Playing this games sometimes feels like being the slave of the slave. She is the one to dictate how you must treat her in order the achieve great results and completely blocks some paths.
So now to adress a different matter then specific behavior..
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. 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.
And as for assistant weight management, I feel the same as people have already expressed, we shouldn't have to manage the manager. I'd be favorable to not having to worry about my assistant when I already have my hands full with my slave.
Overall, the game is great and shows incredible potential, but to me lacks true sens of liberty. There is a numerous amount of things you 'must or have to do/buy' in order to do this or that and there is an obvious lack of comprehension of behaviorism (which can be somewhat okay to a certain extent, especially the other way around, it's a game afterall, but this is just too much).
If you every felt that something was extremely off with what I'm saying, please kindly point it out and guide me. At this point I feel like the only way to beat the game is not to actually use common sens, but understand the code. So I'm ready to learn how things are working instead of trying to rationalize, I don't want to give up on JoNT again.
Thank you for your work on the game and not giving up either !
- Nov 5, 2017
- 41
- 55
Haven't played a newer version since 1.7.X. Game ran pretty well(and loading seems way faster) but I encountered a problem.
Seems like there is no way to control your assistant's weight? No matter what you set your assistant on, she will always accumulate calories at the end of the day. Nutritionist doesn't seem to work on assistant either.
Seems like there is no way to control your assistant's weight? No matter what you set your assistant on, she will always accumulate calories at the end of the day. Nutritionist doesn't seem to work on assistant either.
- Apr 12, 2021
- 290
- 146
- Feb 20, 2018
- 607
- 391
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
)Concerning the difficulty :
I agree with you that in the game as it is you can't really sandbox. In most cases sandboxers are people who like take time to play and advance and it is currently impossible due to the money pressure forcing you, as you said, to have only one gameplay.
The only solution is to reduce the money pressure in sandbox mode. The recurrent costs must be reduced and the curve when you change living location must follow.
Concerning the fear :
I agree with you that there it's completly irrealistic for now and that a slave refusing to do somethings after some punition is abherant. Or she is a masochist, with a special trait, but in this case she must accept any sexual harsh request (bondage, beast mating...).
Here too the solution is, in my mind, easy but I doubt it will be so easy to change coding because the only way is to have all results depending, more than it is for now, of love/devotion (you know, Stockolm syndrom).
To resume, a slave in fear obeys but have very bad results.
Good luck with that devs
- Aug 1, 2017
- 1,639
- 1,823
Saving was so annoying back in the days! Indeed, near end game it could take up to 45 seconds.
It was an engine problem, which got fixed in 2.0
That "assistant getting fat" is a bug/design error on v2.2.2
It's already fixed on latest snapshot of the Dev' Version (IA branch), you can download the "code" of it and patch your game with it. And 2.2.3 will be released with that thing fixed
So I'm a returning, fairly experienced player in the game. Something has changed on the slaves being willing to do stuff.
After breaking to death (Literally) over 40 slaves on new game, with only 2 becoming able to be trained reliably, 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.
There is either too much weight put on allure, or the baths are too expensive. If you're gonna have this break the ability to train, on hardest difficulty with 200 credits, at least give the ability to get a regular - non special bath for master and slave for a couple credits.
The "Give free time" > "Hot springs" option is actually an an ok price at 3, but that is a reward. When the slaves are refusing to do anything to deserve the hour of freedom, no matter what, that is not an available option, and relying on it when you finally get a good loop going is not reliable.
So TL;DR: Lower weighting on allure for slaves obeying non sexual orders, or create a bath house option for the slums to allow players to train slaves because it is so important to be clean. because the current white town bath options are, in my mind, luxury baths with bath girl assistants, and so expensive that it makes living in the slums more expensive than being housed in the next area (serpantine? can't recall off top my head) qwertyu12359
cost proposal for bath slums, 1 total cost to have both slave and master bathe, 2 total cost for slave master and assistant. Again, since it is an almost daily requirement, any more and the cost per month for slums is well over other living areas, and not really feasible at lower base wealth.
After breaking to death (Literally) over 40 slaves on new game, with only 2 becoming able to be trained reliably, 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.
There is either too much weight put on allure, or the baths are too expensive. If you're gonna have this break the ability to train, on hardest difficulty with 200 credits, at least give the ability to get a regular - non special bath for master and slave for a couple credits.
The "Give free time" > "Hot springs" option is actually an an ok price at 3, but that is a reward. When the slaves are refusing to do anything to deserve the hour of freedom, no matter what, that is not an available option, and relying on it when you finally get a good loop going is not reliable.
So TL;DR: Lower weighting on allure for slaves obeying non sexual orders, or create a bath house option for the slums to allow players to train slaves because it is so important to be clean. because the current white town bath options are, in my mind, luxury baths with bath girl assistants, and so expensive that it makes living in the slums more expensive than being housed in the next area (serpantine? can't recall off top my head) qwertyu12359
cost proposal for bath slums, 1 total cost to have both slave and master bathe, 2 total cost for slave master and assistant. Again, since it is an almost daily requirement, any more and the cost per month for slums is well over other living areas, and not really feasible at lower base wealth.
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the full insulation patch can't seem to get it to work
do I need to burn it to USB since its a iso file?
do I need to burn it to USB since its a iso file?
Very well said, and these issues were raised weeks ago. Sadly the Devs seem to have decided to disregard them in order to make the game that they personally want to play (aka a minmax super hardcore version of JoNT) that is *technically* beatable by a very narrow and repetitive "ideal" path of gameplay, but not much apart from that. Real shame
I also agree with your point that besides from being ridiculously hard, these new mechanics also often don't make sense. Normal or even meek girls taking hard violence or rape over basic housework and actually getting MORE rebellious from fear (or at best depressed) but still refusing basic orders. It's nonsense from a psychological POV, and it kills the sandbox and power fantasy aspects that made JoNT great as a gritty grimdark slave trainer.
