9/7/17 and WTF Blog

(Disclaimer, what you are about to read is a convoluted mess attempting to describe my thought process toward a future development. Read at risk of your own sanity. You have been warned.)

Alright, so it's about midnight right now and I have class in the morning, but I couldn't help but make this post. Remember how a few posts ago, I mentioned how I need to find an alternative to the current system regarding the functions of the Sumaki Stone? While now I have a solution.

But first, what lead to this solution. If you don't give a shit about this, just skip to the first paragraph after the '---' markings for my conclusion. While things definitely haven't been clear to you players, the purpose behind the Sumaki Stone's Functions was to create an incentive for the player to utilize special rewards from achievements to enhance their experience of the game. 

Actually coming up with how to do this, has been quite the doozy. Originally I meant to use a plugin that supports different currencies than gold, where I would use a special variable as a "coin" to buy the functions at the players discretion. The problem with this, was that I would have to have each function be an item, have the player need to carry these items on them, and give access to the more late game functions at all times. It wasn't a good way of handling it. The second way was what I had used in the last demo. Having the functions be skills earned through exp and leveling. The problems with this, was that the exp curve had big limitations on how I could balance it, the leveling event and skill unlocking would play even before the ability to check your functions was available no matter what, and the player didn't have any control in what they earned next. 

So, seeing the failures of both of these systems, I came up with another 2 systems to put in place. One, an artificial leveling and exp system, where I control all of the issues with the built-in system. So I could control the exact exp needed, if a leveling event plays out, and where the skills are distributed. However, this still didn't fix the issue of the player having no progress. So I put that to the side temporarily while I thought of something else. This one is more unique than the others. What if I linked certain functions with certain achievements? Like giving a certain number of spankings gives you a function that lowers your exhaustion? This is another more viable idea because it gives the player complete control over their paths, and gives a more natural progression through the functions. The issues that still go unresolved in this is that each function will still have to be an item, and some functions I've thought of wouldn't link to specific achievements. For a while, I was stumped with all of these systems with each of the drawbacks and benefits they all had, until it hit me.

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What if, I combined the best aspects of each of those systems into one? If you aren't following me here, the solution is a skill tree like you would see in Borderlands or Skyrim. Completing an achievement in a certain branch would give you exp or points toward a certain set of skills you can choose from. Some skills would be unlocked after you take prerequisites. You'd be able to choose which spanking related aspects your character will exercise, and which they will ignore. Since you "pay" for skills, there wouldn't be a burden for items. 

As you can see, there are a lot of details that still have to be ironed out, and I'll have to make sure this system if even possible. But if it is, it'll be a big undertaking and what I think is a big improvement. However I'd like to hear you're thoughts on it too, as I'm slightly sleep deprived and am not capable of making the best judgments. 

Bis Morgen, Bagool