Pink Petal Games
Feedback => Bugs and Game balancing => Topic started by: sgb on August 30, 2010, 11:16:41 PM
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I know there's a lot of complains that the game is already too easy, but this one just bothers me conceptually. Basically it doesn't make a whole lot of sense the girls would refuse to do most jobs. It doesn't really make sense for slaves OR free girls.
Slaves techincally shouldn't be able to refuse ANYTHING. I don't know exactly how slaves work in the world of Whoremaster, but I'm assuming the master has some sort of magical means to control the slave. Otherwise they'd just try to escape on a regular basis. Now it makes sense the slave may not WANT to do something, but in this case wouldn't a happiness and health (assuming the master has to discipline the slave to get her to cooperate) drop make more sense then the slave not performing the task?
With free girls it actually makes even less sense. These girls were hired legitimately, and want to work. During the hiring process you'd HAVE to let it be known at some point that you run a brothel. Unless they are stupid, they would know what kind of 'work' that's going to be required of them. Yet ask them to do the job they were hired for and...they simply refuse?! This makes no sense; if someone went to their job in real life and refused to do any work, they'd be fired on the spot and they'd know it. While it makes sense that the girl might refuse extreme fetish sex, it does not make any sense that they'd refuse to clean the bedding or serve drinks in the bar.
What if rebelliousness affected the girls willingness to agree to work for you at all? ie if a rebellious girl came up on a walk, there would be a large chance she'd refuse to work at a brothel. The only way to get these girls would be to resort to kidnapping. This is something that would take a lot of work to overhaul and don't expect to be changed, but it's just something I wanted to throw out there.
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I always liked the idea of girls willing to work jobs like Waitress or Bartender but not really wanting to do the whore jobs. Makes breaking them all the more rewarding.
However, a Happy compromise could be that the girl refuses to see certain customers (random chance based on rebellion) or refuses to see more than X number of customers with high rebellion. That would actually be more realistic in my opinion. And It won't make a girl dead weight when she randomly decides to throw a hissy fit.
For other jobs, High rebellion means poor work and unhappy customers.
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Slaves technically shouldn't be able to refuse ANYTHING.
I dislike that this thought keeps coming up. Slaves can refuse to act just like anyone else. It's just the owner has more legal coercive options to encourage actions. Being considered property in society doesn't change how people respond to onerous tasks other than the knowledge that the consequences may be more severe and the rewards less. Simply they're in a situation with less carrot and more stick. Perhaps another benefit for the gang job watching the girls job could be use of some of those more coercive options. And really the WM is running a brothel where there's the option of taking and then using "free" mothers and their daughters as payment for debts indefinitely. Is that not slavery irregardless of if they have a magic mark?
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Thus why I suggested slaves take a hit to health and happiness instead. Currently, a slave in WM can go up to her owner and declare she isn't going to do any work today. There is no consequence to the slave for doing this. That is what does not make sense in the equation. The slave can certainly TRY to refuse of course; but rebelling in such a way should, at the very least, result in her automatically getting tossed in the dungeon and tortured.
And really the WM is running a brothel where there's the option of taking and then using "free" mothers and their daughters as payment for debts indefinitely. Is that not slavery irregardless of if they have a magic mark?
I always wondered why daughters given in 'payment' weren't automaticly assigned as slaves myself. Daughters that are born by working slaves are set as slaves when they grow up even if the mother is free. Just seems like a some minor oversights there.
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I find myself wondering if a better approach might not be to have unhappy and/or disobedient slaves operate at a reduced skill level - a sort of passive resistance; "I'm going to do as you say, but I'm not going to try very hard"
That way there's an advantage to having free girls in your employ, unless you're prepared to make sure your girls are well trained and happy.
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I find myself wondering if a better approach might not be to have unhappy and/or disobedient slaves operate at a reduced skill level - a sort of passive resistance; "I'm going to do as you say, but I'm not going to try very hard"
That way there's an advantage to having free girls in your employ, unless you're prepared to make sure your girls are well trained and happy.
I like that approach, it's a much closer approximation of slave versus free labor. Is there any chance that well also be able to return to using slaves in all the jobs then since the balance will be a productivity hit?
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Possibly. I'd like to find out who made the matron and torturer free-only and make sure they're ok with the change before I go and undo it.
A config option is always possible as well.
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I find myself wondering if a better approach might not be to have unhappy and/or disobedient slaves operate at a reduced skill level - a sort of passive resistance; "I'm going to do as you say, but I'm not going to try very hard"
That way there's an advantage to having free girls in your employ, unless you're prepared to make sure your girls are well trained and happy.
That would probably work better, yes.
