Supposedly the game has been started back up... the last update had very little new content and the new update has no set release date...
- Aug 5, 2016
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If you go into the code, you can see all the goals are pretty much filled out.
To your other points, I would argue that the intro has been made skippable (with a few choices). I think it's fine that it works as a VN; making assets for a map that wouldn't get used would be stupid and it just serves as a prologue to set the setting and introduce the main characters. ALISHIA has mentioned in the Discord that she's not too fond of flashbacks, and I think the majority of the scenes in the intro wouldn't have worked as a flashback.
Finally, it makes sense that Mia scenes progress faster than scenes with other characters; she is your girlfriend, where all the other characters are your family (exception Jessica, but she doesn't seem too sexually active). Nina could have shown more, but she is a tease anyway.
umm from what I see most NPCs have 3 goals but the goals don't seem to be reachable? Anything that aren't implemented yet are just placeholders. They let you know there will be something happening in future versions but you can remove them from the game and it wont affect your current game play at all.
If the dev doesn't like flashback they can(have to) find their own way. It's not about the skip option which is just for people who played previous versions. What I wanted to say was that the scenes/event and gameplay need to be better balanced. How often do the players get a story/erotic event? How long will those events be? Everything needs to be taken into consideration. You want to give players intention to grind relationships/solve puzzles, and the intentions are usually erotic events in this type of games. Now you already have erotic scenes, why not use them as rewards for gameplay? Why "wasted" them on regular phone calls that requires no effort from the players?
What you say about Mia scenes are absolutely correct. The plot is great, the characters are amazing. I just love the story and the writing. But as a GAME, the dev need to have a better grasp on the pace and consider what is actually fun/satisfying for the players.
Have you ever played a game where you love the story but still find the game boring? How often do you "endure" boring gameplay just to find out how the plot goes? I just don't want to see this game make the same mistake.
- Nov 21, 2018
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No, she doesn't "have to." She can just continue the way she's already going, and either succeed or fail. If she succeeds, then good for her, and if she fails, then perhaps she should have listened to opinions like yours. Either way, it's still up to her, and the results will tell the tale.
That's assuming, of course, that she doesn't kill the game with her update schedule.
There's grind in this game, for sure. But there really aren't any puzzles. Everything you need to do is revealed to you, either through dialogue, or through the hint system.
As for your assertion that erotic scenes should be "rewards" for gameplay, well, I tend to agree. That being said, I would say that rewarding specific choices or choice paths is better game design than rewarding grinding, because I think that the need for grinding is inherently poor game design. And I say this as a person who naturally favors grinding as a play style.
In the case of the phone calls with Mia, some of the erotic content is baked in, but a lot of it is a reward for the choices made during the intro to the game and the previous phone calls. This is why the game actually begins during the intro, and not once the HUD becomes available, as you've previously suggested.
Many times.
Quite often.
That's fair enough. But I really don't think that any deficiency in optimal game design will hurt this game in any very serious way. The thing which I believe is most likely to kill this game is Alishia's apparent inability to keep her deadlines or be transparent about her workflow.
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You say "no effort", but you'd be surprised how many people actually missed that call because it doesn't happen automatically, it is something you initiate as the player.
Also as TheLecher noted, to get the most of out that call (imo at least), you need to have as many NTR points as possible.
I too don't like grinding but with proper pacing, varieties in repeatable events, achievement system etc grinding could make less tedious. What you say about the previous choices leading to "reward" is exactly what I am worried. One major thing to make grinding fun, is to closely relate the "grind" part to the "reward" and build up a conditioning. The players need to be guaranteed "rewards" and "satisfaction" if they "grind". But reward from one time (non repeating) choices breaks the pattern. Especially when the choice based rewards seem to be better than what you can get from grinding. It will leads to confusion and frustration to the grinding part. Every choice based reward would make you hate the grinding part more and make you feel that you want to just skip days for the choice based scenes and return to the grind later (or never). You either make it choice based VN/Adventure type of game or make it abit grindy like summer time saga. It is very difficult to keep a balance.
