Tales of Androgyny

A game about birds, bees, flowers and trees. · By Majalis

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Hopes for Final Release?

A topic by InkSpider created Jul 31, 2022 Views: 1,372 Replies: 10

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InkSpider2 years ago(+2)

I'll start by saying that I've really enjoyed what we have so far. That said, I'm sure I'm not the only person who would like to see certain things added or altered at some point, since the game is still being developed. I'll skip obvious things like the fact that much of the artwork in game does not reflect the actual appearance of the Hiro that you make, because it seems pretty clear to me based on how much art and animations do reflect your customized appearance that this is already something the devs are thinking about.

Firstly, the balance could use some tweaking. Strength feels generally less useful than Agility, to the point that my first Agility build felt like cheating when compared to my old strength build. The go-to Agility class (Thief) gets objectively superior features to Warrior. Thief gets two extra Skill points *and* extra Gold, while Warrior simply starts with a single extra skill in Blitz (which I tended to find less useful than ordinary offensive stance skills) and the entirely useless Weak to Anal. Strength makes it easier to break grapples, but I found that even when running Agility and putting in little investment in Strength, I was still able to break grapples pretty easily. High Agility, on the other hand, makes it so most enemy attacks never touch you. This is without even touching how broken the Agility-centric Stealing mechanic is. In a system where sources of money tend to have downsides (brothel work) or simply be unreliable (gold caches/ogre encounters), being able to walk into the first down and grab the Diamond Armor for zero cost is pretty nuts.

There's a few directions one could tackle this from. Off the top of my head, having Strength contribute to equip load instead of/in addition to Endurance would be logically sound while giving it more of a niche. High Strength could also give bonuses to resisting physical damage (worked for Dark Souls, didn't it?). Less directly, buffs to the Maul could make it feel more like genuine alternative to a Shield and Rapier/Broadsword combo, which would be an indirect buff to Strength builds, but still provide an incentive. On a similar note, Strength could be made more useful by making Grappling more threatening. Aside from the Naga's Coils O' Death, Grappling seemingly can't deal direct damage, and doesn't tend to feel worth it.

This could just be me, but I also feel this game has some problems with conveyance. Many of the mechanics are obscure and not made clear in the game itself. Feels like I'm either scampering off to the wiki or hoping I can blunder my way to understanding via trial and error.

Finally, and this is a pretty small and personal complaint, but it bugs me a bit that you lose Dignity on seemingly every single scene where you bottom. I understand the need to balance whorinng yourself out by threatening Purity and Dignity, and I understand the loss of dignity when you get butt-fucked after a defeat, but losing dignity from bottoming in scenes that are entirely consensual or even power-bottoming scenes where Hiro is clearly the one in control doesn't make much sense to me, and means that nearly every scene with content I actually enjoy, I am mechanically discouraged from actually pursuing. Let me ride Trudy's dick or spread 'em for Urka/Kylria/Alma without worrying about how that's going to screw me over during a Dark Knight rematch, damn it.

Wanna close this out by saying once again that I love this game and am deeply grateful to the creators for making it. I don't have any expectation for the devs to implement these changes just because they'd make me like the game more, or changing the game specifically to please anyone else, but I think there's value in bringing up things we think could make the game better. What would you like to see changed or added when the game is released?

Budouka2 years ago

Dignity isn't that important, I believe. It doesn't cause an instant GO with Dark Knight anymore, it just requires Willpower which I personally never ran off of because it requires encountering one creature many times and consistently choosing one scene. So... Okay, it's a bit sad to see Hiro going around Ashamed, but it's what you get for letting people use your ass every day I guess.

The battle system problems are deeper than that. Strength would be useful if you actually had a real Strngth build in game. But taking a Maul and swinging it isn't much of a build. What would be a build? Using a Berserk stance that relies solely on your ability to beat the crap out of people and your Endurance, one of the possible examples. But as we know, currently it doesn't work to use secondary stances, because you spend two whole turn doing nothing to go into them.

And so the game basically has no builds. Besides the Agility one. Because there are Combat Dodge and Overrun that require a lot of Agility, and they're right there, in offensive stance, making your character overpowered. Auto parries are also active all the time you fight.

Magic, Bow, they're mostly useless, who the hell will spend two turns wide open to cast a 20 damage thingy? Or Withdraw to get hit before you're able to shoot.

All those things are interconnected and need to be rebalanced almost from scratch. I think the Majalis are waiting for the release to be able to work on final product that won't get any new unbalancing mechanics anymore. I hope it is so. But really, it will change the battle system entirely. It is risky. And I would understand it if it all mostly stayed the way it works now, because it kinda works. Yeah, you can't be a real mage, a real ranger, and all... But you can play the game, and if you decide to rebuild tge system, there's a chance the game will get even more hardcore and punish you for not being an RPG nerd in an obviously based around erotica game.

