Pink Petal Games
Game Editing And Additions => User Mods => Topic started by: mika on June 27, 2015, 09:08:11 AM
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IMO, a part of the game's core gamemechanics - the stat system - is completely out of whack. It in some aspects is so ambigous, that even devs are confused, and use stats inconsistently. It is so complex that mere display of stats is taking up ever more screens. And it also results in gameplay issues. The topic is too broad to address everything problematic, so for this thread, i'll focus the issues which's solving would IMO create the largest benefit.
I don't expect this proposal to actually be implemented, because: A) It changes established things. B) It means a lot of work, that could be spent on new features instead.
Beauty, Charisma and Looks:
The docs indicate, that originally beauty was supposed to be mostly permanent, while charisma would be modifyable. In practice however, both now do the same thing. Then on top of this there's "Looks", which with its components doing the same thing, is entirely pointless.
So, now there are two stats and one metastat that all do the same thing. What the hell? Depending on which on technically is easiest to keep, keep that one and axe the other two.
Yes i know, the simulation fans will call bloody murder, because those three things IN THEORY, exist for different purposes, but in IN PRACTICE they now ARE doing the same thing. The game's stat system is a bloated mess. Simplification of "looks" and the "shame/hubris" stats, are the two obvious targets for cutting slack.
Confidence, spirit, dignity and obedience:
Those four are a great big mess. How confusing and ambiguous those are, is reflect in how inconsistently devs themselves use them in the game. If they are open to interpretation and mixup to DEVS, then how are PLAYERS supposed to make any sense of those?
There is no way to fix this trainwreck, without sweeping changes.
Personally, i would prefer strong simplification, but i consider it very unlikely, that players or devs would agree with what i prefer. So, instead i'll propose a solution that does go far enough to "clean house", remove ambiguity and make intuitive sense, while still somewhat appealing to the devs and vets.
In short, i propose to merge confidence and spirit, clarify/modify the remaining three stats, and rename some.
Let's first get the easy ones out of the way: Dignity and obedience.
Obedience really can just remain as is, but it's important to remember, that this means we already have a stat to represent obedience - no other stat should be a redundant measure of it (currently, that's not done consistently).
Dignity should be renamed to "Shame", to make it unambigous what it relates to: A seperate measure of unwillingness to do degrading acts. It should only be a measure of this and nothing else (for example, NOT a measure of selfworth!!!), because the other two remaining stats will cover everything, but this one aspect. If that's difficult to understand to you, then consider the scenario of a girl, that engages in a shameless public act, but does so proudly and confidently - this is why "dignity" is too ambigious - it might easily be confused with selfworth. Rename it to "shame" to make it clear.
This leaves us with confidence and spirit. Again, let's handle the easy one first: "Confidence" should be renamed to "Courage", to make it clear that it too is NOT about selfworth! It is NOT "selfconfidence", which is why calling it "confidence" is confusing.
The game clearly treats courage (confidence) as a measure of valor and mental strength - it does NOT decide about IF the girl will obey (obedience and other stats already do that!). Rather, it defines how much determination a girl can muster, AFTER having made a decision about what she wants to do. It is the opposite of cowardice, meekness, etc.
This is NOT the same as what the game calls "spirit", which is a stat that serves no meaningful purpose whatsoever. Everything "spirit" claims to cover, is already covered by courage (confidence), obedience and shame (dignity).
You need a decision on if a girl will do something, she doesn't like to do? Well, excuse me, but that is what obedience IS! Obedience is about obeying orders, regardless of personal opinion. The bonus/penalty of the likes/dislikes, combined with obedience, already supply all data needed.
What, you need a measure of willpower, for i.e. leadership roles? Well, courage (confidence) already does that too.
Need a measure of willingness to do degrading acts, since the game's datastructures do not have likes/dislikes i.e. for individual sex acts? SHAME already does that!
There is no F*CKING point to spirit! It is completely redundant. I have no idea what good non-redundant thing it ever was supposed to do.
It's even more a mess for item effects: Some seem to assign bonuses to spirit, when they really mean either courage (confidence), shame (dignity) or refinement.
So, what are the efffects of applying the above definitions?
- Leadership jobs would be affected by courage (confidence) and the metastat "rebellion" - not spirit. Hence, willingness to act in the player's interest, and the willpower/mental strength of performing this leadership role.
- Chance of obeying an order simply depends on obedience, shame (if applicable), and likes/dislikes (if applicable). Spirit is redundant.
- Item stats would have to be cleaned up, and feats checked.
Continued in 2nd post...
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Constitution:
Kept, but should also be used, when an estimate of raw strength (for non-combat purposes) is required, since i propose to axe strength as a core stat further down.
Tiredness:
Kept as usual. I do have some concerns about the scaling of how it is affected by constitution. Multiple approaches how to fix it, including not touching constitution at all. Hence, more about this further down in "Gamebalance: Tiredness".
Strength:
Introduction of a new corestat means incompatibility with existing girlpacks. Existing flavour text in the game doesn't expect a strength stat, and hence refers to strength when it actually means constitution (ironic, since further down i'll propose use constitution as a measure of raw noncombat strength).
It's not even a good measure of extra combat damage, since extra damage would rely on more than just physical strength. So in summary, "strength" introduces ANOTHER ambigous stat, that is incompatible with existing gamecontent and girlpacks.
I propose to axe the concept of "strength" entirely.
If you need a measure of raw physical strength for non-combat tasks, constitution can be used (as mentioned, existing textbits even already use it as such).
