@anon54645
See, that's not a problem where I'm concerned. In fact I'm quite glad the game doesn't play like this. If getting bound were part of the gameplay loop in such a way that it doesn't disempower you the way bondage realistically does, it's not immersive and so not fun for me. I don't like 'bondage' except you have full capabilities anyway because reasons and it's just something nice to look at on an anime character. I *like* the fact that bondage is a more realistic hinderance that makes you less capable or incapable of fighting.
I like bondage to be *actual bondage* in a game, and so do many other players of KD.
If the vision being put forth here is "let's keep the player able to fully fight no matter what but with the aesthetics of bondage added in though they don't really do anything" I guess I just don't see the point to that. Not with player-as-sub content. With player-as-Domme content sure, because the *other* characters are tied up and so sure most of that is about the aesthetics of them? But if it's your own character? Shouldn't it, you know, confine you and restrain you and stop you from being able to do things?
If you're not somebody who enjoys a scenario involving the risk of being captured and trying to avoid it, and delightfully 'dreading' the consequences of failure, it's going to seem like bad game design. I've seen this so many times with complaints about other games 'rewarding you for losing' with [defeated and humiliated] Game Over screens and how it doesn't make any sense to reward the player with sexy times for losing etc.
All of this comes down to what you like as a player. Some players like, even love the punishment-for-failure dynamic in things happening to their character because they failed/got defeated. Including things that make gameplay inconvenient, restrictive, 'boring', derailed and extra difficult. If *you* don't like any of that, that isn't an indication of bad game design. It's an indication that your kink isn't the same as someone else's kink.
There are a million NSFW games that play just like any other game except that they have sexy fun fetish kink fun times of whatever type added in as an aesthetic accompaniment that either doesn't change the gameplay at all from a SFW game, or only changes it mildly. Meanwhile almost no games exist like KD, where players actually get punished with immersive bondage consequences for being defeated. A few more are being developed in recent years, but it's rare.
So the answer isn't to take KD and turn it into just another game like a million others, it's to go play those million others and let a rare niche that appeals greatly to a niche of players exist as it is so they too can have what they like.
Specific games have a specific vision, and they should be refined to more closely fit their particular vision, rather than dramatically altered to be something else.
I agree with people in the thread here that difficulty changes so that player characters don't become OP and the game instead becomes harder and harder with time, consistently, is a good idea. But I agree with it mostly because it would keep the risk of spiraling into helpless bondage captivity consistent; the very thing under contention here. So *shrug*