The game is too easy

[RandomNecromancer]

First of all, I will apologize because this topic will be quite large. Take your time to read and reply when possible.

Second, I understand that the game is still in development and that these problems probably arose for that reason, but since this game is open for contributions I decided that it might be a good idea to share the experiences I had while playing it, despite risking stating the obvious.

The biggest issue in this game at the moment is that it is too easy even (sometimes especially) in higher difficulties. The two main causes are the ease in getting rich and reaching the maximum level. There are several ways to achieve these goals, but I will describe only the one I use, as I think it is one of the most efficient:

1. After starting the game, finish Lilaya's initial interactions (tests, current date, enchantments ...) and you should have enough points to get the "orgasmic level drain" perk.

2. Get the prostitution license and work at the brothel, "grinding" your way up to the max level using quick sex and earning some money in the process that will be needed later. Especially easy and fast in higher difficulties and with the right combination of shortcuts. It never takes more than a few minutes to finish.

3. Get the enslavement license at the slaver's alley and set up a slave room and a milking room (fully upgraded) and remember to activate the auto sell options and assign the slaves later.

4. Enslave a slime and, through the transform option, set it to have penis, vagina and the maximum amount of boobs and crotch boobs, as well as maximum cum and milk "storage" and regeneration. Skip some days through sleeping and collect your money.

It may seem like a lot of work, but considering that you haven't done any major campaign missions yet, you can just save and never do it again. Want to start a new character? reload that save and that's it, you are already maxed and you can play the whole campaign again in an almost completely different way.

I don't believe it is possible to solve these problems because the very concept behind orgasmic level drain and milking rooms is faulty, but it is possible to mitigate at least. Just think about it:

1. Why isn't everyone super strong if it's so easy to gain a level and get the orgasmic level drain perk? In a world where sexuality is so open, I can't think of any plausible reason, even considering the fear that people feel about working in a brothel sanctioned by enforcers (of course, not everyone would even be willing to work in a brothel, but you know what I meant). In the player's case, it is not a big problem in the standard difficulty, since the npcs do not have their levels scaled with the player, but the same does not apply to higher difficulties.

2. Why aren't all slavers extremely rich (are they? I don't remember the game stating anything about it) when it is so easy to enslave a slime and sell its fluids? I know it is difficult to get a license, but I am only referring to those who already have one. Also, I didn't mention demons for lore reasons.

In both cases, I would mitigate the problem by locking them behind quests. This would imply losing part of the campaign if you resort to the save strategy I mentioned earlier. The rat warrens quest could be used to unlock the milking rooms as there is one in it. The orgasmic level drain perk could be unlocked somehow through Amber.

Linking them to the difficulty could also be a good idea. E.g. The greater the difficulty, the less xp is drained and the lower the fluid value. For milking rooms, simulating a market that has supply and demand would also be interesting (for all I care and for simplicity's sake, it could be fake as long it got the job done).

You are welcome to share your opinion on the matter if you felt I forgot something or made a mistake, for example. Also, feel free to point out any grammar/spelling errors so that i can fix them (english is not my main language). Thanks for reading and I hope this helps!

[defsil]

Great points! It's a bit surprising no one has answered thus far. I do agree that at the moment the game has quite a few exploitable ways to gain easy money, but I want to make a few comments on that.

First, I don't really think that by itself such exploits aren't that much of an issue - after all, players often dislike having to resort to grind money with boring, repetitive activities in order to be able to unlock certain items, locations and miscellaneous game content. If a player doesn't want money to be an issue, then it's a good idea for them to have such an option once they pass a certain point in the game - after all, LT is one of a few RPGs where players can have fun even with a disbalancingly abundant amount of resources at their disposal.

Second, regarding each of your points:

1. It is odd, I agree. IMHO, the drain perk should either be: 1.1. restricted to a very small number of powerful demons (and the player, naturally), 1.2. and/or get moved to the end of the perk tree (or, if that's going to be reworked, otherwise made less accessible), 1.3. and/or have repercussions on being used (i.e. drain levels on unwilling targets enough times and you'll get reported and hunted down by enforcers), 1.4. and/or be limited in how much power you can absorb (i.e. a fixed limit per day), 1.5. and/or limited by the level difference between the user and their victim (i.e. can only be used on stronger opponents, can only be used on opponents no more than 5 levels below yours, being scaled down as level difference grows, etc), 1.6. and/or victims must be limited to people who have a specific enchanted item on them (wink-wink, Amber's collar) - only if you have the perk and have personally enchanted such an item, then the person wearing it will lose levels to you. Since both the perk itself and the ability to imbue such a powerful enchantment might well be very difficult to obtain, this would explain why this isn't a widespread practice, and it still allows you to use it in most post-combat scenes as you can easily wear it on the opponent and remove it afterwards (wearing/removing such an item might be made into a separate toggleable action on the victory screen to avoid unnecessary tedium). For added restriction, such an item might even be illegal unless the enchanter has the appropriate permit and/or the target has consented to it! 1.7. [EDIT] As an extension of 1.6., one of the options would be to remake this perk to work only with those partners who are currently wearing enslaving items.

