To join into the discussion on changing NPCs and having those changes stick, here's the one thing I'll say...
No matter which option you choose as a dev, having them stick or not, if you don't suck at your job you're going to include some in-game explanation for WHY the outcome is what it is.
That's all that you have to do to make either option work. Scarlet is the best example of this (as a complete failure, not a success). You get given her as a slave, and you can do whatever you want with her. But then you give her back, and all the changes are undone without any explanation or comment. And then it immediately asks you if you want to re-do some of the changes you may have made? Like, WTF. That's an incredibly awful design.
And the set up is so incredibly easy, all they had to do was having a passing comment about how Scarlet's sister asked for the modifications to be undone. Boom; narrative reason why the NPC changes don't stick.
But this all comes down to player agency, which is a very core concept when designing RPGs. And a concept that LT has completely abandoned, in my opinion, just look at the horrible writing behind Nyan's romance quest. You could really expand on the Scarlet example as well, and create all sorts of ways to acknowledge the player's past choices. If the player made Scarlet female during her enslavement, instead of immediately asking the player if Helena should make Scarlet female (again, without ever acknowledging your previous choices...), have Helena ask if the player would like to keep Scarlet female, or change her back into a male.
If your games encounter/scene system doesn't suck, that should be a trivial thing to add with maybe 10 minutes worth of writing behind it, but it would go a long ways toward improving player agency and immersion.
But to loop back to the point; it doesn't matter whether changes to NPCs stick, what matters is that you acknowledge the players actions and give a narrative reason for the outcome. LT is shit at that.
Don't worry, if the game even exists, in two years we'll all be wondering when we're going to be getting the 3rd city, so we'll be too distracted to loop back around to feral content.
That's assuming *way too* emotional investment than most of us are willing to give it. There's lots of us who will talk shit and dump on the stupidity of it all, but that doesn't make us angry. This isn't something personal to me, LT is a product that Inno is trying to sell, it's not something I've hooked to my self worth or anything lol
And I can absolutely laugh at a trainwreck of a project without caring nearly enough to be angry lol
This is entertainment. My entertainment doesn't make me angry. If it did, I'd find something else to bother with.
Everyone online always acts like anyone saying anything negative or calling out something stupid is somehow mad or angry. They're probably not.
No matter which option you choose as a dev, having them stick or not, if you don't suck at your job you're going to include some in-game explanation for WHY the outcome is what it is.
That's all that you have to do to make either option work. Scarlet is the best example of this (as a complete failure, not a success). You get given her as a slave, and you can do whatever you want with her. But then you give her back, and all the changes are undone without any explanation or comment. And then it immediately asks you if you want to re-do some of the changes you may have made? Like, WTF. That's an incredibly awful design.
And the set up is so incredibly easy, all they had to do was having a passing comment about how Scarlet's sister asked for the modifications to be undone. Boom; narrative reason why the NPC changes don't stick.
But this all comes down to player agency, which is a very core concept when designing RPGs. And a concept that LT has completely abandoned, in my opinion, just look at the horrible writing behind Nyan's romance quest. You could really expand on the Scarlet example as well, and create all sorts of ways to acknowledge the player's past choices. If the player made Scarlet female during her enslavement, instead of immediately asking the player if Helena should make Scarlet female (again, without ever acknowledging your previous choices...), have Helena ask if the player would like to keep Scarlet female, or change her back into a male.
If your games encounter/scene system doesn't suck, that should be a trivial thing to add with maybe 10 minutes worth of writing behind it, but it would go a long ways toward improving player agency and immersion.
But to loop back to the point; it doesn't matter whether changes to NPCs stick, what matters is that you acknowledge the players actions and give a narrative reason for the outcome. LT is shit at that.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that feral content has been cancelled entirely. That would be silly, there's a much easier solution. What I'm saying is that, instead of cancelling it, we'll just ignore it for a year or two.
Don't worry, if the game even exists, in two years we'll all be wondering when we're going to be getting the 3rd city, so we'll be too distracted to loop back around to feral content.
Just to be clear here, outside of maybe one specific person, most of us here are not angry.
That's assuming *way too* emotional investment than most of us are willing to give it. There's lots of us who will talk shit and dump on the stupidity of it all, but that doesn't make us angry. This isn't something personal to me, LT is a product that Inno is trying to sell, it's not something I've hooked to my self worth or anything lol
And I can absolutely laugh at a trainwreck of a project without caring nearly enough to be angry lol
This is entertainment. My entertainment doesn't make me angry. If it did, I'd find something else to bother with.
Everyone online always acts like anyone saying anything negative or calling out something stupid is somehow mad or angry. They're probably not.
