Java Tales of Androgyny [v0.3.49.4] [Majalis]

[shujuku]

evoker playable when?

Why is the only necromancer/warlock class a dumb gyaru one?

 

[Tenty]

It is just that - an opinion. A factual claim would be something like there being "9 different stances" that could conceivably be said to have "blurry differences", which you will not be able to name without naming a bunch of the sex stances while pretending that has something to do with the critique of the standard combat stances or the magic stances, which it does not.

Aight, I will give a few examples.
-All Out offense stances: Assault, All Out Blitz, Vault, Berserk, Haymaker
-Offensive stance: Tempo attack, Overrun, Feint, Wristshot, Headshot, Footshot
-Guard stance: Stonewall being strictly dominated by Guard and Careful attack, Sudden attack and Center

All these are almost interchangeable in the use, with some niche use cases making one marginally better over the other. This is just one part of the problem.

So I'll say it loud for the people in the back: I don't remotely care if you don't want to have an interesting combat system. I could have easily made an RPG Maker game where you select Fight - Defend - Magic - Run; they're not alien to me. I don't live on another planet; I know some people want an erotic game with no frills combat that ferrets them from one Fuck to the next.

The core battle system of this game is Fighting And Fucking.

The combat not being interesting is my main point of criticism. I dont think dozens of half baked systems equals depth and complexity. Since the beginning of development combat has been a simple DPS race between you and the enemy. There are a handful of unique interactions between skills and enemies, the rest of the skills are just there for you to figure out which of them lower the enemy HP the fastest while protecting you the most. To experience elements of combat, the player needs to actively go ot of his way to play inefficiently. Examples:

-Seduce system just giving free damage to the enemy
-Same for the grapple system most of the time
-Magic has just been free healing since the very first iteration of it, because casting actual abilities and damage always gets outperformed by combat damage and protection

In the end it all boils down to
Attack until you are imbalanced
Defend until you regain balance
Repeat until victory
Despite being a game about fighting and fucking, the erotic aspect of the game is directly in conflict with the combat.

Hey, did you know if you hit the Golem with a shock spell, she'll get a boner and malfunction? Did you know if you chill the Naga enough she'll fall asleep? Hey, maybe next if you burn off a character's clothes, they'll surrender. Oh, wait, that's in my notes! Maybe if you hit the Fire Elemental with a fire spell, she'll grow hotter. Yep, that's in there too. Here's a fun one that I didn't have time to get to this week while I was implementing the new enemy armors and hand/head/feet interactions - when you hit the Dullahan's hand, she drops her head, and her body goes Berserk, as she has a tendency to do, and her head calls after you while she goes wild with you. That's the fun of making a system with a lot of moving parts.

Honestly, this all sounds great. This would give all of these abilities some use beyond just being another source of damage/some debuff. The problem will be to actually get the player to use them.

-Wrist shot to get dullahan to drop her head: If you aren't an avid fan that carefully reads every changelog, how is a new player supposed to stumble over this interaction? In addition you have Tempo attack unlocked by default.
-The Magic interactions are nice, but Magic is so niche and underpowered, if you don't read the changelog, you would realistically need to do a magic only challenge run to stumble upon these.

Thinning down the skills would make it easier to add many such interactions to the remaining skills that will then actually be organically used and seen by the player. You already had the balance system in place and the Overrun skill that actively disbalances the enemy and the grapple stance. Why not make the dullahan head drop scene part of knocking her down (with a spell or the Overrun skill), or giving the player the option to wrestle it away in the grapple? The wrist/head/foot targeting system is completely unnecessary in this case.

I fear that these interactions will be so niche and specific with so many existing skills, that the player will have to actively browse the wiki/changelog to see the scenes instead of seeing them organically. Another example, I remember you adding a haymaker "scrambled eggs" defeat scene against the Dark Knight. I tried many times to get it, but it requires such a niche combination of her stance and you being in the haymaker stance at the same time that I just couldn't get it to work. And I have been actively trying to get it. In addition using the Haymaker against the Knight is such a bad idea (Due to her immense offense and the Haymakers stance lack of protection), that the possibility of a new player trying to win the fight seeing this unique inreraction is almost 0%. Removing Haymaker and just keeping the all out assault stance like it was at the first release would allow you to pack this and future interactions of a girl countering or reacting to an all out offense Hiro build into one skill.

