Ren'Py Seeds of Chaos [v0.4.07] [Vénus Noire]

[ffive]

Ah yes, but what to prune?

This would largely depend on what's the cost of given features, so it's hard to answer in vacuum.

Personally, i'd consider doing away with the map mechanics (which come with necessity to introduce tons of generic events just to have stuff happen during travels over the course of the game) and replacing it with more streamlined narrative, one that moved between key beats with occasional small events in-between. Then things like the fairies or whatever those things were in the sideplot which was effectively removed from the game during my playthrough -- this demonstrated that it'd be perfectly fine to maybe push it to a later Act without any real issue. The sheer amount of random side events you have currently is to the point where the player is going to need multiple playthroughs to experience them all. Which from the player's standpoint might be great, if multiple playthroughs are something they have keen interest in, but for developer is, as you have experienced, utterly exhausting and unsustainable. And something that could very well be distributed instead along multiple Acts.

(regarding character plot-lines, i think it's pretty easy arguments that the story main characters, that is the protagonists and antagonists, get the priority. Secondary characters are nice to have but they're secondary for a reason. There's also always a question of how much of character's arc has to be included in the game's single Act -- it can be quite okay for some to play out over longer period of time, if just to avoid the situation when it's an open-shut case in a single Act and then the writers are left scratching their heads, "okay but what do we do with these characters now")

 

[Rein]

Personally, i'd consider doing away with the map mechanics (which come with necessity to introduce tons of generic events just to have stuff happen during travels over the course of the game) and replacing it with more streamlined narrative, one that moved between key beats with occasional small events in-between.

Obviously not a bad idea - but for act 1 that would mean removing a third of the game, and completely reworking the way the story paces itself. Which moves us dangerously close to being a pure Visual Novel, which - while not necessarily bad! - is not what was promised when development started.

I am not happy with the role the map plays in SoC act 1. But removing it mid-development would be a titanic endeavor with questionable benefits. Instead, I tried to adjust it so it's at least fun to play around with. Was I successful. Eh. Haven't really heard a lot of good about it. But it's a work in progress, so I haven't lost hope.

The Fae plot could, possibly, be shifted around. BUT it's immensely popular among our Patreons. So again - are you sure you want to remove a story line for which you have assets, for which you have events, and the people are expecting to see?

Obviously SoC is not developed by popular vote, but it does not mean it can ignore the will of its supporters. We have to meet certain expectations.

 

[ffive]

Obviously not a bad idea - but for act 1 that would mean removing a third of the game, and completely reworking the way the story paces itself.

I realize it, but also that'd be very much the point -- if you can cut down the size by 1/3rd without affecting any of your real content, then it's very much what i'd consider successful pruning. I get and agree it'd significantly change the feel of the game, but it's one of those decisions that, while hard, might make a difference between the project seeing the delivery or sinking under its weight. And it is also okay for the developer to admit "Guys, we have initially planned things to be different, but it turns out this is too much, so we had to change it. We're sorry, but it had to be done." Some people will complain, sure. But a lot more will complain a lot louder if the project drags on for years and years because of unsustainable scope.

The Fae plot could, possibly, be shifted around. BUT it's immensely popular among our Patreons. So again - are you sure you want to remove a story line for which you have assets, for which you have events, and the people are expecting to see?

Like i said, when i've played the game the Fae plot was disabled, i think due to being reworked? There was something like one dream sequence that was a lead up to it. But i've still enjoyed the game a lot, so i feel it's safe to say it's not crucial element of the experience. Of course, if it's something extra in Act 1 then it's great... for Act 1 in terms of available content, but far less great in terms of time needed to complete this Act. So again, pushing this kind of things back to later acts (and freeing the development time allocated to that rework or whatever it was for other more tasks more crucial for Act 1 completion) could be another of these hard calls that are ultimately worth making. And while the content might be very popular for the Patreons, i'm pretty sure that the idea of getting wrapped up Act 1 would be also very popular with them :v

Anyway, that was my 2 mostly unasked for cents on this issue. I'll shut up and get back to wait, your time will be much better spent if you can work on the game instead

 

[maroder]

Obviously not a bad idea - but for act 1 that would mean removing a third of the game, and completely reworking the way the story paces itself. Which moves us dangerously close to being a pure Visual Novel, which - while not necessarily bad! - is not what was promised when development started.

