Myrellion Content Discussion (GENERAL)

Smartbites

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 the shady guy who wants honey whose name I can't remember

I love that guy. Second to Embry, he's my favorite part of the planet.

I've always been more fond of the reds. They're upfront and they don't fuck around, I like that. For some reason I've always had the impression that whatever the golds say is something they've painstakingly curated to give off a certain vibe and is always sorta kinda maybe perhaps tangentially related to the actual truth. I don't know why, I just don't really trust them.
 

Nik_van_Rijn

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As a side-note, I can't believe that all of you self-proclaimed small-boobs-lovers forgot about Liliana and Lys. I'm pretty sure that normal (i.e. not-Honeypot) Gold Myr Females are pretty close to Reds in terms of their physique.

All in all, Myrellion is currently doing for my TiTS experience what 'Antz' had done to my cartoon viewing all those years ago: sudden mood swings and surprising themes that in the end make the whole things a better experience. Also, sexy sexy insects.
 
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Kesil

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Aug 26, 2015
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Now I'm just imagining a sexy version of a "licker".

Or a regular one somwhere in the game... Sexiness is in the eye of the beholder, after all!

I love that guy. Second to Embry, he's my favorite part of the planet.
I'm glad to know I'm not alone in that! Also, he makes me think of Futurama's Hyper Chicken, which makes for an amusing mental image.

As a side-note, I can't believe that all of you self-proclaimed small-boobs-lovers forgot about Liliana and Lys.

I didn't. I enjoy talking to them. I only wish Lys stopped popping up when I want to fight against enemies near where she is! If it wasn't because there's neither reason nor room to take them aboard, I would.

Mind you, all three of the diplomats are behaving in extraordinarily unprofessional ways.  Lyralla's banging Kiro, Kiro's given up any pretense of neutrality in the process, and Nehzara accepts bribes of sex from offworlders who she proceeds to drug without information or consent.  This is not going to go well.

McAllister, meanwhile, is undeniably a racist and ethically dubious scientist, if not outright ethically bankrupt.  He's also the chief reason that the gold myr are alive today.  Because that's the thing about Xenogen: they will be the best friends you could ever have, so long as they like you and you don't stand in the way of what they want.  Captain Steele should be wary of getting too buddy-buddy with them, but even more wary of crossing them until the captain's good and ready for the consequences.

You have a very good point here. I can only say "kudos to the writers" for introducing such situation.
 

Karretch

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Aug 26, 2015
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Myr attitudes towards halfbreeds is unmentioned

I'm assuming you're talking about opinions on orange hybrids. In the scene talking to Juro about them he mentions a red begging to get her child off-world because of all the hate from both sides that she feared for the babe's sake. 
 

Nik_van_Rijn

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Oh sweet jesus don't give me ideas.

Push those boundaries, senpai! Caterpillars, Ants, Umber Hulk look-alikes. We have those right now and they are awesome. Death Claws, Hutts, Resident Evil monsters, everyone should join.
 
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TheInfamousImmortal

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Aug 27, 2015
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I'm assuming you're talking about opinions on orange hybrids. In the scene talking to Juro about them he mentions a red begging to get her child off-world because of all the hate from both sides that she feared for the babe's sake. 

Yeah if I'm correct, neither side gives a shit if you're a hybrid of anything else. But if you're a hybrid of red and gold, both sides will hate your guts.
 

Nonesuch

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Firstly who started it doesn't matter at this point. Even if there were an AHA moment where you found out the golds started it and were bad guys all along you know what would change? Nothing. Why? Because the red myr greeted the offworlders like a normal species, with caution, respect, and a healthy level of suspicion. The gold myr on the other hand greeted them with open legs and orifices and played the role whor---I mean damsels in distress. Short of proving the golds guilty of warcrimes or something horrific the gold favoritism should be expected.....especially since all the ingame territory on myrellions surface so far is all gold myr land.(Hold on to your "but kressia--" statements I'm getting to that.)