MajalisDeveloper2 years ago(+2)

The idea that things can't be balanced if they take two turns is just not correct. We are waiting to do balance passes, but it will never be the case that powerful spells or stances like Berserk won't take additional turns to go into, because there's no reason, from a game design perspective, that they can't be powerful enough to compensate for that.

Budouka2 years ago

right now there's no point in using pretty much any of two turns stances, as there are no enemies besides Demon King that give you enough trouble. Well, maybe Minotauress, but not really.

Pretty much everyone is beaten up to zero health with little effort using the same old things.

thesoundingcagefromToA2 years ago

The thing is balancing is still taking place. Strength used to be over powered with blitz attacks. Magic used to be over powered with the paralyzing effect. (would appreciate a skill for warlock class to have debuffs, familiars dealing small amounts of damage, or something that would make warlock more of a magic class again that could beat the demon king without being a less effective soldier or theif because the magic resistance on the creatures are insane, which is understandable being bosses, but the other classes dont have to worry about that).

Strength has many checks that prove useful and many encounters that provide alternative options. Agility IS better for getting gear, but it puts you at risk of losing virginity. Depending on what you value in the game depends on the way you play. You can even go to the end with the demon king by being a slut and be able to forgo a fight(not particularly a victory but you can get away). To play like that you need no strength or agility. Strength offers ways to protect yourself in situations you are already at a stance disadvantage. Also for picking classes, strength may be the more viable option because you have a higher floor to start from. It depends on the class you choose. Saying strength is just worse agility in general is incorrect. It is better than agility depending on the class. The whole point of picking a thief is to be paired with agility. The paladin who has low initial agility may only be able to get it high enough to reach a standard for some checks and must rely on strength or endurance for others. Grappling is great for topping opponents, and making them submit through sexual acts of topping during combat. Strength allows this more than agility.

If you have only one way you want to play, then that is fine, but there is plenty of variety to choose from if you wanted too. Talking more with the community or playing can help with broadening your mind on the topic of the game.

With respect to the Dark knight encounter, you bottoming in many of those scenes, though you may choose it, reading the dialogue you are often not in control. Even then, when you do bottom it is a miniscule amount. You have to bottom A LOT in order to screw yourself over later in game. I have seen that note before, but it is putting all the mechanics to use which is neat, and does make sense. Even the bottoming with kylira does maybe 15 out of all of your levels of dignity and purity that start from 100 for each level. Even then there are multiple levels of both. You can regain dignity too.

Willpower is implemented for those who are trying to get a particular outcome from their scenes and really dont want one that may cause loss of virginity or a game loss. It is a nice addition for newer players to learn, and something that more experienced players don't need.

The use of magic I always enjoy in rpgs and I am partial to that. I liked how you could have a paralysis build for the magic classes and the other classes would either rely on strength or agility to win a fight. I love how the classes' maximum stat points for each attribute make them unique. I would like to see the magic come back a bit for a magic build. One that would work on the dark knight or the demon king. I completely understand the implementations of magic resistance for those bosses which makes perfect sense, but a way to work around that might be nice. Often times you might run out of mana, but thankfully you can restore your mana from before. If possible it would be cool to see passive mana regeneration from having high enough mana stats in combat, the use of familiars to provide assistance such as damaging, debuffing, slowing down, sleeping, or paralyzing to make the magic attribute a bit more functional as a class itself. I know it is a tad picky for a hentai game, but I love this game a great deal. By far the best of futa. Paralysis was amazing, and I would admit that it was a bit overpowered, but a way to require higher magic stats for it, to get longer use out of it on the demon king, or a way that you could deal damage close to that of non magic builds would be cool. I know the majalis team is busy, and I love there work. I also know more content itself is coming out, but I hope it just comes across as a thought if there is ever a chance/need to.

InkSpider2 years ago(+1)

Strength doesn't have as many useful checks as Agility. Being able to smash the Manor door is neat, but Agility is necessary for dodging Aggressive Harpies, escaping Drow snares, stopping Brigand pickpockets and stealing food from the Harpies and Ettin, off the top of my head. Being able to grapple/sex enemies in battle sounds great on paper, but it's not consistent. Some enemies, like Goblins, are notoriously difficult to dominate sexually, while others, like the Fire Elemental, cannot be dominated at all. Know what is consistent? Hitting them until they fall over.

