Devious Followers - Continued

[Lupine00]

7 hours ago, macnchz said:

4.  wear sign (anal plug one)

I personally find that the combination of prostitution plus anal plug is an odd.

Most dedicated prostitution mods set prices up in increasing order like this:

 

Least Expensive

1. oral
2. vaginal
3. anal
4. rough/bondage

Most expensive

 

So being stuck with a plug is removing one of your earning possibilities.

(More importantly, it's ruling out a lot of animations tagged anal).

 

The sign seems to appeal to some people, and it already has its special place in the existing plug/whore deal.

 

For others, the HDT chain is a real problem, so there's an option to disable it.

 

The plan for the new prostitution deal is about pimping aggressiveness, how many clients you will need to deal with, and the kind of dialogs and cash demands the follower will make.

[Buridan]

2 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

The settings do work.

I'm not sure I agree. Even accounting for widely disparate playstyles, I don't think the default of 300 base daily debt (+15 level-based debt) is enough to cause much financial pressure on any player, unless they have some other mod that turns down the gold faucet or has another gold sink. And you need that financial pressure to push a player towards engaging with the deals system at all.

 

I do love that so much of the settings are freely configurable and not locked away, but the feedback on the changes is delayed, right. For me at least I don't tend to realize I've set something up too leniently until a week or 3-4 levels later when I realize my earnings have far outpaced the follower's debt demands. The effects of changes to willpower/resistance take even longer to become apparent.

 

It also comes back to the "dialing in your own defeat" thing you mentioned before. It's not as satisfying to succumb to the devious follower when you've been incrementally turning up the heat on yourself behind the scenes.

[Lupine00]

16 hours ago, Buridan said:

I'm not sure I agree. Even accounting for widely disparate playstyles, I don't think the default of 300 base daily debt (+15 level-based debt) is enough to cause much financial pressure on any player, unless they have some other mod that turns down the gold faucet or has another gold sink. And you need that financial pressure to push a player towards engaging with the deals system at all.

I don't think those are the actual defaults. I don't think there is any per-level by default. I started a new game last night; I didn't see any.

Note: I went back and checked, and there is a +15 level-based debt by default, but 0 level-based enslavement threshold.

I still don't think it's an issue either way. Nobody leaves those defaults indefinitely and they do minimal-harm in a broad range of game setups.

 

But we were discussing Willpower, not the debt configuration. Pivoting to that is changing the subject entirely.

 

 

Either way... It's better to have settings that are too gentle, and let players turn them up when they are ready.

And even gentle as they are, in some games, they will still be harsh.

In many games the daily debt is not even the issue. It's up to the player.

 

There is no arrangement of settings that will EVER be right for everyone, or even close to that.

 

In an argument about "bad defaults" the real bad defaults are the ones that break your game before you know how the mod works.

DF is trying to give you a bit of time to figure that out before dumping trouble on you.

 

 

Guess what the defaults for SLD are? Every single thing is turned to zero. And that way, the mod will never do anything you didn't tell it to.

 

Compare and contrast with DCL, which by default has high chances of just about anything putting you in a full-set of devices, rapes that get you arrested, plus self-bondage cranked up to silly, and an MCM that locks you out as soon as you're in a device? Is that an example of "settings that work"? Clearly, some number of people actually believe it is, but I'm not one of them, and I'm never going to agree with them. 

 

With the existing mild DF settings, when you're ready for more, you can set what you like.

At each turn if it's too easy, you have plenty of scope to turn it up.

 

Or if that doesn't satisfy, use chaos mode, set it to vary between harsh and impossible, and off you go.

 

 

As for self-adjustment or self-balancing; I've already written a good deal on that topic. The question becomes "self-balance to what state?"

What target is the mod aiming for? Is there some "perfect" number of deals you should have? Is there some ideal period before you are suddenly plunged into financial disaster?

How much should it allow you to deviate from that? What kind of railroad are you on? One where the destination is inevitable?

 

There's no answer to that, it's obviously a nonsensical question. So, what are the criteria for a balanced configuration?

I couldn't come up with any that I could meaningfully measure, that weren't narrow, but if somebody has some fresh insights, I'm open to possibilities.

[spyke123]

This is probably my favourite among mods for submissive play. Just love it... and also love the activity in the thread as of late.

