Let's Discuss v0.12 Feedback: Romance

Note that the person who gave the romance a 1 for Rais seemed to have not played his romance at all. Some of the 3's for both romances also came from people who didn't play the romance at all, so the charts are actually even more positive than they appear to be.

Rais's romance is a little less popular overall, but that might be because it's fairly new. So let's dig into some specific comments on the romances. There's really one major refrain I saw over and over:

MOAR!

Most people expressed wanting more, hoping for more, wanting more than just sex, or just being disappointed with the amount of content present in each romance.

I just want to assure everyone that I don't consider these romances "done" by any means, and I do plan to continue adding more content. Things like dates, random events, and more non-sexual things to do.

Rais Specific Comments

Let's go over a few comments that pointed to issues specifically with Rais's romance path.

This is interesting, but I also think that Rais's personality is what it is, I don't want to make him a total degenerate, but I do think some progression toward him becoming more lascivious could be interesting. I think this is a good idea, but don't expect a total corruption path or anything.

Yeah, I found myself just running out of time. Compared to Priscilla, his character-specific sex dialogue is very limited. Because there is less of it compared to the total amount of male dialogue that also makes his specific lines that do exist appear less compared to Priscilla's unique dialogue. Both characters need more unique dialogue but I agree Rais especially is deficient in this area!

Priscilla Specific Comments

Priscilla also had some specific issues players pointed out.

I envision that this stuff happens off-screen, but what I really need to do is make specific scenes happen. Ultimately I do want to add a request where Charlotte and Priscilla interact and ultimately come to terms, but I need to write Charlotte's romance first because that will factor into it. Ultimately I agree though, and this is some good feedback and plotting advice. 

I think the main issue is too much happens off-screen (or is only vaguely implied). After I add Charlotte's romance and figure out the contours of what romancing neither of them looks like, I'll go back and smooth over the reunion and hopefully make this work better.

Priscilla isn't really interested in dicks. Charlotte's romance will feature strap-ons and futa stuff.

I don't see why she would be mad the player has sex with men specifically, but sex with anyone else, really. The nature of the game requires open relationships. I don't think it's as unrealistic as it seems to some people, but even the best most mature open relationships are messy and complex, but that reality isn't a ton of fun to explore in a lewd game.

I do think there is room for exploring more jealousy content since that can be dramatic, but I worry about making it feel toxic or just stressful, so I'm not sure how far I want to go down that road.

It takes several traits to make feeding off of women as effective as feeding off of men, and requires to player to create and use specific potions in most cases, using alchemy, and Priscilla is not an alchemist and so wouldn't have the same ease of access to said potions. Overall I do not see this as an inconsistency.

Switching Romances

There are practical reasons why multiple romances or switching romances are hard to do. It's not impossible, but it would be quite difficult. Since the romanceable characters are so important to the story, letting the player end those relationships is also a little tough to do. All in all, it's something I probably won't change. I've already planned it out to be this way, and changing it would be extremely hard. If I make another game, I will try to make the romance paths less exclusive, though.

Conclusion

I think the big takeaway is just that there needs to be more romance content, and not just more in terms of the amount, but a greater variety of content. Things like dates, random events, conversations, character specific dialogue, and more.

And I agree. I definitely want to add more types of content to the romances presented in the game, and I don't want it all to just be sex. I will prioritize developing the underlying systems to deliver new romantic content through a new event playlist dedicated to serving this content starting in v0.13, and will add a variety of content to this event playlist as we go on. Expect small events and other scenes with your partner that you will be able to react to, leading to both sexy and tender moments, or even to long-ish request-like dates on some occasions.