Your gripes with CoC II

[Tide Hunter]

I didn't respond to this because I thought its a non-argument but I remember someone saying the same thing in a convo I had a minute ago on the Forum. I just don't see the point of gutting something that only needed to be organized/fleshed out a little more; Your wanting to optimize is an intrinsic goal (a goal you set for yourself) that should be none of the Devs' concern, the benefits are there to give the mechanic depth and make TFs seem important. ER and FF14 are recent major examples that ppl will do what they want regardless of balance, for every Moonlight spammer there are plenty of ppl that just cosplay a themed knight or build and you know what they did to that moonlight build? They rebalanced it to be in competitive with the other weapons. FF14's cosmetics all have stats yet you don't see everybody rocking the same build or clothes, do you?

The point is that the devs don't want your build to be reliant on your tfs. They want to keep your appearance and transformations purely cosmetic outside of the soulbinds, and the soulbinds only get to have an effect because they lock you into an appearance and have major story implications for your character. The builds are tied to your gear, your stats, your class (with its perks), and your powers, and should not be tied to your cosmetic choices.

This is the same reason why they removed stat affinities. It wasn't fun for me to try to make a cowgirl spellblade, only to realize that I was only able to level up strength if I gave her enough appearance changes to have her be considered a minotaur. If they added in perks or powers for being specific races, like a 5% damage resistance perk as a minotaur and an at will "milk squirt" power for cowgirls, I'd be just as unhappy because the game would be directly saying "If you want to be this build, you should be x race, not y race."

 

[Melancholy Man]

The point is that the devs don't want your build to be reliant on your tfs. They want to keep your appearance and transformations purely cosmetic outside of the soulbinds, and the soulbinds only get to have an effect because they lock you into an appearance and have major story implications for your character. The builds are tied to your gear, your stats, your class (with its perks), and your powers, and should not be tied to your cosmetic choices.

I've discussed this point ad nauseam with other folks so all I have to say is it is what it is, a shallow cosmetic system, whatever man.

This is the same reason why they removed stat affinities. It wasn't fun for me to try to make a cowgirl spellblade, only to realize that I was only able to level up strength if I gave her enough appearance changes to have her be considered a minotaur. If they added in perks or powers for being specific races, like a 5% damage resistance perk as a minotaur and an at will "milk squirt" power for cowgirls.

that just sounds like a poorly executed concept, their making an error, and then backtracking to fix it doesn't prove that TFs can't have depth. It just proves that execution is king and sometimes we have to go back to the drawing board.

I'd be just as unhappy because the game would be directly saying "If you want to be this build, you should be x race, not y race."

You mean like 90% of all RPGs even the OG that spawned them?

 

[Savin]

it is what it is, a shallow cosmetic system

Yes, that's the point.

 

[Ossa]

Was going to say it but Savin beat me to it. Kek.

The entire point is that they don't want TFs to affect your build, powers or capabilities. It's meant to appeal to fetishism, character customisability and those who just want to place as a certain race. CoC 1 saw people minmaxing the most ridiculous of builds using specific TFs, and while some might not bat an eye at that, the reality is that when balancing new content you have to balance it according to the usual PC strength.

If you weren't TFing to the max, you were always much, much weaker than you could be. And it's understandable, I think, that people weren't too fond of that.

 

[Tullaki4]

Does anyone have any advice at all on how to make the final fight in the Dracia dungeon easier? because by this point im at my wits end.
No matter what i try i just cannot seem to beat her whatsoever. I've switched classes and gear 4 times to try and approach the battle from different angles and every single time she beats me. Its actually enraging how hard the fight is, and even with Arona or Brint on my team its like butting my head against a brick wall.
I've had combat starts against Alissa where she just 1-shots Arona or nearly outright kills one of my party members before i can even do anything.
Normally i've been able to get past the 1st phase, but now i find i can't even get past that because of the insane ammount of healing chucked out by the Demon Jester and the Etheryn Clones. You deal over 200 damage to one of them and before you can cough, they're back to full.
Any help would be greatly appreciated because im at a loss right now.

 

[Kesil]

I had enough with Queenly Rainment Etheryn and Celestial Smite, so holy powers may be your answer.
In fact, I feared I beat the final fight too fast and missed any mirrorable powers!

 

[Shrike675]

You can always change the difficulty to story. Along with that, try playing on manual and inflicting bleed on Alissa since that'll halve healing.