At the end of the day, it is your project and you have your vision. We can agree to disagree, still love your game and your writing. I just think that you have overburdened yourself with all these half baked systems and skills and it will take ages to flesh them out if it even comes to that. Sometimes more is less.

 

[negroidprime]

I just want to be able to take glasses off

If you have a photo editing software, you can.
Open up the .jar file, locate "animation" folder and find the "MC.png" files (there's 14 of them), open them up in GIMP or whatever image editing software of your choosing that can handle transparency (mspaint wont work here), find the one that has the glasses (currently MC_14.png) and edit the glasses out, put the edited file back into the animation folder inside the .jar, launch the game and enjoy the bunny outfit without glasses.
You can edit out pretty much anything with this method, i personally edit out some cloaks because i do not like them.

 

[Majalis (ToA)]

Aight, I will give a few examples.
-All Out offense stances: Assault, All Out Blitz, Vault, Berserk, Haymaker
-Offensive stance: Tempo attack, Overrun, Feint, Wristshot, Headshot, Footshot
-Guard stance: Stonewall being strictly dominated by Guard and Careful attack, Sudden attack and Center

All these are almost interchangeable in the use, with some niche use cases making one marginally better over the other. This is just one part of the problem.



The combat not being interesting is my main point of criticism. I dont think dozens of half baked systems equals depth and complexity. Since the beginning of development combat has been a simple DPS race between you and the enemy. There are a handful of unique interactions between skills and enemies, the rest of the skills are just there for you to figure out which of them lower the enemy HP the fastest while protecting you the most. To experience elements of combat, the player needs to actively go ot of his way to play inefficiently. Examples:

-Seduce system just giving free damage to the enemy
-Same for the grapple system most of the time
-Magic has just been free healing since the very first iteration of it, because casting actual abilities and damage always gets outperformed by combat damage and protection

In the end it all boils down to
Attack until you are imbalanced
Defend until you regain balance
Repeat until victory
Despite being a game about fighting and fucking, the erotic aspect of the game is directly in conflict with the combat.


Honestly, this all sounds great. This would give all of these abilities some use beyond just being another source of damage/some debuff. The problem will be to actually get the player to use them.

-Wrist shot to get dullahan to drop her head: If you aren't an avid fan that carefully reads every changelog, how is a new player supposed to stumble over this interaction? In addition you have Tempo attack unlocked by default.
-The Magic interactions are nice, but Magic is so niche and underpowered, if you don't read the changelog, you would realistically need to do a magic only challenge run to stumble upon these.

Thinning down the skills would make it easier to add many such interactions to the remaining skills that will then actually be organically used and seen by the player. You already had the balance system in place and the Overrun skill that actively disbalances the enemy and the grapple stance. Why not make the dullahan head drop scene part of knocking her down (with a spell or the Overrun skill), or giving the player the option to wrestle it away in the grapple? The wrist/head/foot targeting system is completely unnecessary in this case.

I fear that these interactions will be so niche and specific with so many existing skills, that the player will have to actively browse the wiki/changelog to see the scenes instead of seeing them organically. Another example, I remember you adding a haymaker "scrambled eggs" defeat scene against the Dark Knight. I tried many times to get it, but it requires such a niche combination of her stance and you being in the haymaker stance at the same time that I just couldn't get it to work. And I have been actively trying to get it. In addition using the Haymaker against the Knight is such a bad idea (Due to her immense offense and the Haymakers stance lack of protection), that the possibility of a new player trying to win the fight seeing this unique inreraction is almost 0%. Removing Haymaker and just keeping the all out assault stance like it was at the first release would allow you to pack this and future interactions of a girl countering or reacting to an all out offense Hiro build into one skill.

At the end of the day, it is your project and you have your vision. We can agree to disagree, still love your game and your writing. I just think that you have overburdened yourself with all these half baked systems and skills and it will take ages to flesh them out if it even comes to that. Sometimes more is less.

It is insane to say that Assault, All Out Blitz, Vault, Berserk, Haymaker are all interchangeable. Berserk locks you into the stance, making defensive skills impossible until you trip/get knocked down/pass out, Vault puts you in the air, forcing you to switch stances immediately, dodging low attacks, and being countered by enemies with the ability to grab you out of the air. Haymaker is defenseless, making it risky to use, and has a tremendous damage bonus, allowing you to damage the enemy through armor, but requires an extra setup turn. Assault ignores blocking - kind of important if your opponent is, y'know, blocking. Just 0/5.

