HTML Masters of Raana [v0.8.3.3] [GrimDark]

[caju]

thanks but starting with only 15 in the skill and having 3 chances a day.... it's going to take a while.

Literally f5 everything...
Training shooting... f5 until you and slave both get a point.
Training domestic... f5 until slave gets 2 points.
Stealing from plant.... f5
dont like loot after combat... f5... (when you take 1 item, f5 wont work anymore)
Dont like domestic end of day... f5 until you get something good
Political end of day... f5 until you get what you want.
Hunting... f5 until you get a +1 survival or you and slave get points
Stealth failed... f5 until it works
F5 everything

 

[Gunner Rey]

Literally f5 everything...
Training shooting... f5 until you and slave both get a point.
Training domestic... f5 until slave gets 2 points.
Stealing from plant.... f5
dont like loot after combat... f5... (when you take 1 item, f5 wont work anymore)
Dont like domestic end of day... f5 until you get something good
Political end of day... f5 until you get what you want.
Hunting... f5 until you get a +1 survival or you and slave get points
Stealth failed... f5 until it works
F5 everything

Why bother, do you see some sort of time limit?

 

[Heavy Sleeper]

Why bother, do you see some sort of time limit?

to reduce grind, it's that simple. No reason to take the same action 10 times when you can do it once.

If everything is based on a dice roll and every time you want to train something you didn't spec into in the intro you could run into a problem where you'll have to do the same action in hope of getting 1 point, but that 1 point won't really help that much because you'll need about 10-15 point to make the next roll decently better.

 

[noway]

I am a fan of management/developement games like this and I am currently quite invested in this game therefore I want to share my thoughts.

The game already has an incredible depth and variety, but after playing it a couple of hours I see some underlying issues apart from running out of content.

A core mechanic in these types of games is the investment/reward curve, you obviously have the nsfw part as reward, however, here I want to focus on the money part.
Typically, as you invest more time in the game, earning money should become easier, i.e. less clicks more steady income. So you can fund bigger and cooler projects.

The center question that needs to be resolved for the game is: What is the main focus of the game?

• Is the MC a slave trader: buying, training, selling?
• Is the MC trying to build a business empire based on the labor of skilled slaves?
• Is the MC a mercenary who earns money by looting the corpses of his enemies?

In this early development state it is obviously not yet clear which direction the developer wants to follow.
For the encounters on the map the game play loop is well balanced, you get money, you buy bigger guns and kill more powerfull enemys for higher rewards.
I personally play the mercanary route because it is currently the only way to consistently earn money, although in this kind of games I do favor the business route. The trader route just does not work for me at the moment.
The reasons why:

• To clear the bandits in the Stroke Hills you earn 5-10 k in 5 min, so it just feels wrong to sell a slave for 10k when you invested 2h in training and payed a few k to obtain them.
• All slaves have WIP personal quest lines, if I sell them now, I have to skip on potential content/opportunities, which also feels bad.

To have a rewarding gameplay loop, the time invested while playing should not feel wasted - in case the trader route is supposed to be the focus of the game one should consider:

• Rebalance combat vs. slave trade rewards.
• Make the worth of a slave more transparent. Maybe add customer requests at the town hall slave agent which ask for a certain skill set. This gives clear goals in what direction to focus the training.
  Spoiler: Slave sell prices

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• Lower the threshold to sell a slave, by putting priority in finishing the personal quests. I.e. nothing else to do but to sell.
• Get rid of the blurred WIP pictures, instead create a set of generic renders with a WIP watermark, e.g. a zoom without showing the head/face, but still reflecting the current scene.
• Include a source for generic slaves (with generic renders) with random traits and without story line which can be trained repeatedly and sold without the lingering feeling of missing out on content.

The issues with the business route are similar to the trader route:

• Again not well balanced with the mercenary work rewards, 2 Professors and 1 Dancer = 330g/d == 1 drop of a gun.
• There should be a higher salary with higher skills (btw. the waitress job is missing : ).
• Fully devoted/trained slaves take up space in the MCs fortified prison/mansion, they should be able live outside and provide passive boni/income from there, e.g. from a dorm the MC buys and expands - it could be a copy of the arena system.