 

[Tide Hunter]

Having just completed Shadows over the Sun yesterday, my gripe is that the Wing of Asira has just 20 total damage. Like, seriously. A set of blades, numerous enough to make up the wing of a bird on par with a dragon in size and power, carrying some of the power of that bird after its passing, and it is easily outperformed with an ordinary dagger you can buy at a blacksmith.

Spoiler: Images

These were both done with the weapon in the main hand slot.

The Wing has high accuracy which negates the offhand penalty, and its damage is so low that offhanding it won't matter that much, so I guess it's made for being the second weapon in a dual-wielding pair, but like... Seriously. 20 base damage, compared to the dagger's 30. If I were going to actually use light weapons (this character is a caster so she's actually taking the dress) I would never use this. Even the Chrsanthemum Petal would probably outperform this thing, due to it having 30 damage and 5 armor penetration, and that's ignoring that it grants you Blessed when you land a crit.

Was it seriously intended to be just 20 damage? It can't have been, right? Its unique effect is nowhere near good enough to make up for having 10 less damage than every other competitor in the game. Looking at the wiki, there are only 4 other weapons with less than 30 damage, those being the Kunai (which inflicts bleed for more actual total damage), Trident (which also inflicts bleed for more total damage), and the new Club and Light Hammer. Both of those are light weapons, but they still have more base damage than the godly artifact, on top of having really high armor penetration which would effectively boost their damage against armored foes.

 

[Melancholy Man]

Yes, that's the point.

lame <_<

 

[Melancholy Man]

CoC 1 saw people minmaxing the most ridiculous of builds using specific TFs, and while some might not bat an eye at that, the reality is that when balancing new content you have to balance it according to the usual PC strength.

I've seen this point given as a defense and I don't see it because I'm playing it now (recently a day ago, I got it in my cycle) and I don't midmax, I play how I want; the only time I change is if I want to see a scene I have a feeling will be different (that kelly sex scene hits different when you're a Centaur) or collect a neat ability then change to keep it if it can be kept (my problem is that I can't remove them if I don't them). The game's combat isn't deep or hard for that matter, it could definitely have gone better places if it took so hints from FF13 or Pokemon. The people you're talking about are ppl that just follow incentives without thinking, that's on them if they want to optimize that's what they want to do. To bring back that Kelly example is that I'm playing a Pure-ish Dragon-morph cause dragons are cool but Kelt keeps molesting me so I want some deeply ironic jungle justice, I turn into Centaur just for this moment, and get my revenge, a special scene, and a slave; while from a story perspective, I get to see the horrible loop of victim emulating abuser that seems to be one of the through lines in Mareth and the ludonarritive of both the PC and Me the player getting used the degeneracy and becoming apart of the corruption develops in realtime, its that subtle horror I appreciate. At no point in time does Kick -the ability you get from having hoofs- come to my mind as a priority. Some ppl might discover kick first then realize that scenes can change based on appearance, AIN'T NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. If ppl want to midmax, AINT NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. The Dev's job is just to make sure his/hers gameplay is engaging, interesting, and balanced so that abilities stay competitive with each other and not broken.

 

[Tide Hunter]

stuff

You're going to get absolutely nowhere with this conversation. Every time you get an argument against your point your response is "But I don't feel that way." And that's fine, but at this point you're not going to get the game rebalanced to cater to what you're asking for. Personally, my constant drive for minmaxing specific builds has ruined my ability to play TiTS in certain ways I would have once enjoyed because I constantly get the brain niggle of "You could be doing way better if you did x/y." This is even with just the minmaxxy stuff you can do outside of TFs in that game, because the tfs have relatively little combat impact beyond an enemy liking certain body types more. CoC2 feels like it's done way better in mitigating the things that make my brain scream "You're doing it wrong!" if I don't do them.

that just sounds like a poorly executed concept, their making an error, and then backtracking to fix it doesn't prove that TFs can't have depth. It just proves that execution is king and sometimes we have to go back to the drawing board.

Any attempt at executing on the idea of having TFs have a mechanical/combat impact will take it down the track of "you're not doing it right if you don't do this." Unless the impact is completely and utterly useless, in which case you'd be unhappy, given the way you've been going on about it.

 

[Sacremas]

CoC2 feels like it's done way better in mitigating the things that make my brain scream "You're doing it wrong!" if I don't do them.

