4 Years of Service
Some opinions after playing it a bit more. Feel free to take or leave these as you wish.
1: Cut repeat processes and animations, or at least offer the choice. A 5-10 click process each time you have to change clothes can get old. Especially when you are changing from one to the other, then another, and back to the first. Give the option to only show those animations once? Maybe only once per outfit? Bathing. Journal said to. I tried, told me to undress first. Sure, realistic. But.. too much reality makes games less fun, like... real life. So, I went along with it, and tried to undress. Great, now to bathe. Wait... wont let me, I have to pee first. More reality. Not so fun. Unless maybe you are one of those watersports people. Personally, its Meh. Dont hate, dont like. Meh. So, pee, then finally in the bath. The whole process just felt... unneccessary. Now, I get you made these processes and prob spent a lot of time coding them, rendering them, making the video, so cutting them will kinda suck. But its one of those things that is REALLY cool the first time. "Wow, undress, then get in the bath? Thats soo realistic!" but then it loses that realism cool factor fast.
2: Stat gains seem a bit... confusing. Some things that felt like they should not gain "affinity" were showing the gain icon, so I was confused. I dug into the code and confirmed. A few scenes in the barn with tom were showing what to me looked like love/affinity gain icon when it was in fact a -1 affinity. I think those should look different, or you think "Oh, he liked that!". And for people like me who hate guessing/assuming/try-it-and-find-out, maybe walkthrough like hints? I guess you can just wait for someone to write an actual walkthrough mod, but with the way you structured your code, I would assume it would be cleaner if you did it. But I get it, prob a fuckton more work.
3: Buttons/choices dont seem to work while control is held. For games with a lot of grindy scenes, like your dressing process, I get in the habit of holding control while clicking through and selecting the choices. I tried that, and oddly, clicking the buttons while holding control did nothing. Not sure why, but that sorta took away my most useful way of getting past the annoying repetitions before they start to really annoy me.
4: Submission/Domination. Im still a little confused here. In the start, I'm pretty sure it said that an NPCs submission stat was THEM being submissive to MC, not MC submissive to them. But in a few scenes I get the submissive stat when I felt it didn't match. Like with the farmhand. I think flirting made him submissive to you? Is that some way of saying that he is shy and is now kinda scared of her for being so outgoing? Or did I misread/understand the tutorial and it is actually her gaining submission to him? I guess I could understand either way, it just felt unclear.
5: Annoyed peeps in cabins. There are numerous "find X" quests in the journal and 2 of them I ran into dont quite tell you "Oh, well... thats for the afternoon, and its morning, so you cant find them". Meaning I was going to every possible location, including checking cabins, which I found out was pissing them off and reducing affinity. I would try to find a way to deal with this. Either be much more precise in your quest details so you dont have to search every possible location, then realize you need to pass time and do it again, or, maybe add a "You already bothered them, do you really want to do it again?" type warning.
A possible solution to this that is actually my favorite thing in these types of sandbox like games is an "interaction available" type notice. For example, on the map. If Bob is in locationX, then locationX should have a red exclamation mark on the map. Or maybe a picture of bobs head showing not only that there is a new interaction (not repeatable non-quest/story pushing) but who it is with. And I know a lot of players and devs do not like these, so the option to turn them off (or have them off by default) would be good for both sides.
One of my biggest bitches with these sandbox type games is when I realize I have built myself a pattern. sleep, wake up, check every possible location, see if there is new text (usually because holding ctrl doesnt work), if not, check next until ive checked everywhere, then sleep/rest/wait, repeat. Thats usually when I end up minimizing the game... and eventually forgetting about it for a few days until I see it in my taskbar, remember why I stopped playing and close/delete it.
1: Cut repeat processes and animations, or at least offer the choice. A 5-10 click process each time you have to change clothes can get old. Especially when you are changing from one to the other, then another, and back to the first. Give the option to only show those animations once? Maybe only once per outfit? Bathing. Journal said to. I tried, told me to undress first. Sure, realistic. But.. too much reality makes games less fun, like... real life. So, I went along with it, and tried to undress. Great, now to bathe. Wait... wont let me, I have to pee first. More reality. Not so fun. Unless maybe you are one of those watersports people. Personally, its Meh. Dont hate, dont like. Meh. So, pee, then finally in the bath. The whole process just felt... unneccessary. Now, I get you made these processes and prob spent a lot of time coding them, rendering them, making the video, so cutting them will kinda suck. But its one of those things that is REALLY cool the first time. "Wow, undress, then get in the bath? Thats soo realistic!" but then it loses that realism cool factor fast.
2: Stat gains seem a bit... confusing. Some things that felt like they should not gain "affinity" were showing the gain icon, so I was confused. I dug into the code and confirmed. A few scenes in the barn with tom were showing what to me looked like love/affinity gain icon when it was in fact a -1 affinity. I think those should look different, or you think "Oh, he liked that!". And for people like me who hate guessing/assuming/try-it-and-find-out, maybe walkthrough like hints? I guess you can just wait for someone to write an actual walkthrough mod, but with the way you structured your code, I would assume it would be cleaner if you did it. But I get it, prob a fuckton more work.
3: Buttons/choices dont seem to work while control is held. For games with a lot of grindy scenes, like your dressing process, I get in the habit of holding control while clicking through and selecting the choices. I tried that, and oddly, clicking the buttons while holding control did nothing. Not sure why, but that sorta took away my most useful way of getting past the annoying repetitions before they start to really annoy me.
4: Submission/Domination. Im still a little confused here. In the start, I'm pretty sure it said that an NPCs submission stat was THEM being submissive to MC, not MC submissive to them. But in a few scenes I get the submissive stat when I felt it didn't match. Like with the farmhand. I think flirting made him submissive to you? Is that some way of saying that he is shy and is now kinda scared of her for being so outgoing? Or did I misread/understand the tutorial and it is actually her gaining submission to him? I guess I could understand either way, it just felt unclear.
5: Annoyed peeps in cabins. There are numerous "find X" quests in the journal and 2 of them I ran into dont quite tell you "Oh, well... thats for the afternoon, and its morning, so you cant find them". Meaning I was going to every possible location, including checking cabins, which I found out was pissing them off and reducing affinity. I would try to find a way to deal with this. Either be much more precise in your quest details so you dont have to search every possible location, then realize you need to pass time and do it again, or, maybe add a "You already bothered them, do you really want to do it again?" type warning.
A possible solution to this that is actually my favorite thing in these types of sandbox like games is an "interaction available" type notice. For example, on the map. If Bob is in locationX, then locationX should have a red exclamation mark on the map. Or maybe a picture of bobs head showing not only that there is a new interaction (not repeatable non-quest/story pushing) but who it is with. And I know a lot of players and devs do not like these, so the option to turn them off (or have them off by default) would be good for both sides.
One of my biggest bitches with these sandbox type games is when I realize I have built myself a pattern. sleep, wake up, check every possible location, see if there is new text (usually because holding ctrl doesnt work), if not, check next until ive checked everywhere, then sleep/rest/wait, repeat. Thats usually when I end up minimizing the game... and eventually forgetting about it for a few days until I see it in my taskbar, remember why I stopped playing and close/delete it.