Given the aliens are the only reason why they aren't getting thoroughly ethnically cleansed right now, it's unsurprising the gold myr are overtly welcoming. Calling them "whores" because of it is hardly fair - particularly in this universe. Similarly that the red myr act more ambivalently has more than a little to do with the fact the U.G.C. have denied them a final victory they feel they richly deserve. You can ascribe it to them having a more level-headed, relatable, honorable society... or you can ascribe it to awe overlaying a considerable amount of bitterness.

We haven't actually seen the Red myr's home...
The ol' Legion in New Vegas problem. I dunno. I'd love to see/personally design a true Federation city, but a) it's not going to happen, and b) how relevant is it, really? A culture is at its most revealing when it is busy occupying somebody else's. Kressia says all that really needs to be said about the Reds - and if they ever get in, Anzhela and Ehstraffe will say rather more.

Make them all orange so no one knows who was red and gold anymore.
We've been over this before. Although Fen might have envisaged it as one, it really is not a magic bullet, for reasons that should be obvious if you think about it for more than a second. Aside from anything else, it's amoral beyond anything the Golds and Reds themselves have ever done.

Myrellion is thus far the most interesting planet in the game by far and I'm curious how much further content will be added to flesh it out.
It is, which I think is one of the reasons why many of the content creators are eager to move on. For a smut game it's... a bit too interesting.
 

Karretch

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Aug 26, 2015
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It is, which I think is one of the reasons why many of the content creators are eager to move on. For a smut game it's... a bit too interesting. 
I always find that excuse to be lacking. I get it, smut game so smut should be focus, but that doesn't mean there can't be other things in it. 
 

Couch

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I always find that excuse to be lacking. I get it, smut game so smut should be focus, but that doesn't mean there can't be other things in it. 

Other things being in it and other things being the dominant aspect are two very different things.  Myrellion's other aspects, for me at least, make the game less fun to play because of how they shine a harsh light on things that can be very difficult to stop thinking about once you see them.  It's why I hope Uveto will be handled more delicately in its serious aspects, because Myrellion, in my opinion, goes too far.
 
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Imanuil

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Sep 16, 2015
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Want to end the myr red/gold war? Make them all orange so no one knows who was red and gold anymore.This actually seems to be the sort of thing those seeking unification would really want to get their hands on....but before i get to into that this brings me to another subject not really touched on: Half-breeds. Myr attitudes towards halfbreeds is unmentioned, there's only one that can be found so far, and she's in the red army.
This is the same as make all the black, white, red and yellow people the hybrids.

Spoiler alert - it will fail. 

In any case we will find the occasion to kill each other. It's in our nature to always compete with each other.

The best thing we can do about it - don't kill! 

Without it we are nothing!

It's about 10 times easier to make gold and red stop killing each other, then force them to becom orange. 

Myr aren't as assholish or violent as humans are, after all...
 

Savin

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The ol' Legion in New Vegas problem. I dunno. I'd love to see/personally design a true Federation city, but a) it's not going to happen, and b) how relevant is it, really? A culture is at its most revealing when it is busy occupying somebody else's. Kressia says all that really needs to be said about the Reds - and if they ever get in, Anzhela and Ehstraffe will say rather more.
After reading that big ol' post he made, I may or may not have started poking at the Red potion of the Myrellion resolution, which I've decided will involve going to the Federation capitol. It'll require some serious shit to unlock -- probably thoroughly convincing the Diplomatic corps (Juro and Nehz both) that you can do some good there, or following through with Sellera's eventual questings.

It's why I hope Uveto will be handled more delicately in its serious aspects, because Myrellion, in my opinion, goes too far.

While I don't agree with your take on things -- I think Myrellion's been a resounding success -- Uveto doesn't really have any "serious" aspects. There's no major, dark plotlines running in the background -- everything's pretty much front and center in the design doc. If you've got a direction you'd like to push the planet's design, I wholeheartedly suggest you comment the shit out of that doc.
 

Couch

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While I don't agree with your take on things -- I think Myrellion's been a resounding success -- Uveto doesn't really have any "serious" aspects. There's no major, dark plotlines running in the background -- everything's pretty much front and center in the design doc. If you've got a direction you'd like to push the planet's design, I wholeheartedly suggest you comment the shit out of that doc.