You're lucky; my own obsessive-compulsive brain has forced me to reboot day 140 characters because I decided I couldn't live without that +1 to strength or will I could have gotten from another race or background. So at this point, while it may make things more homogeneous and boring to some, to my obsessive min-maxer mind who is absolutely decided there's only ONE way to play a lot of classic CRPG games and every other variation is just plain intentionally gimping yourself for no reason, I'm left instead focusing on actual characteristics and how interesting X or Y type of character could be to play, as opposed to what minute statistical bonuses they could give me.

Though do have more than a few "you started your journey as a Lupine/Wyld Elf" characters that's now something completely different...

 

[CboyC95]

We still can't top Quintillus, Keros, or Tetsuya when having sex with them?

 

[Bluebird42]

We still can't top Quintillus, Keros, or Tetsuya when having sex with them?

I know Jstar is planning on writing scenes with Tetsuya where you can top him, but that's after he's finished writing the dungeon for the Corrupted Lupine questline.

Topping Quin won't be for a long time and will only be available after marrying him. BubbleLord is super busy recently, so I genuinely don't know when he'll be able to get to it.

No clue about Keros. That would be up to Tobs and I don't know if he ever plans to add to Keros' sex menu.

 

[Melancholy Man]

You're going to get absolutely nowhere with this conversation. Every time you get an argument against your point your response is "But I don't feel that way." And that's fine, but at this point you're not going to get the game rebalanced to cater to what you're asking for. Personally, my constant drive for minmaxing specific builds has ruined my ability to play TiTS in certain ways I would have once enjoyed because I constantly get the brain niggle of "You could be doing way better if you did x/y." This is even with just the minmaxxy stuff you can do outside of TFs in that game, because the tfs have relatively little combat impact beyond an enemy liking certain body types more. CoC2 feels like it's done way better in mitigating the things that make my brain scream "You're doing it wrong!" if I don't do them.

Ah yes, disregard my feelings while putting yours on a pedestal, mhmm. <_< It's not about getting a rebalance- tho it would be nice, it's about hearing why the change and seeing why just rubs me the wrong way because Millions on millions of ppl games just like me doing their own thing but still using the benefits provided when they want to. Players tend to follow incentives, yes, but that happens in a learning curve; usually, after understanding how mechanics work ppl start to experiment then they settle into a role they made for themselves or a premade role, these aren't just my feelings either but takes and thoughts from GDC takes from a bunch different Devs from Arkane studios to Indie devs to Warren Spector, I am paraphrasing but it still stands. I'm not throwing you out in the cold but I'm betting you're still optimizing your build every time a patch comes out and that's fine but shallow mechanics bring games down IMO.

 

[Naterzd]

Hey, I’m having problems fighting Queen Alissa in her beast form I don’t know if she’s glitch, but she has super health regeneration I can’t get past no matter how many times I reload the fight with a different build I tried teasing her nothing happened I tried going be throw the dungeon to see if I missed any notes on beating her or quest related items but nothing is working for me I’m I just in this final loop of doing some damage or no damage

 

[CasualAntlerEnjoyer]

Ah yes, disregard my feelings while putting yours on a pedestal, mhmm. <_< It's not about getting a rebalance- tho it would be nice, it's about hearing why the change and seeing why just rubs me the wrong way because Millions on millions of ppl games just like me doing their own thing but still using the benefits provided when they want to. Players tend to follow incentives, yes, but that happens in a learning curve; usually, after understanding how mechanics work ppl start to experiment then they settle into a role they made for themselves or a premade role, these aren't just my feelings either but takes and thoughts from GDC takes from a bunch different Devs from Arkane studios to Indie devs to Warren Spector, I am paraphrasing but it still stands. I'm not throwing you out in the cold but I'm betting you're still optimizing your build every time a patch comes out and that's fine but shallow mechanics bring games down IMO.

I get where your argument is stemming from Melancholy, it does kind of suck for some of us that we can't have a bit more mechanical/statistical flavor for specific traits/characteristics, I've always been someone who could not care less if I'm playing sub-optimally as long as it gets me to finish-line in a way I find tasteful.

To be honest, I've always found the inability for some of let go of powerplaying and min/maxing to be quite frankly absurd, but that's just from my own perspective. Everyone is different, and from what I've gathered over the years that drive for optimization is often an actual compulsion for these people, it is very hard for them to ignore that they're not getting that 5% extra flame resistance on a tank because they're not playing as a firelizardbornthing.