The issues with the mercenary route are mainly quality of live features:

• Please add a hit the last target button or implement a select active target mechanic.
• Please add skill progression through combat - needing to hire a trainer after having fought countless real battles, just seems stupid.
• Please add passive health generation also for mercenaries.

This is a really good game and has the potential to be a great one. Since it will likely be in developement until Grim looses interest. I hope that before this happens, he will have created a set of core game play loops without loose ends to enjoy the game.
It is too easy to loose focus and indulge in the more interesting developement of new content, while neglecting the core gameplay loop.

Grim: please continue with the developement while having a good time doing so

 

[Gunner Rey]

to reduce grind, it's that simple. No reason to take the same action 10 times when you can do it once.

If everything is based on a dice roll and every time you want to train something you didn't spec into in the intro you could run into a problem where you'll have to do the same action in hope of getting 1 point, but that 1 point won't really help that much because you'll need about 10-15 point to make the next roll decently better.

It kind of strikes me as you're increasing the grind by re-rolling every action until you get what you want when if you just kept playing you'd get there anyways. At any rate I use Firefox and the F5 trick doesn't seem to work for me, or I'm doing it wrong as I'm no master of these types of computer systems.

No skin off my back, play your own game, it just occurred to me when I was tempted to re-load that it didn't matter all that much if I got what I wanted this time, or the next, there's no real time limit you're up against.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

No skin off my back, play your own game, it just occurred to me when I was tempted to re-load that it didn't matter all that much if I got what I wanted this time, or the next, there's no real time limit you're up against.

This lot just wants "give me everything, now!" button, so that they can get to their porn pics asap.
As such, any and all mechanics/systems a game will normally have are being seen as nothing but an obstacle.
They don't want a game, they just want to wank mindlessly.

In this early development state it is obviously not yet clear which direction the developer wants to follow

No it's fairly clear actually: All of them.
As far as i understand Grim wants to give you the opportunity to be who you want to be in his game, selected from a couple of available archetypes of course because nobody is good enough to recreate life.

I personally play the mercanary route because it is currently the only way to consistently earn money

Not really the only way.
It's just that combat is the only thing most people see, it seems.
Probably tunnel vision effect.

The trader route just does not work for me at the moment.

What you describe as "trader route" is actually the "slave trainer route."
And there will be... let's call them: "side-slaves," whom you will be able to train for profit without strings like quests attached.
Also the price can go way beyond 10k.

Rebalance combat

Combat is getting revamp at some point.

Get rid of the blurred WIP pictures, instead create a set of generic renders with a WIP watermark, e.g. a zoom without showing the head/face, but still reflecting the current scene.

That is a waste of time, eventually he will finish proper renders. Be patient.

Again not well balanced with the mercenary work rewards, 2 Professors and 1 Dancer = 330g/d == 1 drop of a gun.

So you think a job where you sit in a cushy classroom and bark at students occasionally should give the same reward as a job where you put your ass on the line? Well, i disagree.

 

[Gunner Rey]

This lot just wants "give me everything, now!" button, so that they can get to their porn pics asap.
As such, any and all mechanics/systems a game will normally have are being seen as nothing but an obstacle.
They don't want a game, they just want to wank mindlessly.

Huh, well even I know you can just go into the IMG file and see the pics if that's all you're interested in. Me I'd rather space it out for a while and enjoy more evenings at the local paga tavern where there might be naked teenage girls crawling around giving blowjobs to all and sundry until eight or so hours later they go home with glazed faces and full tummies. That's even better than pulling into Subic Bay back in the day when the PI was Adult Disneyland for my sort and we played 'Smile' at the local establishments...

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Huh, well even I know you can just go into the IMG file and see the pics if that's all you're interested in.

That's the interesting thing.
Even if they can go to a porn/doujin site and wank mindlessly there with no gameplay to get in their way, they still chose to come here and go around threads begging for saves that unlock all cgs in games.
I can understand cheating and save begging if the game is shit and you want to save time, but doing it in a cool game like this one is basically disrespecting the dev who puts so much effort into all of this.