If you need a measure of extra combat damage, then make a stat that measures just that: "Deadliness"
A "deadliness" stat would be useful, since it can act as a target for certain feats (i.e. assassin, merciless), as well as items granting damage bonuses.
Gamebalance: Tiredness
The way the game currently handles and scales tiredness is not only annoying, but also not well balanced. Two aspects play together to cause this: How constitution affects tiredness, and how shifts manage tiredness.
Let me explain it this way: Girls with less than 75% constitution are pretty much apprentices and of little use. Think about this: Girls with constitution 1-75 are not fit for duty! Their only purpose is to either train at the docks, or be sold away. 75%! Is there any other stat, that makes girls unfit for work, with such a high threshold?
So, this would indicate that constitution should affect tiredness differently - a change in how it scales. But wait: This is only such a big deal, because of how the game handles shifts: Girls always work the full shift, not according to their capability. This is related to what i said in another thread, about there being no way to "go easy" on a new girl. And since there are only two shifts, the granularity for deciding on how much a girl should work is very coarse. No, adding even more shifts would only cause more issues (in fact, i'd rather have the game only have one shift, but that would be too hard to implement so late in development). As a result, there is hard threshold at which a girl can sustain two shifts, instead of one. And that threshold is between 75-90%, depending on the job.
Bottom line: Right now there are only three kinds of girls: Those you sell away, those who can sustain one shift, and those who can sustain two shifts. Sustaining two shifts instead of one means DOUBLE benefits: Double income, double progress speed, double everything! Girls who can sustain just 1 shift don't even pass as 2nd class girls - more like 3rd class.
There are two approaches to solve this - a hacky kludge, and a proper "fix".
The kludge is to change how constitution affects tiredness. If hypothetically the bonus currently were 1-100, then it should become 30-100. But: It's a hacky kludge, and as usually those tend to trigger more issues - current constitution stats would need to be tweaked, to be in line with the new scaling.
The proper fix is, to make it so that girls can do incomplete shifts, or do them at reduced quality. For a brothel whore, the former would mean she will stop accepting customers, when passing beyond say 75% tiredness. The later would mean she does the shift at lower quality, in return for less tiredness.
I prefer the second approach - reduced quality - because it can be implemented without burdening the player with an additional option ("Drive her hard" vs "Go easy on her"): Make it so that the more tired a girl becomes - PER CUSTOMER, NOT PER SHIFT - the lower the quality of her work becomes, and the less her tiredness increases from work. This makes the ability to do work basically a "soft cap": Girls that lack constitution can do two shifts, but their work would be of lesser quality.
The result would be that the player still has to consider tiredness, but the switch from one shift to two shifts is no longer a hard binary one.
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IMO, a part of the game's core gamemechanics - the stat system - is completely out of whack. It in some aspects is so ambigous, that even devs are confused, and use stats inconsistently. It is so complex that mere display of stats is taking up ever more screens. And it also results in gameplay issues. The topic is too broad to address everything problematic, so for this thread, i'll focus the issues which's solving would IMO create the largest benefit.
I don't expect this proposal to actually be implemented, because: A) It changes established things. B) It means a lot of work, that could be spent on new features instead.
Anything can be changed, that is the purpose of open source programming.
While changing some things can be done easily, changing the names of existing things would break most of the existing 3rd party content so I will not change the names of existing things without the consent of the majority of users and pack makers.
The more things change the less consistent they are.
When new things are added it takes time for them to be added to everything.
The docs indicate, that originally beauty was supposed to be mostly permanent, while charisma would be modifyable.
Where did you find this?
Beauty is physical appearance while Charisma is social skills.
Together they are averaged to make Looks.
I didn't choose to call it Looks but because it is not saved anywhere, that can be changed easily.
I always thought Confidence was more like determination than courage.
Spirit is more like enthusiasm.
Obedience is following orders but other things do affect rebelliousness.
I do plan on reworking rebelliousness some time.
Dignity is new and has not been fully implemented yet.
Shame would be the negative aspect of Dignity.
Dignity goes from -100 to +100
Strength is also new and not fully implemented yet.
Deadliness makes less sense than strength, I can't think of any other game with that.
Constitution is physical toughness and resilience.
The higher the constitution, the more they can do without getting tired.
Can you work 16 hours straight without getting tired?
I plan on completely rewriting the way the Brothels are run so I will take your suggestions into account when I do that.
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Where did you find this?
http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY (http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY)
This also is how another game jack9tails, handles this - except of there it actually works like this - beauty is hard to change.
Beauty is physical appearance while Charisma is social skills.
Together they are averaged to make Looks.
I know, but all three mechanically do exactly the same thing. Items, feats and consumables can change beauty, and they can change charisma... there's no lack of items for either, and most in fact change BOTH. Both stats are used to determine how physically attractive a girl is, which then is summed up as the metastat "looks". So, mechanically, there are two corestats doing the same thing, and then a metastat that sums up two things doing the same thing. It's the definition of redundancy.
I always thought Confidence was more like determination than courage.
It's hard to have one without the other. I'd say it represents both, but the common trait is that it affects "diligence" AFTER having made a decision on what to do.
Spirit is more like enthusiasm.
So, mechanically the same, except of its naming is so ambigous, that it could be interpreted to mean anything.
Obedience is following orders but other things do affect rebelliousness.
Rebeliousness - yes, but there need be no redundancy to obedience itself (as currently is for spirit.... spirit, once stripped of its reduntant coverage of obedience, and "determination/courage", serves no purpose anymore, except of causing misunderstanding, inconsistency and ambiguity).