The benefits outweigh the losses here, this is a game more about the smut, character expression and story than the combat mechanics at the end of the day(that is not to say that combat is a small part of the overall experience or lacking in quality, but the working theory is that the raunchy smut game attracts people that like raunchy smut first and foremost). Whilst this is a small slap on the wrist in regards to character building for those of us that like a bit more immersive flavoring, it's also a huge boon to those that would like to get creative with their champions but have trouble keeping themselves from stat-chasing.

...Though you'd also think anyone concerned with having their character as powerful as possible would of done the logical thing and gotten their champ an imposing and regal rack of antlers, and yet I see so many go antlerless.

 

[Melancholy Man]

The benefits outweigh the losses here, this is a game more about the smut, character expression and story than the combat mechanics at the end of the day(that is not to say that combat is a small part of the overall experience or lacking in quality, but the working theory is that the raunchy smut game attracts people that like raunchy smut first and foremost). Whilst this is a small slap on the wrist in regards to character building for those of us that like a bit more immersive flavoring, it's also a huge boon to those that would like to get creative with their champions but have trouble keeping themselves from stat-chasing.

I get that but getting creative with your character is also shucked because things that composed the PC (history, Perks, TFs appendages) rarely provide content that provides that feeling of self-expression, I'm not going to gripe too hard about it because its a writing problem more than a gameplay problem, and I completely understand having a problem writing for divergent paragraphs and lines because I'm trying to write a butt scene for the rider queen to submit but shit is actually challenging, taking into a count of too much will be overbearing but lack representation is blatant. Placeholders/copy-paste Tfs acknowledgment can only placate a player long enough for them to realize their TF holds no bearing on the scene whether smutty or narrative driven, took me legit 5mins of experimentation to realize that shit did not matter.

...Though you'd also think anyone concerned with having their character as powerful as possible would of done the logical thing and gotten their champ an imposing and regal rack of antlers, and yet I see so many go antlerless.

I fucks with Antlers but doors are my enemy

 

[Tide Hunter]

...Though you'd also think anyone concerned with having their character as powerful as possible would of done the logical thing and gotten their champ an imposing and regal rack of antlers, and yet I see so many go antlerless.

If the character creator had a species with antlers and an option to choose their size, I'd probably max them out whenever making characters. But it doesn't, so I end up generally not going with something that could have some.

 

[Sacremas]

I frequently add ram horns to my elves via the sheep TF (something about the deer one that just offputs me, but some nice curly either cute or intimidating depending ram horns would be nice), or good old demon horns or huge mino horns. So I'm actually horny more often than not.

 

[Lolipop]

Even the Chrsanthemum Petal would probably outperform this thing, due to it having 30 damage and 5 armor penetration, and that's ignoring that it grants you Blessed when you land a crit.

No more. It got nerfed No bless...

 

[Tide Hunter]

No more. It got nerfed No bless...

Oh, well, now it's just stronger as a direct damage dealing option, which sends it even higher above the 20 damage supposedly legendary artifact.

 

[JakeFromStateFarm]

i know ive already posted this gripe here, but seriously, fucking let us punch shit if we get disarmed. i dont carry remedy, and it really is stupid that enemies can still deal damage to us even if they are disarmed, but we cant return the favor. i dont have many gripes about this game, its overall a well made game, but not being able to do anything but stand around with my thumb up my ass for three turns fucking infuriates me. theres a lot of suspension of disbelief in this game, but not being able to punch someone with a heavy metal gauntlet as a warrior really brings reality crashing back down. either make the enemies not able to do shit while disarmed, or let us punch back.

 

[Sacremas]

i know ive already posted this gripe here, but seriously, fucking let us punch shit if we get disarmed. i dont carry remedy, and it really is stupid that enemies can still deal damage to us even if they are disarmed, but we cant return the favor. i dont have many gripes about this game, its overall a well made game, but not being able to do anything but stand around with my thumb up my ass for three turns fucking infuriates me. theres a lot of suspension of disbelief in this game, but not being able to punch someone with a heavy metal gauntlet as a warrior really brings reality crashing back down. either make the enemies not able to do shit while disarmed, or let us punch back.

