You did not reply directly to any points in my long comment, but I wasn't really asking questions. Hopefully you do consider some of the points that were inside it.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I was probably pissed off by other people, and the timing did the rest.
I actually read your comment, but never found a moment to go point-by-point over it. The unified comments I made were not directly implying your comment, but probably I matched some of your points.
Anyway, I'm going point by point on your last post, then I'll get back to your original comment in the next days.
I do wish there was a starter pack. I have no problem with it being a secondary download. I also have no problem at all with the girlpack download design. The primary problems I had in this regard was that I did not find the process of starting at the OP to running a functional game an obvious and straightforward task.
Consider adding a new download category below the game with actual downloadable files (if not a starter pack at least something that contains enough to run the game). Seeing additional links would make it more clear that additional downloads are required (before a potential player has started any download process at all) as well as suggesting what those downloads could/should be.
Yes, as I said in several posts I'm considering making one. And as I said it will require quite a lot of time to make a good balance in term of gameplay/download size. If it gonna happen, it will probably land in months from now, and probably only with the help of pack creators.
I just don't want to pick single packs to put in the OP, mainly because of two reasons:
- I made girlpacks too, so I don't want to be biased on picking
- girlpacks flavor is really subjective. I'm quite sure I can't please everybody with a pre-determined list of packs out there
I did see a comment about 2 basic packs being part of your signature. That's fine, but maybe put one or both of those as links in the OP and not hidden inside a spoiler (personally I turned off all signatures years ago because they created massive bloat in viewing threads and made about 50% of all viewed content repeat and irrelevant data... note, I'm not complaining about your signature, I state this to explain that info in signatures will not reach your full audience).
As already mentioned by
Disgruntler
Just to be clear--that's MY signature, not everglow's. I'm the dev for Venus' Club, he's the dev for TUSC.
Both use the same pool of girlpacks, however, so you can look at Venus' Club's girlpack thread
here. New packs are constantly uploaded, and there is a TON of content. That said,
Venus's Club has the links you need in its first post. I do not have the torrent made by
Feyschek in there that has TUSC-enhanced girlpacks, but they've been absolutely fantastic about providing and there's a ton of content for you there. The TUSC-specific lists aren't as well organized as VC's, just because VC was around for a long time before everglow hammered out TUSC, but the community has responded and there's a lot of TUSC-enhanced content now.
so yes, at the moment if you check the developer notes in the OP there's a list of links on where to find girlpacks.
I'm afraid until a starter pack is born, this is the best solution at the moment.
I'll reiterate my earlier comment. Consider implementing a required reserve of capital. Basically do not allow the player to make a purchase that would push their money too low (my suggestion would be a value equal to the combined salary of all current hires). I realize it is billed as a management game, but having built-in helper functions and blocking certain choices still exist. No reason this could not be one of them.
Alternately would be to remove the rather arbitrary choice to be able to pay employees before the day begins. Typically people get paid after they do a job rather than before. Bar opens, people work, collect til, pay employees. So long as my net profit on the day is not negative, starting with 0g at the start is perfectly valid (all employees still work and all get paid). The only problem is if my net profit for a day is negative and I do not have enough cash on reserve to make up the difference. Which would be the typical game-over moment.
I understand your point. The issue with this approach is that it might be quite complicated predicting the actual value of the reserve. As
Disgruntler well explained about how girls pay-off work:
It's on a per girl basis. So if you have 200 on hand, 4 girls who require 600 per night each, and one who requires 100, that girl for 100 will work while the others won't.
so the way to implement a reserve, would be for me to decide regardless of the player strategy, upgrades, girls and dispositions which girls should be working next night and how many of them.
Which is feasible, sure, but at the same time it create a risk to compromise game play for some players.
So let's say that I consider this, but I need to find a super clean way to implement it, if any.
I'll repeat my comment about the need for filler. As stated, I eventually downloaded quite a bit of data to get the game up and running to give it a try. Once I eventually get playing and get late-game I found that no one ever used the bath nor spa. They did not work there, they could not use them during off hours. Both the get and receive massage buttons are always disabled. My presumption remains that this is because of whatever I downloaded did not provide specific videos for these locations (but this is just my guess). In my opinion these features should not be disabled for anyone. If a girl is missing options, some filler should be used so the game functionality is all still available.
I realize the above comment isn't an exact match to the comment of yours I'm addressing here. I mention it here though because if filler exists, 1. it can potentially be used to try the game with no packs installed at all, 2. it allows access to game parts that a specific pack has missing, 3. (and relevant to the above) it provides a means to generate generic-girls to play with only a few "uniques" and still build a fully staffed and functional business.
Honestly my thought is that #2 is the biggest draw here. #1 and 3 are likely mostly limited to those newly trying a game rather than the core players, but filler would have benefit to all.
Yeah, VC has (or had?) some fillers, but I really dislike the concept, and here is why.
The main theme about a filler is that it should be totally generic, so for example shouldn't contain faces, otherwise you get a video of another girl when supposed to get the one you're playing with.
But there's more: what about body parts? Maybe you have a tiny girl with small-sized tits and I put big ones in my filler. Maybe the girl is black or asian, and my filler is made with a caucasian girl. That's a very poor experience under my point of view.
I think the actual inspector (the once you have clicking on one of the girls in the staff list) gives you quite a good idea of which performances you can get from that girl.
Of course, it would be awesome to have a proper list somewhere in advance so you can download contents that full-fills the entire TUSC categories, but that's probably not related to the game itself. And maybe that's the solution: to build up a TUSC specific list of packs like the one it exists for VC. I'm probably more up to this one rather than the filler.
First time looking at the game, so regardless of changelogs or any other posts I don't really have any feel for what's a long established feature and what was newly added. Personally I fully understand that it is a work in progress. If I do comment specifically on lack of balance issues or lack of polish, it is not to badger or complain about your efforts. It is primarily to point out areas where future work might be well spent.
That's why I repeated the thing in the post, to give everyone more context about 1.0
TUSC follows semantic versioning, so 1.0.x won't mean is more stable or polished than 0.6.x, but only the changes between such versions are huge.
I had no intention to attack anybody, it was just a reminder of what this specific release actually ment.
You are all more than welcome to share your feedbacks!