 

For me it has always been hard to have enough deals active though. There is always a stage in a deal that puts me off, and more often than not it is one of the first stages. For example, you need to have a buttplug to get to whoring, and before any sex interaction you need to be wrapped up in tons of devices. (yeah, not the biggest fan of devoius devices). Best deals for me are the ones with interaction and sex. (Barter with merchants, "I am a slut" ect).

 

Without the implementation of modular deals I would probably not be using this mod. This probably sound more negative than intended, and if so then just a reminder that the very first sentence I wrote still applies  ...problem with modular deal tho is that they feel hollow, you loose the sense of progression. In my perfect vision of this mod I would liked to see that every deal has a theme. And that each stage of the deal make you progress even further into that theme…

 

Some examples...

 

Whoring deal:

Stage1: Follower insist you secure income by whoring yourself out from time to time. You control the whens and whats as long as money is coming in...
Stage2: Follower pimps you out. (light, maybe only oral, money split 50-50)
Stage3: Follower get full control. (What you do and with who, follower take all the profit)

 

Ownership deal:

Stage1: Have to wear a collar that says you are owned
Stage2: Have to call follower Master/Mistress (instead of having it happen after X deals it will instead be part of a deal. ...or enforced if enslaved)
Stage3: Something else about beeing owned

 

Sex deal:
Stage1: Follower wants free oral sex (maybe tied to arousal)
Stage2: Follower wants free sex
Stage3: "Hey, I´m not your only follower so why should I get all the fun, we all get free sex". Become fuckdoll for all your "friends" 

 

Control deal:

Stage1: Have to ask permission to sleep. (pretty much tied to when follower needs to rest. If follower dont need to rest then chance is very slim you will be allowed to. Bigger chance if follower is tired but not a guarantee)
Stage2: Have to ask permission to leave town. (Follower might allow it, but random chance follower say no, random chance follower say "yes but only if" -you ask nicely/have sex/take another deal...) 
Stage3: Have to activate gold control

 

Bondage deal - various devices...
Humiliation deal - Naked in town, kiss followers feet in taverns/palaces Submissive Lola style...
Degradation deal - "I am a slut", degradation of character, maybe more nasty stuff (spitting, peeing)...  
Chastity deal - various sex control, plug that increase arousal...
Denial deal - if needs mod installed - denied to eat, denied to relieve yourself...
Whipping deal - spankings, whippings

 

just my contribution to the wall of ideas...    thanks for a great mod Lupine  (and Lozeak) !!

[Reesewow]

53 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

As for self-adjustment or self-balancing; I've already written a good deal on that topic. The question becomes "self-balance to what state?"

What target is the mod aiming for? Is there some "perfect" number of deals you should have? Is there some ideal period before you are suddenly plunged into financial disaster?

How much should it allow you to deviate from that? What kind of railroad are you on? One where the destination is inevitable?

 

There's no answer to that, it's obviously a nonsensical question. So, what are the criteria for a balanced configuration?

I couldn't come up with any that I could meaningfully measure, that weren't narrow, but if somebody has some fresh insights, I'm open to possibilities.

I think one of the things DF does really well is allow the player to tailor the experience to their specific game, at that specific point in time.

 

This does require a fair amount of understanding on what the individual settings will do, and what a player's average gold input and resistance/willpower loss will be based on the mod environment and the activities they typically get up to.  I don't know if there's really a good way to get there without testing things out and tweaking things over time until the mod is too hardcore, then backing off a bit.  

 

Right now I'm just getting into a new playthrough with a lot of mods I hadn't used properly before (needs mods + a gear degradation mod + SLS as a low-level character) so I really have no clue yet where my DF settings should fall to hit the "sweet spot".  Which in the past for me is for DF to require slightly less than my typical surplus gold in normal play.  I personally enjoy DF most when it is mostly a background pressure that becomes a gameplay focus after other events cause me to go into debt, like abusing the key game or device removal too often.

 

That being said - an idea for better "defaults" could be to add preset profiles that cover a handful of different difficulty levels for willpower and gold requirements.  Then a newer user doesn't necessarily need to try to parse the entire MCM menu to figure out what to tweak to make things harder/easier, they could pick a more difficult preset until they hopefully find something that gives them results more in line with what they want from the mod.  For some that might be good enough, but I imagine most would probably then go into the MCM menu to tweak things with the preset as the new baseline.