This is one of the reasons I always make sure all my characters have at least mediocre Sexiness so that I can just use Tease if someone disarms them. Angling towards a Presence based build will boost your companions a lot anyway, and then just toss on some nice silk lingerie and you'll have enough Sexiness to at least not be completely useless when disarmed.

 

[Sacremas]

I'm not sure if this is a bug exactly so I didn't make a bug report, but this is annoying as hell and I don't know if it's my settings or something else causing it. When looking at a character sheet via pressing the dots to see their powers, I keep having this issue with my party members, where most of them are invisible and it's impossible to move it, in this image this is Elthara's character sheet during Spectre of the Wyld, now regardless of what I do I can't see anything more than that, pressing that "Fire..." (Fireball presumably) does nothing, so I can't check out her other powers. I wish there was a slider of some sort, or some other way to move powers ahead, as this happens 90 % of the time for me. This is with the windows client, on 1920x1080 resolution which is native for my laptop, just in case it's a screen resolution problem.

Spoiler

 

[Gabranth]

Finally made an account, after reading the entire thread.

I'll start by saying that I LOVE this game, started playing ~2 years ago, and it's come a long way. So, please, don't take what I'll say as an attack, or anything like that. With that out of the way:

Fox Den, I feel like I could just say those two words and people would get it. Seriously, what's up with that? Only things that might make it bearable are Tetsuya, props to JStar for him, Kohaku, and Rindo.
Hell, it got so bad that now I just don't visit the place, which sucks because I love Kitsune, except those annoying ones in the Frostwood, Kura's good though.

Still Kitsune related:
My beloved Kinu and Kiyoko.
Kinu is the ONLY kid I had in all of FenCo's games, she was so sweet that I couldn't bear to leave her trapped in the orb, something I instantly regretted because of how her stuff is handled once she's free.

So, no more Kiyoko or Kinu for me, which, again, sucks, but maybe that's a "me" problem, although based on what I've read here, might not be a "me" thing.

Moving on:
Evelyn. Bro, I love talking to chars in this game, finding out stuff about them, about the world. Here we have an interesting character, royalty, an effing princess!
Gated behind being a sub, at least at first
(Yeah yeah, I know stuff was added later so she can switch) and not even the kind dom, like Annika (Alypia, love your writing) felt more like a piece of meat than a human being. Yeah yeah, I know some people dig it, but a way to interact with her without being reduced to an onahole would be nice.
If not? Meh, plenty of characters to go around.

What else...
What Etheryn went through is inhumane, my gripe(s) would be that:
1- You can't throw that damn cage in a volcano
2- You can't take your sweet time with Alyssa
3- The whole "Idk if I'll ever look at you the same way" Etheryn says after you Oof Alyssa, feelsbadman. I know she was your only family, but c'mon, not even Kas pulls shit like that.

Onward!
Still no alt way to get the "Redemption" path for Kas. Nope, still behind building the temple, which, I thought, was a good thing. Wrooong. (Great scene between Kas and Mallach, so there's that, at least)

Very, very minor thing:
Liaden and Azzy act like they're together during the High Ground quest, which is odd, since I said NO to getting them together.

That content was... Off. But I'll not get into it, because it's been talked to death lol

I think that's it?
Anyways, all in all, great game, it's come a long way since I first found it.

Savin, my dude, beautiful thing you have here.

 

[TVGuru]

The entire point of the Elthara/PC scene existing is so you can let Ryn blow off her steam, not get fucked by her yourself, and then also still be a participant. There is in fact an entire route through the event where you get what you wanted without having to bottom for her literally ever.

Except not wanting to be a voyeur or sharing Elthara.

 

[Everblight]

Holy Ward and other stances like it.

Spoiler

You weave a holy ward around an ally, granting the target a
+20 bonus to Mental, Magical, and Physical Resistances, and regenerating
X Health every turn. When you first enter the stance, the target is healed for ???.

Because you start in stance now you don't get to pick your target with things like Holy Ward. So if you don't get lucky enough for the game to pick the target you want you have to spend a turn retargeting. I feel like this kind of defeats the purpose of the change to starting in stance.

 

[Necros]

Not Enough Kas recently. I am getting serious withdrawals.

 

[Savin]

Not Enough Kas recently. I am getting serious withdrawals.

I am working on the next MSQ bit, which miiiiiight just have a guest appearance by a certain red cowdragon if you play your cards right.