That's the thing, we do not know the full extent of Null's power since he has so far been limiting himself to mutant powers. Who knows (other than the developers) what would have happened if Null (after being hit by Juggernaut) stated to himself, "I wish I was less squishy and weak, I sure think a power like Juggernaut's would be cool to have."
We have a bit of conversation about TNH in RLE thread with sleepingkirby, hope you don't mind if I double post it here, just to give a little more feedback
If the game was more communicative about how far you can get in things, like relationships, sex, etc. I would have less a problem with tying relationship progress with story progress. A lot of the limits, etc. are not intuitive for me.
Yes! It is a work in progress, but I would say establishing a design language that players can understand how to interact with seems quite foundational. Especially about how they set and communicate boundaries: setting up players for goals they cannot achieve will understandably lead to frustration. They give you a list of goals but put you in the sandbox, forgetting, a little bit, that you will start to generate your own goals in this situation, some of which are easy to anticipate (especially in porn game). I think this is what RLE is doing so well: Oni seems to anticipate your goals, and put enough of a journey on the micro-plots, that you to a degree feel like you are making your own story. Magic of sandbox. Well, you can of course postpone gratification, make it adventure, encourage experimentation and discovery, but it needs a decent feedback loop (information).
Hmm, focus. Tell me what you think about this: story itself, with the help of quest-log, that to a degree gives focus and even built-in walkthrough for sandbox itself. It is even in a sense in conflict with it (pure sandbox), limiting your free-play and self-expression.
Buuuut... Should we focus on the story? Can we? Is there enough of it? The real meat and potatoes of the game, the main gameplay loop, is still purely relationship/sex focused. So it is an interesting question what exactly is/are the functions of the story here? Is it only here to give a little bit of background and flavour? Let you use power in very limited circumstances? One thing it was doing so far is measuring/progressing passage of time and by extension advancing you to new stages of your relationships. So contextualization and framing? Interestingly enough, none of the girls so far was introduced in story events. There were no big changes in circumstances, major changing of status quo so far either. Mostly bridging iterative, progressively more open sandbox sections.
I'm wondering if the reverse relation should have been better. Rather than requiring chapter 3 to increase relationship, requiring a certain relationship level before being able to continue the storyline.
To a degree, it is like that already. One of the conditions (quests) to progress from one season to another is a total number of relationship points, IIRC.
I feel like The Null Hypothesis is what happens when no one tells the creator that this idea is number 1, 2 and 3. And, as much as I hate to say it, solutions that look for a problem, if it doesn't learn to pivot (correctly) or have a HUGE backing (i.e. too big to fail), often slowly get bloated and fail.
What I have seen in TNH thread so far looks like they are really open to feedback. I think they have some good ideas. I'm hopeful, they will be able to build something compelling. Games on this forum have unusual development, by mostly inexperienced but passionate people. If Bioware, Blizzard or Arcane can really go completely off the rails... As we've seen... It is a small miracle we have so many interesting games in this genre.
Not a programmer myself, but understanding of stories - of narrative arts - is kinda passion of mine. I can do a lot of philosophizing and psychologizing about it given opportunity, and conversation with you so far put me in very analytical mood
Which brings me back to why I'm so lenient on Oni's code. [...] I know people keep complaining "He's making so much money, the code should be better." But I can tell you, first hand, what he's done is pretty impressive. Because, again, how many google products have died during RLE's existence? And they had more money AND people behind it.
Even thinking about making my own game makes me often appreciate people that make these games a lot. In my opinion, there is a lot of quite unfair criticism and accusations. In large part because money is involved.
yes but the Phoenix force still needs a physical body and with Jean being a mutant, Null should be able to have some effect on it. maybe not a big effect but a minor one would still be possible
We kinda just assumed people would put two and two together as the systems are not THAT complex or hard to understand. The characters give explicit instructions and Nightcrawler breaks the 4th wall more than once. I genuinely attribute half of the complaints to a complete lack of patience and willingness to read. This is indeed a game, not a skinner box where you press a button and get the sex.
However, that isn't me telling everyone to shut up. We are and will continue to add feedback such as more tool tips and more UI notifications but eventually we're gonna cross the line from being intuitive into stupid proofing territory.
Edit: We do have over a dozen beta testers so if they don't have problems with the instruction then we don't know there's a problem until you guys tell us. This is part of why I attribute it to lack of patience for a lot of people. Note that I'm not accusing you of this. Just stating in general.
There were no big changes in circumstances, major changing of status quo so far either. Mostly bridging iterative, progressively more open sandbox sections.
I mean they got a community manager, that'd be me, to ensure they're in the know.
