Java Tales of Androgyny [v0.3.51.3] [Majalis]

[Majalis (ToA)]

Counterpoint: I like how you've cleaned up the UI/made character reactions/actions more responsive, and would love to see a more in depth tutorial once the gameplay is in a state you think will be final.

Yeah, an optional tutorial battle that'll walk you through a basic battle you can access from the Help menu is something we have planned, but it's lower priority.

 

[vanas_1111]

Yeah, the combat system feels a bit confusing/bloated but only because there's so much, knowing is half the battle

 

[vanas_1111]

skill trees would be cool and help visualize what is meant to be used with what

 

[negroidprime]

knowing is half the battle

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[Boykingdown]

My game it is giving this error " A java exception has ocurred"

 

[T0RQU3 J0N3Z]

Haven't played for a few months.. loving the new updates. still wishing for artwork for the beast hunter dire cat mounting hiro and dark knight putting her feet in hiros face lol

 

[Fleep]

I think the point is: "Combat feels bloated" And personally, I agree. You can have all the awesome flavor of Naga going to sleep when chill and all that without 9 different stances with blurry diferences. Combat depth is having cool and unique interactions with your easy to understand abilities, being able to combo one into another and having different responses depending on the enemy. I think that's partly what we're getting with the AI update and I'm looking forward to it. But at the same time, there's too much fluff in the combat system and what Tenty says (I think) is that some of it could be trimmed to make it more elegant and intuitive without losing depth.

In my opinion, it's a well formulated critique, and there's no need to get mad about it.

 

[Majalis (ToA)]

I think the point is: "Combat feels bloated" And personally, I agree. You can have all the awesome flavor of Naga going to sleep when chill and all that without 9 different stances with blurry diferences. Combat depth is having cool and unique interactions with your easy to understand abilities, being able to combo one into another and having different responses depending on the enemy. I think that's partly what we're getting with the AI update and I'm looking forward to it. But at the same time, there's too much fluff in the combat system and what Tenty says (I think) is that some of it could be trimmed to make it more elegant and intuitive without losing depth.

In my opinion, it's a well formulated critique, and there's no need to get mad about it.

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.

It's actually a very annoying shell game that's happened a few times now - somebody says "there's just too many skills/stances that do the same thing", and when asked to name any of them, they name the sex stances, which are not the skills or stances in question. The specific critiques given were "Haymaker and Berserk stance are pointless and Weapon Grip doesn't add anything" and those are entirely opinion. "Combat depth is having cool and unique interactions with your easy to understand abilities" is... just an incorrect definition of combat depth if it's meant to be factual, and just an opinion if it isn't. It sounds more like a constructed definition working backwards from an opinion, in fact.

Like, I'm down to have an informed conversation on balance issues or confusing elements or skills that don't behave as expected, but since the beginning people have seen the combat system and been like "what? I have to learn things? In a porn game? This is too complex. Make it simple," and I've heard it a thousand times and the answer is no, it will always be no, and the only thing I'll add beyond that is "no, lmao."

 

[Budouka]

Again, this very update added more to the weapon grip system, which is meant to add a layer of strategy to trying to disarm your opponent or avoid being disarmed. The same way that your shield takes damage from blocking whenever using a skill that has block on it (not just skills which exclusively use block), your weapon grip takes damage from parrying part or all of an attack. This means that using skills which parry (including just about any attack, since almost all attacks have 1 Parry and 1 Evade by default) puts you at risk of being disarmed, which can be capitalized on by an opponent, and vice versa. Since enemies also behave differently when disarmed - some try to re-equip their weapon, giving you time during which they're defenseless, some will change their strategy, like Urka wrestling you, and some will enrage, like the Ogre - this also ties into having different strategies for different characters. Note, the behavior I'm listing already exists, but there's more to come.

I'm sorry, the magic system went from "simple and easy" to... not that because of the addition of one extra casting stance, Deep Casting, which was added early in development? The elements absolutely do not just "add damage here and there" - Chill/Frostbite and Overheat hurt Agility (an important stat) and Stamina Regen (more important now), and Ablaze can potentially do a ton of damage over time while destroying your opponent's armor - something mages are typically weak at. Shock attacks can paralyze your opponents entirely. I also did not "change it once again", I added new perks to the kit to make magic as a playstyle stronger. Game in development adds new passives - news at 11. I spent 1 week - 1 - on a balance pass, and that's when you chose to post this. Your principle thesis, here, that we're constantly doing major overhauls is wrong. So anything following from that premise is similarly incorrect.