I can only speak to my own experiences, which have been that Myrellion had a lot fewer people I wanted to bang, a lot more things that made me uncomfortable in scenes that I otherwise might have enjoyed because I couldn't avoid thinking of them, and a lot more reasons to feel like doing anything to advance the outcome I'd like to see would be a Sisyphean task.
 

Nik_van_Rijn

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One of the few questions yet to be asked is: what Victor would have done facing a mess of such proportions? 

@Nonesuch 

Seeing how U.G.C. currently proves itself to be in equal parts indifferent and inadequate when dealing with a crisis like this, I'm very curious about Anatae Empire's modus operandi when facing something like Myrellion.
 

Magic Ted

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While I don't agree with your take on things -- I think Myrellion's been a resounding success -- Uveto doesn't really have any "serious" aspects. There's no major, dark plotlines running in the background -- everything's pretty much front and center in the design doc. If you've got a direction you'd like to push the planet's design, I wholeheartedly suggest you comment the shit out of that doc.

I dunno, I feel that Myrellion is a good example of write team losing track of the game's theme and what they want out of it. What kind of game is TiTs? A porn one, obviously, but also an adventure one, in my eyes. We start at the rather weak planet of Mhen'ga, talking up the town in getting a variety of side quests before running the jungle loop to do them and eventually "complete" the world be getting to the end of one of the path loops. A basic romp, though there isn't much compelling the player forward other then that back of the mind "GET PROBE, YO" bit and how well that is really telegraphed or emphasized is questionable. In a way, it kind of makes me worried about your plans for a particular thing other then Uveto, given it's stop and go hop around nature.

Hop over to Tarkus! Well, actually it's the same sort of tune; run around the town and pick up... one sidequest, I think, then run around the place until you eventually find the end. You practically stumble across the Tether, to memory, with nothing prompting you that way and just a fit of whimsy to take you down it. Heck, you never even find the probe, Shekka just whips it out of no where after you complete the Tether, making it all feel kind of detached and just "yeah alright." Still, you're meandering around, finding stuff and doing something that qualifies as ADVENTURE, even if it might not be my ideal.

Then we roll into Myr which... isn't like the other two planets at all. More in common with the sex-sideshow of New Texas, really; a big town area, a bunch of NPC talking heads that tell you about what's going on, eventually you'll find the person who talks the bestest and nudge your way down into the brief dungeon area to complete the planet. While it's just as much rubbing your face into everything until something clicks and progression ensues, you're just talking to ant land and reading through everyone chattering and yammering on about it. They say how much of a bad time it is and the player is compelled to maybe try and solve it, unlike the lack of compulsions thus far and it's still not really in that Old Campy Star-Wars/etc Adventure the game tries to fit itself with.

Myrellion is deep! Ish! And it's such a stark contrast to everything else and does things very differently that it just doesn't feel right and makes it all kinda spastic. 

Shit, then we hop to Uveto which presents new environmental challenges for all your ADVENTURE needs and it's just a sideshow planet, too.

Dunno, man...
 

Nonesuch

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After reading that big ol' post he made, I may or may not have started poking at the Red potion of the Myrellion resolution, which I've decided will involve going to the Federation capitol. It'll require some serious shit to unlock -- probably thoroughly convincing the Diplomatic corps (Juro and Nehz both) that you can do some good there, or following through with Sellera's eventual questings.
Neat.

I dunno, I feel that Myrellion is a good example of write team losing track of the game's theme and what they want out of it...

This is a problem with TiTS' story itself, not with any of the planets specifically, and why I told you CoC's was better. You zip to world after world because they unlock one after the other (not, it must be said, because any of them are actually mentioned even when you find the data, let alone telling you where the next probe might be and what dangers you might face. Hell, if you happen to impatiently click your way past a "spam e-mail" that pops up, you might readily assume there's a probe on New Texas somewhere) and you haphazardly stumble across each probe not because you were looking for them, particularly, but because they're in one of the last bits of the map. You do this because you are the brat of a rich and ridiculous old man. There's no focus or impetus, really, no overriding threat, unless you're bothering to count Daisy Dastardly. These things are important even in a porn game - motives, drama and urgency that personally affect the PC make sex better, generally. Even if, at the beginning of each planet, you got a small spiel from your nav computer saying something like "It seems the probe fell deep in he jungle" / "There doesn't seem to be any indication of where the probe fell - but there's a lot of activity around the planetary tether" / "Queen Fiftydicks is sitting on it", and that got uploaded to a quest log, things would be a bit better.

