Gave the new version a poke and I do think you're moving in the right direction. Sex scenes are more satisfying now and I feel like you're making good design choices.
For suggestions, I'll throw out that I think it would make sense to let the player pick a couple fetish perks at the start of the game so you don't have to spend level up perks on them. It's usually not a good idea to mix flavor perks with those that have an impact on gameplay. If you want players to be able to pick fetish perks and other similar customization perks that don't directly affect gameplay, Flexible Survival has a system for that where you gain two different kinds of perks at different levels that affect game stats and sex scene preferences (as well as things like transformation preferences, ex: can't be affected by female transformations, can never lose a specific body part, can only grow endowments not shrink).
Thanks for your feedback once again!
I thought about making a separate point system for fetish perks, but decided instead to make them as more of an alternative route for the player to go down. I plan on adding more tangible benefits/rewards to sex scenes, in much the same way that Ralph's discount currently works. In this way, I wanted to give the player the following choices:
1. Take fetishes in order to unlock sex scene actions that provide rewards. (Thus missing out on combat-based perks.)
2. Increase corruption in order to unlock sex scene actions that provide rewards. (Thus being able to take combat perks, but suffer from corruption's negative effects.)
3. Take both fetishes and combat perks. (This will still be achievable, but will obviously require more levelling up.)
My overall goal in implementing fetishes like this is to give the player some meaningful decisions to make as they level up.
Oh, and I'm planning on giving the player some starting points to spend as part of the character creation, so you'll be able to start the game with a couple of perks/fetishes! Thanks for the suggestion. ^^
I would have to agree that this game has a good setup with the core mechanics. The perks you can select from each level integrate all of your experiences into a fluid combat system. It's very easy to pick up on which branch or branches you might want to build your character along. I also want to point out that the creator of this game has taken some pretty good steps to ensuring that the combat is balancing out. Just between this 1.67 and the 1.65 version there is a bit of a difference in how some of the combat skills weigh in. It's now more evenly matched than it was then. If you were playing earlier builds you probably would have figured out that seduction attacks are the way to go because they quickly did the most damage overall and ended fights in your favor. They still do that to an extent but it's scaled much more closely in respect to what you gain with the other branches and stats now. It is a very clever balancing act that they have going here. One thing I have noted now is that ranged attacks for me seem to hit a little harder than melee attacks. I wonder if that was intentional or just a byproduct of how I built up from leveling though?
Either way, the corruption elements add their unique flavor to the gameplay too. I can only imagine what the higher levels could entail for the player though. It might have harsh consequences towards certain points.
The present content still seems to be revolving around shaping the core mechanics and UI though. There is a promise of new content in the works for the story soon so that's good. I don't really mind the delays on the story though when I can see many improvements coming into play with each of the presently weekly updates that the game undergoes. I think 0.1.68 should demonstrate a much more polished release than it already is at 0.1.67. I'm actually pretty satisfied with how the gameplay is setting up. The initial area does get a little old fast but it's a good sampler for the things to come I believe.
The combat is one of the big parts that I'm still working on improving. The reason for the ranged attacks hitting a little harder is that they used to be harder to land a hit with as well (so they were more of the higher risk, higher reward attack).
I think I'm probably going to change melee/ranged into main/off-hand attacks. Some enemies are going to have high resistances to certain damage types, so I think that the way you can equip a different damage type in each hand is enough of a combat mechanic without throwing in obscure hit chance/damage modifiers behind the scenes.
I'm still working on the combat mechanics, so this is all subject to change...
Now that fetishes are in the game as a way to bypass corruption, I'm probably going to ramp up the positive/negative effect balance at higher corruption levels.
You're right in that I'm still shaping the core mechanics and UI. I think all that work will take me up to version 0.1.8, but after that, I'll be free to focus entirely on game balance and adding content.
Can I just ask you to switch the hotkeys from 1-0 to 1-5 and q-t like CoC does it? Much easier to, well, use one-handedly.
You can customise the key binds in the options menu if you'd prefer to use that layout. I would add q-t as secondary key binds by default, but the 'w' key is bound to 'Move North' (as part of the usual W-A-S-D movement keys), so would interfere with the q-t bindings...
Also, I cannot seem to raise corruption in the new patch anymore - surrendered a lot, never got even +1 to the stat even though I made sure to reach 100 arousal before the enemy a lot.
This is a bug, sorry...
That mechanic will be back in the game as of the next release!