I am not happy with the role the map plays in SoC act 1. But removing it mid-development would be a titanic endeavor with questionable benefits. Instead, I tried to adjust it so it's at least fun to play around with. Was I successful. Eh. Haven't really heard a lot of good about it. But it's a work in progress, so I haven't lost hope.

my main problem with map (gameplay side of game)is that it is too easy if you have even basic understanding of what you are doing. it is interesting mechanic but what you do on map is only for getting scenes and reaching two time limit checks that game has. gameplay on map and story are almost separate. there has never been any interesting choice to be made there why does it matter if i raze a town or decide to trade with it when it doesn't has any bearing on wider gameplay or story?
game tells story of tragic hero who has almost impossible task creating new army from nothing to please hes masters to survive gameplay on other hand tells story of super human who can achieve everything even without trying (your decision on map can almost never make you lose the game or even have consequences).
example i could always choose most moral choices and still my army strength would be at least 2 times more then hardest army check.
i know that finishing orc raid now gives bonuses and that is really good step in right direction(haven't played last 1-2 steam updates )

now i will give my unasked opinion how to make map significantly better with least amount of work which i can think of.
it's very easy just add optional hard mode which will make game significantly harder and i mean significantly.
making it should be relatively easy just double military strength necessary for taking towns, decrease gold income, make slaves more profitable, make razing towns better and things like that (make choosing ulcro gives us 4 orcs and 0.5 morale instead of 2 and leave delane option same) make check for taking ravens keep harder and do same for rastadel and field battle.
i want game to force me to consider destroying towns because whiteout it i may fail twins. i want to be forced to consider to take people as slaves because its only option rowan has left. i want to consider abandoning delane because without other orc tribes support rowan may die. i want to see rowan as hero who becomes monster one step at a time because it was only way to survive. i want to feel satisfaction that despite all odd's rowan managed to not become monster and was hero even when it was difficult. i can see great potential in which game map mechanics may help story to become much better, but there is no challenge and without challenge there can be no victory.

in short these game suffers from ludonarrative dissonance .
even if basic people will still find fun in it if it will work with story now they are working against each other.
i wish game devs best of luck its great and i enjoy it greatly.

 

[Rein]

I realize it, but also that'd be very much the point -- if you can cut down the size by 1/3rd without affecting any of your real content, then it's very much what i'd consider successful pruning.

Yes, but removing the map also adds work.

Ultimately it was decided that sustaining the map is less work then removing the map and replacing it with something else. If someone analyzes where all the new events have taken place in the last 3 years, they will realize the map itself hasn't been the main focus of our writing. Yes, I did do some work on it - but I'm just one writer of several. The main focus was always somewhere else.

Some people will complain, sure. But a lot more will complain a lot louder if the project drags on for years and years because of unsustainable scope.

You severely underestimate the backslash that comes with removing content.

As for the Fae plot, it was probably one of the hardest decisions in terms of development. Many arguments for and against. I won't get into it.

my main problem with map (gameplay side of game)is that it is too easy if you have even basic understanding of what you are doing. it is interesting mechanic but what you do on map is only for getting scenes and reaching two time limit checks that game has. gameplay on map and story are almost separate. there has never been any interesting choice to be made there why does it matter if i raze a town or decide to trade with it when it doesn't has any bearing on wider gameplay or story?
game tells story of tragic hero who has almost impossible task creating new army from nothing to please hes masters to survive gameplay on other hand tells story of super human who can achieve everything even without trying (your decision on map can almost never make you lose the game or even have consequences).
example i could always choose most moral choices and still my army strength would be at least 2 times more then hardest army check.
i know that finishing orc raid now gives bonuses and that is really good step in right direction(haven't played last 1-2 steam updates )

You are right! Which is why come version 0.5 Astarte outcome will no longer be set in stone!

With the economy rework of 0.4, expansion of the Bloodmeen army now requires constant expansion of the Bloodmeen castle. At the moment, this is primarily achieved by continuously upgrading your barracks, but eventually Forge (which is far too efficient with producing equipment at the moment), Brothel (which is far to weak at what it does) and Morale (which only grows to be a problem late game) will all be crucial tools for creating a large army for Bloodmeen. And the size of your army will be THE most important factor for determinating if Astarte's victory was a mere fluke, or if Rowan led armies completely annihilate the enemy.