In short, there are multiple components deciding if a slave obeys an order - the sum chance/tendency of obeying orders is the metastat rebelliousness. The components are obedience first, hate/love/fear second, likes/dislikes and shame third (which basically are context-specific modifiers to obedience). Finally, capability affects the result: Skill and if applicable courage/determination.... the later NOT because of "self-esteem" or preferences, but instead because of... well "courage": If the order requires the opposite of cowardice... prime example being combat... then a girl might despite wanting to comply, just fail to have the "courage" to do it.
Spirit? Redundant.
Dignity is new and has not been fully implemented yet.
Shame would be the negative aspect of Dignity.
Dignity goes from -100 to +100
Umm, why would it be a negative aspect? A girl with high shame might refuse a public humilating act, so would a girl with high dignity. Again, both mechanically do the same thing, except of that dignity again is ambigious and open to interpretation, since it might be confused with self-worth. Hence, why i propose to rename dignity to shame, so it can't be confused.
Strength is also new and not fully implemented yet.
Deadliness makes less sense than strength, I can't think of any other game with that.
That's a statement - can you also explain why so? Because i already explained, why strength makes no sense, and introduces another stat with double-meaning: Extra combat damage, and physical strength, which are not the same thing. Given the limited relevance of strength in the game, constitution can just cover physical strength. Combat damage has a point, because there are feats, items and so on, that affect damage... but currently, the actual values aren't shown to the player.... he is left to guess just how much extra damage something causes, and what the current total extra damage is... hence, a stat with modifiers (deadliness) would make it transparent to the player.
Can you work 16 hours straight without getting tired?
F*ck fake realism. In reality, i can also make pauses and smarter schedules, than two nonstop shifts.
Mechanics work. Not ill-guided appeals to realism. People who argue for realism, create the most unrealistic games, for in their imaginary concept of "reality" full of hubris, only a fraction of things exist, that actually exist in reality. "Let's simulate ONE single aspect, or a few, and completely ignore 99% of reality, and then call that 'realistic'." Screw realism to hell - it is gamedesign based on wishful thinking and denial, not facts.
I plan on completely rewriting the way the Brothels are run so I will take your suggestions into account when I do that.
Wow - i didn't expect that to even be an option. I was thinking the codebase is much larger, and not very modular? The individual parts of the game are actually contained enough, to rewrite a core aspect of the game, without having to rewrite everything?
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http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY (http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY)
This also is how another game jack9tails, handles this - except of there it actually works like this - beauty is hard to change.
The wikia is extremely old and out of date.
I tried to start updating it but I don't really know wikia enough to do it efficiently.
That is why I started making the info threads on here instead.
Rebeliousness - yes, but there need be no redundancy to obedience itself (as currently is for spirit.... spirit, once stripped of its reduntant coverage of obedience, and "determination/courage", serves no purpose anymore, except of causing misunderstanding, inconsistency and ambiguity).
In short, there are multiple components deciding if a slave obeys an order - the sum chance/tendency of obeying orders is the metastat rebelliousness. The components are obedience first, hate/love/fear second, likes/dislikes and shame third (which basically are context-specific modifiers to obedience). Finally, capability affects the result: Skill and if applicable courage/determination.... the later NOT because of "self-esteem" or preferences, but instead because of... well "courage": If the order requires the opposite of cowardice... prime example being combat... then a girl might despite wanting to comply, just fail to have the "courage" to do it.
Spirit? Redundant.
Umm, why would it be a negative aspect? A girl with high shame might refuse a public humilating act, so would a girl with high dignity. Again, both mechanically do the same thing, except of that dignity again is ambigious and open to interpretation, since it might be confused with self-worth. Hence, why i propose to rename dignity to shame, so it can't be confused.
Originally all stats were 0 to 100, at some point that was expanded to -100 to 100.
Love and Hate are 0 to 100 and the code calculates them together to get a -100 to 100.
These could technically be made into one stat but that would remove the chance of a "she hates that she loves you" kind of thing.
The fewer variables you have, the less variations you can get.
Consider it this way, a girl with High Spirit and High Obedience will only Obey You and not anyone else.
If there were only one stat controlling this, High Obedience will Obey Anyone.
That's a statement - can you also explain why so? Because i already explained, why strength makes no sense, and introduces another stat with double-meaning: Extra combat damage, and physical strength, which are not the same thing. Given the limited relevance of strength in the game, constitution can just cover physical strength. Combat damage has a point, because there are feats, items and so on, that affect damage... but currently, the actual values aren't shown to the player.... he is left to guess just how much extra damage something causes, and what the current total extra damage is... hence, a stat with modifiers (deadliness) would make it transparent to the player.
My background is AD&D where the higher your strength, the more damage you can deal and the higher the constitution, the longer you can exert yourself.
Strength is only limited in the game because it was only added 4 months ago in version .06.01.05
As it gets added to more things it will get used more. (is that redundant?)
The combat system needs to be rewritten but because it works and not many people complain about it, it is low priority.
Wow - i didn't expect that to even be an option. I was thinking the codebase is much larger, and not very modular? The individual parts of the game are actually contained enough, to rewrite a core aspect of the game, without having to rewrite everything?
The code base is huge AND modular.
The code that runs in the background is much easier to change than that which controls loading and saving things with numbers.
When I rewrote the image handling, I condensed a few dozen functions into just a few that does everything in one place.
