I apologize for not responding directly to anyone, I am quite rushed and have something, but wanted to check in the forum (try to about once a week).
Never worry about feedback of any kind. I take everything into account, and it's no bother to share ideas. Only trolling or clearly disruptive/abusive comments to anyone (including other posters) would annoy me.
Very briefly, subs can move up the ranks too. But their style of doing that will be different than a dom path, as a sub would rely much more on a powerful female figure for protection. So it would be harder to be truly independent as a sub. The sub paths will have gentle/severe variations, mostly dependent on which characters you tend to attach to over the long run. You can also have a highly ranked sub (say K9 rank which is high) and can even be assertive and strong with day to day company stuff, but very submissive to his own Mistress, etc.
This is definitely a difficult game I chose to create narratively, due to the many branches. I had no illusions how hard it would be versus say another game idea I had which basically had one MC, and less complex branching.
It is impossible for me to account for the many variations I would love to have, but I think I have a decent amount. I will deliberately pare down the very complex branches that will have formed by 0.8, and require a very strong moment of truth decision that locks you in a final trajectory for Act III. Even that specific moment of truth decision might be influenced by prior choices (some choices in that moment of truth may not be available to you if you strayed a certain way in prior choices) So far, there have been only I think three prior choices that actually impact the moment of truth, and they are still reversible.
You will still have many choices from 0.9 to 0.11, but they will more be within your goals in your path at that point versus changing the dynamics of your allies/nature at that point. So after 0.8, if you are locked to say a submissive good man allied with say two sisters and their own allies, that is your "team" so to speak and you can't really go evil at that point. I am not sure on romance/harem paths after 0.8 quite yet (haven't got that far on that aspect compared to narrative overall) but I believe I may keep some flexibility there within that path. (for example, two sisters are in your faction, perhaps either one you can get with stronger, etc.) My art helper has seen my final outline, and has remarked it reminded her of a game where at the end you have some factions and before, you could help or mess around with all of them, but at some point, you had to pick one faction as your main. Then the missions/game geared to their goals and your own, so maybe that's a good example.
As for the final paths, there are four what I consider main branches based only on the MC, but they have sub branches depending on some things (romance, rank, etc.) and those four branches and sub paths lead to 15 endings. I don't count side character fates as endings (likely will do slides/ short scenes/narratives for the ones you didn't key on as critical to your game) and the endings will have pure scenes/narratives for the characters/connected to/impacting you at the end. Keep in mind the sister's paths are kind of dependent too but hard to explain without any of you knowing what I have in mind yet.
Forgive any spelling or grammar, I am just typing and dashing off. So going fast...