Seeing how U.G.C. currently proves itself to be in equal parts indifferent and inadequate when dealing with a crisis like this, I'm very curious about Anatae Empire's modus operandi when facing something like Myrellion.

They wouldn't touch it, even if a big human corporation hadn't staked its flag down. The red myr would probably integrate into their way of doing things pretty well. But it's pretty much a prime example of a planet you'd go light decades out of your way to avoid - fairly barren with three or more war-like races at each other's throats. And they don't have Xenogen's reason for intervening. They'd be far more likely to annex Mhen'ga.
 
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Jacques00

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Even if, at the beginning of each planet, you got a small spiel from your nav computer saying something like "It seems the probe fell deep in he jungle" / "There doesn't seem to be any indication of where the probe fell - but there's a lot of activity around the planetary tether" / "Queen Fiftydicks is sitting on it", and that got uploaded to a quest log, things would be a bit better.
I didn't add any Codex blurbs, but I put some clues in the Codex's log in the latest pull request (#490) if that helps contextualize things. It's up to the writers to make probe reclamation urgent though. Story seems a lot more sandboxy than linear, all things considered--as in the main story is saturated by all the subplots and individual characters, making the main drive of the probe hunting a bit secondary to the secondary content. Whether or not that's a good thing is subjective though, but it's just something I've noticed.
 

CallistheCalloused

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Nov 5, 2015
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Oh man there's alot I want to say right now but lemme try and address some of the main things

The orange myr thing, yes obviously it doesn't fix everything and make everyone magically happy to be orange. But it does stop the gold/red conflict and the halfbreeds benefit most from such a solution, obviously it's wrong to force a species wide change like that. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option. I mean you can allow tarkus to explode, why not make steele a infamous walking disaster known for coming to planets and changing them forever? Ok maybe that's a bit outside the scope of the game but my point is once in awhile you should be able to do the 'bad' thing and I say that as someone who usually plays "good guy Steele" wandering around the universe as if becoming "Captain Save a Ho" is his purpose in life. As for it being worse than anything the myr have done to one another....I'm not so sure about that. Chemical weapons were used in the war by the golds at least.

Quote said:
This is a problem with TiTS' story itself, not with any of the planets specifically, and why I told you CoC's was better. You zip to world after world because they unlock one after the other
Do you remember early CoC? There wasn't a plot besides you're the champion, here's this horribly corrupted world, Figure it out! That was basically it all you could do as hit 'explore' and beat on whatever popped up there weren't even dungeons or much in the way of quests...hell there wasn't even a city and things were changed more than once to make more sense or fit better. I'm sure in time TiTs will have a number of side planets and the means of finding the probes will get refined a bit to make more sense by the time we have the 9 or so main planets plus whatever other side planets might be added.There'll probably be more reasons to wander around too. But putting that aside isn't the point of the game being sort of 'open world' (or open galaxy in this case) that you not feel compelled to just follow the main plot?  It seemed to me more of an intentional design to allow the player to screw around on each planet instead of feeling like you need to hurry on to the next place and miss out on whatever else might be going on,people to meet(and sleep with),items to get etc

Quote said:
I dunno, I feel that Myrellion is a good example of write team losing track of the game's theme and what they want out of it. What kind of game is TiTs? A porn one, obviously, but also an adventure one, in my eyes.
Have you ever played  Monster girl quest?  it starts out really light hearted and the main char at times seems to be accomplishing nothing but gradually it handles some really dark/heavy subject matter with discrimination, and corruption and turns the concept of good and evil on it's head....but it's just a smut game where you get raped by monstergirls if you lose. Adventures sometimes go to dark places....and myrellion isn't even that dark. it could be much much worse. Hell if New texas had a plotline....THAT would probably go to some dark places. You have essentially a dynastic rule over a place that mandates the use of mind altering drugs that have permanent effects, add in a couple of shady tidbits here and there and NT has the potential to be a case of fridge horror waiting to happen probably won't since i doubt there'll ever be a plot for that planet and given people are all bothered by myrellions story i doubt we'll get another 'heavy' story for awhile if ever.