I am not blind regarding the shortcomings of the Map segment. I cannot focus entirely on polishing it - our focus at the moment is finishing all the important act 1 events - but eventually this god damn game will behave like a god damn gamn.

 

[Jynx_lucky_j]

There are always back seat drivers and Monday night quarterbacks that think they know know what you should have done and what you should do in the future. But they aren't the ones that are in it, and they have a very limited perspective.

There's a quote I've heard from various developers, I can't remember who said it first, but is goes something like:
"Players are great at identifying problems, but awful at coming up with solutions"

 

[Gicoo]

There are always back seat drivers and Monday night quarterbacks that think they know know what you should have done and what you should do in the future. But they aren't the ones that are in it, and they have a very limited perspective.

There's a quote I've heard from various developers, I can't remember who said it first, but is goes something like:
"Players are great at identifying problems, but awful at coming up with solutions"

Dunno if he invented it, but its part of his 20 lessons (#19):

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[Segnbora]

Easy there fella

Not a fella, but the rest is representative crap.

 

[DeemLeem12]

Let me put it that way.

You make a game. You make a crucial mistake during the development phase of the game and 2 years into development, and you are saddled with certain mechanics or plot-lines that are unsustainable in the long run. Your options are as follows:
1. Continue as you were, basically dooming yourself into eternal development.
2. Scratch everything, and start from zero.
3. Wrap up haphazardly and move on to a new game.
4. Correct course, attempting to bring a satisfying conclusion to what you already started, vowing to not repeat the same mistakes moving forward.

Now, nr 1's natural conclusion is usually the game being abandoned. Eternal development is incredibly taxing - a story must be seen to its conclusion, otherwise you get burned out. If the developer is mad enough to keep going regardless... Well it's not particularly fun to watch anyway. I think Yandere Simulator is a good example. I admire the tenacity, but like, damn.

Nr 2 is a fantastic way to alienate your playerbase and bankrupt yourself. Unsustainable or not, people LIKED what you did, and supported it. Removing it will not be seen favourably. You can check Saria Reclaimed to see how his recent rework is working out.

Nr 3 has its advantages. Just... Cut off and move on. Leave whatever story lines you have unfinished and just move on to the next game. We see it all the time, particularly with triple A games.
Was that an option? Yes. Now, I'm just a writer, so I don't set the course of the ship. Personally, if we went that route, I wouldn't be satisfied with the end product. I hate blatantly unfinished games.

Which leaves nr 4 - compromise where you can, and try to make the possible product out of the things you've already put in place. Is it going to take long? Yes. Are you going to bang your head against the wall every time you have to deal with a old mechanic that doesn't really support the current vision of the game? Many fucking times. Will you have to deal with people asking month, after month, after month, "Are you done yet?". Very much so!

But you do it anyway, because you believe the end result will be good. And if you don't plan to make something good, then why the fuck do you get started on it in the first place.

Now, as for act 2. Will it be smaller in scope, with less characters, and less freedom of choice? Preferably not. There's a lot in Seeds of Chaos Act 1 that can be shaven off, without really detracting from the core experience. It will present itself with its own brand of unique challenges, but we are hopeful things will go better this time.

Every release brings us closer to the finish line. The game doesn't expand anymore - it just fills up where it has to fill up.

Alright, rant over, had to get it off my chest

Why hasn't the pace of development improved over the last years? You say mistakes were made in early developments, but I don't see why only a little improvement happened over time. You now have a bigger team, with better experience, who supposedly learned from their mistakes, and more resources. Has the team simply gotten complacent? It's been 7 years and it's still a slog.
You said you would cut down on the next game, with fewer characters. But if you do so, the consistency would be considerably off. The game already introduced a wide array of characters. No longer meeting those characters would only make the plot disjointed.

 

[Filipis]

Now, as for act 2. Will it be smaller in scope, with less characters, and less freedom of choice? Preferably not. There's a lot in Seeds of Chaos Act 1 that can be shaven off, without really detracting from the core experience. It will present itself with its own brand of unique challenges, but we are hopeful things will go better this time.

Ummm, I dearly hope I am misunderstanding your intended meaning here - but surely Act II will not, or is not planned, to feature the same # or even more characters?

You do understand where things went wrong with Act I, right?

