Thanks for your feedback!
Being able to check your relation with other characters when you meet them while roaming around would also be nice!
-Not being able to see MC relations when talking to NPC. I forget things easily and it gets confusing
I implemented this a few days ago, in version 0.3.5 you will be able to see the relation stats any NPC has with the player character at the bottom of their status screen.
-No Fast Travel. A bit too heavy on clicking
Fast travel will eventually be implemented. It has a few difficulties because it requires a sequence of queued player actions, which may be paused or interrupted depending on the actions of other characters. Since this implies a lot of changes in the logic that could easily break the main game loop, I prefer it to wait until my living/working conditions go back to normal to implement it - otherwise it would take a lot of time-work just to release an update with a lot of effort put into QoL but too little actual new content.
-No hotkey binds. Degrees of Lewdity has same-action inputs so you can use keyboard inputs to select which option to go with, which is great for people in a hurry
I'll consider it in the future. Right now I'm reluctant to implement them because they could easily turn obsolete or require maintenance as fast as the UI gets some minor changes. In the meantime, however, remember that you can navigate most menus relatively fast with tab + space, and q serves as a hotkey to the next turn in scenes.
-RNG odds not being shown prior to selection, only after. This gets annoying when trying to seduce, considering it costs a fortune of the conversation to ask for sex.
This is intentional - otherwise conversations would turn into meaningless mini-games of "get the numbers raise until the bar is full", which takes the risk of failing away. As it works right now, you have to find a balance between going for it early enough and maximize your time or maintain control over what's happening against the risk of failing, and going slow and steady to make sure you don't fail, against the risk of someone else taking the initiative earlier. NPCs do also have "broken" functions that do not tell them with large precision when their actions will be successful with other NPCs (which often causes them to be overly cautious, and rarely to be rejected), so it isn't a fundamental disadvantage for the player.
-Conversations are way too tight. With only having 100 +/- social drive, it feels like farming for nothing when compared to just maxing out skills rather than relationships. If the story is going to be locked into a set timeframe-- meaning days are extremely limited-- the payout to increasing relations should be higher.
Increasing relations helps/will help you at passing checks and get the story to advance through the way you want it to, as well as a few other advantages in the main game loop, at the cost of your stats not increasing as efficiently. The choice between using your time to train, gain merit, dominate the others or raising other stats is less meaningful if you have time to do everything - and I'd say it's still possible to have a very large control over it all in your first playthrough at easy difficulty, or subsequent playthroughs at normal. Do also keep in mind that your max social drive increases over time.
-It's hard to spar with people later on in game since everyone just gets along easily enough-- there's rarely a causus belli to be found.
You can still pick up a fight if you're willing to take the infamy hit. It may help you to know that, the higher your infamy is, the faster it decays: the base infamy loss is 1 point per day, but it raises to 1 extra infamy lost per pay for every 10 accumulated infamy you have. Still, it's true that the tendency of the game is that NPC aggression falls down too much after a few weeks, but I'm not focusing on balancing the game beyond the latest day in the already existing story. I'll come back to this point after the first adventure is finished.
-Speaking of, is the game going to lean towards a sandbox experience, or be locked into a specific timeframe?
The main experience is intended to be a timeframe, but there will be options to extend the playthrough beyond the time limit. Right now, the game is pure sandbox after you reach the end of the story, although it ends up getting bland.
There's also a bug with the "Tie Nash & Claw with Mir's vine" event. (...)
Nah I think the bug is that while they can't take the lead, they seem to be able to start with the lead (...)
At
which scene specifically have you found this? There are different possible scenes in that story event,
Knowing exactly at which scene you found the issue would ease things for me to find the bug.
The stat growth options at start feel clunky. They limit more than they help, so it seems-- and the "Growth" multiplier isn't explained well, and doesn't show up anywhere later on, meaning multiple save files can be hectic.
Noted, will add further info in the UI.
Seeing the exact math would help a ton when trying to decide on what build is best-- especially when it comes to stat growth, and knowing early on what exactly you can do with your build, rather than waiting for a story event, or "Boon."
At the moment it's fairly simple: experience gained * affinity (mostly modified by starting boons and some story events) * stage multiplier (higher during training period, 3 at the start of the game), required exp to level up each stat grows by 100 for each additional level that you earn. At some point in the future I will add a mechanic that gives you further information on incoming stat checks.
Early battles need a bit more care as well-- there's little explained, and NPC's exploit moves that the player doesn't seem capable of. The very first optional battle, after some testing, is only winnable with two weapon builds. I'd rather not explain which two, so others can figure out the pain of writing jargon down trying to compare stats like I had to.
The player also has access to actions that NPCs don't. It's possible to win the first battle with each of the first four starting weapons, or with each of the three starting boons (at the very least, on normal difficulty), but the affinity between your stats, weapon and boon matters and not all builds are equally strong for all purposes. Spoilers regarding the first optional battle, regarding options that are possibly not too well known:
One example is magic. The debuffs don't stack well with the offensive spells at all. Energy Drain doesn't do really anything worth the cost, compared to Hypnosis, which has a purpose outside of battle to give you a huge edge while inside of battle. Combat spells rarely hit, and don't do much.
The most spammy thing to do in the game is just battlestaff+hypnosis, since raising the Staff's stats are pretty much the only viable skills that let you actually connect things in battle. Otherwise, it's just "Everything you do misses, and most of your own attacks backfire."
Someone in the game's Discord channel was recently arguing that pure magic builds are overpowered, so I'm getting some conflicting feedback here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A really annoying factor is that NPC's have pretty much all the boons combined, meanwhile you get one.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you referring to the fact that NPCs start with higher stats? If so, the total stat affinities is the same for all characters on normal difficulty, so early stat differences tend to be overshadowed by training on the long term. Do also keep in mind that NPCs aren't as good at focusing towards a min-maxed stat distribution as the player may actually be.
Probably might want to rehaul combat a bit. RNG combat is alright, but when the RNG nullifies attacks so much that you're likely to miss an offensive capability than not, it's not fun. Nobody likes seeing "You/They missed" this much lol
This makes sense and I'll keep it in mind, I'll test some changes in the future.