2. I also agree with this one, it's quite a balance-breaking exploit, and it's odd why slavers don't use that practice by default. Here are a couple more possible suggestions on how to fix that: 2.1. make it harder to obtain more exotic (and therefore higher-paying) flavors and types of liquids: exotic TF potions made from expensive ingredients are necessary to combine more liquid traits, and generally, the more traits a liquid has, the more it sells for; 2.2. limit total amount of liquids a single person can produce per day: curve/hard limit; 2.3. make all liquids produced by slimes forcibly have the 'slimy' trait, liquids with which have much lower selling price; 2.4. making (de-)slimification more difficult; 2.5. make it harder for slimes to shapeshift, especially in flavor-related aspects; 2.6. dietary requirements - higher liquid production demands exponentially larger upkeep requirements; 2.7. market saturation: the more liquid of a given type you're selling, the cheaper it gets.

Personally, I'm in favor of implementing 1.1, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, and possibly 1.6.

That's all I could think of for the moment. I really hope it will help! ^w^

[RandomNecromancer]

Regarding your points:

players often dislike having to resort to grind money with boring, repetitive activities in order to be able to unlock certain items, locations and miscellaneous game content.

I don't think I'll ever be able to properly stress how fast, easy and beneficial those steps are. It's a fifteen minutes one-time job that will save you more trouble that I can describe. I can see people not be willing to do so for other reasons though.

1.1. restricted to a very small number of powerful demons (and the player, naturally),

This one would be good choice actually. Locking the "Orgasmic level drain" perk behind Lyssieth's quests and the demon transformation would be a waaaay better choice than Amber. Plus it fits my previous points.

1.2. and/or get moved to the end of the perk tree (or, if that's going to be reworked, otherwise made less accessible),

To move it to the end of the perk tree would probably make it pointless: What's the point of a perk that helps you level up if you're already at a high level? I can see a super specific build with super specific requirements focused around this perk though. That would be really interesting actually.

1.3. and/or have repercussions on being used (i.e. drain levels on unwilling targets enough times and you'll get reported and hunted down by enforcers),

You know claire's teleport spell quest? the one with the group of strong enforcers at the end you usually avoid with the many ways the game provide? with unlimited money not even them are a challenge. I don't think this point would help.

1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7 would only either have the same issues I described, slightly change the steps above, or add another approach to exploit the issue.

2.1. make it harder to obtain more exotic (and therefore higher-paying) flavors and types of liquids: exotic TF potions made from expensive ingredients are necessary to combine more liquid traits, and generally, the more traits a liquid has, the more it sells for;

Flavor and modifiers doesn't change fluid price last time i checked (only its type - cum/milk/girlcum). Also, all you need to craft every type of potion is sold. Unless that changes, this wouldn't solve the problem.

2.2. limit total amount of liquids a single person can produce per day: curve/hard limit;

I would just need to add more slaves and time skips to bypass this.

2.3. make all liquids produced by slimes forcibly have the 'slimy' trait, liquids with which have much lower selling price; 2.4. making (de-)slimification more difficult; 2.5. make it harder for slimes to shapeshift, especially in flavor-related aspects;

Demons can transform too. Anything slime specific doesn't work. Also, after you learned three water spells you get free fluid-related transformation enchantments, which means a easy to replace slime and demons with any other race.

2.6. dietary requirements - higher liquid production demands exponentially larger upkeep requirements;

The game has a upkeep feature but no food/hungriness management, so that would probably not fit the game or look out of place, at least.

2.7. market saturation: the more liquid of a given type you're selling, the cheaper it gets.

This is what I suggested and probably the better solution both of us were able to come up with. I would like to see this in the game, even if in a primitive way.

Personally, I'm in favor of implementing 1.1, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, and possibly 1.6.

I like 1.1 and 2.7 the best. 1.2 would probably work with the specific build thing I mentioned.

That's all I could think of for the moment. I really hope it will help! ^w^

Thanks for the throughout response!

(Note: I didn't mean to sound rude or anything by the way, I'm really sorry If did so. Damn you, language barrier!)

