Game Balance Moving Forward

The new version will be up by the end of the week but I just wanted to have a bit of a discussion about some of the quite major changes you'll see in the changelist this time.

So, I've left the poll up for a while now and have recieved some interesting, illuminating results. Lots more people than I realised are much more focused on slutting it out than playing the game how it was originally intended. This is fine, but it does mean I need to slightly change the game direction to make sure I cater to at least the majority of players. What I've understood from reading feedback and talking to some people is that it's very important to the majority of people enjoying the game, that choosing the slut option is more often than not strategically viable.

To some extent this was always the plan, to have ways of winning (or at least not losing) by giving into the dark side, but it's now going to work a bit different from the original version. Originally, my vision of the different strategic pathways was this:

  • Balanced approach; OR
  • Combat based brute force strategy; OR
  • Intelligence and dexterity pacifism stragegy; item identification and skills and alchemy; OR
  • Give into the sex (also doubles up as a plan B for the other strategies)

However the problem with this (and this is definitely not a problem for just Trap Quest but most H-games) is that players really want to access the smut content, and when every sex scene gets you closer to losing, or is as a result of you losing, that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth (no, not semen, that's a great taste).

Some games, for example Noxian Nights, have solved this by flipping the entire model on its head, and implementing the spiral into sexual indecency as a bonus that the player needs to seek out in order to buff their character. That works well for some games, but the corruption in TQ is definitely supposed to be considered a bad thing overall, especially when you get towards maximum bimbo.

So, this is the model I am going to work towards moving forward:

"Giving in a little bit to the sex is fine, sometimes even beneficial, but going too far is always bad."

What this means is that over time I plan to make there more and more viable reasons for you to give in once in a while and slut it up. This will be in the form of stat rewards, item rewards, skills, and so on. And of course, we still have the current reasons to do so, such as finding clothing gear with good bonuses, preventing yourself from fainting from soreness, and so on.

However what will remain completely unchanged is that going too far will result in a slow but inevitable spiral towards sluthood, thanks to more enemies becoming unfriendly, the player refusing to do net-positive actions such as dominant fucking and masturbating, the player getting horny, craving cum and so on, and the player doing some automatic actions without the user even telling them to.

So really what this blog post is really here to say, is that expect my game balance changes over the next several months to slowly but surely move the game in this direction. You can expect more items, events, and so on that reward the player for their slutty actions or require certain slutty elements to access (e.g. the recipes that require bottled semen). Going full prude will remain a valid (but probably even more challenging) strategy option. Moreover, the epilgoues will be giving scores out to people that indicate how desirable their ending was. The only way to get the maximum scores here will be to have gone full prude.

Something else I am working on right at this moment is the win condition (defeating the demon lord was just a temporary placeholder). Minor spoiler warning: the boss battle will be two NPCs defending a big STOP button, which when pressed ends the game. There will be several ways to get to the button:

  • Defeat the NPCs in combat.
    • Will require strength, dexterity and of course any combat enhancing clothing you can get.
  • Sneak past the NPCs and hit the button before they notice.
    • Will require intelligence and dexterity to pull off, and will require the completion of multiple side quests in order to get a shot at it. It will be several versions before this is completely implemented.
  • Satisfy the NPCs before you faint.
    • High semen addiction, sex addiction and orifice openness will all help here. A full 100% slut shouldn't have a problem, but others might.
    • Beating the NPCs up a bit first will make this easier in some ways but harder in others. For example, there might be less cum to swallow but it takes more turns to bring them to orgasm.

I don't want to make this blog post too long but the other thing I will quickly discuss with you all is prize money. This is changing significantly, and as with all the changes made this upcoming verison, this is not the final iteration, and constructive feedback is appreciated. 'Time spent in the game' is no longer a thing, and instead prize money will be determined by the jewellery you are wearing when you press the STOP button. The changelist goes into more detail about how this is being balanced, but the general idea is that people who care about the whole prize money epilogue thing can go for gold and others can just continue playing as they always have. What I don't want is for the majority of players to never spend jewellery ever again because they're saving it for prize money, so I will be putting as many measures in place as I need to, to prevent this from happening.

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