RPGM Succubus Covenant Generation One: The Cursed Forest [Ch. 5] [Olympus]

MikeSamson · Aug 1, 2023

If I remember correctly, the original rd was in June(correct me if I'm wrong). Then, he said July. Now it's august. If I was a paid subscriber, I would be angry. But I know he doesn't work for pirates like me, but instead for his patreons. As long as he is still being paid with no major consequences, why would he change and do things on schedule? If you are a paid subscriber, go ahead, vent, and most importantly, stop supporting him if you don't like being misled/lied to.

colascage · Aug 2, 2023

Dreamer44 said:
The PC is at peak human condition, as strong as he can be. How could he level up and become stronger, then?

Let me get this straight, the dev is willing to make huge sacrifices in the gameplay department for that tiny bit of lore? You can easily make excuses like the hero getting essence from defeating/fucking succubi, which enhances their body or something similar. No wonder this game is such a slog. Only the lore matters, and let's be honest, even the majority of his supporters don't care about it aside from the succubi scenes, skipping right to the gallery.

I don't think this game is a scam. The developer genuinely wants to create, or rather write, a game about evil succubi. But, man, he should just make a VN of it or let someone else design his games.

blufalcon · Aug 2, 2023

To quote my own posts from 2 years ago

blufalcon said:
My only issue with the way the story is presented is that I just do not give a single fuck about all the other hunters that aren't player-controlled and I grow to resent them because their cutscenes actively distract me (the player) from my own mission. The cutscenes that involved rabbit girl and tribe chief girl are fine because she is directly involved with what I am doing as the player-controlled character. When we cut away to other countries to watch someone walk up a hallway and talk to yet another random dude, I just kinda stop caring. I don't sense any danger or tension with those other hunters because all that happens with them is them talking or walking, or there's a scripted, non-interactable fight or stealth sequence involving a bunch of random soldiers, and it happens like 99% of the time we enter a new area. Do they even deal with succubi or are they just there to talk? Why send an Adalon hunter to go talk?

I am getting drawn into this forest, I have prepared myself to clear this forest that is filled with the plant succubus scourge, but anytime I take 20 steps I gotta watch another cutscene about some dude who I honestly don't really care about talking to some other dude in a toga or something. Then his friend comes in who is just the same picture with a different colored toga. And for every single one of these men we're introduced to, you make us watch 3 seconds of it scrolling up from their feet to their face. So all this time is adding up and taking the hype away from me clearing out this forest or cave or whatever and I am just sitting there in my cuckscene corner thinking "Where are the boobs? My feet hurt. I just wanna get some fish. How do I know about the parts I'm not there for?"

If I were to offer any kind of solution, it would be to just focus on the main character, and then later if (and this is just an assumption) somehow we all meetup again, maybe the MC can ask them about their story and we can play a little sidequest as those other people and get to see their character and motivations then.

Other than that though, I enjoy my time with the game. I like the succubus designs. I like fighting them. I like winning and losing to them. It's the main draw of the game. The focus should be on them and the player's interactions with them. Otherwise it's not really Succubus Covenant. It's Men Have Discussions Generation One: The Cursed Pacing. Like... can't I just get letters from them or something? Something I can just read and put away so I can actually play the video game?

blufalcon said:
...there's exposition dumps that happen too often and at times that brings the momentum of things to a screeching halt. To me, it's like I'm trying to watch a 10 minute YouTube video that has 5 Ad breaks in it. I think it takes away from the immersion and that there could be better ways to have players engage with the story.

There are other things I could criticize as well, such as the lack of actual build options and runes just being stat-sticks. The lack of combat depth makes every fight in the game as easy as applying Iron Will before the battle and just holding down the confirm key to attack a few times to win. The only potential roadblock being the chance of getting RNG permastunned by the few enemies that have access to stuns, but that still usually isn't an issue. Let me ask this, if this game is supposed to span multiple chapters, generations, eons, etc, is the combat actually going to remain this stale throughout the entirety of it? Will we be challenged at all? Or is the Adalon Hunter going to continue to slice through everyone like a hot knife through butter? Did this dev work at fucking Blizzard or something? If the story is going to be raising stakes, then I think the combat should reflect that as well. It's obvious that the combat part of this role-playing game was sacrificed for the story. If I were to compare this game to something like The Three Charms R, then mechanically and narratively, Minwa is superior. Depth to the combat and story provided in ways that don't feel like you're #1 on every telemarketer's to-call list.

The dev is probably going to block anyone that criticizes them and say that we just don't understand their grand tale, but that won't stop me from pledging during release months to play the game. I'd like to note I'm not intending to come off as hostile, just criticizing. These forums are meant for discussion as well, but for some reason people here actually fucking hate any type of discourse and turn it into tribal warfare bullshit and try to shoo people away.

The game has suffered design issues from step 0. The combat is so shallow that it's almost not worth talking about and the story has considerable pacing issues and is riddled with exposition dumps that could've been conveyed with environmental storytelling and other techniques. Isn't that why so many writers say "show, don't tell"?

The dev clearly wants us to respect him as a writer but he's shown no respect to the players from the beginning, even when he frequented these threads. Anytime he was met with actual constructive criticism presented in a non-hostile way, he'd ignore it or imply that we're just too stupid to understand or enjoy it. The truth of the matter is that the story and lore is presented in such a terrible way that it actively kills the momentum not long after it just starts to get going. It doesn't even build up enough tension to be considered a cliffhanger. It is just a random deviation. This would bore any player of any game made like this and it would bore and reader of any book written like this.

There are thousands of FREE videos that he could use to learn the basics of game design (