[Maxis010]

Point 1 We see a lot of balancing suggestions but Inno's adding more content rather than balancing existing content and the contributors aren't focused on it because if we do it now then we have to do it again as new content is added that is unbalanced The perk tree needs a full rework not just single point balancing It's not that we disagree, just that we have other priorities

Point 2 I have a TODO to balance the milking room but only to break the ridiculous single day gains Slaves will turn a profit over time, stopping that would just mean there is no reason to keep slaves and nothing will stop the player skipping entire months with the mansion converted entirely into a milk farm if they wanted to Even after this I know of other exploits that I can't close off

[defsil]

Oh, my goodness. I really didn't expect such a quick and thorough reply. Thank you, as well! ^w^

Regarding your reply:

players often dislike having to resort to grind money with boring, repetitive activities in order to be able to unlock certain items, locations and miscellaneous game content.

I don't think I'll ever be able to properly stress how fast, easy and beneficial those steps are. It's a fifteen minutes one-time job that will save you more trouble that I can describe. I can see people not be willing to do so for other reasons though.

Sorry if I phrased this wrong, but I was referring there to the usual methods of money grinding - you know, spend days selling yourself, fight random encounters and sell all their items (how rude .-.), make every consumable into a potion, et cetera, et cetera. The exploit you've outlined, on the other hand, is quick and fun to do and saves a lot of tedium in the future, and the only thing I'm sad about is that getting rid of the repetitive grinding requires doing an exploit in the first place.

1.1. restricted to a very small number of powerful demons (and the player, naturally),

This one would be good choice actually. Locking the "Orgasmic level drain" perk behind Lyssieth's quests and the demon transformation would be a waaaay better choice than Amber. Plus it fits my previous points.

I, ah, was actually suggesting to leave it more-or-less as it is, and rather provide a lore-wise justification for this:

Why isn't everyone super strong if it's so easy to gain a level and get the orgasmic level drain perk? In a world where sexuality is so open, I can't think of any plausible reason [...]

Locking it behind Lyssieth's quest... hm. On one hand, it would be pretty late in the game, which would render it hardly usable. On the other hand... What if, later in the game, there were more lust-based level draining hazards to encounter? That way, players could lean either towards angelic/celibate route (by refraining from acts & getting lust protection), a full-on demonic route (by choosing to drain enemy levels themselves faster than they could drain their own) or some third, possibly quest-locked, option if they don't feel like choosing either? (I'm saying "hazards" rather than "demons with this perk", because in the current implementation that'd just discourage spicy post-victory actions - this also needs to be given some thought.)

1.2. and/or get moved to the end of the perk tree (or, if that's going to be reworked, otherwise made less accessible),

To move it to the end of the perk tree would probably make it pointless: What's the point of a perk that helps you level up if you're already at a high level?

Referenced in the previous point.

1.3. and/or have repercussions on being used (i.e. drain levels on unwilling targets enough times and you'll get reported and hunted down by enforcers),

You know claire's teleport spell quest? the one with the group of strong enforcers at the end you usually avoid with the many ways the game provide? with unlimited money not even them are a challenge. I don't think this point would help.

If PC defeats weaker enforcers, stronger ones would be sent in their place? The only reason PC normally gets away from the enforcer battles is because their foes are both unprepared and too embarassed to report their defeat. But with an actual bounty on their head, and if known for defeating elite enforcers before... o-oh, boy, things would get spicy really fast. PC can't take on the entire demonic army on their own, after all, and the more they escalate, the worse the consequences become. For example, submit the first time, and you might get out with a minor bribe, but get defeated by an elite squad after defeating three regular patrols before, and even with Lilaya's protection you might get released only after spending a week collared in a basement with level-draining enforcers all too happy to help you learn your lesson... and with a stained record to boot, which is going to cause problems later in the run, possibly a debt to pay, an angry aunt to deal with...

I do think this is a direction worth considering.

2.1. make it harder to obtain more exotic (and therefore higher-paying) flavors and types of liquids: exotic TF potions made from expensive ingredients are necessary to combine more liquid traits, and generally, the more traits a liquid has, the more it sells for;

Flavor and modifiers doesn't change fluid price last time i checked (only its type - cum/milk/girlcum). Also, all you need to craft every type of potion is sold. Unless that changes, this wouldn't solve the problem.

They don't yet, yes, but this could be tweaked. Though you're right, that won't solve the problem at all.

2.2. limit total amount of liquids a single person can produce per day: curve/hard limit;

I would just need to add more slaves and time skips to bypass this.

Indeed - but getting more slaves is a valid and intended way to earn more money. Besides, make the profits from milking comparable to other jobs, and the exploit basically dissolves on its own! :3

2.3. make all liquids produced by slimes forcibly have the 'slimy' trait, liquids with which have much lower selling price; 2.4. making (de-)slimification more difficult; 2.5. make it harder for slimes to shapeshift, especially in flavor-related aspects;

Demons can transform too. Anything slime specific doesn't work. Also, after you learned three water spells you get free fluid-related transformation enchantments, which means a easy to replace slime and demons with any other race.

