Pink Petal Games
Feedback => New Features => Topic started by: ker on June 29, 2010, 12:36:43 AM
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Was trying to think of a few ways to increase difficulty, but keep it scalar. Game starts off ok, but as soon as you get your first really productive unique girl, profit becomes automatic. Trying to think of a few new ways of increasing the difficulty, without making the early game too hard, so want most of them to scale with the size of the brothel/quality of the girls.
What a few of them will be based on is an idea of reputation/fame. Where you have a certain level of fame, and that opens new options as the game goes on.
1. Make high profit girls a bit harder to find.
Slaves
-Either scale the costs of the girls more, where the ones that make alot more costs far more (could be dramatic) or have several differnt tiers of markets. The first market are your fairly cheap girls (20-40g per customer) and whatever uniques might fall into that category. Once your fame is high enough, you get invitations to more and more select markets, with better (and more expensive girls). Probably have an cost to join those markets as well, either large first time payment or a set amount of gold for every visit.
Free girls, both walks and kidnapping.
-For girls you meet during a walk or your gang tries to convince. The girls stats are averaged, and that number is compared to your fame score. If it is too low, she thinks that she's above you, and won't work directly for you. Potentially you could give options at the time. Like she won't join you intially, but if you give her a large sum, she'll work for you. Or that she has a fixed house percentage when she starts to work, agreed on by contract.
-For girls that your gang is trying to kidnap, I might weight the combat skills higher, where the number that your fame compares to is something like (combat x 2 + magic x 2 + average score)/5. If she's a good fighter, she'll be harder to capture, and more likely to kill the gang trying. You could make it so that if your gang fails to kidnap, you have the ability to hunt her. Use the recapture job, and every week that you hunt her, her number goes down steadily. So in time you can capture her, but it might take a few weeks and gangs to do it. Also, initial obedience/hate should recieve a high temp modifier for every kidnapped girl.
Catacomb girls
-Similiar to kidnapping. But if you are sending your own girl down there, there's a chance that the monster girl will kidnap yours. Or if her rebellion is too high, be convinced to stay in the catacombs.
Level-based script events.
Right now it doesn't feel like the level stat does a huge amount, but with the LUA scripting coming online, this could be a great time for the girl to present a 'challenge' to you. Ideas for scripts.
-Demand better living conditions or a higher cut of the take.
-A slave girl could demand her freedom for the work she's done for you. You could accept or decline, but there would be negatives for declining. Also, if she's managed to save enough gold, she can try to buy her freedom. You can still decline (or even take the gold and not free her) but there would be legal rammifications for doing so.
-A slave's family could try to rescue her. A fight ensues, with the potential to capture family members. If the girl wasn't legally enslaved, they could also go the authorities.
-A customer could fall in love with a slave and try to buy her from you. Again accept/decline, but if you decline, he could attack or try other ways to get her from you.
-A noble falls in love with a slave and tries to buy, or blackmail her from you. Declining could get you in trouble with the authorities, or have the noble put his house at war with yours. And if the noble is a lady... well, you might have a chance to add to your brothel (but face alot more heat in the future)
-A girl gets injured badly. Would require medical care. How much you pay defines how long it'll take for her to heal.
-A free girl wants to retire. You could either let her, agree to higher pay, or enslave her.
-A free girl falls in love and wants to stop whoring and start a family with the customer. Again accept/pay/enslave, or you could kill/enslave the customer.
-A noble falls in love with a free girl, and she loves the noble as well. If you allow them to marry, you'd have a powerful ally.
-A noble falls in love with a free girl, but she doesn't love the noble. Do you protect the girl, facing the nobles wrath, or create an alliance.
Increasing the interactions with the authorities in Crossgate. Right now it's just bribe and forget, or just pay the fines and forget. They could do more things, such as increase your taxation rate, free all the girls in the dungeon, free individual girls, etc. Would take a bit of work, but you could also try to fight off the authorities with your own gangs. Expect to see alot of raids/attacks, but you wouldn't have to pay taxes anymore, and be free to do whatever you want. Pay enough money in the future and you can make peace with them. Maybe even have an end-game where you fight the police, and win =).
The matron could try to stand up to you for the girls sake. Increasing rebellion or better living conditions. Or make a less on the matron in the dungeon.
Attacks from the monsters in the catacombs. Fights, thefts, kidnapping in both ways.
Just a few ideas, chip in any you might have.
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Some interesting ideas here.