The Brothels are run in 3 layers: UpdateBrothels > UpdateGirls > (individual jobs)
Most of the jobs need to be updated to work better anyway so why not do it all at once.
The jobs dealing with customers will need the most changes and that is why I have put off doing it.
I am thinking .06.02 will have several more updates for small things and when I start rewriting the Brothels it will be for .06.03
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Oh hey, just gonna leave something of mine here again:Why not just "Stamina" instead of "Tiredness"?You don't "gain" tiredness in real life. You lose energy to do things - you become tired. You regain energy by "recharging" through sleep. At least, I think that makes more sense. Is this more of a matter of "Can't change a value this old to something else now because it would retroactively fuck up EVERYTHING" ?
I've noticed there is no "Rebelliousness" in the thread. Is it actually gone? Because either Rebelliousness or Obedience should go - they are basically the same stat in different directions.
Fertility - the value is in-game. Why not make this a visible stat as well? I mean, we can SEE the number for Lactation, it wouldn't make less sense for the stats for fertility to be out in the open as well.
Why does "Looks" exist at all? If it's supposed to be the average between a girl's personal presentation skills (Charisma) and her physical appearance (Beauty), then isn't the name "Looks" a bit misleading?Perhaps "Impression" is more fitting, but that just seems like a stretch for a skill name.
Here's my idea for the whole Charisma debacle I've had saved lying around for a while:
Beauty for her... beauty. But just how pretty she is - meaning her face.
Body for how hot her body is. You know what I'm talking about - you've seen pornstars (or maybe even an elusive specimen of a REAL LIFE WOMAN) with bodies that make you hard as quickly as their faces make you flaccid. Traits related to tit/ass size would easily serve the purpose of affecting this skill directly.
Speech or Persuasion - this is basically the art of wielding words - convincing people to your ideas, leadership skills and your personal vocal presentation.
Charisma - being the average of all three of the above.
This way, we can safely say that Charisma does not exclusively mean that a girl MUST look good, because you don't need to be looking good to be charismatic. At the same time looking good (or having huge tits) DOES HELP being charismatic.
I'm still also leaning towards just throwing out either "Looks" or "Beauty" in the end run, since they essentially are the same thing. I think the combination of Beauty (physical appearance) and Charisma (social/leadership/persuasive skills) should be named "Appeal".
Similar opinion of mine for Rebelliousness and Obedience, just different sides of the medal. Morality is one stat that can be low (Evil) or high (Good).
As Aevo mentioned, this also applies to the Dignity stat - your goal from a gameplay perspective would most likely be to keep it low (shameless) although it being high (dignified) could also have its benefits. I'd like to see Dignity more of a "good stat either way" granting benefits or advantages on both sides of its spectrum. Once it's implemented fully, of course. It would keep gameplay interesting IMO.
Can you work 16 hours straight without getting tired?
F*ck fake realism. In reality, i can also make pauses and smarter schedules, than two nonstop shifts.
Mechanics work. Not ill-guided appeals to realism. People who argue for realism, create the most unrealistic games, for in their imaginary concept of "reality" full of hubris, only a fraction of things exist, that actually exist in reality. "Let's simulate ONE single aspect, or a few, and completely ignore 99% of reality, and then call that 'realistic'." Screw realism to hell - it is gamedesign based on wishful thinking and denial, not facts.
Feel free to just write "fuck" on these forums bro.
A something of a compromise-solution to the Constitution issue, that would need a complete rewrite of some core mechanics: a four shifts per day system, 6 hours each:
-morning (6.00-12:00)
-afternoon (12:00-18:00)
-evening (18:00-00:00)
-night (00:00-6:00)
The rough practical estimates of the stats would be that girls with around 25 constitution could handle one shift a day without too much Tiredness gain. Girls with 50 - two and those with 75 - three. Beautifully logical IMO.
Dignity, decency, self-respect, self-worth, virtue, honor, morality, grace... they are more or less all listed as synonyms in many dictionaries.
I originally picked and proposed Dignity as the stat representing self-worth, or the opposite of shamelessness because... it simply sounded cool as a stat. For a similar reason I have a problem with "Tiredness". It just sounds off.
As for Spirit... wasn't Spirit a primary stat meaning to influence the rate at which the girl gains Obedience/Rebeliousness, being more or less the girls' inherent willpower? It does seem redundant otherwise.
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There is an important difference between obedience and rebelliousness: Obedience JUST measures overall willingness to obey...
But in the game, if a girl obeys is then further affected by other things - like for example likes and dislikes, how much the girl likes the player, and so on.... "rebelliousness" technically is nothing more than the result of those calculations: Final chance to obey.
EDIT: Or to put it more technically: "Obedience" means "BaseObeyChance".... this BaseObeyChance is then combined with modifiers: Likes/Dislikes, relationship with the player, happiness, and so on. "Rebelliousness" is the result of all this - it means "FinalObeyChance".
The same is not true i.e. for "looks", beauty and charisma.... because beauty and charisma mechanically make no difference, and "looks" then sum up the combination of two things, that are technically the same: Total redundancy.
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Few things actually make sense from a purely mechanical perspective at the moment, it would seem.
For now, Beauty and Charisma, while being the same thing from a gameplay perspective are an extension of a girl's description - one is simply something of a "flavour" stat, if you will.
I'd propose writing scripts or just making other suggestions as to what actual different gameplay purposes these two stats may have.
EDIT: Or to put it more technically: "Obedience" means "BaseObeyChance".... this BaseObeyChance is then combined with modifiers: Likes/Dislikes, relationship with the player, happiness, and so on. "Rebelliousness" is the result of all this - it means "FinalObeyChance".