The DPS race is exactly what this update is intended to address, again. That's why there's boosted enemy-unique armor and reductions in knockdown and armor destruction, to slow down the pace of victory - along with the AI changes that will actually allow the enemy to punish you for overly-aggressive play, when they currently will often let you get away with it. These changes haven't happened till now partially for that reason - most of the complaints people have are about the combat being too difficult, so I couldn't very well make it harder. But that's what I'm doing now, closer to the point where I have the levers to smooth out the difficult by having the AI be consistent, and carefully targeting where the AI will go easy on you and how you can manipulate it - things like arousing enemies or getting them drunk so their decision-making is worse or their goals change from beating you down to something else. Like, I cannot stress enough that you yadda yadda'd over the actual changes that are fixing the problems you're currently complaining about based on the erroneous assumption that a ton of effort has mistakenly gone into trying to fix these problems in the past, which is just wrong.

The solutions to the problems you're raising exist without removing a bunch of skills. If the problem is that Tempo Attack is too effective, it can just be made less effective. If you want an answer to "why shouldn't I just spam this one attack or this simple strategy", the answer is "make it so that spamming this one attack or strategy causes you to lose", obviously, and the fact that people miss that is genuinely baffling. And it's not that I can't do that - I've deliberately avoided doing it so people wouldn't complain about things being too hard.

How are you supposed to figure out that hitting the Dullahan's hand will make her drop her head? I'll tell you! First off, you might just try it, thinking it might do that! You might be trying to disarm her whip. You might try to hit her head, only to have it whiff, because obviously her head isn't where it is on a normal fighter, and think to yourself "oh, of course, her head isn't there... but she is holding it." You might read the changelog. You might hear it from somebody else and go try it. If your goal is to actually explore the game's combat and not to find some optimal route to the easiest victory, which... is not a good assumption for how people are playing this game, for a number of reasons, then you might just find it that way, too. Even the people who don't care about the combat as an artifact itself might care about the sex aspects of it, and might be using seduction in combat not to do the most effective possible thing in combat, but for some other reason, like, maybe, because it's hot?

Or, you might just not see it.

Making the Dullahan drop her head because she fell down is not nearly as fun or interesting as making her drop her head because you realize that if you hit her hand, she'll drop her head. Hitting the "Knock Over" button when you want to knock the enemy over, instead of puzzling out how you can knock them over, is not fun. It's a glorified gallery viewer.

As for Scrambled Eggs - all you need to do is have nothing covering your crotch and she'll automatically do it while she's in Haymaker. That's it. Actually, I can see that she does have one other option now, because of the newer AI system, so I can make sure she uses it guaranteed. I absolutely do not care if people miss things that they could have seen. If you're someone who needs to see absolutely everything in a game, you have my sympathy, but not my accommodation. Finding things spontaneously and surprisingly is one of the great joys of playing games. How are you supposed to know there's a hidden wall behind the chest that is already relatively well-hidden in Blighttown that leads to two entire optional areas of the game, one of which has a beautiful, haunting vista that you would otherwise miss? You aren't. And when you stumble on it, it's magical. And then you can tell somebody else about it, and they can go and see what they missed. I love seeing comments from people discovering the Troja easter egg for the first time and being pleasantly surprised by it, or people stumbling upon the debt Bunnies or the Giantess valley or the Mouth Fiend.

There is an enormous amount of content in this game. People finding it for the first time routinely message me and say they can't believe how much there is - before they realize the game has more than one map. "What if a given player doesn't see absolutely everything in the game" is not a problem I care to give much attention to at all. Notably, there is a tracker for how much of the game you've seen, but there's no achievement for 100% (or ANY percent, for that matter), because that tracker is only meant to give you a rough idea of how much more there is, and maybe a hint about things you haven't seen yet.

So the long and short of it is that I'm not designing for those goals. I'm not trying to make a simple, easy to understand combat system that anyone can pick up and immediately fully understand that will show them all the possible interactions without having to experiment or think about anything. I'm not trying to make sure every unique interaction is seen by every player. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is more. Brevity may be the soul of wit*, but it's definitely not the soul of sex.