1. Make high profit girls a bit harder to find.
Hmmm... It occurrs to me that the core problem is probably that some girls are so much more profitable than others. In some ways it woud be better to give all the girls more of the less the same number of clients (and let that ramp up with training) and and use the fetishes and so forth as a modifier to training. That way a good girl might bring in twice as much as a bad one, as opposed seven or eight times as much. I'm not quite sure how we'd measure the rate at which a girl attracted more customers . It might be a good use for the level stat.
That said, I do like the idea of setting the chance of encountering a girl in inverse proportion to their profitability. We coud use a weigted lookup to manage the odds, probably use a two tier lookup list to save constantly recalculating it. It would also give girl designers some motivation not to make the girls too good, but without imposing artificial limits.
I'd also like to reduce the girl supply generally. Make the player make the most of what he can find.
Slaves
-Either scale the costs of the girls more, where the ones that make alot more costs far more (could be dramatic) or have several differnt tiers of markets. The first market are your fairly cheap girls (20-40g per customer) and whatever uniques might fall into that category.
I'd like to see multiple slave markets anyway, but I agree that the better slaves should cost more. In some cases a lot more. Get people to scrimp and save a bit so they can afford the better ones.
-For girls you meet during a walk or your gang tries to convince. The girls stats are averaged, and that number is compared to your fame score. If it is too low, she thinks that she's above you, and won't work directly for you. Potentially you could give options at the time. Like she won't join you intially, but if you give her a large sum, she'll work for you. Or that she has a fixed house percentage when she starts to work, agreed on by contract.
Interesting idea. It's a bit at odds with the notion of the PC basically playing chickenhawk in Crossgate Market, but I like the idea that there might be some element of negotiation involved. Possibly scripted.
Again, we could solve a lot of the problem here by just weighting the encounter tables.
-Demand better living conditions or a higher cut of the take.
I think they already expect better conditions as they go up levels, but it would be nice to wrap a bit of interaction around it, so long as it doesn't get too intrusive. We' d need to try it out and see how it worked.
-A slave girl could demand her freedom for the work she's done for you. You could accept or decline, but there would be negatives for declining. Also, if she's managed to save enough gold, she can try to buy her freedom. You can still decline (or even take the gold and not free her) but there would be legal rammifications for doing so.
Maybe give her a chance of losing the level if you decline. Lack of motivation, and all that. Although I think any decent slaver ought to be skilled at motivating his girls. One to ponder...
Decent ideas for scripts in general.
Increasing the interactions with the authorities in Crossgate.
Elaborating the Crossgate civil service is something else I've been keen to do for a while.
Attacks from the monsters in the catacombs. Fights, thefts, kidnapping in both ways.
Yeah, there's a few events you can do along those lines. The catacombs are a weak point in the player's defences in many ways. If you had a slave from a high-tech or magical background, I can imagine her friends using the catacombs as a portal for a rescue attempt. Or an enemy gang magically hacking into the extradimensional space and launching a raid, maybe abducting one or two of your better girls. Or you send girls down on a raid, and some giant tentacled slime beast tracks the scent of pussy back to your door...
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This was a lot to go through but I agree on one point.
The price of girls needs to be increased across the board. When I hit "endgame" I was swimming in money. So it's not like it will ramp up overall difficulty. It will however put a lot of that gold to use.
Also, make non slave girls fine with typical jobs like Bartender or Game dealer. But extremely apposed to being whores. (or even catacomb runners. Monster rape ain't fun. ) This gives players incentive to try and get that slave tattoo on or shower them with gifts till rebelliousness is 0. While making the glut of "Take a walk" girls less attractive early on. And not just in the "they refuse to work" way we have now. But in a "I didn't sign up for this" <leaves> way.
Also, if a girl is free, and you go to "recapture" her. It should be far more risky than if they are slave. Specifically, there should be a very high chance that the authorities get involved. Arresting and or killing the gang you sent out. (the can still succeed though, if they do it's a kidnapping. )
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The price of girls needs to be increased across the board. When I hit "endgame" I was swimming in money. So it's not like it will ramp up overall difficulty. It will however put a lot of that gold to use.
That's available right now as a config option :)
One thing I wanted to do was start a thread/contest/poll sort of thing to try and find some good preset config files. I thought people could submit what they thought worked for them, and an idea of how hard they thought it was, and people could try them out and discuss the results. Never quite got around to it for some reason, though.
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I know it's already in the game but increasing the aggressiveness & power of the rival factions as you get stronger. I find while they get better they don't grow nearly as fast as you do and end up meaninglessly weak real fast.
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That's available right now as a config option :)
One thing I wanted to do was start a thread/contest/poll sort of thing to try and find some good preset config files. I thought people could submit what they thought worked for them, and an idea of how hard they thought it was, and people could try them out and discuss the results. Never quite got around to it for some reason, though.