 

[Jynx_lucky_j]

Why hasn't the pace of development improved over the last years? You say mistakes were made in early developments, but I don't see why only a little improvement happened over time. You now have a bigger team, with better experience, who supposedly learned from their mistakes, and more resources. Has the team simply gotten complacent? It's been 7 years and it's still a slog.
You said you would cut down on the next game, with fewer characters. But if you do so, the consistency would be considerably off. The game already introduced a wide array of characters. No longer meeting those characters would only make the plot disjointed.

Don't expect another full reply. Rein doesn't normally write such long posts. He normally just occasionally chimes in with quick corrections, or jokes, or on very rare occasions a snippet of information. It is generally regarded as a bad idea for developers to actively engage in debates with their player base.

But I would propose it the pace of development has improved simply because they are more focused and are following a roadmap instead of everyone just just working on whatever they feel like. It's just that even with the improved focus and work flow they still had a mountain of content to work through.

They team is only so big, and from my understanding they are all working day jobs in addition to this project. Still each update contains on average about 50-60 thousand words and dozens of new and updated art pieces. So I have a hard time agreeing they are developing at a slow pace. It wouldn't be very reasonable to say they should do even more work. You could argue that they could be less verbose and just get to the point and so spit out even more content per update but I can't help but think the quality of the game would suffer if they did that.

I've played a lot of "in development" porn games and for the vast majority of them when I reach the end i just kinda go "well that was kinda fun," and I move on and almost never go back to check on them. I like to think I'm not terribly unusual in that regard. The reason we get upset about the pace of this game is because it is good. We want more, and unless you are invested in some of the side content that is still in progress you aren't getting more. And that is frustrating. But if they reduced the quality to finish the game faster we would all be more likely to just shrug our shoulders and move on when we got to the end.

 

[ffive]

There's a quote I've heard from various developers, I can't remember who said it first, but is goes something like:
"Players are great at identifying problems, but awful at coming up with solutions"

The obvious simplification here is presumption that "players" and "developers" are separate circles on this Venn diagram. Although sure, the overleap tends to be minor (given the number of the latter is relatively low)

(a separate issue is that developers aren't all that universally great at coming up with solutions either, as evidenced by many, many games in existence with their own shares of problems they've failed to address in satisfactory manner)

 

[Lavinotinto]

"Are you done yet?".

Literally me. Xd

My tier.

 

[mehGusta]

Literally me. Xd

My tier.

View attachment 3325488

i saw your list and found it interesting that your S tier is pretty much mine as well. but after that it gets quite chaotic
Xzaratl should actually be A tier, since futa isn't my cup of tea. but she is so darn adorable one of the rare cases of people you can blindly trust, even though you don't really know them.

p.s. every character that is missing from the list isn't added because they have too little character or screentime of their own to really form a opinion about

 

[Mfka5]

I like them like this

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Curious. DOn't remember doing a tiermaker for Seed of Chaos before.

 

[g0i5y]

New version available?

 

[Lavinotinto]

i saw your list and found it interesting that your S tier is pretty much mine as well. but after that it gets quite chaotic View attachment 3326764
Xzaratl should actually be A tier, since futa isn't my cup of tea. but she is so darn adorable one of the rare cases of people you can blindly trust, even though you don't really know them.

p.s. every character that is missing from the list isn't added because they have too little character or screentime of their own to really form a opinion about

Yeah, It's my personal opinion and theirs screentime. For example Andras is top A cause all his encounters with Alexia and dialogues are glorious and Xztlara in top B cause she needs more duo content and not just threeways. Again it's personal opinion.

 

[ashkatchemall25]

Yeah, It's my personal opinion and theirs screentime. For example Andras is top A cause all his encounters with Alexia and dialogues are glorious and Xztlara in top B cause she needs more duo content and not just threeways. Again it's personal opinion.

I definitely agree that Alexia and the futa succubus need more content. I always thought that activating that route would enable Alexia to kinda run amuck with her own futa fking other characters and doing self-play around the castle. I also figured she'd spend much more quality time with her, because it seems she is pretty open to her from the start, especially with the permission from Rowan. Reason I thought she'd go a bit crazy with the new toy was because during one of her scenes, she seems to be really enjoying the heck out of it, so I thought it linger for a long while lol.

 

[DarkDank]

Quick and dirty tier list of the girls imho. I tried to keep S tier for the elite elite, but that shouldn't downplay my appreciate for the A listers at all, it really only starts to drop off heavily in C tier, though there is of course a drop for A to B, bigger than S to A.