If a demon sells their milk... well, I see no problem with that priced high on the market. :3 Though, yes, I agree with you on the rest. I have a few ideas to rebalance that, as well, but that'll have to wait.

2.6. dietary requirements - higher liquid production demands exponentially larger upkeep requirements;

The game has a upkeep feature but no food/hungriness management, so that would probably not fit the game or look out of place, at least.

True!

2.7. market saturation: the more liquid of a given type you're selling, the cheaper it gets.

This is what I suggested and probably the better solution both of us were able to come up with. I would like to see this in the game, even if in a primitive way.

Personally, I'm in favor of implementing 1.1, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3, and possibly 1.6.

I like 1.1 and 2.7 the best. 1.2 would probably work with the specific build thing I mentioned.

So we're in agreement, then. Glad to hear that! ^_^

Thanks for the throughout response! (Note: I didn't mean to sound rude or anything by the way, I'm really sorry If did so. Damn you, language barrier!)

Thank you, too! ^_^ You didn't, don't worry, but thank you for saying it nonetheless. And same!

[defsil]

Point 2 I have a TODO to balance the milking room but only to break the ridiculous single day gains Slaves will turn a profit over time, stopping that would just mean there is no reason to keep slaves and nothing will stop the player skipping entire months with the mansion converted entirely into a milk farm if they wanted to Even after this I know of other exploits that I can't close off

Well, the point isn't blocking all the easy ways to gain money - after all, slave farms are the intended way for this, and players should be given such an option. As outlined in my latest reply,

Indeed - but getting more slaves is a valid and intended way to earn more money. Besides, make the profits from milking comparable to other jobs, and the exploit basically dissolves on its own! :3

As you've said, it's only these single day gains that's a problem. IMHO, milking profits simply have to get relatively balanced against other jobs, both profit- and relationship-wise. Maybe adding a harder limit on milker liquid collection rate per hour/per day would help?

Point 1 We see a lot of balancing suggestions but Inno's adding more content rather than balancing existing content and the contributors aren't focused on it because if we do it now then we have to do it again as new content is added that is unbalanced The perk tree needs a full rework not just single point balancing It's not that we disagree, just that we have other priorities

Agreed! It's not like I really expect this to be implemented any time soon, either - I'm just eager to provide helpful suggestions and get feedback on whether they are useful. Obviously, there are more important things to code in right now, but, IMHO, having suggestions like these helps to build a picture of what the game should look like, which, in turn, helps right now to build upon the framework to implement such things in the future. I do hope these contributions help! :3

[RandomNecromancer]

Sorry if I phrased this wrong, but I was referring there to the usual methods of money grinding

More likely I just misinterpreted. Not my main language, after all.

1.1. restricted to a very small number of powerful demons (and the player, naturally),

I, ah, was actually suggesting to leave it more-or-less as it is, and rather provide a lore-wise justification for this:

You meant even before/without transforming yourself into a demon? I assumed otherwise.

Locking it behind Lyssieth's quest... hm. On one hand, it would be pretty late in the game, which would render it hardly usable.

Not really. Just like the Claire's teleport spell quest, you can avoid pretty much every combat and speedrun to this point barely levelling up.

I'm saying "hazards" rather than "demons with this perk", because in the current implementation that'd just discourage spicy post-victory actions - this also needs to be given some thought.

It is as you said. There is a thin line between interesting and boring/annoying. Unfortunately, many devs come up with interesting mechanics only to cross that line by using them in every possible situation. It's something to be really careful about.

If PC defeats weaker enforcers, stronger ones would be sent in their place? The only reason PC normally gets away from the enforcer battles is because their foes are both unprepared and too embarassed to report their defeat. [...]

With the new enforcer content (Wes quest), they seem to be too corrupt to bother hunting you down like that (well, unless you're human, apparently) and they're specially complacent when it comes to demons. I don't know how much that would make sense.

Indeed - but getting more slaves is a valid and intended way to earn more money. Besides, make the profits from milking comparable to other jobs, and the exploit basically dissolves on its own! :3

True and True. As you mentioned elsewhere though, one slave is all it takes currently.

It's not like I really expect this to be implemented any time soon, either - I'm just eager to provide helpful suggestions and get feedback on whether they are useful. Obviously, there are more important things to code in right now, but, IMHO, having suggestions like these helps to build a picture of what the game should look like, which, in turn, helps right now to build upon the framework to implement such things in the future. I do hope these contributions help!

Thanks for expanding on the topic. I feel the same way.