I'd put "Dignity" somewhere in between those having an influence on the girl's "ObeyChance" as well, depending on what kind of action in-game is required of her.
But in the end I don't know... I still see it the way that "Obedience" is the lack of a girl's rebelliousness and "Rebelliousness" is a lack of a girl's obedience. If we're streamlining the stat system, I'd incorporate those two into one stat and make it so that -100 means as obedient as possible and 100 means as rebellious as possible. I'd also put in a "Will" stat instead of "Spirit" somewhere in there, directly influencing how fast a girl gains/loses Obedience/Rebeliousness...and maybe some other gameplay elements, like spellcasting or amount of a girl's total mana or its regeneration per turn.
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I'd put "Dignity" somewhere in between those having an influence on the girl's "ObeyChance" as well, depending on what kind of action in-game is required of her.
Yes, indeed - for humilating actions shame/dignity would then affect the result. This does make sense, because the game does not track likes/dislikes for individual sex acts.... it just has a single stat tracking how much a girl likes sex in general (plus a secondary stat for "escort"). Hence, shame for example this way can differentiate between how much a girl likes sex in general, and how much she's resistant to humilating sex acts.
About your proposal to add more shifts: I considered this, but the game already has a severe micromanagement problem. I'm spending 90% of my time with micromanaging schedules and distributing equipment. In a game that is supposedly about running MULTIPLE businesses, this is nuts. Of course, the interface is partially at fault for this, but that's not the only issue. Personally, i consider even the current two shift model already too much for the scale on which the game operates (I'd rather have just one assignment, and then a kind of setting to determine "how much" a girl works. Yet i didn't propose this, because A) I doubt the existing playerbase would agree, and B) At the time of writing, i thought things like these are already too deeply rooted in the gamecode, and its now too late to make such fundamental changes).
So, if neither a redesign of scheduling is on the table, and extra shifts would make micromanagement truely ludicrous, the remaining option to manage workload more finely is, to either:
1. Per girl, introduce an extra setting, to let the player modify how much or how hard a girl works.
2. Have the game someway automagickally make needed adjustments. This adjustment might on purpose not be perfect and could have downsides.
Option #1 - despite not being as complex as additional shifts - still adds more complexity. And the problem is different jobs take different effort. So, the player would constantly have to adjust this setting about how hard a girl should work, whenever the assignment is changed.
Hence, i proposed something akin to option #2: As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases. This way, a player still needs to pay attention to tiredness - because of quality, and because high tiredness of cause reduced happiness and possibly health. But the transition from "she can deal with it with no problem" to "she gets overworked so hard she almost dies" is less binary. It also means that i.e. a girl with 60 constitution could do 2 shifts, but at reduced quality and the player would still ocassionally have to give her free time to recover. In summary, it makes the whole overwork mechanic more of a soft cap, but still a cap with penalities.
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For now, Beauty and Charisma, while being the same thing from a gameplay perspective are an extension of a girl's description - one is simply something of a "flavour" stat, if you will.
I know, but all three mechanically do exactly the same thing. Items, feats and consumables can change beauty, and they can change charisma... there's no lack of items for either, and most in fact change BOTH. Both stats are used to determine how physically attractive a girl is, which then is summed up as the metastat "looks". So, mechanically, there are two corestats doing the same thing, and then a metastat that sums up two things doing the same thing. It's the definition of redundancy.
I disagree, Beauty is (or at least is supposed to be) hard or expensive to increase, while charisma is easy to train.
Axing Beauty would not only require reworking/catching that in all girl and item files, it would also require balancing the increases to the remaining stat, maybe even capping it from normal training allowing increases beyond ~70 only by level ups, items or surgery. Otherwise you will end with every girl having maximum 'looks' after a few months of in-game training, which will feel flat.
Instead of removing stats that are deeply burrowed in the game they should be differentiated more, maybe decreasing the use of the 'looks' composite in favor of job performances/events that take at look at the underlying stats more to make them more interesting.
So, if neither a redesign of scheduling is on the table, and extra shifts would make micromanagement truely ludicrous, the remaining option to manage workload more finely is, to either:
1. Per girl, introduce an extra setting, to let the player modify how much or how hard a girl works.
2. Have the game someway automagickally make needed adjustments. This adjustment might on purpose not be perfect and could have downsides.
Option #1 - despite not being as complex as additional shifts - still adds more complexity. And the problem is different jobs take different effort. So, the player would constantly have to adjust this setting about how hard a girl should work, whenever the assignment is changed.
Hence, i proposed something akin to option #2: As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases. This way, a player still needs to pay attention to tiredness - because of quality, and because high tiredness of cause reduced happiness and possibly health. But the transition from "she can deal with it with no problem" to "she gets overworked so hard she almost dies" is less binary. It also means that i.e. a girl with 60 constitution could do 2 shifts, but at reduced quality and the player would still ocassionally have to give her free time to recover. In summary, it makes the whole overwork mechanic more of a soft cap, but still a cap with penalities.
Option #1 strikes me as adding even more micromanagement than the current system has.
I don't see how you could implement Option #2 transparent enough that people wouldn't constantly report is as a bug.
Also the original point of a matron is being able to take of girls needing to rest, even having a chance to reduce the girls down time by helping her heal and rest. I prefer to have low constitution girls train or take a single shift plus a shift of rest then have the matron take her off and put her back as needed.
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I'm spending 90% of my time with micromanaging schedules and distributing equipment.