*this quote is actually meant ironically in context

 

[Twiton]

There's only one true criticism that Majalis can't refute though:

You can hug Kylira, but there isn't a hug counter for it.

How can I do a Can You Beat Tales of Androgyny Without Hugging Kylira run? smh

Genuinely though, looking forward to combat easter eggs/secret phases & weaknesses like that being implemented, keep it up!

 

[Budouka]

It is insane to say that Assault, All Out Blitz, Vault, Berserk, Haymaker are all interchangeable. Berserk locks you into the stance, making defensive skills impossible until you trip/get knocked down/pass out, Vault puts you in the air, forcing you to switch stances immediately, dodging low attacks, and being countered by enemies with the ability to grab you out of the air. Haymaker is defenseless, making it risky to use, and has a tremendous damage bonus, allowing you to damage the enemy through armor, but requires an extra setup turn. Assault ignores blocking - kind of important if your opponent is, y'know, blocking. Just 0/5.

The DPS race is exactly what this update is intended to address, again. That's why there's boosted enemy-unique armor and reductions in knockdown and armor destruction, to slow down the pace of victory - along with the AI changes that will actually allow the enemy to punish you for overly-aggressive play, when they currently will often let you get away with it. These changes haven't happened till now partially for that reason - most of the complaints people have are about the combat being too difficult, so I couldn't very well make it harder. But that's what I'm doing now, closer to the point where I have the levers to smooth out the difficult by having the AI be consistent, and carefully targeting where the AI will go easy on you and how you can manipulate it - things like arousing enemies or getting them drunk so their decision-making is worse or their goals change from beating you down to something else. Like, I cannot stress enough that you yadda yadda'd over the actual changes that are fixing the problems you're currently complaining about based on the erroneous assumption that a ton of effort has mistakenly gone into trying to fix these problems in the past, which is just wrong.

The solutions to the problems you're raising exist without removing a bunch of skills. If the problem is that Tempo Attack is too effective, it can just be made less effective. If you want an answer to "why shouldn't I just spam this one attack or this simple strategy", the answer is "make it so that spamming this one attack or strategy causes you to lose", obviously, and the fact that people miss that is genuinely baffling. And it's not that I can't do that - I've deliberately avoided doing it so people wouldn't complain about things being too hard.

How are you supposed to figure out that hitting the Dullahan's hand will make her drop her head? I'll tell you! First off, you might just try it, thinking it might do that! You might be trying to disarm her whip. You might try to hit her head, only to have it whiff, because obviously her head isn't where it is on a normal fighter, and think to yourself "oh, of course, her head isn't there... but she is holding it." You might read the changelog. You might hear it from somebody else and go try it. If your goal is to actually explore the game's combat and not to find some optimal route to the easiest victory, which... is not a good assumption for how people are playing this game, for a number of reasons, then you might just find it that way, too. Even the people who don't care about the combat as an artifact itself might care about the sex aspects of it, and might be using seduction in combat not to do the most effective possible thing in combat, but for some other reason, like, maybe, because it's hot?

Or, you might just not see it.

Making the Dullahan drop her head because she fell down is not nearly as fun or interesting as making her drop her head because you realize that if you hit her hand, she'll drop her head. Hitting the "Knock Over" button when you want to knock the enemy over, instead of puzzling out how you can knock them over, is not fun. It's a glorified gallery viewer.

As for Scrambled Eggs - all you need to do is have nothing covering your crotch and she'll automatically do it while she's in Haymaker. That's it. Actually, I can see that she does have one other option now, because of the newer AI system, so I can make sure she uses it guaranteed. I absolutely do not care if people miss things that they could have seen. If you're someone who needs to see absolutely everything in a game, you have my sympathy, but not my accommodation. Finding things spontaneously and surprisingly is one of the great joys of playing games. How are you supposed to know there's a hidden wall behind the chest that is already relatively well-hidden in Blighttown that leads to two entire optional areas of the game, one of which has a beautiful, haunting vista that you would otherwise miss? You aren't. And when you stumble on it, it's magical. And then you can tell somebody else about it, and they can go and see what they missed. I love seeing comments from people discovering the Troja easter egg for the first time and being pleasantly surprised by it, or people stumbling upon the debt Bunnies or the Giantess valley or the Mouth Fiend.

