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Monday, August 30, 2021

Release 21: Distortion

This update has two major features.  The first is a significant change to the game's multiplier balance.  PLEA's trauma multiplier has been increased to x4, INJU's circumstance multiplier has been decreased to x3, EXPO's trauma multiplier has been removed (leaving only the circumstance multiplier), and the trauma penalty to each associated circumstance has been changed to only apply for every level above the lowest current trauma.  In order to keep circumstance levels from growing out of control, a new penalty has been added of x1/2 to all circumstance damage per level of the highest circumstance.

The effect of these changes on the game's difficulty is complicated.  Trauma is now more difficult to get, and PLEA is now important, so the previous dominant strategy of avoiding PLEA and stacking INJU and EXPO is now much weaker.  Because the strongest strategy is no longer as strong, this will probably result in an increase to perceived difficulty for players who had mastered using those multipliers.  However, for players who liked to use PLEA because of their personal preferences, the game will now probably feel easier, because you're no longer punished for investing in PLEA.

The other major change is the addition of an alternative corruption path which involves seducing the Chosen by being kind and gentle to them.  In order to activate this path, the player must avoid breaking all Morality and Confidence Vulnerabilities (except for T1 Confidence, use of 'begging'), must break the T2 Innocence and Dignity Vulnerabilities (Force Orgasm and Broadcast), and then reach 100k PLEA in order to use the new Tempt action.

This is meant to be a bit more challenging than just breaking Chosen the normal way, so you probably shouldn't attempt to use it on all three Chosen at once unless you're using cheats to help.  More alternative corruption paths will come eventually, each of them following the pattern of "Break two Vulnerabilities, leave the other two mostly untouched, and then achieve something difficult."

Finally, this update adds two new vignettes.  The first is a sex scene between the Chosen with Core Confidence and the one with Minor Confidence once they're both significantly corrupted (note that it requires them both to be non-virgins, so you generally won't see it if you're going for distortions).  The second is an early-game scene for the Chosen with Core Morality once she's gotten a decent amount of trauma.  The trauma required is high enough to trigger T1 sinful downtime actions, so if you see this scene, it means that it's definitely time to start aiming for some Vulnerability breaks.

For the next update, I've decided to start working on campaign mode.  There are other features I had wanted to add in order to help make campaign mode more interesting when it arrived, but I realized that those features would be a lot less interesting before campaign mode was implemented.  One or the other has to be done first, and I've decided that it makes more sense to start with campaign mode itself, since this will help tie the Forsaken into a functioning gameplay loop.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

  • Content: Added a new corruption route.  See the end of the guide.txt for detailed information.
  • Content: Added two new vignettes.
  • Balance: Reworked how several damage multipliers function.
  • Interface: Chosen who have above 100% Punisher effectiveness will now have that information shown on the corruption overview.
  • Bugfix: The tutorial will no longer break when played with hard mode activated.
  • Bugfix: Corrected some issues with the predicted exermination progression when surrounded or captured Chosen are close to freeing themselves.

56 comments:

  1. Ooooh. Campaign mode will be interesting (especially when we get special modifiers and hopefully base assualt in the future.)
    Alt corruption paths by being gentle and kind are certainly gonna be interesting (Was hoping to tempt chosen with pleasure into making them be even lewder with other chosen but this'll still be pretty interesting) Hype for the future for sure

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    1. Also, what does it mean by significantly corrupted when you mentioned viginettes? Ie break up to t3 on Confidence or is there a trauma amount that both need?

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    2. Well, that anal tempt scene is goooood. Real hot. As were the new viginettes (Only seen the early game one so far. Minor complaint I've got is that theres not enough facesitting lol. Especially between Chosen and forsaken, but that'll probably come in later updates with relationships between the two hopefully.
      Minor request, is it possible to seperate the scenes into their approriate tabs? ie. Daily Viginettes are behind a Viginette button in the scene viewer ect. So we can tell what a viginette is vs a vul break scene.

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    3. Chosen who have been tempted should definitely be more interested in doing lewd stuff to their fellow Chosen, it just isn't happening on-screen yet. I'll definitely want to write some vignettes to that effect, and maybe do some more alternate text for in-combat stuff.

      For the purpose of the new sex scene, "significantly corrupted" means that they both need T2 Morality Break, T2 Innocence Break, and at least 10M DISG trauma. I also forgot to mention in the post that they need to have a positive relationship with each other.