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, spyke123 said:

For me it has always been hard to have enough deals active though. There is always a stage in a deal that puts me off, and more often than not it is one of the first stages.

What you are interested in is closer to what I was hoping from modular deals originally.

 

The idea that was (sort of) in my head was that in the existing deals where some bondage device is applied and it doesn't really matter which, it could be a random device, or maybe the player could decide what devices might satisfy that.

 

e.g. The classic Bondage Deal has a corset requirement. It could have been some other item. The reason it's a corset is really because other items are used in other deals: collar, belt, armbinder, etc. And some were considered too annoying (blindfold), so it was wired to corset. The classic deals have a certain logic to most parts of them.

The whore/plug deal less than most. It makes sense if you think about the sign, which was clearly what it was made for, but if you disable the sign, it becomes a bit odd.

 

The deals you put up are a sort of DF classic deals remix, apart from the Control deal.

The planned whore deal (again, see roadmap on Blog) isn't quite what you're asking for, but it's quite close. Very close.

 

The control deal is something else again. Some ideas like that have been floated on and off. Gold Control as a level 3 deal though? That's a big win for the PC, as currently you can simply get it imposed as a punishment for too much debt, or ask for it, on purpose. It's not entirely disadvantageous. If you set the limit low in a theft heavy game, it can save you money.

 

With sleep, the follower is currently the one demanding sleep, to regain their "lives". When your follower is tired, they no longer function nicely.

But there are certainly things that can be done with sleep; deals where the follower might interrupt your sleep or occasionally obstruct it altogether, and deals where the follower needs extra sleep.

Serious disruption of sleep seems like something that should be limited to slavery though, as not many things are. It's a powerful way to keep you unable to escape the follower's demands.

 

It would be good to have some sort of mini-game to enable a sufficient amount of sleep to regain willpower in slavery mode.

 

 

1 hour ago, Reesewow said:

That being said - an idea for better "defaults" could be to add preset profiles that cover a handful of different difficulty levels for willpower and gold requirements.  Then a newer user doesn't necessarily need to try to parse the entire MCM menu to figure out what to tweak to make things harder/easier, they could pick a more difficult preset until they hopefully find something that gives them results more in line with what they want from the mod.  For some that might be good enough, but I imagine most would probably then go into the MCM menu to tweak things with the preset as the new baseline.

Feel free to make them  Seriously. You can save and restore your MCM settings. If you make some named sets, I can work up a drop down to select and load them by name. If you get them to me before 2.12 (which is a week or three away) I'll get the feature in there.

Don't forget to configure Chaos Mode to match ... I think it saves its config too (if not its state).

 

Or hold off and wait, because I want to get the overall cost scaling in 2.12, and that should give two sliders that will let you configure the overall cost scaling per-level, which is currently more of a twiddle everything activity. I should think in practice you'll still end up twiddling, but it will reduced.

 

 

I'm going to add some tweaks to how resistance config works in 2.12 that should lead to default configs giving more resistance and a bit more clarity on what the default set-up does.

 

I'm also going to provide an option to make willpower regains random, with a tickbox to turn that on or off (off by default).

 

If your calculated regain amount is 6, if you enable random regain, you will regain between 0 and 6 points (inclusive) randomly.

That will have the overall effect of halving your regain rate over time, but it will also make regains less of a sure thing.

If you happen to be getting a bit heavy into the STA masochism, and banking on consistent willpower regains to keep yourself "safe", there's a chance it could all go horribly wrong.

 

[Darkwing241]

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Feel free to make them  Seriously. You can save and restore your MCM settings. If you make some named sets, I can work up a drop down to select and load them by name. If you get them to me before 2.12 (which is a week or three away) I'll get the feature in there.

I was actually thinking of doing this.  Frankly a ton of Lupine mods have a lot of options mcm settings to go through.  One could make a bunch of different option with plain english and/or immersive descriptions.

 

The Slow Burn DF: For use with normal skyrim gameplay.  In the short run the DF will be easily managable, but long run boredom may lead to trouble.   

 

For use with DCL: High threshold of max debt and lower device removal cost to compensate for use with mods that put large numbers of devices on the player.

 

I currently don't have much experience tweaking SLAX and disparity though.  So I'd probably need to work that out first.