This I did not know, Thought that was for increasing how much it cost you to do certain actions like training. Gonna have to give that a looksy.
Also, now that I think about it I should probably just double the price of everything and see how that goes :D
And that sounds like a great idea about the poll. :)
I know it's already in the game but increasing the aggressiveness & power of the rival factions as you get stronger. I find while they get better they don't grow nearly as fast as you do and end up meaninglessly weak real fast.
This goes triply so for new rivals as they appear. Your gangs do make short work of those easily.
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well one thing I'm a big supporter of capping the number of customers a girl sees, it would make the game more realistic (I mean can a girl really see 10 customers in a night? and have sex with all of them). have groups take up more then one time slot, but raise the amount they give (so count them as 1.5-1.75, for income or something, but take up 2 time spots). I myself would cap it at 5-8 customers a shift (depending on how long we view each shift as lasting). you could increase fatigue rates so that it's harder (when whoring) to make girls who won't tire out.
I would also think having more goals to reach would make things more interesting, and adds difficulty from the player trying to achieve them. so, maybe have both short term and long term missions, rather then one long term event and a few random short term events.(I know this sounds a lot like sims brothel...) add some missions (I forget if this is in there) like "own __ of properties", and I would move the brothels into long term goals, since there are only what 5 or 6 of them. "have __ girls successfully preform __ job". successfully complete __ number of ___(movies). even if it doesn't make the game much more of a challenge it would make it more involving and more entertaining. it also barely, if at all, increases micromanaging.
maybe decrease the effectiveness of bribes as the toughness as fame goes up, I mean the more famous a person, building is, the harder it is to keep secrets hidden, thus the more people you have to bribe.
I would love to have people come seek my girls for themselves when you are famous enough. (this could create a late game challenge, sell __ girls)
I would also like the ability to train girls to be certain things, like ponygirls, or cat girls (yes like Slave Maker). there could also be seductress, dominatrix, or things like that.
I also think that it would make things harder if more traits were earned, instead of given at the beginning. the way I play I don't even have much trouble at the beginning (get all the gangs, buy/find a girl or two and I'm set)
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Difficulty has always been a bitch, because some people just want their sandbox, and others want their hardcore sim. And if you favor one, the other side is gonna bitch. Loudly. My suggestion, give the player more options to spend gold on, there's little use for it aside from slaves, items, and occasionally another brothel. I suggested in another thread, specialized training to raise a girls stats or give her traits, but make it cost money, perhaps a lot of money. Customizable brothel rooms should help, and I think I saw discussion kicking around about a players house, make that upgradeable and customizable, add more events, like a festival coming to town where you can give all your girls the week off in return for a massive happiness boost and income loss, or keep em working for a happiness malus and a significant income and customer boost (festivals are good for business in the red-light district too), and other stuff like this, it'll give a facade of difficulty (having money to do cool stuff when it pops up, while not really restricting sandboxy players at all.
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You could add a switch for sandbox mode when you start a new game, slave maker has that option so it has worked for them.
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This was more or less the idea of having different profiles with preset configs: we could have a normal, hard, very hard and sandbox.
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well one thing I'm a big supporter of capping the number of customers a girl sees, it would make the game more realistic (I mean can a girl really see 10 customers in a night? and have sex with all of them).
if you want realism, the number should probably be higher than that, considering the turns are weeks, not days
I don't get people who look at this game and want "realism"
it's a game with magic portals that spit out anime girls
I mean, common sense is fine, but a realistic whore master would not be a very fun game
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if you want realism, the number should probably be higher than that, considering the turns are weeks, not days
+1 to that.
Assume a 7 day week and a 12 hour working shift. Assume that with tidying up basic hygene a trick takes two hours. we get 6 * 7 = 42 clients a week as a maximum. Which is silly. If nothing else I'd go nuts reading them all.
It's one of the things that didn't carry very well when the game time turn changed from one day to one week. That said, the sex is an abstraction in any case. Necessarily so, if you think about it.
I don't get people who look at this game and want "realism"
it's a game with magic portals that spit out anime girls
Yeah. What most people mean when they say "realism" is "I don't want this game to interrupt my suspension of disbelief with too many unexpected elements". And the Principle of Least Surprise is a generally a good rule of thumb for most elements of game design.
The trouble is that expectations vary, and so one player's realism is not the same as another's.
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I think they already expect better conditions as they go up levels, but it would be nice to wrap a bit of interaction around it, so long as it doesn't get too intrusive. We' d need to try it out and see how it worked.