Well... what do you spend the 10% of the gameplay time on? Watching the pictures? Because 100% of the gameplay is essentially micromanagement of all the girls. That's what the game is about.
Keep in mind that according to Constitution requirements, the vast majority of girls would STILL be needed assigned to 1-2 shifts only, similarly to how they are now now, spending the "empty" unassigned shifts on automated events and resting (degenerating... ugh, Tiredness).
Only girls with very high Toughness/Constitution could be exclusively allowed to spend that third shift (and hey, if anyone cares about realism that's a 18-hour work day with 6 hours of sleep, even with breaks considered that's pretty extensive)
The equipment system just needs a general overhaul allowing it more clarity. It's simply un-intuitive at the moment, being combined with the shopping and inventory systems with the girl auto-equipping the "best" items.
However, what is good about it is the "gifting" system, which influences the girl's happiness/love/hate based on what item she is given.
1. Per girl, introduce an extra setting, to let the player modify how much or how hard a girl works.
2. Have the game someway automagickally make needed adjustments. This adjustment might on purpose not be perfect and could have downsides.
Option #1 - despite not being as complex as additional shifts - still adds more complexity. And the problem is different jobs take different effort. So, the player would constantly have to adjust this setting about how hard a girl should work, whenever the assignment is changed.
So, let me get this straight - you want to axe the shifts altogether and simply add a "Work" slider to every girl which would determine if she works a lot or little in general? That's overly simplistic IMO, and would still require you to extensively micromanage the girls to make sure the slider is set on the proper amount so she is neither too tired nor doesn't work too little.
Your second proposition is somewhat covered by the function of the Matron job, as pointed out by the post above me. The AI isn't perfect yet AFAIK, but it serves its function of putting tired girls to rest shifts, and rested girls back into their jobs. I think.
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I had a girl with Constitution in the 40's range working double shifts as a stripper for several weeks before she had to rest. Whoring jobs are the only ones that can cause tiredness to go up fast because every customer adds tiredness.
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So, let me get this straight - you want to axe the shifts altogether and simply add.... (more complete nonsense)
Please read the paragraphs of my post from left to right, top to bottom, not in reverse.... because you see, only if you had red my post in reverse, could you have come to such a nonsensical conclusion about what i supposedly "mean".
What i mean is just what i typed - it requires no fantastic interpretation. My post ended with the following, which is the paragraph exactly below where you stopped to quote me:
Hence, i proposed something akin to option #2: As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases. This way, a player still needs to pay attention to tiredness - because of quality, and because high tiredness of cause reduced happiness and possibly health. But the transition from "she can deal with it with no problem" to "she gets overworked so hard she almost dies" is less binary. It also means that i.e. a girl with 60 constitution could do 2 shifts, but at reduced quality and the player would still ocassionally have to give her free time to recover. In summary, it makes the whole overwork mechanic more of a soft cap, but still a cap with penalities.
NONE of the above suggests ANY changes to the interface! On the contrary, my whole argument was to NOT change the interface, and instead make the mechanics address the issue without extra input from the player.
I disagree, Beauty is (or at least is supposed to be) hard or expensive to increase, while charisma is easy to train.
*rollseyes*. Folks, i know my OP is a really long wall of text, so i could understand that people didn't read something that was further down in the post. But i would expect that if you reply to a paragraph of my post, you don't instantly forget 90% of what you just *did* read... requoting from the OP:
mika:
Beauty, Charisma and Looks:
The docs indicate, that originally beauty was supposed to be mostly permanent, while charisma would be modifyable. In practice however, both now do the same thing. Then on top of this there's "Looks", which with its components doing the same thing, is entirely pointless.
So, now there are two stats and one metastat that all do the same thing. What the hell? Depending on which on technically is easiest to keep, keep that one and axe the other two.
Yes i know, the simulation fans will call bloody murder, because those three things IN THEORY, exist for different purposes, but in IN PRACTICE they now ARE doing the same thing. The game's stat system is a bloated mess. Simplification of "looks" and the "shame/hubris" stats, are the two obvious targets for cutting slack.
So, your statement is redundant, because you're repeating what i already said in the OP. But wait, it's also irrelevant, because.....
Where did you find this? (the bit about beauty being hard to change)
http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY (http://whoremaster.wikia.com/wiki/Girl_statistics#BEAUTY)
This also is how another game jack9tails, handles this - except of there it actually works like this - beauty is hard to change.
The wikia is extremely old and out of date.
I tried to start updating it but I don't really know wikia enough to do it efficiently.
That is why I started making the info threads on here instead.
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Also the original point of a matron is being able to take of girls needing to rest, even having a chance to reduce the girls down time by helping her heal and rest. I prefer to have low constitution girls train or take a single shift plus a shift of rest then have the matron take her off and put her back as needed.
But that doesn't address the problem at all, because the problem is girls only being able to work a full shift at full effort - requoting again:
This is only such a big deal, because of how the game handles shifts: Girls always work the full shift, not according to their capability. This is related to what i said in another thread, about there being no way to "go easy" on a new girl. And since there are only two shifts, the granularity for deciding on how much a girl should work is very coarse.
Bottom line: Right now there are only three kinds of girls: Those you sell away, those who can sustain one shift, and those who can sustain two shifts. Sustaining two shifts instead of one means DOUBLE benefits: Double income, double progress speed, double everything! Girls who can sustain just 1 shift don't even pass as 2nd class girls - more like 3rd class.