Now it's more about pressing the right buttons at the right time over and over and handing out sundresses in order to form aura globuli and survive rent-hell. Forget about fear or devotion "paths", forget about exploring options in the city or taking different approaches to different girls. There's one way that works and everything else will either flat out not work at all, or take so long that rent will eat you up. "Slave of the Slave" really feels like the essence of it
It's incredibly poor gamedesign and seeing that he or they decided to roll with it (and actually make it even harder) despite the overwhelmingly negative feedback means that sadly I'll have to walk away from this. Shame about the new content, but then again given how the game is designed right now, we were not gonna experience most of it anyway (there's simply no time. )
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My best run so far on getting a slave to listen has been:
Get them, start trying to get them to do stuff,
punish> brutally beat them, public toilet, and then have them break on sanity so they actually do work
Have them start training, and then send them in gladiator fights.
Train them up in fighting until they no longer sanity broken
Find a buyer.
I can almost turn a slave around in 30 days doing this (Before I run out of money). But it really sucks. I can get D+ slaves doing this. Gladiator is easiest background to train in slums for this reason
I have had zero success with doing any other approach starting with 200 money on hard difficulty. Used to be you could turn a profit in the patrol border fogs, and selling, but the prices for slaves there have been nuked. Auctions don't get you anything cause it is locked to your brand ranking more than it used to be, it seems.
Get them, start trying to get them to do stuff,
punish> brutally beat them, public toilet, and then have them break on sanity so they actually do work
Have them start training, and then send them in gladiator fights.
Train them up in fighting until they no longer sanity broken
Find a buyer.
I can almost turn a slave around in 30 days doing this (Before I run out of money). But it really sucks. I can get D+ slaves doing this. Gladiator is easiest background to train in slums for this reason
I have had zero success with doing any other approach starting with 200 money on hard difficulty. Used to be you could turn a profit in the patrol border fogs, and selling, but the prices for slaves there have been nuked. Auctions don't get you anything cause it is locked to your brand ranking more than it used to be, it seems.
- Aug 1, 2017
- 1,639
- 1,823
Better to @ ImperatorAugustusTertius for this kind of balance talk
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.
That's a very wrong judgment of our intent. We don't want to make that.
We want to make it "challenging but fair" throughout. Keep the original 1.21 game experience (because it's not our game and we have a legacy to preserve...). Back in the days, and you can still read it, we received 1 star angry reviews that 2.0 was "Jack for noobs", so yeah there'll always be whinny guys that want every game to be specifically hand tailored for them, and if we cave in, we'll have betrayed both the legacy of Old Huntsman and our own artistic vision without stopping whinny people from the opposite end to leave frustrated comments.
What "new mechanics" are you talking about would cause meek girls rather take hard violence or rape over basic housework?
Be specific, because that sounds like having a very vague memory of how the original game was made. You want to know what? We've actually made it far easier in more than many instances to get obeyed for lessons. You do need to get better at this game because that specific part is your problem.
All the rest of the message you're quoting will get thorough examination for 2.2.3
(Edit: it's already been put in the roadmap)
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- Aug 1, 2017
- 1,639
- 1,823
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 (both for yourself and for sharing your complains) 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.
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.
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.
I kind of agree, it's a long standing issue. We made it happen a lot less in latest version however. By making the slave not say shit like: "Oh please don't give me that punishment again, I'll behave" and then immediately refuse the same order (yeah that was a thing... we fixed it in 2.2)
Yeah that's already been fixed on the dev' version only a few hours after it was first signaled. ImperatorAugustus was really reactive
IA argued with me in private messages that the game never actually had as many different paths for players. Here is a quote:
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Oh that's something I definitely don't want the players to feel. I hope everything will make more and more sense.
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).
Well, but you are making it.
I'm not a diehard pro at this game (nor do I want to be, I have other ambitions in life) but I beat the original Old Huntsman version several times and really enjoyed myself.
Point being, I cannot tell you *exactly* where things go wrong because I do not know every piece of code by heart.
All I can say - and all other people are saying - is that it *feels* much much harder (and often unnecessarely so) than it used to. Maybe you made it easier on some technical aspects, but maybe that is not how most people play. For example 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
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.
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).
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
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.
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)
Edit:
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.
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.
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. 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....
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- Feb 20, 2018
- 607
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Agree and it's the reason of my proposal on this subject in my previous post.
Having "management by fear" giving very lower result in actions (less gain in training) it don't change the balance but create some sort of new one, at least in sandbox mode :
- You don't like grinding, be a carebear slaver
- You prefer roleplay, be a harsh slaver
But it is directly related to the "take your time" subject and it's currently not possible because of the money pressure
Added note : there are so much games where "slavery" is only "managing a harem of girlfriends" that I don't see the interest to have one more...
I didn't play this game for over a year now. I also found it way to hard for someone who never played this or any other game like it before. I think there was also an absence of good tutorials and how everything works together.
I'm downloading now. I won't give up on the game yet. From what I've been reading so far, this game could become a favorite of mine if all the planned changes go through and I finally manage to survive and thrive in the JoNT world
I'm downloading now. I won't give up on the game yet. From what I've been reading so far, this game could become a favorite of mine if all the planned changes go through and I finally manage to survive and thrive in the JoNT world
Just wanna point out the contrast.
- Aug 1, 2017
- 1,639
- 1,823
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".