Just to expand on this, I have NEVER run into happiness problems related to housing. I set everyone to average, even slaves, and never look at it again. Even double-shifted girls can maintain stable happiness levels at average conditions. If there actually is some mechanic that starts to make them unhappy at high enough levels, this effect needs to be drastically increased to make a noticable difference on gameplay.
Definitely agreed on high stats scaling slave market prices more. The problem here is also coming up with something for free girls so players can't simply ignore the rebalanced slave market. The negotiation thing that ker suggested wouldn't work, because most people here have dozens of custom girls. It could take many months before a girl with low enough stats was chosen on a walk action, at which point the player is broke and/or bored. Forcing players to use slave girls to run things initially would not go over well with most people. Nothing really comes to mind at the moment to solve this one; making free girls higher maintaince wouldn't work as the player would just brand everyone then. Lowering the maximum amount of income each girl can generate seems to best route at this point. As others have said, no more super whores seeing 8+ customers at 100 gold a pop + tips. ~4 should probably be the limit, while increasing the fatigue per customer so constitution doesn't become irrelevent with the lowered limit.
I think the best way to handle any proposed difficulty changes would be a have a new game choice between Sandbox or Sim mode. Sandbox would be about how it is now, with basically little way to lose unless you really screw up. Sim mode would incorporate whatever script ideas are decided on for making life harder for the player. I'm not sure a 'easy/medium/hard' division is really needed here, as I think generally everyone here either wants things to be easy or difficult. Further refinements to difficulty should be simply left to the player to control via the config file like they can now.
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just dozens i have a couple hundred custom from downloading the packs it would take me about ten years in game if negotiation were implemented to get them.
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Just to expand on this, I have NEVER run into happiness problems related to housing. I set everyone to average, even slaves, and never look at it again. Even double-shifted girls can maintain stable happiness levels at average conditions. If there actually is some mechanic that starts to make them unhappy at high enough levels, this effect needs to be drastically increased to make a noticable difference on gameplay.
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Sounds like a bug, then. Although (off the top of my head) I think "average" should keep everyone happy until level 7 or so anyway, so maybe you're just hitting it. Probably the thing to do is stick them all in slave kennels and see if they hit happiness problems then.
Definitely agreed on high stats scaling slave market prices more. The problem here is also coming up with something for free girls so players can't simply ignore the rebalanced slave market.
I'm tending towards making the better girls appear less frequently. I thought about basing it on the number of customers they'd attract.
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36
# customers odds d100 roll
8 = 1/36 = 0.03 00-03
7 = 2/36 = 0.06 04-09
6 = 3/36 = 0.08 10-17
5 = 4/36 = 0.11 18-28
4 = 5/36 = 0.14 29-42
3 = 6/36 = 0.16 43-58
2 = 7/36 = 0.19 59-77
1 = 8/36 = 0.22 78-99
So that would mean that almost 60% of the girls would be in the 1-3 customer bracket. Which is probably too low. Maybe the way to do it is to set the tier weights in the config file.
I'm not sure a 'easy/medium/hard' division is really needed here, as I think generally everyone here either wants things to be easy or difficult.
The thing is, you have to bear in mind newcomers to the game. The hard level is going wind up being hard for the regulars on this list - the guys who know all the best tactics and want a setting that challenges them even when they do everything right. We need something for the newbies who want more than a sandbox, but are going to do lots of sub-optimal things because they're just learning the game. If we only have "hard" and "sandbox" then new players who want more than just a sandbox may be left without a way in.
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So that would mean that almost 60% of the girls would be in the 1-3 customer bracket. Which is probably too low. Maybe the way to do it is to set the tier weights in the config file.
Another possibility for the 'tier ranking' would be the simply include a new field for unique girls allowing the player/girl makers to judge how early they should be able to appear. This way you don't have to worry about formulas creating too low of a threshold with this system. Players and girl makers could make sure there were enough girls at the lower tiers to get started, while no more super-whores showing up as your first girl, making the early game a joke. I'd suggest keeping it to 4-5 tier levels at most for simplicity.
The thing is, you have to bear in mind newcomers to the game. The hard level is going wind up being hard for the regulars on this list - the guys who know all the best tactics and want a setting that challenges them even when they do everything right. We need something for the newbies who want more than a sandbox, but are going to do lots of sub-optimal things because they're just learning the game. If we only have "hard" and "sandbox" then new players who want more than just a sandbox may be left without a way in.
Didn't think of that; I guess having one more difficulty step would make sense then.
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Players and girl makers could make sure there were enough girls at the lower tiers to get started, while no more super-whores showing up as your first girl, making the early game a joke.