      Glad you're enjoying the new content. There should be more dominant actions all around as more vignettes following the theme of "things the Chosen do on their own" are added. I agree that better scene organization would be a good idea. Separating it by category would be a good start, but eventually there'll be enough vignettes that even that much might be insufficient.

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    4. Yup yup. More lewd is always a win. Very hype for the Forsaken and Chosen interaction/ Tempted chosen being more lewd. Can't wait. Hopefully we get longer scenes for that considering how hard it is to tempt without breaking if you don't know what you're doing.

      More organisation sounds fun for sure. Actually. With campaign mode coming, is there the chance for us to get special modifications for Commanders? Ie, break X number of vulnerabilities on Chosen with a commander with Y Attachment to get this special part. ie a Pleasure + Expo Defilier thats only possible through campaign achievements/progression?

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    5. That sort of achievement system is something I'm planning on adding to the campaign, and I want to include some sort of reward. I'm not sure if the reward will be new Commander parts, but the idea sounds good. We'll see.

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  2. Found a bug. The game freezes if you retreat when you would gain no EE from a fight. Ie on the retreat confirmation for retreating by getting 0 energy.

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    1. I wasn't able to reproduce that exact bug, but I think what's going on here is that retreating before all three Chosen have been met causes an error. It'll be fixed in the next version.

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  3. Your work is always amazing!

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  4. This is the update I was waiting for, now I just await a bugfix or two before I start playing again :D

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    1. Glad to hear it! Are there any particular bugfixes you're waiting on?

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    2. Just the basic gamebreaking stuff that tends to come with a fresh release, the moment it's 100% playable I will dig my teeth into it :D

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  5. Gonna be interesting with the balance changes. I'm gonna have to sit down and grind out a new line of saviors to corrupt tbis week. Thanks for once again having a juicy and timely update CSDev!

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  6. Quick question. Is it possible to get a txt doc with all the daily viginettes and their requirements? It says there's 9 total, and I've no idea how to get the other 5 I'm missing.

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    1. This is a good idea. I'll plan on including a checklist with conditions for each vignette in the next release.

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    2. Do hope we get forsaken and chosen daily vignettes soonish even without the relationship mechanic. Here's to hoping.

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  7. Just found this game out and it's so fun. While I could make a host of mechanical criticisms, it's definitely a gem and I can't wait to see how it gets better.

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  8. Something about the two main changes to circumstances seems a bit... off.

    Under the old system, if I had the pain trauma up to level 4, injury gain would be at 1/16 from the trauma. With the new system, if I have all four circumstances at level 3 and pain at 4, I only have a 1/2 penalty due to trauma, but also a 1/8 penalty due to highest circumstance... still the same 1/16 penalty.

    Under the new system, that penalty is reduced based on how high my lowest circumstance is. At the same time, a new penalty is added based on how high the lowest circumstance is... that brings back the exact same penalty.

    The end result is that you're penalized - possibly very heavily - for not keeping all four circumstances at roughly the same level. You're also penalized for letting circumstances get a lot higher than trauma. Meanwhile, nothing in the new system makes it any *easier* to build circumstances, so overall this is just a difficulty increase.

    Not sure if this was your intent or not; I understand making the "push INJU and HATE" strategy a bit worse makes sense, but I don't think this update did anything to make increasing PLEA easier, just that the difficulty increase is less for that strategy than it is for others.

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    1. It was indeed intended that the circumstance multipliers add up to roughly the same value in most cases. My main goal with the changes was to make it so that PLEA was just as important to raise as INJU. I think it's a good thing for it to be best to raise all four circumstances roughly evenly when possible. The strategy in the game has always been about deciding the order in which to inflict each circumstance.

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  9. Unable to get tempt action to appear (even after coming back here to find there there were some initially unmentioned conditions...). I've gotten 2 chosen (#1 and 2) to simultaneously have 100M DISG (with at least ~1B unresolved), 10M PLEA, all T1 Breaks with T3 innocence and T2 dignity breaks and no T2 morality or confidence breaks (barring chosen #3 which started with a T2 morality break). All chosen have solid friendship barring 3 and 2 which are rivals.
    Looking at the hotkeys, it appears to be a surround action, but it's just not showing up, either going to surround, having already surrounded one, going to surround the second, or having already surrounded both...
    So, is there another unlisted condition I'm not fulfilling, or is my 3rd chosen who started with T2 moral break or having a rivalry with any chosen making this impossible?