Your point about Berserk is... what, exactly? It's substantially stronger as of this patch. I have no idea what you mean by "in limbo". The original design of the game involved 3 basic combat stances (Defensive, Balanced, Offensive), along with 3 advanced defensive stances (Counter, Focus, Stonewall), and 3 advanced offensive stances (Blitz, Berserk, Haymaker), making up the core combat stances. And we've added sex stances over time... so? Are you aware what kind of game this is?

As for whether people would care if we removed 80% of the abilities... that's wrong. To the extent that it's true, it's true we could remove *100%* of the abilities and some people wouldn't care. Some people would much prefer if the game had two buttons that said "Win Fight" and "Lose Fight", and those people will be happy when we get around to letting you choose the battle outcome to skip it entirely as a part of cheat mode. And sure, there's people in between who want a simple battle system. But I'm not making the combat system for those people.

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.

I just don't care. Their opinion is irrelevant in regards to the combat system. They can turn it off, if they like. The people who want a fantasy combat simulator where they might be parrying and disarming their opponent's weapon one moment, and the next moment find themselves with a fat set of orcish nuts in their face is who I'm trying to provide fun for. So when you say the "core aspect" of the game is fucking-as-battle, you made a wrong turn at some other game, and now you're at my complaint desk, and I absolutely cannot help you with your problem. The core battle system of this game is Fighting And Fucking.

Though, while I have you here: if you're thinking, "THIS time could be better spent adding cool stuff like character's acting drunken and flirty when they drink, or characters who are disarmed or overpowered suddenly trying to flirt with you instead, or characters responding to you losing your weapon by humiliating you about your small penis" - that's what the AI work is for.

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.

Well, the guy had one point right. I'm making a wiki for this game and I read people's questions to cover more potential questions they have. Since 2018 people complain that the system is waaaay more complex and confusing than it should be. So many different characteristics to each skill. Hundreds of skills. And still nobody is using them because they simply don't work.

For example — using Ablaze to destroy armor? But why? It costs half your mana and you need to spend tons of time to just be able to cast it or more mana to use Quick Cast. Literally staying in the same position is:
* safer because attacking skills have more defense and you don't get wrecked
* more effective because you hit people's armor and you inflict damage with each attack
* you won't run out of mana, never.

Face it. The skills system already was hugely, extremely bloated, to the point people drop the game because they don't have any idea what skills to use. And instead of removing excess, you add more. I'm super annoyed now that there are three pages for perks, even though I never used 75% of them even when there were less. I don't think I will use Berserk or Blitz now, because the skills are 20% better than usual, but I need to waste 200% more time. New spells, like Inflict Wounds and all? But WHY? I can inflict bleeding in one hit by using Spring Attack. Even if you nerf this skill, which is sad, I still can inflict Bleed effectively without EVER USING THIS USELESS SPELL.

So, yeah, basically you waste your time right now. It's not like spells and all can't be useful. It's just you need to rebalance all the “added in early development” deadweight for this system, like Deep Casting (I remind you again, you lose all of your mana for two or three spells anyway, that's enough of a balancing). Or... nothing changes ultimately. People will keep asking: “Why the hell there are so many skills? Do I understand it right that the combat system is developing with quantity, not depth?” (real question) And it will be 80% of perks people never use instead of 75% previously.

 

[Jaybig]

Not gonna lie I think this is too much combat talk for a horny game. We have Elden Ring for that.

Y'all jerked off once before coming here didn't you? The post-nut clarity can be seen in every argument.
More Urka dick less armor crusher bullshit please.

 

[Budouka]

Not gonna lie I think this is too much combat talk for a horny game. We have Elden Ring for that.

Y'all jerked off once before coming here didn't you? The post-nut clarity can be seen in every argument.
More Urka dick less armor crusher bullshit please.

Okay, then, did you notice that if you choose Help in the tavern and they give you a bunny suit there, it is replacing your current outfit. So you have to play the rest of the game dressed as fancy bunny in glasses (or choose the boy clothes which are comically large).

 

[LandBeach]

Okay, then, did you notice that if you choose Help in the tavern and they give you a bunny suit there, it is replacing your current outfit. So you have to play the rest of the game dressed as fancy bunny in glasses (or choose the boy clothes which are comically large).

I just want to be able to take glasses off

 

[Konpon]

I just want to be able to take glasses off

And I want a birthday suit option. While having glasses as its own slot. Be it also for masks, sunglasses, or even goggles.

 

[Evokerr]

evoker playable when?

 

[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.