[Buridan]

10 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I don't think those are the actual defaults. I don't think there is any per-level by default. I started a new game last night; I didn't see any.

Dropping the rest as it seems like there's a fundamental disagreement there, but is this not what everyone sees in the DFC (2.11) MCM when they start up a new game? I assumed these are these are the defaults, they're what the numbers snap back to as well if I use the 'default' button on the sliders.

[Reesewow]

6 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Feel free to make them  Seriously. You can save and restore your MCM settings. If you make some named sets, I can work up a drop down to select and load them by name. If you get them to me before 2.12 (which is a week or three away) I'll get the feature in there.

Don't forget to configure Chaos Mode to match ... I think it saves its config too (if not its state).

 

Or hold off and wait, because I want to get the overall cost scaling in 2.12, and that should give two sliders that will let you configure the overall cost scaling per-level, which is currently more of a twiddle everything activity. I should think in practice you'll still end up twiddling, but it will reduced.

Yea was hoping it would be as simple as saving the profile and sharing it.  The MCM save/load feature has been a huge help - it is only now that I'm finally playing a non level 80 character that I'm needing to play the fiddle game.

 

That being said, where are the saved profiles located?  "skse\plugins\DeviousFollowers"?

 

Once 2.12 is out perhaps longtime users could simply share their preferred settings with a description.  Hopefully the user base has different enough games that you'd get a pretty decent variety of settings to throw in a dropdown for new players.

 

Quote

iIf you happen to be getting a bit heavy into the STA masochism, and banking on consistent willpower regains to keep yourself "safe", there's a chance it could all go horribly wrong.

 

Part of my new game challenge is definitely balancing STA masochism and willpower.  First thing is to balance STA itself - I think my poor new character ended up becoming a masochist in like 3 game days time trying to navigate Riften and Whiterun.

[HexBolt8]

2 hours ago, Buridan said:

I assumed these are these are the defaults, they're what the numbers snap back to as well if I use the 'default' button on the sliders.

Unfortunately you can't assume that the "Default" button on the slider gives you the original starting value.  Those two values are set up separately, and if a mod author is careless with copy/paste, that default button could be set to something other than the original starting value.  I haven't looked at how that's set up here.  I'm just passing on a general caution about how that default button works in any mod's MCM.

[Aldid]

Quick question: Would it be possible to add the option to only allow certain genders on prostitution deals? I realize that such an option goes against the degradation and the idea that the follower is always in control, but I am personally not at all interested in seing heterosexual sex, whether implied or explicit...

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, Aldid said:

Quick question: Would it be possible to add the option to only allow certain genders on prostitution deals? I realize that such an option goes against the degradation and the idea that the follower is always in control, but I am personally not at all interested in seing heterosexual sex, whether implied or explicit...

Maybe if I get around to fixing the scanner properly.

[Nepro]

If follower sold you via Simple Slavery he or she should be present at the auction house when NPCs bid on player price that would be nice eastern egg. ?

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, Nepro said:

If follower sold you via Simple Slavery he or she should be present at the auction house when NPCs bid on player price that would be nice eastern egg

Lots of things would be nice in Simple Slavery. I dare not look into that chalice of horrors.

 

You can set your existing follower as the person who buys you in SS, so they sell you and buy you again. Hilarity.

[Balgin]

1 hour ago, Lupine00 said:

Lots of things would be nice in Simple Slavery. I dare not look into that chalice of horrors.

 

You can set your existing follower as the person who buys you in SS, so they sell you and buy you again. Hilarity.

Funnily enough, if you don't set someone else then that actually seems to be the default (or at least it ends up being your existing follower more often than not).

[Aldid]

13 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Lots of things would be nice in Simple Slavery. I dare not look into that chalice of horrors.

 

You can set your existing follower as the person who buys you in SS, so they sell you and buy you again. Hilarity.

Like a practical joke. You thought you might get a less sadistic master for once, but nope, here they are again. Back to taunt you and buy you back with the money you gave them

[colddagger]

I'm having issues trying to get my fatigue down. Buying out of deals doesn't seem to affect it at all and I can't get the priest donation dialogue to show up. I tried to manually add the faction to danica in whiterun but with no luck.

I had the same problem on my previous playthrough tho this is a new character that's using DF 2.11. Same problem still.