There is an enormous amount of content in this game. People finding it for the first time routinely message me and say they can't believe how much there is - before they realize the game has more than one map. "What if a given player doesn't see absolutely everything in the game" is not a problem I care to give much attention to at all. Notably, there is a tracker for how much of the game you've seen, but there's no achievement for 100% (or ANY percent, for that matter), because that tracker is only meant to give you a rough idea of how much more there is, and maybe a hint about things you haven't seen yet.

So the long and short of it is that I'm not designing for those goals. I'm not trying to make a simple, easy to understand combat system that anyone can pick up and immediately fully understand that will show them all the possible interactions without having to experiment or think about anything. I'm not trying to make sure every unique interaction is seen by every player. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is more. Brevity may be the soul of wit*, but it's definitely not the soul of sex.

*this quote is actually meant ironically in context

Well, the point stands that the player will not use all those. Those skills have huge downsides, and so nobody would ever suggest to even learn them.

I never knew that Vault is essential to find Ouroboros stances before I was told it is. Because this skill DOES NOTHING FOR ME. I don't know what could do the attacks aimed at hand to Dullahan. Because I WOULD NEVER AIM FOR THE HAND.

Why? Am I lazy? Am I dumb? Probably not. It's just currently, here and now grip on weapon as mechanic bears NO IMPORTANCE. I don't need to hit their hands because I must hit their chest and end the fight faster. And that's the general issue with the approach to mechanics in this game. They exist to be there. They exist, because it's “neat that there are such mechanics”. But the gameplay DISCOURAGES YOU COMPLETELY to use them. And that's not what it should do. It should reward you for going out of your usual way to try shocking spell on Golem. But you actually made elemental spells worse by making some characters immune to them. And they were already bad because you need to: invest soul crystals in them; invest stats in Magic (that is objectively less useful of a stat than any other stat besides Charisma); spend two-three turns to cast it. Why would I even do that to all the opponent to figure out one has a unique reaction? I won't. Because it will ruin my walkthrough. I will have to restart everything when I realize this build sucks and it doesn't let me freely get the scenes I wanted to.

 

[acerbicAnecdotalist]

i just want to come in and say that i'm a huge fan! if i had any criticisms, it's that i wish more girls got the ability to impregnate hiro('s eggs). like, i wanna get stuffed by a companion and then have them react to us being pregnant with our(?) baby. i like the characters and i would like more content with them.

thank you for reading this message :3

 

[Pervtron3000]

Just wondering if anyone is like me, and wished that these kind of games didn't "Game Over", and instead sort of world-built an "End-Game" state where your current relationship with the world persisted, into a sort of sex purgatory.

Not a suggestion to ToA devs because I know it would be way too much work, just wondering if theres any actual demand or its just me.


End Game sex purgatory

The relationships that you develop with the world characters essentially persist as you chose to develop them. And even after the game ends, in the route with which you chose to complete the game, can still go back to these characters and do what is necessary to maintain the relationships (where your agency is required), or the characters track you down periodically and maintain your relationship. (where you agency isn't required)

Lets imagine the innkeeper decides that you are his wife, Uruk decides you are her sex slave, Kylira is your slutty night out orgy buddy, the goblin/highwayman decides you are their girlfriend, the strange merchant has a business relationship with you testing products and selling your bodily fluids, the brothel Madame arranges high profile customers and big events for you, various species seek your assistance during breeding season, etc etc
^ this of course assuming that these are the established relationships

Reputation based random/non-random events, where your reputation with various groups/towns/species/factions influence how the world continues to interact with you. Like how you interact with the goblin horde, or human gloryhole, or monster gloryhole, or alleyways, or how you typically are known for resolving fights (force/submission/sexual exhaustion) influencing how the end-game world interacts with you.

Sort of like how ToA's free-roam mode has, but without game overs, and with more focus on repeatable and random encounters. For example, instead of a game-over, a very impactful change in how the world interacts with you. Like lets say the harpy game over, all of the game-over breeding slavery stuff still happens and either you agree to be (or they decided you are [non-reluctant, but without agency]) a harpy breeder, but you can escape or be released, with the caveat that you will be found and bred again, and again, and again and escape/released again, and found again~


Or lets say as innkeeper's wife you can leave, but you need to be a good wife and remember to visit and take care of your husband(s).