 

[dmop22]

Not sure what's up with the random "you can only play this game my way" here, but quicksaving and quickloading has been a thing to get past skill checks with RPG's since they were first made more or less. If that's considered "disrespecting the game" then only God knows how many times any well known and liked rpg with skill checks has been disrespected.

 

[noway]

Thank you for your answer VoidTraveler, but it would be appreciated if you'd actually read my post a bit more carefully.

Not really the only way.
It's just that combat is the only thing most people see, it seems.
Probably tunnel vision effect.

What you describe as "trader route" is actually the "slave trainer route."
And there will be... let's call them: "side-slaves," whom you will be able to train for profit without strings like quests attached.
Also the price can go way beyond 10k.

I wrote "consistently earn money":
5 min combat gives the same reward as 120 min training ... there is no real argument here, nothing to do with tunnel vision.
100 clicks is different from 1000 clicks.

I just checked the code again and it looks to me the absolute maximum in an auction is 25k, which is based on luck and could also be 16k for the same girl. This is anything but "way beyond" 10k and to get to the max tier likely more time than the 2h are required.
But I might be missing something.
Btw. "way beyond" 10k would be 100k in my world, in particular, when I paid 2-35k to obtain the slave in the first place.

So in the end a perfectly trained slave is making less money than a piece of stealth armor costs

That is a waste of time, eventually he will finish proper renders. Be patient.

Now you can argue that the 120 min are actually rewarding gameplay, however, this goes only for the 3 slaves which have currently a full set of renders. Why would I want to spend that time while seeing only blurred placeholders!?

So the suggestion to have sexy renders as generic placeholders is quite the opposite of a waste of time.
There are currently 14 different slaves in game, with the number likely to go up with continued development. So the "proper renders" are likely to never be finished
The generic renders are anyway necessary for the "side-slaves" you mention

So you think a job where you sit in a cushy classroom and bark at students occasionally should give the same reward as a job where you put your ass on the line? Well, i disagree.

Maybe I am too rooted in real life where a university professor earns much more than a member of the armed forces. Which is justified given the investment to obtain such a position - which is obviously not necessary in the game.
Also I did not compare it to the total combat reward, but to a random drop on top of the base reward

Regardless of that, I remarked mainly the progression curve you experience in game.
This is currently completely tilted towards combat, when you take the number of clicks to get to the same result as base currency.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I wrote "consistently earn money":

Yes and i basically responded that combat is not the only way to CONSISTENTLY earn money.
Now i have added the word consistently because you clearly have a problem with it not being there.

5 min combat gives the same reward as 120 min training ... there is no real argument here, nothing to do with tunnel vision.
100 clicks is different from 1000 clicks.

I thought this was about consistency and not how many clicks we do?
If speed is your problem then yeah, there is probably nothing in this game that produces monies faster than combat.

I just checked the code again and it looks to me the absolute maximum in an auction is 25k, which is based on luck and could also be 16k for the same girl. This is anything but "way beyond" 10k and to get to the max tier likely more time than the 2h are required.
But I might be missing something.
Btw. "way beyond" 10k would be 100k in my world, in particular, when I paid 2-35k to obtain the slave in the first place.

So in the end a perfectly trained slave is making less money than a piece of stealth armor costs

More than half the price you pointed out initially qualifies as 'way beyond' in my books.
Or what, you actually want 1 billion reward with minimal effort or something?
Also the slave that costs 35k is one of the unique ones, so is there any surprise that she costs a lot?
But i agree that the max sell price for them should be able to rise to like 100k with enough training, and it probably will be increased at some point, probably gradually.

Still, again, the biggest problem for you seem to be speed. If you want fast $ then just keep fighting for loot?
You could also try your hand at investing, you can bring your daily income up to like 1.500$ if you want to.

Why would I want to spend that time while seeing only blurred placeholders!?

Those things come with early builds, you are playing what is basically an Alpha version of the game.
If you want your renders so badly then come back later when they arrive.
Still see no reason why dev should waste time doing half-assed placeholders just because you can't find it in you to be patient and wait for proper renders to be done.

