Hi, while I haven't played the original Defiler Wings, I have been enjoying your modded version of the game a lot
Jman9. Thank you for your efforts to improve a (to my best knowledge) already great game, and continued work to do so.
There is a lot to be said about the game, and there is this (fairly simple) idea/suggestion I had in mind that I think once implemented would somewhat alleviate the lack of "romance" in the game, that I'm sure has turned away many people (including me at first for a very, very long time).
The idea is as follows:
In addition to the current "affection" statistic, maidens have an additional statistic called for example "loyalty".
This is the root of the idea. This by itself is not very exciting (yet), but for the curious, it might raise a couple of questions:
- What does this loyalty statistic do (i.e. why should I care about it)?
- When can loyalty be raised/changed?
- How can loyalty be raised/changed?
Of course you have the complete freedom of how you want to implement this loyalty stat idea (i.e. how you answer these questions), you have the complete freedom to decide whether to implement this idea at all to begin with. However, I do have a couple of ideas/suggestions:
What does this loyalty statistic do (i.e. why should I care about it)?
Once maxed/reaching certain thresholds, maidens:
- Receive a modest boost in combat statistics
- Gain additional interaction options
For (1), I'm not sure whether it would be better to let it scale with loyalty, or have it simply be a boolean; if implemented as boolean, it should be easier work to do so. Furthermore, in my opinion the total boost to be gained should not be significant to begin with (for example +1 attack, +1 master, +5 hp at max).
For (2), this is the part that made me say
once implemented would somewhat alleviate the lack of "romance" in the game
The main additional interaction I was thinking of, was making it possible to have sex again with the maiden. While it would be really nice if this interaction has its own flavor text (which if necessary I suppose I can provide. Just let me know), I think you can also just re-use the 100 "affection" flavor text.
Regarding (2) from a gameplay/balance point of view, what could this mean? I can think of 2 benefits to be implemented:
- An additional rage sink
- Offspring
(1) is not really something significant I think since it costs lust which is usually too valuable, but it might be nice for the early-ish/mid game I guess (assuming you don't save scum the crap out of the game like I do). Now, what could make this rage sink idea interesting and worth it no matter what stage of the game you're in, is if it's a separate interaction, that does not consume lust at all. The constraint is just that you can use it once per slumber or something, anything to make it balanced. You can call it something like "talk", or "visit", but what I think would make the most sense would be "play/toy with" (follower edition).
(2) though, is both something that greatly excites me, yet worries me. It worries me because it will likely impact (-> break) the current game balance, but it excites me because if done correctly, it won't, and will add a fun little goal to reach to the game.
This is what I had in mind: Offspring from follower maidens are by default less powerful than when the maiden is a prisoner.
However, if the maiden is still a virgin, the offspring gets a significant boost in statistics that when compared to prisoner offspring, is slightly (or a lot?) better. I believe that this would be balanced, since using followers to breed low-quality minions for say the army is not a good idea, as you cannot put followers in breeding pits/milking farms to protect them from the risk of death at birth, and raising another high loyalty follower takes a lot of effort. Perhaps there is also the additional penalty that pregnant followers cannot accompany you in battle and/or be assigned to buildings (except for a new building dedicated to this?). However, it does add a new "ultimate" goal to the game as far as breeding goes: break a maiden, convince her to serve you, raise her loyalty (all the way to the max), and only then, you take her virginity.
On to the next question(s),
When can loyalty be raised/changed?
The most sensible choice I believe, would be to say when they have the follower status.
How can loyalty be raised/changed?
I think that the best way to implement loyalty change, is to draw some inspiration from how experience is gained on followers:
- It can be changed from battles
- It can be obtained naturally over time (->in the lair)
For (1), I think it's obvious to say that after a battle, loyalty gets raised just like experience. One little addition however, that is a little bit less obvious but might be worth implementing, is that upon fleeing, loyalty is
lost instead. This could add a nice little bit of challenge to raising loyalty I think.
For (2), possibilities can be from having it really be passively and unconditionally (aside of "be a follower" of course) incremented over time, to adding conditions such as "must be assigned to a building" (perhaps even add a new building dedicated to raising loyalty. for example maybe a resting room, that functions as increased health regeneration as well?) and/or new interactions (now this, would be amazing, but it would probably also take the most work).
Some additional remarks I have:
- It could be nice if loyalty is not exclusive to maidens, but is innate to any follower. Of course the monster-type followers won't have additional interaction options (or at the very least, it won't be sex lol), but at least they can benefit from the stat boost.
- The way I see it, there are two ways to implement loyalty. One way is to really just have it be a new additional stat added to the game. The other way would be to just modify the current "affection" stat: either increase the max value or rescale everything, then put a temporary limiter at the point where you cannot raise the affection stat until the maiden becomes a follower. The reason why I mention this is because if the current affection stats gets modified, then I think the name of the stat is fine. However, if loyalty is implemented as a separate stat, or even if loyalty is not implemented and we just stick with what we have right now, then I really think that the affection stat should be renamed. The first thing that comes to mind would be "fear level". The "loyalty" stat can then also be called "affection" if you deem that more suitable. Some other names that come to my mind are "favor" and "servitude", though I must say I quite like "loyalty". Some example tier names for loyalty from 0 to max: treacherous, enduring, cooperative, respect, devoted/adoration, worship.
- "Lore"-wise, I think all this can still make sense: in order to convince a maiden to follow you, you promise that you will not torture/kill/rape/whatever them, but after loyalty is sufficiently raised, the maiden will willingly submit themselves to such actions from you.
I hope that this idea was as interesting to you, as it was to me. If nothing else, I hope it provided inspiration to whatever endeavors you have planned.