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    1. I haven't tried it myself yet, but the post says "In order to activate this path, the player must avoid breaking all Morality and Confidence Vulnerabilities", so if you've broken all T1 Breaks, you're disqualified.

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    2. You're skipping the immediately subsequent part of "(except for T1 Confidence, use of 'begging')"...
      Though reading that now... ... ... I guess that explains it, I somehow read it as "except T1 breaks"...

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    3. Just posting to confirm that Anon's reply has the right of it, and breaking all T1s will lock you out of it. There will eventually be a distortion that you can reach even after breaking all T1s, but it'll have other tricky conditions to fulfill.

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  10. Does campaign mode last until you give up in the face of increasing difficulty, or does it have a definite end?

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    1. For now, the difficulty will just keep increasing until you give up. The eventual plan is to have a "final boss" so that you'll be able to win a complete victory in the end.

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  11. CsDev.... Succubus giantess using the chosen as dildos when

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    1. Succubus Commander who can shrink the chosen to her liking...

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    2. It's pretty far from anything I have a fetish for, so that's probably one of the things that will have to wait for mods made by the players once I release the source code.

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    3. Welp hype either way lol. Mods are gonna be interesting for sure. We'll need a place to share them tho. Maybe a discord server?

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    4. Using a Discord server would probably make sense. I don't have time to manage an official Discord, but if there's interest, I imagine that an unofficial one will pop up sooner or later.

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  12. Also, will we see more in depth descriptions and scenes containing the chosen sexual equipment before/after body modding ie Forsaken A has a bigger ass then Chosen a and she bullies said chosen with that ass

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    1. Yeah, that sort of content is definitely feasible once more detailed customization has been added. I want to make sure that all measurements have their own associated descriptions and scenes.

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    2. Oh my... Thats gonna be reaaaaal fun to see. Can't wait till we get that for sure. Tho hopefully we get the forsaken more fleshed out for actual use in battle first

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    3. Yeah, the basic battle functionality will definitely be finished first.

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    4. Hype hype. Hows the new update coming along?

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  13. The guide.txt doesn't seem to mention what are the angst thresholds for extra daily EE, you should add that

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    1. This is a bit harder than it sounds, because the degree to which one of the Chosen prefers each downtime action depends on a bunch of factors. I guess it would make sense to give a general range to use as a rule of thumb, though.

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  14. I have been playing CS more many versions, but only just now I realized I had a HUGE misunderstanding:

    T1 vulnerabilities have text like
    >Violence: Used against Grind and Pummel. Causes Morality Break.

    So I thought T1 vulnerabilities are opened only when BOTH Grind and Pummel are used at the same time. Maybe use "or" instead of "and" there?

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    1. I worry that just using "or" would make it seem like using Violence only impedes either Grind or Pummel, and not both at the same time. But I'll see if I can figure out some clearer wording that can be used without making the tip too long.

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  15. Trying to get Tempt certainly made the game more interesting.

    But unless I'm missing something big, it's not remotely competitive with doing things normally?

    Does "Morality/Confidence distortion" mean anything besides the lowering PLEA threshold? That seems irrelevant - it is difficult to get a circumstance up to 10k, but after that you can have group activities that raise it to M or G levels anyway, so for example 100k PLEA threshold (the original threshold) vs ~50k PLEA threshold (a few days later, after many Tempts) made zero difference in my playthrough.
    And I don't see how the Tempt activity itself is much good.
    So other than the initial 100 EE, is there any reason to use Tempt? Even if hunting that 100 EE, it seems a better idea to drop the whole thing immediately afterwards and just play normally from there, with HATE and INJU.

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    1. Dropping Tempt and returning to HATE and INJU after getting the 100 EE bonus is a completely valid strategy. However, you can also instantly defeat a Tempted Chosen in the final battle just by reaching 10x the usual PLEA requirement, so strictly speaking, starting the Tempt route means you don't have to break anything else.

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    2. Interesting! That makes sense, I'll try it out!

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  16. On another note, at least in hard mode, especially after the rebalancing (I was unsure about the PLEA and INJU rebalancing at first, but I have come to like it), the day 10 talkshow event comes too early imo.
    The day 20 spa's and day 30 military base's EEs are much easier to get, shouldn't it be the other way round if anything?

