LadySmoks

Member
Apr 21, 2020
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Just finished playing and I have mixed feelings...
The story, journey, was great! Not often that I'm surprised by there being porn in my plot, usually it's the other way around. Before book 2, there is only one game that I can recall that's actually made me feel truly sad. This includes AAA games and regular, non porn ones. Bella dying in book 2 made me sad. Emily reciting the Fae poem, holding MC after he has taken out the last outsider, made me tear up.. The downside with a great story is that once it's done, I'm left with an empty feeling that can take up to a few weeks to get rid of.

I also have to say, that there also wasn't enough Bella in the third book. Though, I'm quite sure I would have felt that way even if she was the main LI.

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Your reaction to the end of bk2 puts you in the 99% crowd. I cursed Droid for days!

Your second spoiler...
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Warscared

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2021
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Your reaction to the end of bk2 puts you in the 99% crowd. I cursed Droid for days!

Your second spoiler...
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Nimue is the horned one but Chloe is the mother´s chosen!

I know. But thanks.
then you worded it wrong, probably to spare yourself the mothers wrath... since that is a clear sign of jealousy
 
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Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
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Game Developer
Dec 30, 2017
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Somewhat LoM related;




Basically, I commissioned (who also did a uses) to create a set of 3 Katie theme-music sequences. I did a about the first of these, the Rock theme.
 

PAINKIRA

Member
Aug 20, 2020
108
63
Somewhat LoM related;




Basically, I commissioned (who also did a uses) to create a set of 3 Katie theme-music sequences. I did a about the first of these, the Rock theme.
This man is something else, Echancted forest should be a national anthem
 
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xeris89

New Member
Feb 25, 2019
9
7
I’ve played to the end and the game was fine, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped. There are a few reasons but one thing drove me nuts and I feel like I’m crazy because nobody seems to care? So I’ll throw this into the void and at least it will be out of my head. Maybe someone can help me understand.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a character does something out of character for a flimsy reason to fabricate or progress a story. Like a boy scout superhero committing excessive violence when comic book sales are down. It makes me feel like writers don’t actually care about their characters and betray their art for convenience. Instant break of immersion.

In this game (particularly bk2) we are repeatedly told the MC cares deeply while being this massive horndog. All the characters believe and accept he’s sleeping with everyone but he’s just this lovable scoundrel. It’s common knowledge repeatedly drilled into the player.

What actually happens with several LI’s is the MC proclaims a profound love and ownership (creepy!), has sex with her once, then tosses her aside and refuses to have sex with her again for *months*. He sees her almost every day, she repeatedly asks him for sex (believing he is her loving partner/master) and he turns his LI’s down *constantly*...while having one night stands with other women. In a couple of cases he’s like “you can blow me and if you’re good enough I’ll use a toy on you” then cuts them off without any actual sex. It makes me feel like I’m playing some asshole frat boy who loses interest after a conquest.

The extra bit of salt is in the late game when there are disparaging references to another version of the MC who had a massive sex drive. Yeah, at least he actually attended to his sexual partners unlike the weirdo MC the player is stuck with. I could have done without the MC celebrating his callous inattentiveness.

Now before any developer types get their hackles up, I’m not advocating for thousands of additional renders and massive development effort to have more sex in a game that isn’t strictly about that. It literally just comes down to who the game tells me the MC is, and how he actually behaves. There are multiple ways this gulf could have been narrowed. Even just having the LI’s not ask for sex, constantly forcing the player to deny them, would have been a huge improvement. Having their day-to-day relationships be mostly non-sexual would have been fine and in line with a game of political intrigue with occasional sex. That would require the same or even less dialogue and no additional renders.

I feel like the best solution would have been low effort optional repeatable sex scenes for all the main LI’s. There are a few of these but they exclude characters. I still can’t understand why most of the scenes are not repeatable. Certainly some interactions and environments wouldn’t be evergreen but not all of them. Reuse assets if needed but just have *something* there to make the story plausible. The player doesn’t need constant new material to present the illusion that the MC has healthy sexual relationships with all of the LI’s and not just a select few.

So there is is. I cannot reconcile who the game says the MC is with how he acts. Tell me I’m wrong if you like. I just feel better having written this down.

Edit: Also, the game is final. I don't think there can or should be any changes at this point. Developer effort is generally better spent on something new and better than rehashing published work. This is purely me tilting at windmills and I'm fully aware of that. Although maybe there is a dev out there who will see this and learn there are people like me that really care about the integrity of characters. Who knows?
 
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Segnbora

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Aug 30, 2017
1,803
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I'll agree that the way the MC neglects his Chosen has always bothered me. I hoped, in Book 3, that we'd finally have nightly repeatable scenes for all of them. (Plus some bones...literally or otherwise...thrown Katie's way.) And we got it for the one who'd been most neglected in Book 2, but the rest had to share, which doesn't really make up for the first two books in which they all got little to nothing from the MC.

