Unreal Engine Completed Subverse [v1.1.1] [Studio Fow]

[IG88a]

For those first point...while I'm sure we'd all love if every Pandora scene was 5 minutes long, that's simply asking too much. Especially considering how many are currently there, and what's being added in the next update for just 4 girls. With numerous partners and kinks to fill, that'd just be impossible to do without a significantly larger team and budget. And personally I feel that if you made everything long, then the really special ones would feel monotonous at that point. You need the basic ones to make the Premium ones stand out. And the premium ones in turn will help the devotion quest animation (which is the several minute long cap off you want) do the same.

Regarding the second point, the problem with every scene having context is that that would vastly expand the dialogue. Therefore its the big bad budget rearing its head again. Now I'm sure this could easily be fixed if FOW opened up more financial support options, but they don't want to be Star Citizen, and just have endless feature creep because they keep getting more money. They have stated that the Ela update will see more sex integrated into the story, which is somewhat what you asked. I just don't see it being applied to every scene that'll be in Pandora.

I mean they only had two years and two million dollars guys. We have to be fair here.
Like voicework could cost upwards of a whole thousand dollarydoos per hour of finished VA. Thats like... under 1% of their initial budget if they recorded another 20 solid hours of additional dialogue... 10x the length of the current games VA runtime... thats 30% of the game by chapters... the one with the most VA talking according to their own pressers due to the tutorials and necessary exposition.

But you're right in appropriating my point about VA being a millstone around the neck of the game, meaning it'll never improve in it's current trajectory. Any change to game design means new voicework. Money they might not even have to budget at this point, but also time that definitely isn't on their side after 2 years of pissing around. They really, really fucked themselves on having full VA so low on the list of stretch goals. They never did a comprehensive business plan or matte out what their additional backer goals would actually cost as they added them. No one is even hounding them yet for all the other stuff that was contractually promised by accepting more money... but less than it might cost to realize.

Now most apparently erroneously assumed full VA actually meant full VA, not just the VN segments (sans mocapping the actual mouths, something that is incredibly poor form for an animation studio) but all the sex scenes. Probably foremost.

Then they announced pandora as the only method of unlocking content as the cheap copout because as you agree, VA being expensive and context dependent. Seems writing and game design is hard in their camp.
Isn't exactly what people thought they were signing up for. His shortlist there was the bare minimum people thought they were getting.

With this exchange it seems you're softballing the fact even you believe the only thing people will get out of Subverse is more of the same.
There will never be that bare minimum of content having context. The girls talking during sex. Your actions even effecting the goings on of your own characters dick.
Just more of the same short, choppy animation loops disconnected from the narrative. Tacked on as an afterthought to the entirely linear "watch cutscenes with no player choice between repetitive minigame combat that spits out big PP" main gameloop so heavily derided.

Not quite the "just wait and see when it gets good" cheery disposition you used to hold.

 

[Gwedelino]

Yeah just choosing to ignore...that one. Grats to him for being the second person I've had to do that with in this thread. Once they become a wall that refuses to budge no matter how many facts you present them with, you're just wasting your breath at that point.

Now back to what I can hope are somewhat normal discussions.



Well I'd think we'd left that debate about 50 or so pages back, but in agreement with Kerry's following statement. NTR really only applies if you're self-inserting yourself into the character's role. Which unless you're a space traveling australian hooked on cocainium, I don't think you can

For those first point...while I'm sure we'd all love if every Pandora scene was 5 minutes long, that's simply asking too much. Especially considering how many are currently there, and what's being added in the next update for just 4 girls. With numerous partners and kinks to fill, that'd just be impossible to do without a significantly larger team and budget. And personally I feel that if you made everything long, then the really special ones would feel monotonous at that point. You need the basic ones to make the Premium ones stand out. And the premium ones in turn will help the devotion quest animation (which is the several minute long cap off you want) do the same.

Regarding the second point, the problem with every scene having context is that that would vastly expand the dialogue. Therefore its the big bad budget rearing its head again. Now I'm sure this could easily be fixed if FOW opened up more financial support options, but they don't want to be Star Citizen, and just have endless feature creep because they keep getting more money. They have stated that the Ela update will see more sex integrated into the story, which is somewhat what you asked. I just don't see it being applied to every scene that'll be in Pandora.

A huge number of games here with far far less budget are able to give context to their sex scenes.

That's not a problem of ressources, but how they are spend and what choices are made by the devs.

I don't mind having 4 or 5 times less scenes on Pandora if the remaining scenes were longer and had context.

As an exemple I think the best scene was the recruitment scene for Kily because we had context for it. It's not a 2 minutes long animation, but the story was here.