So, the problem is not handling 100% tiredness... the problem is the current shift system and its mechanics, do not allow finegrained enough workload decisions. The transition from doing 1 shift, to 2 shifts, is too drastic - both in effort and payoff.
EDIT: The matron approach COULD work, IF she would take a girl off-shift *in the middle of the shift*, so on a per-customer basis, AND then automatically puts her back on the job, once the girl rested. That would actually address the problem.
The only concern i have about this is, that relying only on the matron to "fix" an issue of the gamemechanics.... well duh, it's like saying: "Yes, this is broken - but later in the game you can assign a matron to fix it" Wat? This is the same kind of mindset like in games, where one has to purchase items, just to make the game work properly. Like, in a roguelike game the pet-AI being broken, but hey you can purchase this item, that fixes it.
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Well... what do you spend the 10% of the gameplay time on? Watching the pictures? Because 100% of the gameplay is essentially micromanagement of all the girls. That's what the game is about.
And this doesn't strike you as a problem?
You don't think the game would be better, if the ratios were instead:
- 30% schedules and equipment
- 10% redesigned turn report (the current one is a mess - will post about that in the future, maybe)
- 10% watching pics
- 10% new interactive scripted events
- 40% no longer wasted playtime (or rather, faster play)
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Please read the paragraphs of my post from left to right, top to bottom, not in reverse.... because you see, only if you had red my post in reverse, could you have come to such a nonsensical conclusion about what i supposedly "mean".
What i mean is just what i typed - it requires no fantastic interpretation. My post ended with the following, which is the paragraph exactly below where you stopped to quote me:
*rollseyes*. Folks, i know my OP is a really long wall of text, so i could understand that people didn't read something that was further down in the post. But i would expect that if you reply to a paragraph of my post, you don't instantly forget 90% of what you just *did* read... requoting from the OP:
Could I kindly interest you in simmering down with the passive-aggressive snarky way of posting? I usually don't give a fuck but you're coming off as a giant cunt ITT.
Forum etiquette aside, if YOU'D pay attention to MY post you'd probably notice that I referred to your first suggestion in my reply:
1. Per girl, introduce an extra setting, to let the player modify how much or how hard a girl works.
Option #1 - despite not being as complex as additional shifts - still adds more complexity. And the problem is different jobs take different effort. So, the player would constantly have to adjust this setting about how hard a girl should work, whenever the assignment is changed.
Which CLEARLY suggests adding a controllable feature (like a slider) into the game, that would adjust the girl's quality of work and the quantity of her Tiredness gains.
Hence, i proposed something akin to option #2: As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases. This way, a player still needs to pay attention to tiredness - because of quality, and because high tiredness of cause reduced happiness and possibly health. But the transition from "she can deal with it with no problem" to "she gets overworked so hard she almost dies" is less binary. It also means that i.e. a girl with 60 constitution could do 2 shifts, but at reduced quality and the player would still ocassionally have to give her free time to recover. In summary, it makes the whole overwork mechanic more of a soft cap, but still a cap with penalities.
My reply to THIS was that "giving a girl free time to recover" is already covered by the Matron function. Maybe I should chop your posts into more quotes so my replies are more comprehensible.
As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases. This way, a player still needs to pay attention to tiredness
So, your problem of "severe micromanagement issue" is solved by more micromanagement. Because apparently you do not want to remove the current shift system. You just want to add this to it.
To be completely straight, I do agree that the "Constitution limiter" exists but it places girls into two categories: buy constitution boosting items and useful.
What I ASSUME is you want is for girls with lower Constitution to not be useless, just be... less useful than those with high Constitution.
But your proposed solution of Tiredness (and by an extension Constitution) affecting the quality of a girl's work does not make the game simpler in any way... in fact, I don't see how it changes anything at all, since they'd still have to be taken off shifts when their Tiredness maxes out eventually and their job quality is at minimal percentage of effectiveness, like you stated yourself.
Unfortunately the game operates on a two shifts per turn system and that's that. You'd really need to split the turn into more parts in order to fully utilize Constitution, because with only two shifts, you'll get two kinds of girls between a certain threshold - those who get exhausted (useless) and those who don't (useful).
As it stands I'm personally fine with Constitution just being a stat that NEEDS to be raised through the player's gameplay efforts, most usually through the usage of items.
And this doesn't strike you as a problem?
Uh, no? I believe WM is meant to be a brothel simulator. It's supposed to be about management, whether it's micro or macro. Watching pictures was a joke from my side, I don't know why you took it seriously.
- 10% redesigned turn report (the current one is a mess - will post about that in the future, maybe)
Reading the turn report is gameplay?
- 10% new interactive scripted events
That's the only thing I agree on, but still, this isn't a visual novel, even if I wouldn't mind if it contains as many elements of one as possible. Again, not really gameplay...
- 40% no longer wasted playtime (or rather, faster play)
Doing...what, ingame, exactly???
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Stop mutilating my posts by cutting them into snippets, then arranging the snippets in a way that implies things i never said.
Quote and reply to arguments in full context, instead of building strawmans.
I will not discuss with sophists.
EDIT: As for my aggressive tone right now - i do not respond well to dishonesty and lies.
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Stop mutilating my posts by cutting them into snippets, then arranging the snippets in a way that implies things i never said.
Quote and reply to arguments in full context, instead of building strawmans.
I will not discuss with sophists.
EDIT: As for my aggressive tone right now - i do not respond well to dishonesty and lies.
How's this for a strawman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4goUqiOL44 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4goUqiOL44)
Also, I don't think "sophist" means what you think it means...