I know I can be sassy and a little overly direct. Though I do read EVERY comment in this thread. All of them, and pass along the general consensus to the dev team regularly.
Recent discussions around here have included Skinner boxes and Kinsey Scales. Something tells my we have a psych major in our midst. Or worse, a Neo-Freudian.
Recent discussions around here have included Skinner boxes and Kinsey Scales. Something tells my we have a psych major in our midst. Or worse, a Neo-Freudian.
I got to thinking, because of what Cyclop's blasts are, would null's nullification really work against them? Though i suppose this depends on whether the source of the blasts is a result of Scott's mutant ability or if his real ability is just having his eyes connected to the source or something, my understanding of his abilities is limited and probably skewed though.
Anytime I see/hear someone end a word with itis(or something that looks/sounds like it), my mind automatically goes "Inflammation of the (Insert word here), makes absolutely no sense."
I'm actually not responsible for that. I just helped the depiction of her anxiety. I left everything else to the writers because I specifically didn't want it to seem like Null was genuinely her behavioral therapist.
Anytime I see/hear someone end a word with itis(or something that looks/sounds like it), my mind automatically goes "Inflammation of the (Insert word here), makes absolutely no sense."
Yeah I'm with you on that one. Senioritus isn't a real thing. It's just a joke name a bunch of seniors came up with to describe their increased stress as they get closer to graduating... and man am I chronic.
I'm actually not responsible for that. I just helped the depiction of her anxiety. I left everything else to the writers because I specifically didn't want it to seem like Null was genuinely her behavioral therapist.
It would be interest to see (i.e., I ain't volunteering) how many of these games feature, deliberately or not, legitimate psychological techniques to get laid.
While the ideas you propose are hilarious and I wanna add Apocalypse suddenly crumbling to dust the second he is touched to that list, remember that for that Null needs to actually get close enough to them, hard to nullify Magneto when you can't get close without a manhole cover hitting you from the sides at 40 mph.
Also we have seen what happens if you suddenly take away Chambers power, it was not pretty.
Got an exception during a sex scene with Rogue. Running 0.3c1 with no mods, and haven't changed anything via the console. I searched this thread, but didn't see anything that looked similar. Still a great game
I think it mostly depends on where Null is in this example. if he's at a distance greater than lets say 10 feet, I don't think it would work because it might be the same as if firing from a laser based gun. if Null is closer to Cyclops at lets say less than 10 feet, he could probably move fast enough to close the distance keeping Cyclops power temporarily nullified
Here's an idea for the map UI. Navigation is not as efficient as it could be. There are hotkeys, but not for every location. But I was thinking, a good majority of the time you're going to a place because an exclamation-mark-event or some other character is there. When this happens, we have the convenient X-Tracker on the map screen to tell us where it is. So for example it might have a list item that says "Grounds" followed by the icons for Jean and Laura - well, what if you could click the word "Grounds" and it takes you to the Grounds?
With this you would simplify a lot of location changes to just two clicks. Even when you're not going to a location because of the characters there, you are often at least going to a location where characters happen to be. Overall I think it would be much less map switching and more going directly where you wanna go, with no downside I can think of.
If there are clues in canon to this, I don't know them. But if it's possible to do it by shaping metal and applying magnetism, while still accomplishing the main purpose of blocking telepathy, then it probably can. Magneto seems to have vast resources.
Anytime I see/hear someone end a word with itis(or something that looks/sounds like it), my mind automatically goes "Inflammation of the (Insert word here), makes absolutely no sense."
Can you direct me to said forums or forum posts? I cannot find any here so far, and while I also really love the game so far, having to go through a 3 minute long "meanwhile on earth 69" screen when it crashes every 5 minutes is making it unplayable.
We kinda just assumed people would put two and two together as the systems are not THAT complex or hard to understand. The characters give explicit instructions and Nightcrawler breaks the 4th wall more than once. I genuinely attribute half of the complaints to a complete lack of patience and willingness to read. This is indeed a game, not a skinner box where you press a button and get the sex.
Don't get me wrong, the game is absolutely playable and even fun to play in general. Since most of everything that can be considered gameplay is in relationship/sex sandbox. This is where you make your moves, your choices, where you get rewards, where you explore, where your progression is: the core gameplay loop, practically by definition. And you are adding story to the whole mix, which is great, but here is some discussion on how well these two parts are integrated, how they inform each other.
However, that isn't me telling everyone to shut up. We are and will continue to add feedback such as more tool tips and more UI notifications but eventually we're gonna cross the line from being intuitive into stupid proofing territory.