Not going to go into every relationship and faction, but just some examples to get the juices flowing. Imagine many many world altering decisions, compounding into your own customized end-game heaven, one which is pleasurable to come back to over and over again even after exhausting all of the story content.

Same question for a dominance harem style sex purgatory end game, for those who lean toward dominance, any interest in such a game?
Most sex games have enough content and relationships that would enable such an end game. And I can't be the only one who plays these games with one hand.

 

[Tenty]

It is insane to say that Assault, All Out Blitz, Vault, Berserk, Haymaker are all interchangeable. Berserk locks you into the stance, making defensive skills impossible until you trip/get knocked down/pass out, Vault puts you in the air, forcing you to switch stances immediately, dodging low attacks, and being countered by enemies with the ability to grab you out of the air. Haymaker is defenseless, making it risky to use, and has a tremendous damage bonus, allowing you to damage the enemy through armor, but requires an extra setup turn. Assault ignores blocking - kind of important if your opponent is, y'know, blocking. Just 0/5.

The DPS race is exactly what this update is intended to address, again. That's why there's boosted enemy-unique armor and reductions in knockdown and armor destruction, to slow down the pace of victory - along with the AI changes that will actually allow the enemy to punish you for overly-aggressive play, when they currently will often let you get away with it. These changes haven't happened till now partially for that reason - most of the complaints people have are about the combat being too difficult, so I couldn't very well make it harder. But that's what I'm doing now, closer to the point where I have the levers to smooth out the difficult by having the AI be consistent, and carefully targeting where the AI will go easy on you and how you can manipulate it - things like arousing enemies or getting them drunk so their decision-making is worse or their goals change from beating you down to something else. Like, I cannot stress enough that you yadda yadda'd over the actual changes that are fixing the problems you're currently complaining about based on the erroneous assumption that a ton of effort has mistakenly gone into trying to fix these problems in the past, which is just wrong.

The solutions to the problems you're raising exist without removing a bunch of skills. If the problem is that Tempo Attack is too effective, it can just be made less effective. If you want an answer to "why shouldn't I just spam this one attack or this simple strategy", the answer is "make it so that spamming this one attack or strategy causes you to lose", obviously, and the fact that people miss that is genuinely baffling. And it's not that I can't do that - I've deliberately avoided doing it so people wouldn't complain about things being too hard.

How are you supposed to figure out that hitting the Dullahan's hand will make her drop her head? I'll tell you! First off, you might just try it, thinking it might do that! You might be trying to disarm her whip. You might try to hit her head, only to have it whiff, because obviously her head isn't where it is on a normal fighter, and think to yourself "oh, of course, her head isn't there... but she is holding it." You might read the changelog. You might hear it from somebody else and go try it. If your goal is to actually explore the game's combat and not to find some optimal route to the easiest victory, which... is not a good assumption for how people are playing this game, for a number of reasons, then you might just find it that way, too. Even the people who don't care about the combat as an artifact itself might care about the sex aspects of it, and might be using seduction in combat not to do the most effective possible thing in combat, but for some other reason, like, maybe, because it's hot?

Or, you might just not see it.

Making the Dullahan drop her head because she fell down is not nearly as fun or interesting as making her drop her head because you realize that if you hit her hand, she'll drop her head. Hitting the "Knock Over" button when you want to knock the enemy over, instead of puzzling out how you can knock them over, is not fun. It's a glorified gallery viewer.

As for Scrambled Eggs - all you need to do is have nothing covering your crotch and she'll automatically do it while she's in Haymaker. That's it. Actually, I can see that she does have one other option now, because of the newer AI system, so I can make sure she uses it guaranteed. I absolutely do not care if people miss things that they could have seen. If you're someone who needs to see absolutely everything in a game, you have my sympathy, but not my accommodation. Finding things spontaneously and surprisingly is one of the great joys of playing games. How are you supposed to know there's a hidden wall behind the chest that is already relatively well-hidden in Blighttown that leads to two entire optional areas of the game, one of which has a beautiful, haunting vista that you would otherwise miss? You aren't. And when you stumble on it, it's magical. And then you can tell somebody else about it, and they can go and see what they missed. I love seeing comments from people discovering the Troja easter egg for the first time and being pleasantly surprised by it, or people stumbling upon the debt Bunnies or the Giantess valley or the Mouth Fiend.