I have issues with the ending which I still haven't fully worked through, which is why I haven't said anything about the finished game — I think I'd like to play it again to revisit my initial impressions, and I don't have time at the moment — but if there's one thing I could've changed about Books 2 and 3, it'd be optional repeatable scenes for all the LIs in the night/late night dead time. Because, especially if you follow the walkthrough (and I'm quite aware that Droid hates that form of gameplay, but then again he freely enables cheating because he doesn't want to force people to play his game a certain way, so the objection's a bit wobbly), you're going to have a lot of dead time. If I could've spent that time bedding Emily, any of the Chosen, Katie, or Jenny whenever I wanted to, I would have.

Optional repeatable scenes for all of the beddable characters would be a dream, especially in Book 3 as you can travel anywhere, but that's a lot of work. Maybe for the + version?
 
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xeris89

New Member
Feb 25, 2019
9
7
if you follow the walkthrough (and I'm quite aware that Droid hates that form of gameplay, but then again he freely enables cheating because he doesn't want to force people to play his game a certain way, so the objection's a bit wobbly), you're going to have a lot of dead time.
Yeah, I used the walkthroughs. Perhaps that sucked some of the fun out of the game but with a game this size it would be a huge chore to manually try everything. Some content is only seen after performing x action n times. I wouldn't feel right making a post like the above if I thought there was a chance I had missed content. I have reservations about missable content in general, it being a shame to miss content someone worked hard to create, but I'd feel like a real asshole critiquing a lack of interaction if I just missed it.
 

Segnbora

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Aug 30, 2017
1,803
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Yeah, I used the walkthroughs. Perhaps that sucked some of the fun out of the game
It does. So does cheating, which I also did on my initial playthroughs (stats and unlimited gems). But, like you, I wanted to see all the content. I had more fun playing it without cheating, albeit less satisfaction, and it took forever. Tomato, tomahto.

Well, I made my bed. Which no one's ever in, despite having an entire world of women who should theoretically be willing to share it, but okay.
 

Segnbora

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Aug 30, 2017
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but with a game this size
I want to circle back to this, because one of my very favorite games in this genre — Harem Hotel — is absolutely massive. And it's a sandbox grind (not a bad or unreasonable one at all, but you still have to grind the levels and the stats, which aren't necessarily tied to each other, to see anything). Runey (the dev) absolutely loathes any of the mods that make the grind more tolerable.

Now, I've started that game three times, but I'm not going to start a fourth until he's done, because it's just too fucking long, and that won't be for years and years. But I guarantee that when I play it again, I'm going to use whatever I can to shorten the early grind, because I've already done it and have no interest in doing it a fourth time. (This won't necessarily make sense to people who haven't played the game, but: the mods make things a lot more efficient.)

I think devs forget just how long their "replayable" games are. I would never replay LoM Book 1 or Book 2 again. I played the first three times and the second twice. I own all three books, so I can replay them anytime, but save for my curiosity about revisiting the third I won't anytime soon. There's nothing else to discover, and I have other things to do. I also don't need to cry about...you know what...again.
 

Droid Productions

[Love of Magic]
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In general I'm not a super big fan of repeatable sex scenes; I try to make each scene tell a story, and repeatable sex scenes don't.

Having said that, across the three books there's repeatable sex for Emily, Molly, Akane and the Chosen. I guess I could have made replayable sex for Bella and Katie, but I'd much rather do a fun story-building sex scene (for example Bella's birthday) than just something mechanical.

As for "dead time" (as in, I followed the walkthrough, and there's no unique events towards the final days of book 3), those are mostly set aside for exploring the world and character building (reading books, building stats, going on the paths). The problem with following the walkthrough is that it frontloads as many unique scenes as early as possible, so all the "dead time" is a contiguous block at the end.

Only real solution to that is to make more unique events than available time, which is what's happening in Morningstar.

Of course, then people complain that there's not enough free time :)
 

e6mill

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Aug 4, 2022
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I think devs forget just how long their "replayable" games are. I would never replay LoM Book 1 or Book 2 again.
I already have once, and I plan to do so again with bk3 - now that it's complete. There was so much I missed the first time - not just foreshadowing (tho' that too), but things like the entire bringing Draco on the paths arc. But you do you.
 

xeris89

New Member
Feb 25, 2019
9
7
In general I'm not a super big fan of repeatable sex scenes; I try to make each scene tell a story, and repeatable sex scenes don't.
Thanks for the answer. You've probably already answered it in the previous 400+ pages so I appreciate your patience to answer again.

I can somewhat understand the desire to focus on mini stories and I don't claim to have spent near the time you have thinking about all this. Being repeatable was just one example that came to mind that would assuage my character integrity concerns. Perhaps it was unfair to call it the "best solution".
 
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