The generic renders are anyway necessary for the "side-slaves" you mention

Those will have their own collection of proper renders if i remember right. Grim doesn't half-ass.

Also I did not compare it to the total combat reward, but to a random drop on top of the base reward

Which you get by kicking someone's ass, all the same putting your ass on the line.
Which, in my opinion, only naturally gives you proper reward for doing so.

This is currently completely tilted towards combat, when you take the number of clicks to get to the same result as base currency.

If speed is your primary concern, then perhaps.
Personally i don't particularly care how fast i get everything in the game.
In fact, stretching the fun might be more enjoyable. But eh, that's just me.

But again, this is just Alpha stage basically.
While i don't think that all jobs have to have equal rewards, i do think there will be more variety and balance corrections.
When he has time to get to that. He's just one dude after all.
All we can do is wait, and bitch in here, too, i suppose.
I'm sure there will be something he'll like in that first wall of text you wrote that he'll take into account.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Not sure what's up with the random "you can only play this game my way" here, but quicksaving and quickloading has been a thing to get past skill checks with RPG's since they were first made more or less. If that's considered "disrespecting the game" then only God knows how many times any well known and liked rpg with skill checks has been disrespected.

Dunno how you got that impression but no one but yourself can control how you play the game. I just wondered why anyone bothered being as there's no reason to; there's no clock ticking in this game. Don't you end up spending more time re-rolling until you get what you want each and every time as opposed to just moving on? There's no prize if you get to 80 ranged combat in thirty days as opposed to sixty as far as I know.

 

[SpikyHair]

Kind of in line with the ongoing discussion...

I did a few restarts with different stat/skill initial distribution, and unless I'm just having a bad RNG rolls streak, it seems the stat/skill gain from training and events are straight dice roll results? Skimmed through the HTML code, and seems to be the case, but maybe I'm just misreading things.

I wonder if it would be possible for GD-studios to implement kind of a "normalization" approach. In other words, let's assume 40 is the average value for humans in MoR. So any attempt at raising a skill or stat while it is below 40 points would be faster to achieve (basically higher chance for success, possibly with "critical success" double gains on lucky rolls?), whereas the "grind" would begin as soon as you start going above the intended average?

I mean, the game is a power fantasy. At least it would allow the player to get to some "decent enough" level before the grind sets in. This also means opening up more playstyle choices for the player faster without going god-mode.

The game is provably in good hands, but figured it wouldn't hurt to toss this idea out there, since it would alleviate some of the early-game progression grind while retaining the challenge for higher values.

Personally, I've been experiencing a somewhat annoying string of failures in training regardless of the base value of associated stat, even after spending preciously scarce money on a trainer.

Edited for grammer. Heil Spellcheck!

 

[Gunner Rey]

Maybe I am too rooted in real life where a university professor earns much more than a member of the armed forces. Which is justified given the investment to obtain such a position - which is obviously not necessary in the game.
Also I did not compare it to the total combat reward, but to a random drop on top of the base reward

You're not a member of the armed forces, I imagine those guys get paid dick compared to university professors, considering elite mercenaries like the Space Marine, Felix and Ayden only make about 100-200. Your character, if you choose to go combat, is more along the lines of a rising mob boss, those guys can buy and sell university professors even in our world.

Regardless of that, I remarked mainly the progression curve you experience in game.
This is currently completely tilted towards combat, when you take the number of clicks to get to the same result as base currency.

Actually it's more tilted towards food production, though if you never go that route you won't realize it. Hunting has almost no overhead or other expenses and no risk, whereas you spend oodles and scads on temstims and ammo fighting it out every day.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Kind of in line with the ongoing discussion...

I did a few restarts with different stat/skill initial distribution, and unless I'm just having a bad RNG rolls streak, it seems the stat/skill gain from training and events are straight dice roll results? Skimmed through the HTML code, and seems to be the case, but maybe I'm just misreading things.