I get that game balance is hard, but the only real reason I see to play Strength over Agility as it stands is for aesthetics/flavor. Not saying someone is wrong for playing the game that way, just saying I wish the game made it more mechanically rewarding.

thesoundingcagefromToA2 years ago

If you want to go for consistency, just be a slut. Loose every fight and let them fuck you. Pleasure them. You can get past each time. It can be consistent based on your style of play. I would personally level both up and use the better sword being the broadsword if I could. You run the broadsword with both high strength and agility. Given that you can increase both by 5 after creating your character, you are guaranteed better damage by purchasing the broadsword. Your stats all have a cap, and when you can't level up your agility, you level up your strength to deal more damage.

You don't need to stop the harpies, just blow them. You can also get out of drow snares using boots, or by going through the dialogue, you can also talk to the brigand pickpocketer to giving it back. Winning grapples and preventing yourself from getting raped is another perk of strength in terms of grappling. What you deem useful is subjective. Especially the checks.

Your preference is to use one over the other it seems, but one could argue that you shouldn't be using one over the other and instead be using them together. You can deal more damage that way.

The additional content for having higher strength isn't rewarding? You get far more extra scenes with characters for having high strength over high agility. Check out all that it opens up with Urka. There is content for having high strength.

There is more to the game than just the combat. That is why Charisma is important. You open up actions with characters which is tons of fun. All the scenes are entertaining. The point is that you can play the game the way you want and you have the choice to use your perks to aid in that. Your agility means less than strength for someone who wants to see more scenes. That person would value charisma. I personally play with a pretty well rounded character because I want to have the most options. You can pass most checks with an 8. Now given that we can increase just about any stat by 5 during the game, that means the minimum score of 3 for each stat would be sufficient. On top of that the game also provides us with bonus perk points for getting achievements. Now that you have 8 agility, what more do you want to do? Any class can get to it, as well as getting just about all their other stats up to 8. Agility is only so important once you get it high enough. There are plenty of checks so that you can play it different ways that suit you, each having different scenes to get you there. I would know, I try to keep getting every scene to have full completion. The scenes and checks are rewarding if you value that. What you value and how rewarded you feel is up to you.

The choice for agility and strength isn't binary, you can choose both. Nothing is being forced. Only so much agility is useful, so you have plenty to spend on other things as well. I would suggest spending a good deal on strength to reach the same amount of combat damage and still reach those checks for more scenes. There is no reason you should be choosing one over the other unless you are doing it to yourself.

Budouka2 years ago

The thing with grapple is you need only 5 of Strength there, which is more than reachable with Thief, but when the Paladin lacks in Agility, that hurts.

The problem with being a slut and losing battles is you're missing on much of a content. Usually, if you lose, you only get one scene, and not the best one. If you're strong enough, you still can be a slut if you want, or you can not, but if you're a weakling, you don't really have a choice.

Bottoming with Kylira is a bad example. Its context is a consensual sex, so the punishment for it is a minimum loss in Purity and Dignity. There are the enemies that will corrupt you much faster, most of the enemies will. And later on you will even get egged instantly.

thesoundingcagefromToA2 years ago

The lacking of any stat is at the fault of the player not the game. You can Increase any Stat by 5 in the game after character selection. There is no reason you should have less than 8 agility if you value it. Agility is important, but so is everything else. There shouldn't be a problem with people not having enough points for the stats because there are so many ways to raise it. Agility is easily reachable if you value it. There are charms perk points and items. All easily reachable. Strength has other applications such as checks, just like agility. The idea that there is little reward for strength is just ridiculous. There are plenty of scenes and checks for it.

Again though, anyone can play the way they want, but there shouldn't be complaints about Stat allocation. The player decides that. Strength is always viable.you can only increase any Stat so high, so in order to put out more damage, you increase your strength to as high as you can.

My example of being a slut was consistency. The argument that agility is THE ONLY consistent way is ridiculous. If you want a reliable way of fighting that can just be losing. It is easier to control than winning the fights. You miss out on content by focusing on one aspect of the character. I don't support just losing every battle, because it isn't as fun. I like doing literally everything I can in the game to raise my completion.

Bottoming with kylira was used as an example BECAUSE, the effects were minimal. The argument that the other guy was making was how it is bothersome when he plays because he has to worry about checks on dignity and purity when he has consensual sex on bottom. That is the reason that I brought up how it only does minimal anyways. In order for it to have to be a problem is if you do it a ridiculous amount of times.

Analatrix2 years ago

omg shorten your posts. This reads like fiction.

Budouka2 years ago

Well, Kylira is still literally the most harmless sex you have consensually. If you have it on top of Brigand in a cottage, you get serious punishment, because she dirty talks you. If you have it on top of Warlock, it's even worse. With Trudy? Big loss. And with bestial enemies it's large numbers, even though you're enjoying it, but you're committing bestiality.

So, the Kylira thing was an exception, the rule is quite different.

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Tales of Androgyny

Hopes for Final Release?