Your view about the risk of sex scenes becoming "monotonous" if all sex scenes were longer only exist because of the current situation of the Pandora system : preferring quantity over quality.

Ofc all of this is related to my vision of how sex should be implemented into this game, but it seems that I'm not the only one having this point of view.

And curiously, since Subverse is a game that try to create his own universe / story, some people are looking for the same thing for the sex scenes.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

A huge number of games here with far far less budget are able to give context to their sex scenes.

That's not a problem of ressources, but how they are spend and what choices are made by the devs.

Okay but how many of those games also had a giant cast of actors to pay?

 

[Joshua Tree]

Okay but how many of those games also had a giant cast of actors to pay?

and the length of animation sequences.. that take time..

 

[Gwedelino]

Okay but how many of those games also had a giant cast of actors to pay?

Okay but how many of those games also had several millions dollars of budget ?

 

[Deleted member 324588]

Okay but how many of those games also had several millions dollars of budget ?

And that budget was spread over the entire studio of employees, voice actors, and such over two years. That isn't an argument. They're not pulling in monthly income anymore.

 

[IG88a]

Gwedelino
It's really funny how shameless they are.

Schrodinger's Subverse

Both fully funded for several more years of development along with all FOW projects in the future yet also completely bankrupt and unable to throw a few hundred dollars at voice actresses to spend the day recording a batch of canned "fuck me harder baka onichan" dialogue loops.

A .0000001 early access game that can only be judged as if it materialized out of the ether yet also simultaneously a serious game from a totally professional studio who should be trusted implicitly.

When all 65,000 backer keys activating at the same time pushed it to a slow weeks no2 slot on steamDB this very same pair actually thought the game was selling tens of thousands of additional copies and they'd raked in millions of extra revenue, only for it to disappear off the board along with the cratering of playercount the second the calendar ticked forward.
Now Studio Fow is apparently in such dire straights with no additional revenue (Not even VValen thinks the game is selling apparently) that the voicework to meet the actual intent of the backer goal is too big an expense. But 16 more chapters are totally to be released on... uh... tbd.

 

[Gwedelino]

And that budget was spread over the entire studio of employees, voice actors, and such over two years. That isn't an argument. They're not pulling in monthly income anymore.

As your argument about them having to pay VA isn't one. As I said before it's about how they spend their money, not how much they have.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

As your argument about them having to pay VA isn't one. As I said before it's about how they spend their money, not how much they have.

Well unless you're gonna drop a detailed bill for how to pay at least 12+ people plus voice acting expenses over a 2 year period with what they got from KS (minus the percentage KS itself takes), then we're just going around in circles. And we're talking livable wages, as I doubt any of them are working for minimum

 

[Gwedelino]

Well unless you're gonna drop a detailed bill for how to pay at least 12+ people plus voice acting expenses over a 2 year period with what they got from KS (minus the percentage KS itself takes), then we're just going around in circles. And we're talking livable wages, as I doubt any of them are working for minimum

You created this meaningless circle by bringing this "but they must pay their VA argument".

My opinion is quite clear, and I will say it again : it's about how they spend their money, not how much they have.

I already said in my previous post that I wouldn't mind having way less sex scenes in the game in order to favorise quality other quantity. In this situation, you don't spend more, you just make a different choice of how you spend your money.

Same for giving context to the sex scenes and same for the VA. We would probably have a different adventure and different dialogues if they decided to give sex scenes fully implemented into the story, but it would have been better for my point of view.

 

[Razrback16]

You created this meaningless circle by bringing this "but they must pay their VA argument".

My opinion is quite clear, and I will say it again : it's about how they spend their money, not how much they have.

I already said in my previous post that I wouldn't mind having way less sex scenes in the game in order to favorise quality other quantity. In this situation, you don't spend more, you just make a different choice of how you spend your money.

Same for giving context to the sex scenes and same for the VA. We would probably have a different adventure and different dialogues if they decided to give sex scenes fully implemented into the story, but it would have been better for my point of view.

Agreed. Would be perfectly happy to see half as many GIFs if it meant proper, narrative-driven [actual] scenes and / or have proper flow when you put a lead-in --> scene --> lead-out selection so that they resulted in an actual, mostly complete scene and not brief, looping GIFs with minimal (or zero) context.

 

[Trello]

Query, where are the save games stored for this game?

 

[Deleted member 324588]

Query, where are the save games stored for this game?

C:\Users\whatever account name is\AppData\Local\Subverse

 

[Kernist]

Again with "It's just an EA, you can't judge, wait till the game is finished".