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ORLY sophist?
Let's recap my statements in the proper order and context:
This is what i proposed in the OP:
The proper fix is, to make it so that girls can do incomplete shifts, or do them at reduced quality. For a brothel whore, the former would mean she will stop accepting customers, when passing beyond say 75% tiredness. The later would mean she does the shift at lower quality, in return for less tiredness.
I prefer the second approach - reduced quality - because it can be implemented without burdening the player with an additional option ("Drive her hard" vs "Go easy on her"): Make it so that the more tired a girl becomes - PER CUSTOMER, NOT PER SHIFT - the lower the quality of her work becomes, and the less her tiredness increases from work. This makes the ability to do work basically a "soft cap": Girls that lack constitution can do two shifts, but their work would be of lesser quality.
Summary for the illiterate: No interface changes proposed. Instead i'm putting two options on the table: First, respond to tiredness on a per-customer instead of per-shift basis. Second: The more tired a girl is, the lower the quality of her work becomes, and the less effort (tiredness), she spents on her work - again PER CUSTOMER.
I conclude that i would prefer the SECOND OPTION, because the FIRST OPTION (First does not mean second, just so you understand), might result in the need of an extra UI "slider" to set at what tiredness level a girl should stop.
Notice: Nowhere is there a mention of changing the number of shifts. In fact, YOU were the first person to suggest changes to the number of shifts, not me. To quote from your reply (You is not me, just to make sure you understand):
A something of a compromise-solution to the Constitution issue, that would need a complete rewrite of some core mechanics: a four shifts per day system, 6 hours each:
-morning (6.00-12:00)
-afternoon (12:00-18:00)
-evening (18:00-00:00)
-night (00:00-6:00)
The rough practical estimates of the stats would be that girls with around 25 constitution could handle one shift a day without too much Tiredness gain. Girls with 50 - two and those with 75 - three. Beautifully logical IMO.
I then responded with the following:
About your proposal to add more shifts: I considered this, but the game already has a severe micromanagement problem. I'm spending 90% of my time with micromanaging schedules and distributing equipment. In a game that is supposedly about running MULTIPLE businesses, this is nuts. Of course, the interface is partially at fault for this, but that's not the only issue. Personally, i consider even the current two shift model already too much for the scale on which the game operates (I'd rather have just one assignment, and then a kind of setting to determine "how much" a girl works. Yet i didn't propose this, because A) I doubt the existing playerbase would agree, and B) At the time of writing, i thought things like these are already too deeply rooted in the gamecode, and its now too late to make such fundamental changes).
Just so you understand: "Didn't propose this" means that i do NOT propose it.
What DID i propose instead? For those too lazy to read the OP, i next in the same post repeated my original proposal:
So, if neither a redesign of scheduling is on the table, and extra shifts would make micromanagement truely ludicrous, the remaining option to manage workload more finely is, to either:
1. Per girl, introduce an extra setting, to let the player modify how much or how hard a girl works.
2. Have the game someway automagickally make needed adjustments. This adjustment might on purpose not be perfect and could have downsides.
Option #1 - despite not being as complex as additional shifts - still adds more complexity. And the problem is different jobs take different effort. So, the player would constantly have to adjust this setting about how hard a girl should work, whenever the assignment is changed.
Hence, i proposed something akin to option #2: As a girl gets more tired, both the quality of her work and the effort spent decreases.
EDIT: See, no UI changes - no nothing - just girls automagickally working at lower quality and effort, as they get more tired. No, this does not neccessarily mean that a girl can work forever... less effort does not mean no effort. Overwork would still remain a problem - so you couldn't let a girl with i.e. 50 constitution do 2 shifts. But for whore jobs, in the range of 60-75 constitution, there would be a "soft cap" - a transition - where a girl can sustain two shifts, but at reduced quality, and over time probably health and happiness penalties.
KTNXBYE
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I will not discuss with sophists.
So much for that, whatever your definition of the word "sophist" is.
I guess this is the part where we could start flinging shit at each other, but whatever, dude, you win, I guess I did fail to interpret your concepts, although I could argue you're just shit at explaining them.
Your proposition is still confusing as fuck, and I don't see how it changes anything in the current gameplay aside from adding a mechanic forcing the player to micromanage girls with more varied Constitution levels. I guess it does fix the "issue" of "girls only being able to work a full shift at full effort".
As for your opposition to micromanagement I'm still waiting for propositions as to what the actual other gameplay elements WM might have.
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As for your opposition to micromanagement I'm still waiting for propositions as to what the actual other gameplay elements WM might have.
Honestly I think you should have more interaction with the characters and gangs working for as it is it feels kinda soulless. There's basically no reason to care about anything in the game, because you could easily get replacements and you don't really develop sentiments to anything. So I won't really care if girl A dies unless she makes the most money, which is fine considering you can play the game as that kind of person, but you can also play as someone who's not like that. Maybe add things like if a player is good they'd have a funeral for a dead character and things like that that you'd be forced to read rather than how it currently is where you read a little tiny bit dialogue of what the girls and gangs did that day.
Also [/size]The same is not true i.e. for "looks", beauty and charisma.... because beauty and charisma mechanically make no difference, and "looks" then sum up the combination of two things, that are technically the same: Total redundancy.
Beauty is how a character looks and charisma is how well they interact with one another so the easiest solution to this would be to change "looks" to Allure, as that would be a good combination of the two. And seriously bro, chill you can ask how to make these changes and try making them yourself and see how they work you know?