The matron being required to be free makes some sense actually. She has a lot of power and authority within the organazation, so it makes sense the PC wouldn't want someone who possibly resents him or someone who would be extremely sympathetic to other slaves. You would rather someone who is going to be as neutral as possible, or have the organizations best interests in mind when managing the girls. I think this is the same line of thought with the torturer; The PC wouldn't want someone who would likely have reservations about whipping other slaves, knowing full well she could very easily end up on the receiving end on a whim from The Player. Of course the PC could have picked her because she's a crazy sadist who doesn't care, but without a player personality the logic has to lean towards 'what's most likely', not extremes.
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You will always have a few girls who will refuse to comply with their status as a slave in a brothel regardless of the consequences. Of course these girls are made an example of in short order to keep the other girls in line.
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Which is the other thing the game should probably do: track disobedience on the part of the girls and have prompt discipline affect the obedience of the girls in the brothel (as well as the one being punished).
Maybe in WM2 :)
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I do feel that there should have been a great number of rewards and punishments that could have been handed out to the girls. As well as the range being from minor to very big in scale. At some point in the scale the rewards or punishments would have been give in front of the other girls to influence their mindset.
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I think different players want different amount of rebelliousness. Some people want a pokemon sim, some people want a control sim. Having levels of resistance being defined in a user-config file would be great!
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A way of having a hit on the girls for refusing to work could be done by making a hate type hit and a drop in love, then it mite also be a good idea to make it so that the sex jobs are much more likely to trigger it then say a cleaning job or a security job. Also there could be some sort of job that effects how likely it is for a refusal to trigger, or that could be rolled into matron by making it so if you have a highly skilled matron with a high confidence and high combat and magic abilities it becomes much less likely for refusals to trigger.
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Another thought, the game already tracks whether girls like or dislike doing different types of jobs. Currently all girls start off completely indifferent (not liking or disliking) all job types, which changes as they do the different jobs. I don't think their likes/dislikes currently affect whether they refuse to do different jobs, but it definitely should; I believe that was the original intention.
Further, I think it would be good for the girl definitions (in girlsx and rgirlsx files) to start them off already liking and disliking certain job types, so they have a better defined starting personality when the player gets them. I imagine many of the default unique girls would start out with at least a mild aversion to whoring.
A fighter girl might for instance start out enjoying combat and disliking whoring and cleaning.
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I like that idea a lot ;D
One thing I noticed about job likes and dislikes though. I've noticed that if a girl dislikes combat, for whatever reason, she gets constantly trounced in the catacombs. It could of course be that she dislikes combat because she is constantly trounced. But girls with similar stats and equip do much better in the catacombs and the only difference between the girls is that one doesn't like combat. So if this is the case, Job dislikes effects catacomb combat and may be a little broken.
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Being able to set initial likes and dislikes would be great, though it seems like something that shouldn't be a dev concern until all the new jobs actually do something.
And yeah, the girl's interest in combat is definitely affecting her combat rolls. It seems if a girl losses once, it becomes extremely unlikely she can win until you raise it back to a neutral like status through Security work. And this would be totally fine, except Security doesn't currently do anything but raise combat interest, which kind of sucks.
I think different players want different amount of rebelliousness. Some people want a pokemon sim, some people want a control sim.
It's not that anyone wants rebelliousness to do nothing, but that the logic of it causing girls to refuse to work at all doesn't really make sense. Having it result in lowered performance, causing free girls to quit, lowering the brothels fame (due to bad service), or something along those lines just makes more logical sense.
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And this would be totally fine, except Security doesn't currently do anything but raise combat interest, which kind of sucks.
Isn't security used to stop rape in the brothel?
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why are you even using reality/sense/probability as arguments?
virtually nothing in the game makes "sense"
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why are you even using reality/sense/probability as arguments?
There's a balance to be observed. Realism and common sense are perfectly valid arguments; it's just that they're not the only consideration.
We want a game that reflects people's expectations based on their experiences in real life, so to that extent, "reality" is a useful touchstone. On the other hand, the game needs to be both fun and finite. So we make some compromises to make the game more enjoyable than a strictly realistic implementation might require, and we take some shortcuts in accounting so we don't need to every individual atom in the universe when adjudicating outcomes. And of course, we have a fantasy setting, so we have things like magical slave tattoos and rituals of domination, for example. But even there we strive to be consistent in how we handle the fantastic elements of the game.
It's a trade off. I don't think we do too badly, on the whole.
virtually nothing in the game makes "sense"
I think that's a little overstated. Lots of things in the game make sense. When you buy things, you have less money as a result. When others attack your organisation, your people get hurt and killed. People are willing to pay to have sex, and the better the girls are, the more money they can make. Giving a girl chocolate and flowers tends to make them like you. The game wouldn't be recognisable as a sim if there wasn't some level of correspondence to the real world.