Well, before it gets finished this game will no longer be sci-fi but history oriented game because humanity will progress further than what is shown in this game.

I think it's over. Who backed the game on KS, backed it. Who fell into the trap of Studio FOW bought this EA. What's next? Who will buy the game now when we are probably years from finished version and people who were hyped already got it? I can't imagine a scenario where people who were undecided will suddenly buy the game after what happens here, what happens on discord, reddit and Steam discussions and how recent reviews for the game look like. I didn't think this game will be good from the start, but now I doubt it will ever be finished. Live and learn.

 

[IG88a]

You created this meaningless circle by bringing this "but they must pay their VA argument".

My opinion is quite clear, and I will say it again : it's about how they spend their money, not how much they have.

I already said in my previous post that I wouldn't mind having way less sex scenes in the game in order to favorise quality other quantity. In this situation, you don't spend more, you just make a different choice of how you spend your money.

Same for giving context to the sex scenes and same for the VA. We would probably have a different adventure and different dialogues if they decided to give sex scenes fully implemented into the story, but it would have been better for my point of view.

Thats really the crux of it, overwhelming mismanagement and poor game design.

Even the pandora interface could have been done right, they just half assed it. What they wanted to do with it was give people the ability to chain scenes together into custom interactive events. Then they realized at some point this is hard, that context became hard, and decided to remove context (or never had it to begin with) from the equation. Rendering a system invented for customizablilty entirely sterile. Even that could be reading too much into it because this is the first time they've ever had to deal with 'contextualizing' anything. Their videos are self contextualizing, Worgen X _____, but in a videogame every sex scene needs to be narratively supported or... subverse happens.

How you'd fix this from the current state is a product of several new elements.
1. In narrative sex scene unlocks with a narrative intro and outtro (The fucking duh one)
2. the pandora system as an interface is girl specific and opens when you click a "sex menu" button when interacting with her
3. They add something new, radiant intro and outtro.
5-7+ randomized "So Captain what are we going to do on the bed" "I haven't been fucked like that since gradeschool" Visual novel segments that bookend the 1-3 sex scenes you've chosen.

I can even foster a simple lore/mechanics fix for why mantics aren't cuckshit
>They're piloted by you
Why you aren't a field unit, you are. Just not as you.
Lily cloned the current batch of Mantics from your DNA and you're piloting/directing them in combat. When you aren't in direct control, they're just order driven beasts. Why this is a desired military technology, easy bake becoming a hive faction. Why people are chasing Lily.

To the proposed "you get to the gallery through the girl menu" change, then how do you get to mantic content? The current interface, on the bed. For mantic scenes only. Separated from general content.
Lily didn't start fucking dogs, the player (having agency) being a le edgy pervert gets the bright idea to patch in to a mantic and mount her in the lab. She doesn't complain much and doesn't force the issue that she knows you know you piloted it the 97 times she's been fucked by her experiments this week.

With any, let alone meaningful choice, being absent from Subverse's game design these are the kind of mostly simple mechanic/structure side changes that would give some much needed actual gameplay to their game. Because as it sits, the combat isn't gameplay. It's reduced in role to a minigame due to the lack of gameloop surrounding it.

 

[IG88a]

To my suggestion, it's also a return to form of the initial scope of the game.

As Fow thought it up, the game was supposed to be about raping women with monsters to breed more monsters for your monster army.
Now thats at home here, and what all the comics are about, but that initial idea doesn't exactly get past the censors and doesn't sit well in this "climate" of political correctness and other such pearl clutching at power fantasy escapism.

"You are the mantics" fixes all that.
And makes you an actual faction with a chance at actually taking down the "empire." Playing right into the "empire" main race maintaining their psyonic powers through sexual purity and all the rest of the lore fluff for why you are fighting for Truth and justice and SEX accross the galaxy.

Typically a "macguffin" is the reason here for why game. You should have done something wacky as a space adventurer in the intro that made you the progentor of the mantics. Easy one, You stole it from the space pirates, who stole it from fortune, who stole it from the empire, who made it as a god weapon to subjugate their own species who's powers come from abstaining from sex.
When cornered you use it on yourself and now Fortune and this whole plan to overthrow the empire falls on your shoulders.

Then as the roguishly handsome and handsomely roguish (under the panties) captain, you get to be the humanizing mouth piece of this hive faction and convince the ladies of the galaxy they want to fuck you for the cause.

