Boys, I ain't reading all that, easy on the walls of texts. But we can see you are passionnate about this game, so it's a bit sad to see so much passion being somewhat ignored.
That said, something I picked up in all you said there :
"> It should also be noted that the deluxe edition has a built-in cheat console. This might be skewing the perception of some patreon players."
So basically, the game is pay to enjoy ? Kinda sad.
Basically, what I'm saying is that people with voting power have a blind spot with regards to how difficult the game might be for new players.
The game remains enjoyable without cheats.
But the game is becoming more about puzzling together the one "correct" way to play instead of trying to make fun builds work.
I'm not necessarily suggesting you're saying this about me specifically, but I'm hardly a new player. I have posts going back months and months. I would say I understand the game quite well, well enough to identify where the issues currently are. Maybe not enough to offer answers, but enough.
The games difficulty isn't a problem for 'new' players. It's a problem for players who;
I wouldn't even say necessarily it's becoming about puzzling together the correct way to play (though that IS an issue for some styles of playthroughs) It's that it increasingly feels like the balance of it's gameplay is entirely designed around ng+ carry over and exploiting the point system as much as you can with constant resets.
Like friendly reminder it takes 160 days (80 working days) of 250 gold (max) workshopping to afford tuition. Which isn't even accounting for doing anything else with your time or how long it takes to gain said star metals.
I like a lot about this game, but not that it requires an obscene level of time management perfection just to STILL need luck.
Personally, I think luck currently feels a little underpowered at either end of the graph compared to other non-agility stats. Buffing it to 3% per point of difference or having it cap out at a difference of 15 could be nice.
I would say discussing point by point would prove fruitless, as we'd inevitably continue to disagree, so I'll just say this.
It says something about the game that your first playthrough (or more) is doomed to failure.
I'll make the obvious time management and life/rpg comparison to Persona. Imagine if with improper time management your playthrough of persona 5 was doomed to fail. No, you might miss some confidants, maybe not max social stats, or get to see all the random mini-games or events etc, but the game stays able to be finished. Removing the collar isn't a real collar. Removing the collar is just a crutch for poorly balanced fights.
And in a similar vein to how you might miss a few things and fail at some stuff in Persona, a first-time player trying to go pure on normal difficulty will probably stumble through to the end with about 10-20 mental changes, a few points of lewdness, and having had to resort to the collar for the three demon generals because they failed the timer and/or killed the drug dealer. Or they ended up with soul break after using the collar like a crutch instead recognizing that the limit break ability is balanced by its limited use, similar to bombs in a danmaku game.
You seem to be conflating things like difficulty and complexity with poor balance. Like I said before, that's more of a "you" problem.