In my eyes if you're not getting involved in things you're not really adventuring. If you're on the sidelines hearing about shit happening and going 'oh hey...that sounds serious...lemme go....somewhere else'  Then you're doing it wrong. Sure Steele isn't necessarily a hero, but part of being a bigshot of a megacompany is being where the important things are happening, I mean look at the grey-goo's on tarkus and the nova construct. That's a pretty hefty moral choice, no one's complaining about that why? because you don't have to deal with any consequences? (Yet anyway) deciding whether to keep handso or destroy her or sell her is another big decision that as yet doesn't have a finished resolution.

I know I'm getting way off topic so I'm going to wrap this up with one last thing.

Quote said:
For a smut game it's... a bit too interesting.
There is no such thing as a game that is too interesting
 

TheInfamousImmortal

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Aug 27, 2015
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I really don't mind there being deep stories like Myrellion or New Texas (if it EVER gets a story expansion), in fact I like it, makes the game a lot more interesting than just a game that just gets your boner going.
 

Fisto

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Aug 26, 2015
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Even if, at the beginning of each planet, you got a small spiel from your nav computer saying something like "It seems the probe fell deep in he jungle" / "There doesn't seem to be any indication of where the probe fell - but there's a lot of activity around the planetary tether" / "Queen Fiftydicks is sitting on it", and that got uploaded to a quest log, things would be a bit better.\
I had a doc for that somewhere, but it was a bar encounter. Thought it was a stupid idea after a bit so I stopped :#
 
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Nonesuch

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Do you remember early CoC? There wasn't a plot besides you're the champion, here's this horribly corrupted world, Figure it out!
But you see, that's perfect. In all of two or three paragraphs, you've told the reader - who's got their dick in their hand, remember - everything they need to know, and you've hooked their attention. There are sex demons and you are lost alone in a strange world, away you go. Five seconds later you can be fucking a goblin. TiTS meanwhile has a long, fairly tedious and contrived introduction which serves to tell us the main character isn't the PC, but Victor. A great deal of time later we're introduced to the main villain, who's just this random asshole who has the audacity to maybe ruin your perfect life. S/he's not SEX DEMONS. Again and again I run into discussions elsewhere about TiTS that straight up complain that it does not hold their attention in comparison to CoC - this is one (not all) of the things they're talking about. Longer and more complicated =/= Better.

There is no such thing as a game that is too interesting
No, but there is such a thing as tone. I would not expect to see a socio-economic breakdown of giant culture in Jack and the Beanstalk. I would not expect to see endless joking asides and silly pictures in a financial study of France in the 18th century. And I would probably not expect to see a meditation on ethnic cleansing and playing God in a porn game. It's fine packing such information behind dialogue options and codex entries for the player that wants to go chasing after it - it's when you start requiring the fapping reader to engage with such material that you have a problem. Myrellion is fine... but it sails pretty close to the wind, in my view. Particularly as, as Ted and Couch allude to, nothing that comes before really prepares the reader for it.
 

Klaital

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Oct 22, 2015
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But you see, that's perfect. In all of two or three paragraphs, you've told the reader - who's got their dick in their hand, remember - everything they need to know, and you've hooked their attention. There are sex demons and you are lost alone in a strange world, away you go. Five seconds later you can be fucking a goblin. TiTS meanwhile has a long, fairly tedious and contrived introduction which serves to tell us the main character isn't the PC, but Victor. A great deal of time later we're introduced to the main villain, who's just this random asshole who has the audacity to maybe ruin your perfect life. S/he's not SEX DEMONS. Again and again I run into discussions elsewhere about TiTS that straight up complain that it does not hold their attention in comparison to CoC - this is one (not all) of the things they're talking about. Longer and more complicated =/= Better.

