I think I want to just leave you with the thought that you just described Dark Souls using such motivated reasoning that you ended up with "Dark souls establishes early that there are many alternative passages and you will be (most of the time) rewarded for exploration, not punished." which is not at all what Dark Souls establishes. Dark Souls establishes that opening a treasure chest might kill you. It establishes that going off the beaten path may have an item, or it may have a Dark Knight who will disembowel you. It establishes, in the very beginning of the game outside of the tutorial, that sometimes going off the beaten path means you will be killed by a dozen skeletons, or fight intangible ghosts you have little hope of understanding. You will absolutely be punished for exploring in Dark Souls, even if it's expected that your dangerous curiosity will also lead to rewards, and that punishing obstacles can be their own reward. It just doesn't care that going off the beaten path will likely mean your death, because it respects player choice. Like, read this entire paragraph again if you don't get it. Dark Souls is not remotely like what you just described it as, and there's a good reason for that.
And, again, I don't want the player to "naturally" encounter things because there are four buttons and every one they hit results in something unique. I want people to be excited when they find something unexpected. The Souls games absolutely do not give a shit if you miss something (see: every single NPC quest in any of the Dark Souls games, or how you enter the ENTIRE DLC in Dark Souls 1), which is why finding things in them is rewarding.
I had a different experience with exploring in dark souls, but I understand your overall point.
Do you have some ability to poll your backers? I am sure if you would do a survey on what type of skills and stances they use, you would get the result that many of them arent being used because they are redundant or straight up bad. I think skills like center, head/wrist/foot shot, berserk, haymaker, magic except heal, seduce, stonewall, feint, the archery system are only being used by a few players, if any. I am very confident the data would support my theory. Now, how you hadle that info, is up to you.
-Rebalance the skills to give them all a
meaningful niche
-Add tons of cool interactions with girls to each skill, making using them fun and sexy despite not being meta
-Remove the unused and (mostly, stop splitting hairs ^^) redundant skills and focus on cool interaction and balancing for the remainder
I respect the ambition, and sincerely hope that I am wrong and it comes all together at the end and works no matter what you pick. But I think it is very true that there are many ambitious half baked ideas in the game that will take many years to be completed if not adjusted, that is if they get completed at all.
I don't usually fight in combat, but when I do I came across a combo that has always worked for me in every encounter Fade-Away -> Parry -> Disarm [REPEAT]
I always give myself enough crystals and points to unlock everything at the beginning of the game though. Doesn't do a lot of damage but it seems to get the job done without taking a lot of damage and needing to use potions.
I also wouldn't find content hidden behind something like you mention, because I only fight when I know their sex stamina is inexhaustible, and then my attitude toward fighting is just "ugh, whatever, get it over with ew gross fighting yuck"
I usually put skill points into Armor Crusher and Tempo Attack and go AC until armor is gone, then Tempo attack, guard when balance is low. If your fast attack bleeds an enemy, you can grapple her until she bleeds out.
Another strat is going high strength/agi and skilling blitz stance->assault to just deal consistent massive damage.
You can also add Overrun and use it when the enemy is at low balance, then use crushing blow while he is down for massive extra damage.
The thing I'm keeping in my head for two years already is this: ToA is developing as an illustrated book, not as a game. It really doesn't want to invest into playing it and all.
The writer for this game seems proud that people find ToA huge. But it is huge as a visual novel, a book. As a game it looks like it barely changed since 2019. I think it was the last year when the META actually changed. Blitz stance had an overpowered skill that was giving you 100% of defence and decent damage if you had high Agility. It was changed. Since then the game barely received any update that changed the way it feels. Now you have an armor weight, which forces you to choose between light and heavy armor, you have a little bit better upgrade system (you can never use it and it won't hurt much tho), now there's a debuff from irritated anus, and that's it. It was almost 5 years, and that's really it.
It's not hard to find real games that in this particular aspect are much better. Lust Doll, for example. They made sex an alternative to combat. It has own mechanics and it has own unique outcomes. ToA's combat sex, which, as Majalis state it, is interesting, hot and all, is not an alternative to combat at all, it can only give you a tiny advantage. Gameplaywise it's useless. Being good at sex won't reward you with experience. It never gives you really cool outcomes, just a generic “you were fucked silly” text. In Lust Doll you can challenge a minotaur girl for a sparring and win to see her cheerful and tomboysh, or make her horny, start sex and make her embarrassed, meet her at shower and have a continuation to see this character in a very different light. It gives you depth and immersion, gameplay is giving you freedom, a feeling that you really are making choices. In ToA you just bash buttons to see scenes usually, or pass checks to branch them. Like in a visual novel. Not in a real game.
Honestly, I'm embarrassing myself by being so persistent. But I really don't understand. You paid for a person to make your Developer AI. Why do you use it and use your time to make more skills that are not making any difference? They're useless. U s e l e s s. Nobody is picking them. They don't give you real scenes with very scarce exceptions. Vault can give you one scene with Demon King in ouroboros, which seems like something worth the trouble, interesting and good. But that's one character. With other 40-50 battles, if I use Vault, I get damage. And it's boring. I may be rude, but who do you think we are? Is our time so cheap that we will use the bad skills like hand hits on every of 40+ fights just to get one scene where the head is falling, and you are being fucked? And then we do it with 100 other moves to get 2 or 3 real scenes? Have decensy. Remove skills that are a deadweight. Start with spells like Cinder-Flame-Inferno, you barely find use for one such spell in current meta, you don't need three times three of them.
I think you are being very harsh. I don't like the direction the devs are going with the combat, but it has some cool ideas and is very unique.
I think the grapple system and unique skill interactions (maybe include mid-combat scenes?) have great potential to finally combine the combat aspect with the erotic aspects of the game. But I agree that removing many of the redundant skills and focusing on the ones that matter would be the smartest course of action.