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, colddagger said:

I tried to manually add the faction to danica in whiterun but with no luck.

That wouldn't work because she is already in the faction.

If the dialog isn't showing, it's likely for other reasons.

You should have over 1000 gold. If you're in gold control it may be impossible to pay (which is by design).

 

I moved the priest dialog to an entirely different quest, so it should work in an updated game.

 

Try a Reset of of your DF and see if this changes anything related to dialogs.

 

Failure to lose Fatigue due to deal buyouts is more problematic. That is hardwired into the scripts.

Check your log. If you are seeing complaints about None objects in DF scripts that would be an indicator of problems.

If you have such messages in a log. Please compress it and upload.

[colddagger]

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

That wouldn't work because she is already in the faction.

If the dialog isn't showing, it's likely for other reasons.

You should have over 1000 gold. If you're in gold control it may be impossible to pay (which is by design).

 

I moved the priest dialog to an entirely different quest, so it should work in an updated game.

 

Try a Reset of of your DF and see if this changes anything related to dialogs.

Oh I have plenty of gold, tried reset but the dialogue is still missing.

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Failure to lose Fatigue due to deal buyouts is more problematic. That is hardwired into the scripts.

Check your log. If you are seeing complaints about None objects in DF scripts that would be an indicator of problems.

If you have such messages in a log. Please compress it and upload.

Okay I enabled debug logging and tried to make a deal and then buy out of it. Got a bunch of such messages.

I'm attaching the log.

 

Great mod btw. This minor inconvenience aside. I am really enjoying it.

Papyrus.1.log

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, colddagger said:

Great mod btw. This minor inconvenience aside. I am really enjoying it.

Yep. Broken due to missing property values.

Thanks for the log.

 

Should be fixed in 2.12.

[deviant51]

I have the same problem with fatigue. 

go to temples with thousands of gold but they don't have new dialogue options. 

is there a way to reset it via console or something?

don't get me wrong I would love the addition of the fatigue counter, but this makes the entire mod unplayable ones your fatigue gets to high...

 

[colddagger]

2 hours ago, deviant51 said:

I have the same problem with fatigue. 

go to temples with thousands of gold but they don't have new dialogue options. 

is there a way to reset it via console or something?

don't get me wrong I would love the addition of the fatigue counter, but this makes the entire mod unplayable ones your fatigue gets to high...

 

set _DFFatigue to 0

[Aldid]

Does anyone else have problems with Chaos mode? For me it seems to calculate once, then never again. No matter how much I wait or rest, the values stay the same

[Lupine00]

9 hours ago, deviant51 said:

I have the same problem with fatigue. 

go to temples with thousands of gold but they don't have new dialogue options. 

That's a different problem entirely.

The problem I fixed last night was failure to remove fatigue due to debt payoffs.

 

There seem to be a whole host of issues with unset properties. Which bugs me, because I know I set and tested those properties, but at some point they stopped being set.

However, those things showing up in a release is my fault for not fully testing release installs.

 

The priest dialog not showing up has nothing to do with properties.

The dialog conditions on the (new) owning quest are inappropriate.

It was something I thought about, and even looked at, when I moved the lines, but I clearly didn't check them carefully enough.

Again, if I'd tested that feature, it would have shown up immediately.

 

 

In most cases, it's still better to put out a release that hasn't been tested properly, because you still get more fixes than you get new bugs.

The important parts were tested quite a lot.

If I have to test every change on a different setup, it would hold the releases up for days or weeks.

If people tested and reported on betas, again, these things would be detected prior to release.

Some things did get fixed due to beta bug reports.

 

Given the awful state of modular deals, I was prepared to leave a few things "maybe fixed but not actually tested" to get the deal system fixes out ASAP.

I think that was probably still the right thing to do. Nothing new got broken, but some fixes didn't work.

 

Fatigue not working right is an annoyance, but not a game breaker.

You can just adjust fatigue from the console, or neuter it in the MCM.

 

However, I'll try and make sure it is actually working for 2.12  

 

 

If there's a feature you care about, then you should test the beta and report. That's your chance to make sure you get the fix you're looking for.

[deviant51]

On 4/28/2020 at 9:27 PM, colddagger said:

set _DFFatigue to 0

this doesn't work. the game doesn't regonize the command "set_DFFatigue"