I share the same opinion on the deadlines part.
Really like conversations like this in this forum. I understand that lots of people do not agree with me but I hate to see when people just say "No you are wrong" without giving any reasons and leave no room for further discussion.
Maybe effort is not the proper word, I am refering to the repeated grinding when I say effort.
EDIT: oh now that you mention, apart from the points I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post. Having to load saves a few ingame days ago because you missed scenes from a wrong choice, is another frustration to the grinding part because you wasted your "effort" by loading a save quite some time ago. It's just hard to balance the game when you mix grind and choice based style
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- Nov 21, 2018
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This is the so-called "Skinner box" method. I agree with Extra Credits (a YouTube channel which primarily focuses on game design) when they say that this is bad game design. But an interesting thing about Skinner's research is that people respond positively to random reward schedules, just like they respond positively to intermittent reward schedules. The thing to which people respond poorly is a constant reward schedule, in which you receive the reward every time you perform an action.
With a constant reward schedule, people experience diminishing returns on their enjoyment of the reward. But with both random and intermittent reward schedules, they either do not have diminishing returns, or experience much less diminution.
But all of that is actually irrelevant in this case, because we're talking about two completely different things. On one hand, we have the grind, which would ideally not exist. But since it does exist, it should preferably have either an intermittent or random reward schedule. But rewards from one time (non-repeating) choices are in a completely different category. You can't grind non-repeatable choices. So rewards from non-repeatable choices don't fall within the Skinner box.
You can actually force non-repeatable choices into a Skinner box by creating an achievement system, and making each of the non-repeatable choices an achievement. This then creates a new layer of grinding. But if Skinner boxes are bad game design in the first place (And I believe that they are.), then this just takes that badness to a whole new level.
I'm rambling a bit, but the point I'm trying to make is that the non-repeatable choices must either have no reward, or have a reward which doesn't require grinding. There's no other way to make it work, apart from something like an achievement system. And this doesn't invalidate the grinding. It's possible for a game to have both and reward both separately.
As mentioned above, I think that you can have both in one game. It depends on the purposes each serves. If they serve the same purpose, then that's when I think the conflict arises. If they serve different purposes, then it's less likely that they'll conflict.
As far as I can tell, in this game, they do serve different purposes. The grind in this game (at least so far) is entirely to build relationship scores and desire scores, which open new interactions with the affected characters. If those scores are high enough to open those paths, then one time choices may be made which will allow for erotic scenes. In Mia's case, the scores are high enough by default for you to get those scenes, provided you make the right choices. For other characters, you have to grind to raise the scores, in order to allow for the one time choices. So, in a sense, the reward for the one time choice is also a reward for the grinding.
Personally, I think that grinding should either be avoided entirely in game design, or else kept to the minimum possible amount of grinding. And that's not because I hate grinding. I actually don't hate it. I have a high tolerance for monotony and tedium, as long as I know that it serves a purpose which I want to achieve. I tend to heavily favor grinding strategies in all games which permit it, because I have a personal liking for being over-leveled. But I still think that it's bad game design, my own personal preferences notwithstanding.
I agree. If you think I'm wrong, that's fine. I don't take it personally when someone disagrees with me. Just tell me why you think I'm wrong, or, at the very least, tell me what you think the right conclusion is, and why you think that.
No. It's currently radio silence from Alishia. I'm sure someone will post here to let people know when she makes an announcement, whether she announces the new release or another delay.
I was actually thinking about Pavlov's Dogs and classical conditioning when I wrote but skinner box was referenced alot in game design. Either way choice based event would "distract" you from the grind. In Mia's case, if you make "wrong" choices on 2nd chat event and realised you missed scenes at 3rd chat event, loading the save before 2nd chat event would make you lose two in game days of grind. Unless you strictly follow a walkthrough, you would be forced to choose to 1) miss some scenes and keep your grind on other NPCs; 2) load game and lose your grind; or maybe 3) load game and skip all grind until you are done with all the choice based events.
The choices do not directly affect other NPCs event/grind but would still indirectly affect them in the end.