That's the thing though. Girl makers (and I'm guilty of this as well.) try for authenticity first and game balance a distant second. This is why a lot of packs end up with girls with multiple stats at 100. (Combination of traits and what the creator figures the characters stats should be.) So perhaps the 2 lowest tier starter girls should be included with the distro with the remaining upper tiers being created by players as they are now.
Otherwise I see a likely scenario of new players not having many girls to start with. And not knowing how to alter girlsx files to give them more of a stable.
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That's the thing though. Girl makers (and I'm guilty of this as well.) try for authenticity first and game balance a distant second. This is why a lot of packs end up with girls with multiple stats at 100. (Combination of traits and what the creator figures the characters stats should be.) So perhaps the 2 lowest tier starter girls should be included with the distro with the remaining upper tiers being created by players as they are now.
Otherwise I see a likely scenario of new players not having many girls to start with. And not knowing how to alter girlsx files to give them more of a stable.
Yeah, I would definitely say being able to add your own girls with stats and all definitely impedes on balancing the game properly. While this isn't a bad thing it means any form of balancing the game without restricting the player at the start sounds rather impossible. My proposal would be to give the player various rankings though out the game. You could start out as a thug and eventually get to a Whore Master.
These ranks would just determine what stats a girl will start with. Your first rank will have their stats very low, since you're a nobody who knows very little about the trade, eventually opening up all the girls to you.
The easiest way I can think of to determine when you rank up is just over-all money gained. I have no idea if this proposal would actually work, but it seems like it could work fine for random girls. As for uniques I have no clue, their stats seem to be the same as the modder put them, perhaps a mix of docs idea and this could help.
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That's the thing though. Girl makers (and I'm guilty of this as well.) try for authenticity first and game balance a distant second. This is why a lot of packs end up with girls with multiple stats at 100. (Combination of traits and what the creator figures the characters stats should be.)
Exactly. We can always turn the tiering off in sandbox mode if becomes an issue. Meanwhile, we give girl makers some small incentive to exercise a little restraint.
So perhaps the 2 lowest tier starter girls should be included with the distro with the remaining upper tiers being created by players as they are now.
Hmmm.... I'd like the game to be fully playable without having to d/l extra packs.
Otherwise I see a likely scenario of new players not having many girls to start with. And not knowing how to alter girlsx files to give them more of a stable.
I'm thinking that if there's not a unique girl in the randomly selected tier, we could generate a random one with her stats constrained to the tier boundary values.
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Exactly. We can always turn the tiering off in sandbox mode if becomes an issue. Meanwhile, we give girl makers some small incentive to exercise a little restraint.
The problem is how traits are handled now. You can still exercise restraint and end up with an uber girl.
Example: When I was making Shimako Todo, I wanted a girl with extremely low sex skills, but have some skill in lesbian sex. I also gave her the lesbian trait as a label to flesh out the character. This of course trippled her Lesbian skill, something I had not initially wanted.
Hmmm.... I'd like the game to be fully playable without having to d/l extra packs.
Point taken. Don't need to preclude the uber girls from the initial distro. Just think you can go a long way in balancing with the initial girls offered with the distro. This way, if all(most) of the girls that come from packs are uber, players will have that to fall back on.
I'm thinking that if there's not a unique girl in the randomly selected tier, we could generate a random one with her stats constrained to the tier boundary values.
My fault. Random girls are a bit superfluous to me, so I often overlook them. :D
edit: on second thought. If pack creators are creating uber girls by the dozen and random girls can pick up the slack, leave it the way it is. It gives players incentive to increase there whoremaster skill so they can start getting unique girls.
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The problem is how traits are handled now. You can still exercise restraint and end up with an uber girl.
Agreeed. What I'm proposing is that if that girl turns out to be an uber whoring machine, then the odds on seeing her are going to be low. Which might encourage people to moderate the design a little.
The editor would probably need to tell designers what tier the girl was going to appear in though...
Example: When I was making Shimako Todo, I wanted a girl with extremely low sex skills, but have some skill in lesbian sex. I also gave her the lesbian trait as a label to flesh out the character. This of course trippled her Lesbian skill, something I had not initially wanted.
Arguably that's a bug in the girl design, of course. Or a simply good argument for decoupling stats and traits :)
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Agreeed. What I'm proposing is that if that girl turns out to be an uber whoring machine, then the odds on seeing her are going to be low. Which might encourage people to moderate the design a little.