There is an enormous amount of content in this game. People finding it for the first time routinely message me and say they can't believe how much there is - before they realize the game has more than one map. "What if a given player doesn't see absolutely everything in the game" is not a problem I care to give much attention to at all. Notably, there is a tracker for how much of the game you've seen, but there's no achievement for 100% (or ANY percent, for that matter), because that tracker is only meant to give you a rough idea of how much more there is, and maybe a hint about things you haven't seen yet.

So the long and short of it is that I'm not designing for those goals. I'm not trying to make a simple, easy to understand combat system that anyone can pick up and immediately fully understand that will show them all the possible interactions without having to experiment or think about anything. I'm not trying to make sure every unique interaction is seen by every player. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is more. Brevity may be the soul of wit*, but it's definitely not the soul of sex.

*this quote is actually meant ironically in context

I understand your point, but with the current amount of skills, girls and stances, magic, grapple, clothes, accesories it is an *immense* undertaking to flesh them all out. You are one guy doing this, assuming your partner commits full time to the high quality art and animation. And that is just the combat aspect of the game, not counting all the other big plans like story mode, companions, quests, the roguelike mode, etc.

The dark souls example is actually a great point. Dark souls establishes early that there are many alternative passages and you will be (most of the time) rewarded for exploration, not punished. In addition, you can get clues with the in game messages. It is a fleshed out system that is consistent througout the game, with some small twists.
In ToA, you are punished if you stray from the meta and experiment and with so many skills and stances the unique interactions seem arbitrary and random. The lost HP carries over to the next encounter and most skills are just the clearly best picks. Right now to experience all these scenes, the best way is to quicksave, try out something until you discover a scene, look at it and enjoy it, quickload and cut down the enemy health asap with actually good skills to then actually progress. Is this really the intended way? My example with overrun was an example how you maybe could combine gameplay with unique interactions. Knocking down enemies is a good combat strategy and one can assume that players who want to win may try to use overrun on Dullahan if they see that she is unbalanced. The chance of that happening is pretty high and adds both depth to overrun and the balance system. They would also "naturally" encounter the head drop scene and get to enjoy it. What is the chance a player picks wrist shot and thinks of using it on her?

It think ultimately you run the risk of ending up with tons of unique interactions, but them being spread over many redundant skills and still feeling sparse and arbitrary.

Well, the point stands that the player will not use all those. Those skills have huge downsides, and so nobody would ever suggest to even learn them.

I never knew that Vault is essential to find Ouroboros stances before I was told it is. Because this skill DOES NOTHING FOR ME. I don't know what could do the attacks aimed at hand to Dullahan. Because I WOULD NEVER AIM FOR THE HAND.

Why? Am I lazy? Am I dumb? Probably not. It's just currently, here and now grip on weapon as mechanic bears NO IMPORTANCE. I don't need to hit their hands because I must hit their chest and end the fight faster. And that's the general issue with the approach to mechanics in this game. They exist to be there. They exist, because it's “neat that there are such mechanics”. But the gameplay DISCOURAGES YOU COMPLETELY to use them. And that's not what it should do. It should reward you for going out of your usual way to try shocking spell on Golem. But you actually made elemental spells worse by making some characters immune to them. And they were already bad because you need to: invest soul crystals in them; invest stats in Magic (that is objectively less useful of a stat than any other stat besides Charisma); spend two-three turns to cast it. Why would I even do that to all the opponent to figure out one has a unique reaction? I won't. Because it will ruin my walkthrough. I will have to restart everything when I realize this build sucks and it doesn't let me freely get the scenes I wanted to.

Yep, this.

 

[Majalis (ToA)]

I understand your point, but with the current amount of skills, girls and stances, magic, grapple, clothes, accesories it is an *immense* undertaking to flesh them all out. You are one guy doing this, assuming your partner commits full time to the high quality art and animation. And that is just the combat aspect of the game, not counting all the other big plans like story mode, companions, quests, the roguelike mode, etc.

