Idea's for difficulty

[sgb]

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.

[Lorde]

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.

[Mehzerz]

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.

[DocClox]

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.

[Lorde]

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. 


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.
 

[DocClox]

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

[Lorde]

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.

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. 

[sgb]

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.

[Mehzerz]

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.

[megamanx]

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

[sgb]

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.

[Bluebeholder]

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.

[Lorde]

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. 

-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.)

[sgb]

-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.

[sgb]

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.