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    1. I think this is correct, but the early event timings were balanced with how they'll work in campaign mode in mind. Some of the bonuses you get in campaign mode speed up the early game, so when you enter a loop with earlier events, you have a much fairer opportunity to get the talkshow bonuses by day 10.

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  17. The talkshow might be the most enjoyable event for me. I wondered why that is, and it's probably because it is immediately clear what condition causes what passage. Of course, the text tells that anyway in a longwinded way, but I wonder if writing the reasons for any particular passage (at least ones that could grant EE) in HUGE CAPITAL LETTERS would make it more satisfying to see the results of your strategies.

    Like this:

    (HOMURA and MAMI: SOLID FRIENDSHIP)
    Homura and Mami are discussing strategies at Mami's home. Mami is drinking coffee, and accidentally spills some of it on Homura. The coffee was hot, and the burning sensation causes Homura to yelp in shock.

    (HOMURA: T1 INJU VULNERABILITY BROKEN)
    Homura's experience in battle has traumatized her. Instead of irritation or anger, she reacts with sniffling and tears. She clutches her sides, looks down and whispers: "Please don't... Please don't hurt me Mami!"

    +1 EE

    (MAMI: T1 HATE VULNERABILITY UNBROKEN; MAMI: T1 INJU VULNERABILITY UNBROKEN)
    Mami is shocked and confused by her friend's reaction. She awkwardly tries to comfort Homura, and Homura calms down in the end, but the rest of the evening proceeds in an uncomfortable mood.

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    1. Interesting idea. I do generally like to be as clear as possible about what's happening from a gameplay perspective. My only worry is that seeing everything explicitly described in gameplay terms might "take people out of the story," so to speak. I'll think about it, at least as an option.

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  18. I did a game to try for a high score.
    Obsessive save-loading early and midgame, but some lazyness and errors later.
    I found that Early Finish gives too few points for Imago Quickening to be worth it.

    Here's my score with Imago Quickening:

    day 26

    96.8T (ANGST)
    + 215T (Trauma)
    + 120P (Evil Energy)
    + 360P (Corruption)
    +1.50E (Enmity)
    + 900P (Early Finish)
    + 500P (Victory)
    +1.50E (Fallen Chosen)
    4.88E pts

    Here's my score by waiting till the end:

    day 35

    304T (ANGST)
    + 241T (Trauma)
    + 996P (Evil Energy)
    + 540P (Corruption)
    +1.50E (Enmity)
    + 0 (Early Finish)
    + 500P (Victory)
    +1.50E (Fallen Chosen)
    5.03E pts

    Early Finish gives 100P points per day.

    Foregoing Imago Quickening and playing till the end gives you:

    1) 150P points,
    from EE, from not paying the cost of Imago Quickening

    2) 100P points,
    from EE, from the 200 EE from the military base event

    3) 75P points per day,
    from EE, if you are on 3x50 EE daily EE gain

    4) ? points,
    from Corruption. I'm not sure what the Corruption numbers are exactly, but apparently those rose also.

    Which is a bit more than you'd get from Early Finish points.
    Maybe increase the Early Finish points to 200P per day?

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    1. Thank you for the detailed feedback! I think you're probably right. Originally, the Early Finish modifier was balanced around 50-day loops instead of 35-day ones, so there was a large range of days where the bonus from an early finish would outweigh all the remaining bonuses you could earn. I should definitely bump up the reward by some amount.

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  19. Wondering if you're planning on potentially having different kinds of "Player Chassis". We currently have the real neat various different commander bodies you can make, but curious if we'll ever have more of a starting feat system to add some personality and uniqueness to our specific brand of Hentai Demonlord trope.

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    1. The system for making commander bodies will probably remain mostly as it is now, but I do have plans for letting the player put together a more detailed custom body in order to have detailed sex scenes with the Forsaken (and sometimes with the Chosen).

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  20. I know the tickling content was added purely as a censor for the violence, but is there any plans for more content involving it as a kink? It's what originally drew me to the game in the first place, i'd love to see more.

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    1. I might end up adding some tickle-centric vignettes in the future. It's just always a hard decision to add something which is going to be hidden behind a toggle that half the playerbase doesn't use. (This is also the reason why I haven't been adding dedicated ryona scenes.) I'm sure there will be more at some point.

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