See my edit above. Fits in for this. :D
Arguably that's a bug in the girl design, of course. Or a simply good argument for decoupling stats and traits :)
I've made that argument before in the trait request thread. But I think I came late to that party. :D
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That's a large part of the reason I released a coretraits mod that listed the exact stat boosts. For your example, since we know now the the Lesbian trait adds +40 to lesbian skill, adjust her starting lesbian stat accordingly. You generally can't lose traits in this game, so there's no chance the Lesbian trait will ever be lost. That +40 will always be there, and so you need to plan accordingly. The worst offenders for this are Charismatic and Charming; adding one of these to a girl with ~20-30 charisma and a few other traits WILL result in a 100 charisma uber-girl. And this is after I suggested to Dagoth to nerf these hard (charismatic use to boost charisma by 100!) and he cut them in half.
The best way to test your girls for balance is to play a testmode game and go on walks until the brothel is full. Check out their stats with WMedit open and see if the final result is badly off from what you wanted. Make tweaks as needed, even if you have to set certain stats to 0 to make up for the trait boosts. You'd be surprised how many of your girls ended up too good despite your best efforts. I can tell you right now the WMEdit suggestion that beauty should start at 50-60 will result in lots of 100 beauty girls. Too many traits unexpectedly boost this. A lot.
As DocClox said, my tier stat suggestion was intended for the core girl pack balance, which the devs can control. If the player wants to add uber girls into their game afterwards or tweak the existing girl, it's really not the devs fault that the balance is thrown out the window.
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As DocClox said, my tier stat suggestion was intended for the core girl pack balance, which the devs can control. If the player wants to add uber girls into their game afterwards or tweak the existing girl, it's really not the devs fault that the balance is thrown out the window.
I can't really argue that, but perhaps traits in general are just waaay too powerful? Stats only go up to 100. A +40 in any given stat is just insane.
I may have read this in another thread, but adding what the stats and various traits do now that there's a clearer idea of what they are would be very nice. I must admit I never really looked at how much of a boost various traits give girls and I never researched how much of an impact various stats had on girls. I only followed the recommended given in the editor when I made them. Realizing that now, I may very well have to go back and alter the girls current stats and traits.
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yeah traits should give plus 10 at most but can take away 50 would be a good idea it would prevent massive powering at first
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I can't really argue that, but perhaps traits in general are just waaay too powerful? Stats only go up to 100. A +40 in any given stat is just insane.
I may have read this in another thread, but adding what the stats and various traits do now that there's a clearer idea of what they are would be very nice. I must admit I never really looked at how much of a boost various traits give girls and I never researched how much of an impact various stats had on girls. I only followed the recommended given in the editor when I made them. Realizing that now, I may very well have to go back and alter the girls current stats and traits.
Won't disagree with you on that one. I had girls I set to 40 beauty, then get them in game and find they're at 100 from a few trait boosts. Please do yourself a favour and look at the modified coretraits file I uploaded so you can see the craziness that goes on from some of them. This is something that should probably be continued in a seperate thread; and something that would really benefit from a user-moddable traits file.
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When playing WM there seems to be strong positive feedback loops. Each girl added makes money at a decent clip and gangs become profitable very fast. Negative feedback seems limited and fairly inconsequential.
There are the three usual ways to deal with this:
-Reduce positive loops: Currently many choices have exceptional ROI. Catacombs and whoring seem to top the lists. Ways to contain this for example having a girls level cap the price per trick; no mater how awesome her stats/traits it takes a while for her to reach her full potential. Reducing catacomb profit or having prerequisites to get the better loot appears to be the most popular for reducing the catacomb job.
-Money sinks: Currently getting new building and buying gang weapons/items/slaves are the money sinks. In my experience all can pretty much be ignored. With the exception of buildings all of them seem a bit on the light side. On a side note it makes an interesting challenge if you never buy a slave.
-Negative feedback: There are a few of these already in existence; maintenance, filth, beasts, matron, bribery and consumables. The problem with escalating them is they very become irritating rather than fun. eg the maid got sick and filth shuts down the business. The least irritating ones are either fun (no ideas here) or silent such as better girls require more funds in maintenance. One idea it is to tweak the customer count equation so that it becomes less profitable per incremental whore. Personal experience shows ambient visitors are sufficient to produce sufficient tricks per whore such that rarely do any go wanting.
Bringing cash-flow into closer balance makes money more challenging/interesting for the business players. However making them too close risk alienating the girl collectors.
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When playing WM there seems to be strong positive feedback loops. Each girl added makes money at a decent clip and gangs become profitable very fast. Negative feedback seems limited and fairly inconsequential.
There are the three usual ways to deal with this:
-Reduce positive loops: Currently many choices have exceptional ROI. Catacombs and whoring seem to top the lists. Ways to contain this for example having a girls level cap the price per trick; no mater how awesome her stats/traits it takes a while for her to reach her full potential. Reducing catacomb profit or having prerequisites to get the better loot appears to be the most popular for reducing the catacomb job.