I get what you mean, and you are right. It is the whole From Software vs Ubisoft approach. The thing is I would consider RLE (hope mentioning it is OK for you) to be more intuitive (mostly), even if it has fewer explanations, less of a "step by step" guide in the form of quest-log. So it guides you less, encouraging your own goal setting. But the big difference is, your action have clear reactions. You can more or less directly observe what your choices do. As you can in THN in some cases, but in others you are not engaging clear game mechanics, just some vague story concept.
Borrowing Game Theory language, if I don't understand my moves, and I don't know payoffs, it is difficult for me to formulate strategy as a player. Without moves and payoffs, it is difficult to even consider it a game.
Edit: We do have over a dozen beta testers so if they don't have problems with the instruction then we don't know there's a problem until you guys tell us. This is part of why I attribute it to lack of patience for a lot of people. Note that I'm not accusing you of this. Just stating in general.
Well, I haven't encountered many bugs, there were problems with phone text not scrolling, which was quite annoying, but it is fixed already. So I would affirm, the game seems well tested. But I will posit a possibility, that tester, who probably seen several iterations of the game already, are probably well attuned to what you are trying to do. Or I am a dummy, and/or just haven't read carefully enough. It is, as saying goes, sometimes better be silent and be considered fool, than speak and leave no doubt, but so far I seem to be doubling down
I know I can be sassy and a little overly direct. Though I do read EVERY comment in this thread. All of them, and pass along the general consensus to the dev team regularly.
So what you are saying is (am I Cathy Newman now?): you are not boring There was a time that I really tried to be as mellow and unoffensive as I could and considered it a virtue, but here is great value in being a bit provocative. If you do it just right, you can make people think. Too much and they will become defensive/reactive. Too little, and as I said: booooring. Of course, being provocative gets you nowhere, if you have nothing to say. And you will never "get" how much is enough if you can't listen, but it is a different conversation.
I could be wrong, but I feel like there's so little player interaction at that point that it's not really a game. If there's something telling you every answer or guiding you every step of the way, what's the player doing besides clicking the thing the game tell you to click? (Not a rhetorical question. Honestly asking to see if I missed something or to develop the idea further.)
Which, again, if the gameplay loop is about the relationships, why is are the relationship points based off of the story and not the other way around? This tells me that the primary gameplay loop is the story, not the relationship.
IMO the main loop, next to a setting, Is what both games have most in common. You can progress your relationships in similar fashion. With added story bitts, that (ideally) build on it and around it. And one other major difference on development side is that Oni have a strategy of adding girl one by one in somewhat complete fashion, TNH on the other hand has 3 girls in parallel and none is complete.
But as I've written above in the story department, I would agree that it might not look like a game for example from Game Theory perspective. Story itself does not have its own loop.
That's a good question. Because if this was a visual novel, all those would be good things. Very good things. But, to my knowledge, none of those contribute to it as a game. If they were to contextualize it to the game, it should progress/be brought up/be given with game progress. i.e. during the primary gameplay loop of relationship/sex. Again, I'm not saying these are bad things. But they don't contribute to the game as a game. They contribute to the story that gameplay happens to be in. Which is why they seem so antagonistic to gameplay.
This. To a degree, they are antagonistic. So it is not an easy task to harmonize them. It is possible, that's what great RPGs do, which I see a one (or maybe the) most complex narrative structures in our culture.
This is how Oni "anticipates" your goals. He doesn't. He established a good/fun primary gameplay loop and then built things up from it and around it. You want to fuck the girl. You do things to get to that goal. All the other stuff around it is giving you a variation on that and/or helping with that.
And he puts friction points, obstacles that you need to overcome, building both anticipation and sense of agency. He can actually suggest goals to you, even by at the beginning saying you can't do it. For example, girls leaving your cum when they go in public wasn't something I thought of before playing RLE. But game suggested it to me, and I thought "kinky! I like It! I want it!".
That's really cool. I'm from a moderate sized city in Poland, so not much of such opportunities here. Especially when I was younger and there was no YouTube, or even easy Internet access.
There was a time that I was actively trying to find some resources about how you're supposed to build stories, or even express why you find some good and other bad. Even tried Literary Theory Yale courses (on YT), but it was mostly waste of time, full of post-modern philosophy nonsense (and I'm one of the freaks that actually like philosophy). But you can find some very interesting things these days. I'll just mention Brandon Sanderson university lectures on writing. And, as much it feels weird to mention him on a porn related forum, Jordan Peterson is the psychologist (/philosopher) that is treating stories the most seriously.
I'm actually not responsible for that. I just helped the depiction of her anxiety. I left everything else to the writers because I specifically didn't want it to seem like Null was genuinely her behavioral therapist.
I have a lot of experience with CBT (no, not that kind) as well as other types of therapy as well, so, while not intentional, I imagine some of that's probably bleeding in from my side as well