I wonder if it would be possible for GD-studios to implement kind of a "normalization" approach. In other words, let's assume 40 is the average value for humans in MoR. So any attempt at raising a skill or stat while it is below 40 points would be faster to achieve (basically higher chance for success, possibly with "critical success" double gains on lucky rolls?), whereas the "grind" would begin as soon as you start going above the intended average?

I mean, the game is a power fantasy. At least it would allow the player to get to some "decent enough" level before the grind sets in. This also means opening up more playstyle choices for the player faster without going god-mode.

The game is provably in good hands, but figured it wouldn't hurt to toss this idea out there, since it would alleviate some of the early-game progression grind while retaining the challenge for higher values.

Personally, I've been experiencing a somewhat annoying string of failures in training regardless of the base value of associated stat, even after spending preciously scarce money on a trainer.

Edited for grammer. Heil Spellcheck!

Huh. It seemed to me to get very much more difficult to raise stats once you got to 80 and damn near impossible once it got to 100--unless you're training Rebecca with you and she never seems to have more difficulty getting more awesome, provided you maxed her disciple first.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Huh. It seemed to me to get very much more difficult to raise stats once you got to 80 and damn near impossible once it got to 100--unless you're training Rebecca with you and she she never seems to have more difficulty getting more awesome. That is provided you maxed her disciple first.

Actually, stats on mc are fairly easy to rise to 130. (Primary ones that can be easily trained that is.)
But good luck going beyond that threshold.

 

[Heavy Sleeper]

This lot just wants "give me everything, now!" button, so that they can get to their porn pics asap.
As such, any and all mechanics/systems a game will normally have are being seen as nothing but an obstacle.
They don't want a game, they just want to wank mindlessly.

I failed to see how anything I said equals to "I just wants to see porn"? the best game of this type I played was free cities, you start with a couple of slaves and grow a freaking empire. The porn aspect of the game is minimal, but the management is where the meat is.

All I want is more consistent way of skill level ups, whether it's 1 of 2 sessions or w/e but completely random doesn't make it feel very rewarding.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Actually, stats on mc are fairly easy to rise to 130.
But good luck going beyond that threshold.

You didn't notice a significant difference once you passed 80 and 100? I've gotten myself past those thresholds as well, mainly because I wanted to see just how high I could get Rebecca and had trained Juno's stamina first. Up to around 80, if you use a trainer and 'push it' (if applicable), it's pretty much assured you'll get a point each time. After 80 it's more dicey and past 100 I felt lucky to get one point every other time.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I failed to see how anything I said equals to "I just wants to see porn"? the best game of this type I played was free cities, you start with a couple of slaves and grow a freaking empire. The porn aspect of the game is minimal, but the management is where the meat is.

All I want is more consistent way of skill level ups, whether it's 1 of 2 sessions or w/e but completely random doesn't make it feel very rewarding.

Well, that's dice roll for you. And this game is based on dice roll system as far as i am aware.
So, you'll just have to deal with it.
In the first place, i don't think you're supposed to have absolutely everything in the game.
So, only natural that some of your skills which you didn't spec into will be hard to train.

You didn't notice a significant difference once you passed 80 and 100?

Hilariously enough, no.
I even sometimes got double skillups in one day when i was past 100.
Was quite amused.
But noticed significant difficulty jump once i hit 130, i think i spent like a week trying to skillup when i hit 130 and still failed.
Hm, maybe i'll give it another shot.
I don't think skills actually have a hard cap, but things do get more hardcore the higher you go.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Hilariously enough, no.
I even sometimes got double skillups in one day when i was past 100.
Was quite amused.
But noticed significant difficulty jump once i hit 130, i think i spent like a week trying to skillup when i hit 130 and still failed.
Hm, maybe i'll give it another shot.
I don't think skills actually have a hard cap, but things do get more hardcore the higher you go.

Maybe he's changed it since you did your training, what you describe was not my experience at all. Or perhaps there's another factor I'm unaware of. I know with slaves it seems their discipline matters a great deal and I suspect the percent of stamina they have left plays a factor as well. Is there possibly something about your character that makes it easier for him to train?