And while it's true there are places where things don't go as real life might suggest, that doesn't mean we should abandon reality as a measuring stick. We just need to bear in mind that there are other factors that need to be considered
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no need to take it so literally, I even air-quoted the word "sense"
giving the girls flowers doesn't make them "like" you, it makes them believe you are their true love
hell, anything short of incarceration makes them believe you are their one true love
and "sense" is pretty subjective here
to sgb, it makes sense for the slaves to be unable to refuse an order, while to Bluebeholder the opposite is true
and they are both valid opinions
you shouldn't go into this with the idea that it should make sense, but rather how it will affect gameplay and entertainment value
to sgb, the sensible approach is "without a player personality the logic has to lean towards 'what's most likely'", to me it's "let the player decide what the play wants"
I would prefer if all restrictions were minimized, if not outright erased, and instead introduce consequences
"you know that slave you made a matron? well she doesn't fear you all that much, and she helped some slaves escape. oh, and that was 3 days ago, we just found out. so no loading"
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no need to take it so literally, I even air-quoted the word "sense"
I thought you had a point that was worth addressing.
giving the girls flowers doesn't make them "like" you, it makes them believe you are their true love
hell, anything short of incarceration makes them believe you are their one true love
Sure. That's what I mean about compromise. If the game was to try and model the full complexity of human emotional response, it would be huge. So we have to take a few shortcuts. It's like making a map - you don't do it at 1:1 scale.
and "sense" is pretty subjective here
to sgb, it makes sense for the slaves to be unable to refuse an order, while to Bluebeholder the opposite is true
and they are both valid opinions
And it's important to recognise that. However that doesn't mean that "common sense" isn't a useful benchmark, so long as we recognise that we're talking about a consensus rather than one individual's opinion.
That said, unless we get individual opinions, we never get a chance to determine where the consensus lies. The bottom line is that you can't throw out an argument purely because it appeals to common sense, any more than you can because it violates the same.
you shouldn't go into this with the idea that it should make sense, but rather how it will affect gameplay and entertainment value
to sgb, the sensible approach is "without a player personality the logic has to lean towards 'what's most likely'", to me it's "let the player decide what the play wants"
Hard to argue with the principle there, but it is kind of tricky to establish in advance, though. And consistency and observing the principle of least surprise are generally things that software users do want. So there is a case for modelling reality.
I would prefer if all restrictions were minimized, if not outright erased, and instead introduce consequences
"you know that slave you made a matron? well she doesn't fear you all that much, and she helped some slaves escape. oh, and that was 3 days ago, we just found out. so no loading"
Hmmm... I if I tried something like that, I'd expect complaints about how I was trying to force a particular playing style on the player. I think restriction is something else that has a significant subjective element. Or maybe it's just a case of direct vs. indirect restriction. Do we prefer to forbid an action outright, or is it better to make the action so punitive in its consequences as to make it effectively worthless? There's a place for both approaches, I'd have said.
For instance, you could do away with the restriction that you can't go overdrawn at the bank and replace it with consequences. Maybe the bankers try and have you killed, with assassination attempts becoming more frequent the more you owe. Is that really better? Certainly it's a lot of code that doesn't really add very much to the game. Or we could go for a lessdramatic approach and add a system of interest charges, and repossession orders ... but that ends up more complex than the assassination approach and is even less fun for the player.
On the other hand, you can just stop the player from taking out more money than he put in. The bank then behaves as people expect banks to behave, and everyone is happy.
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Or maybe it's just a case of direct vs. indirect restriction. Do we prefer to forbid an action outright, or is it better to make the action so punitive in its consequences as to make it effectively worthless?
not exactly what I meant
the severity of the consequences would depend on the girl's stats
in the example I gave, it would be fear
if the matron is a slave that has 100 love, -100 rebelliousness, 100 obedience, etc. she does the job with no penalties to the outcome
but if you kidnap a girl from her home, slap a slave brand on her, make her a matron and just call it a day, she will fuck you up
Hmmm... I if I tried something like that, I'd expect complaints about how I was trying to force a particular playing style on the player.
usually, I wouldn't even doubt that, but I don't think it holds true in this case
it is not any more restrictive than the way the game works now
and, even though there have been complaints about the free-slave thing, I still play all my games free-only
there is just more satisfaction in making them obedient, than just enslaving them
if anything, this would make room for more playing styles
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if the matron is a slave that has 100 love, -100 rebelliousness, 100 obedience, etc. she does the job with no penalties to the outcome
but if you kidnap a girl from her home, slap a slave brand on her, make her a matron and just call it a day, she will fuck you up
Can't argue with that; I'd considered implementing something along those lines myself. The point I wanted to make was that both direct and indirect restrictions have their place.
usually, I wouldn't even doubt that, but I don't think it holds true in this case
it is not any more restrictive than the way the game works now
The thing that would really raise the protests would be the proposed three day delay intended to prevent reloading :)
and, even though there have been complaints about the free-slave thing, I still play all my games free-only
there is just more satisfaction in making them obedient, than just enslaving them
if anything, this would make room for more playing styles
Well, it's a purely theoretical question so far as I'm concerned. I'm not adding any new features beyond those on my to-do list at the moment.