ROI is a bit of an understatement as it stands now. There is very little investment. (You can never buy a slave and end up with a ton of girls in your brothel) and a metric ass ton of return. It's a bit unbalanced. :D
-Money sinks: Currently getting new building and buying gang weapons/items/slaves are the money sinks. In my experience all can pretty much be ignored. With the exception of buildings all of them seem a bit on the light side. On a side note it makes an interesting challenge if you never buy a slave.
Tried the not buying slave thing, also tried ramping up the cost of the money sinks in the config file. Even got it to the point where I had to have the 2 "starter" gangs getting at least 2 pieces of territory a week and get 4 girls able to whore day and night for at least 2 months before they needed rest or I would not be able to turn a profit to do anything else and would eventually negative out. (Conversly this was the hardest I could get the game without making the early game unplayable.)
However, between breaking "walk around" girls in the dungeon and the freebies you get from customers that can't pay. You eventually can put all your girls on training in the morning whoring in the evening. Your income then reaches a point of critical mass and you start earning money hand over fist. If you put some girls on catacombs or have your gangs start sabotaging rivals, you earn even more income with little consequence.
So I guess this is a long winded way of saying Money sinks just won't work.
-Negative feedback: There are a few of these already in existence; maintenance, filth, beasts, matron, bribery and consumables. The problem with escalating them is they very become irritating rather than fun. eg the maid got sick and filth shuts down the business. The least irritating ones are either fun (no ideas here) or silent such as better girls require more funds in maintenance. One idea it is to tweak the customer count equation so that it becomes less profitable per incremental whore. Personal experience shows ambient visitors are sufficient to produce sufficient tricks per whore such that rarely do any go wanting.
Note also that you can get those ambients without ever spending a dime in advertising. or giving a crap if they are happy for that matter.
Bringing cash-flow into closer balance makes money more challenging/interesting for the business players. However making them too close risk alienating the girl collectors.
And this is the real heart of it, how to make the game challenging to the power players while still making it appealing to casuals. Solution, the config file. A this point in time the game is pretty easy. So this is newbie mode right here.
Any new alterations to the games balance should have a corresponding option in the config file to tweek it down. (Dev's are already doing this, Case in point, when Dagoth altered how recruiting gangs work.)
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-Negative feedback: There are a few of these already in existence; maintenance, filth, beasts, matron, bribery and consumables. The problem with escalating them is they very become irritating rather than fun. eg the maid got sick and filth shuts down the business. The least irritating ones are either fun (no ideas here) or silent such as better girls require more funds in maintenance. One idea it is to tweak the customer count equation so that it becomes less profitable per incremental whore. Personal experience shows ambient visitors are sufficient to produce sufficient tricks per whore such that rarely do any go wanting.
Bringing cash-flow into closer balance makes money more challenging/interesting for the business players. However making them too close risk alienating the girl collectors.
I strongly agree that you can have too many girls in one brothel and still rake in the money. Why even buy a second brothel when I can have 40 in my first and still have enough customers to supply them all with 5+ each? There needs to be more pressure on the player to buy new brothels sooner, with new girls after a certain point actually causing losses as they get 0 or 1 customer each while taking up maintenance costs. At the moment, more girls increase the number of customers that come. While this makes complete sense to certain limit, after a certain point this bonus needs to be stopped or even cause a backlash (ie shy, married customers, or important businessmen wouldn't want to risk being seen by someone who might know them). This cut-off needs to hit pretty quickly, forcing the player to resort to increasing advertising or expand to a new brothel to insure each girl is profitable.
Fame could likewise be given similar double-edged benefits. It brings in more customers, but could also cause more suspicion and raids, which means more bribe money. Essentially, the player should have to think carefully about adding more girls instead of the current system of more always being better.
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Another thought I had; have fetish sex cause injuries, unhappiness or refusal to work with low skill girls. Currently, you can disable some sex acts at the expensive of losing customers. However, there's no reason to actually do this unless you personally dislike certain images. 0 skill girls don't seem terribly bothered by beast/monster sex, BDSM, or lesbian sex even though a 'normal' girl would balk at having to do these acts. In other words, the player should have to seriously consider either turning some of these off or sinking more time into training girls before putting them to work.
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Another thought I had; have fetish sex cause injuries, unhappiness or refusal to work with low skill girls. Currently, you can disable some sex acts at the expensive of losing customers. However, there's no reason to actually do this unless you personally dislike certain images. 0 skill girls don't seem terribly bothered by beast/monster sex, BDSM, or lesbian sex even though a 'normal' girl would balk at having to do these acts. In other words, the player should have to seriously consider either turning some of these off or sinking more time into training girls before putting them to work.