Your army grows with more units, made slowly by Lily or the old fashioned way through monster rape, and thats why the first faction you go after is the fuckbots
They aren't people, have no agency, and it isn't rape. You capture a fuckload of them and they clone you a bigboy army of mantics.
Sidebar: Imagine Demi as the niave and sweet AI queen at the heart of the sexbot menace and absorbing their faction as a first galaxy arc. Setting a pattern of earning your "waifus" through the core combat mechanics.

Ideally then comes VN relationsim mechanics of convincing your crew and captured enemies to bear your mantic children, sending videos of it out across the internet to proselytize the benefits of mantic sex, but sticking to the limited mechanical scope of subverse you can make this all happen as part of the linear narrative through cutscene.

Bottom line as the overarching meta plot, the empire falls into shambles over the course of the game because of the threat and pornagraphic propaganda of your sex positive, giant dick having, swarm faction that directly neutralizes the core imperial races psyonics. All because their ground forces want to fuck the mantics they're fighting.

There you have wrapped up with a nice little bow the game they actually wanted to make, but with their ducks in a row about
1. Global framing of sex content being the player with the female characters
2. Narratively suported core mechanic of the Mantic on X they wanted to animate
3. all sex is consensual

And if it sounds like this, or any, or the released version of Subverse would make hell of a lot more sense as an RTS instead of xcom-bullethell, it's because it does.

They always wanted to make an "Overlord" style game. Instead we got subverse due to the constraints of normies and their inability to write or game design around them.

 

[Zeddy]

A lot of energy spent trying to convince others to dislike stuff. I don't think the problems here warrant this many drama posts. If I am wary of something and want to share that; I try to keep it concise to not waste people's time. For what problems this game's development does have, there are plenty of other, more serious things currently happening in the world to be this upset about and try to change. This game is unimportant enough to ignore if you don't like it. It would be cool if this passion shown in this thread was used on more constructive things.

 

[IG88a]

A lot of energy spent trying to convince others to dislike stuff. I don't think the problems here warrant this many drama posts. If I am wary of something and want to share that; I try to keep it concise to not waste people's time. For what problems this game's development does have, there are plenty of other, more serious things currently happening in the world to be this upset about and try to change. This game is unimportant enough to ignore if you don't like it. It would be cool if this passion shown in this thread was used on more constructive things.

Made me think of this

You must be registered to see the links

But no ones spending any energy on trying to prove the game is bad or convince people to not like it. The game being bad in it's current form is self evident. The "drama" stems out of no one defending the game or even thinking it's good, but wanting to shut down discussion all the same.

These dogged "defenders" aren't arguing for the game on it's strengths. Things like the voice actresses putting in a great job. The technical merits of the premium scenes long enough to watch. Not even where they personally think the game should go to generate some positive speculative posting. There are plenty of highly critical reviews that have went far deeper into what works about subverse than subversefan69 and co. ever have 'defending" the game.

Just nonstop kvetching whenever anyone offers their perception that the game is bad, much less brings up a problem they have with a specific mechanic. Well you're not allowed to feel that because the game is early access, only a .0000001, because you should just trust them as professionals, because they're a small studio and should be given the benefit of the doubt, beca...
Endless, shameless duplicitous bad faith posts to shut down discussion, backfiring when someone interrupts their circlejerking like on dev moderated social media. Limping away and waiting or forum sliding the next page to start up another attempt to consensus crack F95 into the opinion that until the game is "out" no one can have an opinion.

 

[arpaschad]

I still like the game in it's current form (which is btw in EARLY ACCESS and not even 50% compete) what are you gonna do? lynch me? lol at the people here complaining ad infinitum when most of you all won't even BUY IT when it gets completed! spouting crap like ''HuRr DuRr GAmE iS rEusIng AsSeTs fRoM anOthEr GaMe!'' and you jack off to the same reused assets in any Renpy game here like what?! GTFO here

 

[IG88a]

I still like the game in it's current form (which is btw in EARLY ACCESS and not even 50% compete) what are you gonna do? lynch me? lol at the people here complaining ad infinitum when most of you all won't even BUY IT when it gets completed! spouting crap like ''HuRr DuRr GAmE iS rEusIng AsSeTs fRoM anOthEr GaMe!'' and you jack off to the same reused assets in any Renpy game here like what?! GTFO here

"Well you're not allowed to feel that because the game is early access"
womp womp
Fiery post and yet conspicuously absent... articulating why he likes the game, let alone why anyone should like the game, yet still indignantly saying everyone else must reserve judgement as if this wasn't a game and studio handed over two million dollars upfront only to release incomplete and over a year late.

The dual opinion of "You won't even buy the game" and "it's fine if they pirated honey select models from illusion" is pretty humorous. Usually something that hypocritical goes in different posts at the least.