No, but there is such a thing as tone. I would not expect to see a socio-economic breakdown of giant culture in Jack and the Beanstalk. I would not expect to see endless joking asides and silly pictures in a financial study of France in the 18th century. And I would probably not expect to see a meditation on ethnic cleansing and playing God in a porn game. It's fine packing such information behind dialogue options and codex entries for the player that wants to go chasing after it - it's when you start requiring the fapping reader to engage with such material that you have a problem. Myrellion is fine... but it sails pretty close to the wind, in my view. Particularly as, as Ted and Couch allude to, nothing that comes before really prepares the reader for it.
Well I don't know about you, but I personally at least specifically like the story and exploring and quests most, and am not really all that interested about the porn part. Which is also why I didn't really like CoC that much, because the actual main story part of it was really small, (like three dungeons and thats about it, and even from those, the final boss encounter isn't in), rest was just random stuff which you could fully ignore if you wanted. TiTS instead seems to have quite a lot more interesting story and more quests and things to discover. Although I do agree with the earlier poster that something like a quest log that would actually tell you where to go would be nice, as for main quests you pretty much are just told that the probe is on this planet, go fetch! And some of the side quests are very easy to miss unless you like talk to every npc for every topic they have available. And even then, for some quests you need to talk to them again after doing some other thing first. On my first character, I missed most of the side quests, and even on my second one I still missed a few, because they are not that obvious.
 

Imanuil

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Sep 16, 2015
54
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 Again and again I run into discussions elsewhere about TiTS that straight up complain that it does not hold their attention in comparison to CoC - this is one (not all) of the things they're talking about. Longer and more complicated =/= Better.
I like TiTS more!

I tried CoC yesterday... 

Well, i have got defeated by the first enemy because my usual peaceful way didn't work on him for some reason...

Besides the word "corruption" is a bad sign for me. 

Because i hate the "mind break" and "corruption" genre in fantasy the most! 

On the other hand i can make my character with white hair. That's cool!
 

Couch

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I disagree with Nonesuch in that I enjoy the story of TiTS more than CoC's (though I do agree that it could have been much better), but he and Ted have expressed what I'm trying to describe about tone much better than I have.

The New Texas comparison is particularly apt.  Myrellion's structure is very similar both in the talking-heads aspect and in the way that feeling comfortable around a large chunk of it requires being into a particular fetish, one that if you're not sold on said fetish is instead potentially sickening.  Indeed, I might not be as uncomfortable on the subject of Myrellion as I am had it not come immediately after NT and been such a similar experience, when I was initially looking forward to Myrellion as an escape from the previous six months of NT.
 

TheHappiestMerchantMan

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Oct 5, 2015
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I disagree with Nonesuch in that I enjoy the story of TiTS more than CoC's (though I do agree that it could have been much better), but he and Ted have expressed what I'm trying to describe about tone much better than I have.

The New Texas comparison is particularly apt.  Myrellion's structure is very similar both in the talking-heads aspect and in the way that feeling comfortable around a large chunk of it requires being into a particular fetish, one that if you're not sold on said fetish is instead potentially sickening.  Indeed, I might not be as uncomfortable on the subject of Myrellion as I am had it not come immediately after NT and been such a similar experience, when I was initially looking forward to Myrellion as an escape from the previous six months of NT.

I think Myrellion is worse then NT in that aspect because while NT is completely optional and you never need set foot in bimboland, Myrellion is legitimately required for you to go through in order to get to later content, on account of the probes, which then ties into the problem of gating content behind fetishes. If each probe you got had perhaps a single choice on it (for instance, the mhenga probe gives two options of "the next probe seems to be transmitting from...[some trash planet] or [the site of a recent UGC blockade]) it might be a bit better, but then that's also a large headache fro the writers.
 

Fisto

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Aug 26, 2015
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I think Myrellion is worse then NT in that aspect because while NT is completely optional and you never need set foot in bimboland, Myrellion is legitimately required for you to go through in order to get to later content, on account of the probes, which then ties into the problem of gating content behind fetishes. If each probe you got had perhaps a single choice on it (for instance, the mhenga probe gives two options of "the next probe seems to be transmitting from...[some trash planet] or [the site of a recent UGC blockade]) it might be a bit better, but then that's also a large headache fro the writers.

They're making a alternate starting world other than Mhen'ga if I remember correctly