The dark souls example is actually a great point. Dark souls establishes early that there are many alternative passages and you will be (most of the time) rewarded for exploration, not punished. In addition, you can get clues with the in game messages. It is a fleshed out system that is consistent througout the game, qith some small twists.
In ToA, you are punished if you stray from the meta and experiment and with so many skills and stances the unique interactions seem arbitrary and random. The lost HP carries over to the next encounter and most skills are just the clearly best picks. Right now to experience all these scenes, the best way is to quicksave, try out something until you discover a scene, look at it and enjoy it, quickload and cut down the enemy health asap with actually hood skills to then actually progress. Is this really the intended way? My example with overrun was an example how you maybe could combine gameplay with unique interactions. Knocking down enemies is a good combat strategy and one can assume that players who want to win may try to use overrun on Dullahan if they see that she is unbalanced. The chance of that happening is pretty high and adds both depth to overrun and the balance system. They would also "naturally" encounter the head drop scene and get to enjoy it. What is the chance a player picks wrist shot and thinks of using it on her?

It think ultimately you run the risk of ending up with tons of unique interactions, but them being spread over many redundant skills and still feeling sparse and arbitrary.

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.

 

[Pervtron3000]

*expert ToA combat stuff thats way over my head*

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"

 

[Budouka]

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.

 

[Tenty]

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.

 

[Turkishlads]

Are we just going to ignore the fact that you can stack Strength in the latest update to ridiculous levels (2k+) just by spamming Incantation>Titan Strength or by Berserk>Enrage??? One shots anything, and even Demon King just needs 2 hits.

 

[Flam3r]

Damn, I just asked if the combat meta was the same, didn't think it would devolve into a full discussion about the complexity and depth of the combat system lmao

 

[Majalis (ToA)]

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 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.

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.

Man, all of those were improved in the update. The problem is not that there are too many skills - the problem is that some skills are undertuned! It is not hair-splitting to point out that the skills operate in fundamentally different ways from a strategic standpoint. That's why I released a big balance patch! Some might need more improvements, but little numerical improvements or even bonus attributes are really not hard or involved for me to do.

As for Armor Crusher and Tempo Attack, this is the third time I am saying this: if you read the patch notes, you would see that strategy has received an enormous nerf. All physical damage has with the addition of enemy armor and reduction to armor sunder and knockdown. I'm worried about touching it anymore, in fact, because once the AI is actually trying to win, they will - and then if a strategy is too dominant, we'll know what it is. Oh, and I already fixed the cap on stacking status effects.

 

[Twiton]

Damn, I just asked if the combat meta was the same, didn't think it would devolve into a full discussion about the complexity and depth of the combat system lmao

Majalis replying here does activate everyone's desire to give their input, lots of folks here really care about the game or want to be heard regarding their feedback.

Kinda wish we had an AMA with them.

 

[Twiton]

Genuinely insightful output about the AI implementation being improved to work around previously OP tactics.

But is Herobrin- I mean, is Helena fixed again? Still find it funny that she wrestles Hiro to the ground just to punch him in the face.

 

[qwsaq]

The problem is not that there are too many skills - the problem is that some skills are undertuned!

I think the main problem is that it's too much information too early.
Imagine it's your first time creating a character in this game: you choose your class, you apply your stats, all standard fare. But then suddenly there's all these skills dumped on you. You barely have a vague concept of what any of them do. You don't even know how the combat works yet. It being your first time, you're probably aiming for as generic a build as possible to see how the game's supposed to be played. But there's no indication of what "generic" is in this case. It's too easy to get lost. There's good reason nearly every other game doesn't do it this way.

I'm not saying you should go fully in the opposite direction and hold our hands with hyper-restrictive tech trees. But a little nudge in the right direction would do wonders in ending this tired discussion.

 

[Turkishlads]

Man, all of those were improved in the update. The problem is not that there are too many skills - the problem is that some skills are undertuned! It is not hair-splitting to point out that the skills operate in fundamentally different ways from a strategic standpoint. That's why I released a big balance patch! Some might need more improvements, but little numerical improvements or even bonus attributes are really not hard or involved for me to do.

As for Armor Crusher and Tempo Attack, this is the third time I am saying this: if you read the patch notes, you would see that strategy has received an enormous nerf. All physical damage has with the addition of enemy armor and reduction to armor sunder and knockdown. I'm worried about touching it anymore, in fact, because once the AI is actually trying to win, they will - and then if a strategy is too dominant, we'll know what it is. Oh, and I already fixed the cap on stacking status effects.

I'm glad to see stuff fixed!
And I'm also having an issue when entering the Giving Handy stance, where it automatically takes your mouth-virginity from only cranking, which is illogical.