If the game is all choice based, you can load old save and hold ctrl to quickly skip viewed content, that should not cause too much trouble. If the game is all grind based, I would imagine Mia's path divided into NTR and non NTR route, and you grind by keep chatting on certain topic to progress on the scenes and eventually you can get all the scenes from her in the route you choose. Since you would not miss any content in the chosen route in the grind based version, there should be no need to load and lose your grind with other NPCs (until you replay the game for another route)
But if you have both choice based events and grind events in the game, it would need a brilliant way to let players redo their choices without losing their grind elsewhere.
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Seems like the devs statement of at the end of November was a wrong one... like the three previous statements.
- Jan 27, 2019
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- Nov 21, 2018
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You don't have to strictly follow a walkthrough in order to avoid this problem. There currently is no walkthrough to follow, and I didn't have this problem even once, let alone having it happen multiple times.
I admit, having to reload multiple times and replay the daily grind over two or more days could be mildly annoying, but I don't think that it's a major problem, since there's currently so little content in the game. With the number of scenes, and the number of characters with whom you can grind relationship scores, there isn't that much to miss. And two days (in game time) of grinding isn't really that time consuming, so going back once or twice (which should definitely be enough) shouldn't be a deal breaker.
And, as the game progresses (If it does continue to progress.), I don't think that this is likely to become more of an issue than it already is. I mean, if we ever have to complete multiple times quests within the same week, then perhaps this problem could become more serious, but we don't know that this will happen. Also, as long as you keep track of your relationship scores and use the hint system, I think that even two or three simultaneous timed quests should be manageable.
yup but i'm just thinking if the negative experience could be avoided by the means of game design
The walkthrough is for the choices so you can get the scene/path you want without loading a two days ago.
There are 38 time slots in two days if you use them all.. but anyway, like you said, it really depends on how often this could happen. It would be better if the dev notices problems at the early stage of the game, instead of us avoid talking about them and just hope things won't go the worst way.
I do understand the development progress is already worrying and people don't want to interrupt the development. But things that seem small in the beginning can very often leads to huge problems later on. Maybe I am just over reacting but there are so many games in this forum being reworked during mid development and it seems like devs here still never learn.
- Nov 21, 2018
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Who wants to avoid talking about them? I haven't seen anyone on this forum avoiding the topic.
That being said, Alishia doesn't really read this forum anymore, except on occasion when she posts a new update or a major announcement. So us talking about it here is just for our satisfaction. It won't influence the development of the game.
I do think that you're overestimating how much of a problem this could be for this game. There are three reasons why.
- The fact that most of the quests will have a time limit which will probably be between one and two weeks of game time will be a limiting factor in how far back you would have to go to reload. It seems extremely unlikely that you could get halfway through the game and then have to load a save from the early part of the game.
- The fact that choices will open up based on three things - relationship scores, desire scores, and NTR points - combined with the fact that only one of those things (desire scores) resets daily, means that, once you've hit the required relationship score for each character and the required number of NTR points, you won't have to continue grinding, unless or until a new character with whom you have to build relationship is introduced. Edit - You'll still have to grind desire points, but they're not hard to get.
- Alishia has already announced that all possible NTR points will be achieved through the introduction and the early part of the game. Once you've completed the introduction and the early game (which should be just the first couple of weeks of game time), your NTR score will be locked, and you will be on either the full-NTR or the NTR-lite path. This will determine the majority of the scenes which will be available to you.
- Aug 5, 2016
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Also, 0.4 will include a pop-up/signal/icon whenever you get NTR points (and it already does so for desire iirc).
- Nov 21, 2018
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No, it shouldn't, because the developer doesn't plan to make a version of the game without NTR. This was always going to be a game which included NTR. She is including the NTR-lite path for the people who aren't big fans of NTR, but if you want to completely avoid NTR, you'll have to play a different game. The developer wants to make an NTR game, and so she will.
Speaking for myself, I'm not a big fan of NTR, but I'm also not put off by it, unless it's handled in one specific way which I particularly dislike. So I'll be playing both paths of the game, just to see both versions.