This is a really good idea. Something I hadn't even considered.
All the above ideas are good as well. Brothel space was going to be a lot different with that building management. So who knows as far as that goes.
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Another thought I had; have fetish sex cause injuries, unhappiness or refusal to work with low skill girls. Currently, you can disable some sex acts at the expensive of losing customers. However, there's no reason to actually do this unless you personally dislike certain images. 0 skill girls don't seem terribly bothered by beast/monster sex, BDSM, or lesbian sex even though a 'normal' girl would balk at having to do these acts. In other words, the player should have to seriously consider either turning some of these off or sinking more time into training girls before putting them to work.
On the idea's of girls refusing to work. Walk around girls could have predetermined aversion to certain jobs. (slaves don't have much of a choice.) Obviously rebelliousness would play a part, but with so many new jobs, like waitress and game dealer, there is a lot for a girl to do in a brothel other than whoring.
As such, here is a quick list of what I would figure girls would do with average rebellion. (Like what, 30-40?)
- Non sex jobs: Of course
- Stripping, Movies(eventually): Sorta leery but may do it if there desperate for cash.
- Whoring: nope, not unless they are nympho's or completely trust|fear the player.
This would give players a lot of incentive to get girls into the low rebellion numbers. Either by showering them with love or breaking them int he dungeon.
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..... wait... I just realized something.... girls are working for cash because they need it.... but why do they need it if they get free room and board from you even if they refuse to work..... they should be paying YOU, they should be able to go into debt to you, and all in all I think girl behavior needs to be majorly reworked
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no. no, no, no, no
fuck no
I brought up the fact that the game is too easy on a number of occasions, and I stand by it
it needs challenge. badly
but this thread is, for the lack of a less offensive word, retarded
and by "this thread", I mean most of the recent threads
you are confusing challenge and.. I'm not even sure how to call this
let me put it this way:
this thread is about a house-building game
specifically, about stopping it from deteriorating into playing itself, with no input from the player
as it is, the game lets you build a house
not a very elaborate house, but a house nonetheless
it has its flaws, but if you use some imagination, it is a very fun little game
now, some people aren't satisfied with the game's limitations
they want to build "anything", and they want to build it "realistically"
to cut the story shorter, by the end of the thread, we have a game that is about building a house
sort of
it is now more focused on the things that make the house
wood, brick, nails, that sort of thing
now, to build your house, you need a wooden framework, first
and, depending on the angle at which two wooden beams join, you need different kinds of nails (that you, of course, must acquire)
now, different nails need different hammers, but the hardware store lady won't sell you different hammers unless she likes you or fears you enough
so, you need to :
a) bring her gifts
b)torture her
or
c)rape her kitten
now that you have your hammer, you need extra work force
but slaves can't build houses, because they don't like you all that much
no, sir, you need to pay people that may or may not build your god damn house
well, now you have your shit together, and..well, fuck
it seems that owls shit on your material at night, and that threatens the structural integrity of your would-be house
well, we can't have that happening, so you hire a squad of rangers to guard against the owls
but, as it turns out, the are more suited to squirrel-trapping, so you need to have them retrained
in the meantime, three of your workers do not appreciate the design of your house, and refuse to build it, as it goes against their aesthetic principles
this lowers the morale of your other workers, who, seeing the 3 get paid despite not working, start slacking off
to remedy this, you need to redesign (10/(the number of workers))^(average skill - their pay), in order to get the 3 working again
or bring them gifts
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That has to be the most bizarre rant I have ever seen. And I'm all for challenge (Blatant lie) But having stupid, completely illogical ai to make that challenge is, to use your own words, retarded.
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That has to be the most bizarre rant I have ever seen. And I'm all for challenge (Blatant lie) But having stupid, completely illogical ai to make that challenge is, to use your own words, retarded.
Totally can't see why anyone would think you are an asshole exo.
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Just imagine me speaking everything in a flat boring monotone.
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Totally can't see why anyone would think you are an asshole exo.
I honestly don't see the problem
he called an idea stupid, rather than anyone in particular
it was an argumented post, as opposed to "lol that's stupid"
p.s. argumented is a valid word in my language
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p.s. argumented is a valid word in my language
Don't worry about pointing it out. Who would actually complain about that? :D
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I would
seriously, the word doesn't exist
what was I even trying to say?
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Fuxing lol (hope your head didn't go pop on that one. :D )
And feel free to make up your own language. I'll take a stab at trying to decipher it.