POLL: Devious Hobble Dress in Skyrim -- How Long Do You Enjoy It?

[El_Duderino]

Hi all,

 

Some of you may know that I'm working on a mod which makes quite some use of DD's hobble dresses. The extreme kind, the one that only allows those shuffling steps (or the bunny-hopping).

 

Which made me wonder, how much tolerance Devious Skyrim players might have in average for the devious hobble dresses. And more to the point, how long they enjoy having their char locked in them, forced to walk ever so sloooowly...

 

I'm hoping that some of you might take the time to answer the poll to give me a better picture of overall user preferences. Depending on the outcome, this may influence my quest design choices. And of course, please add a reply if you have any other related thoughts or don't find your opinion reflected in the six poll choices. 

 

Thanks much!

[Taki17]

The tight hobble dress is an absolute miserable travesty to play. Getting it randomly equipped and trying to play the game will stop it dead on its tracks, and provided there is no way to opt out of having it in the equip pool, I WILL reload an earlier save instead of suffering through having my character slowed to a crawl.

 

In controlled environments, like story scenes, there is a sliver of validity for using it, however having to move around at a maddeningly slow speed while the player is wearing one, and being assigned some repetitive task gets old really fucking fast. And I'm yet to see a single case where it makes a meaningful difference either, the enforced slow walk never adds anything to or enriches the scene, and merely serves to arbitrarily prolong the events by slowing the player down.

[Guest]

There could be some interesting control system to let the player move faster with additional effort. Like hitting a and d back and forth while hitting w to move faster. But even then, it's not particularly accessible to people who can't do QTEs and may get old quick.

[spoonsinger]

I am totally mystified by the lack of space hoppers in this game considering their natural symbiosis with the subject.

 

[krzp]

1 hour ago, Taki17 said:

In controlled environments, like story scenes, there is a sliver of validity for using it, however having to move around at a maddeningly slow speed while the player is wearing one, and being assigned some repetitive task gets old really fucking fast.

Second that.

 

In general, anything that messes with player's speed for a prolonged period gets really tiresome instead of fun pretty quickly for me (looking at you, DCL's storyline ?)

 

I like the hopping animation, though. ?

Edited October 27, 2023 by krzp

[Miauzi]

Vor 23 Minuten sagte Ponzipyramid:

Es könnte ein interessantes Steuerungssystem geben, mit dem sich der Spieler mit zusätzlichem Aufwand schneller bewegen kann. Als würde man a und d hin und her schlagen und gleichzeitig w drücken, um sich schneller zu bewegen. Aber selbst dann ist es für Menschen, die keine QTEs durchführen können und möglicherweise schnell alt werden, nicht besonders zugänglich.

 

For years there has been a "training mod" in which the movement speed increases with the wearing time ... at the highest level you are faster than without the DD hobble dress.

I use this mod e.g. in my blog story about my Skyrim-Isekai character ... this creates interesting effects e.g. in the story about Laura's bondage shop.

In general, the prolonged wearing of DD devices only makes sense in the game if there is a malus-bonus system.

[verel]

My suggestion is to make it a choice with some dialogue. So the player can pick between the relaxed and the strict hobble dress. And maybe scorn them with some banter for picking the dull option.

[El_Duderino]

Thanks much for the responses! There's a trend evolving here, but please keep voting if you haven't yet.

 

One thing already seems clear after the votes so far and the comments in the thread: at a minimum, I ought to put up a big, bold warning that my mod will include wearing hobble dresses. And if possible and practical, come up with a system for adding some choice or even making it entirely optional, though the latter will prove to be quite a challenge as the dresses are in a way integral to my story. So I'd need to provide not only outfit but also various dialog topic changes depending on the player's chosen outfit style, which is a bit tedious to set up given how dialog-heavy my mod is (though very much doable).

 

In short: I'll see what I can do.

 

I've got a follow-up question to those who don't like the tight ("extreme") hobble dresses in Skyrim: do you regard the "relaxed" version as an alternative you can live with for prolonged periods of time (as it "only" prevents running but doesn't mess with the speedmult, or at least not nearly so much)? Or is that also too restrictive for your taste and preferred way of playing the game?

Edited October 27, 2023 by El_Duderino

[oblivioner]

I don't mind them, but as others have said, its more situational.  it would be nice if the shuffle/hop option was included in the game, just at a more extreme stamina cost for the hop.

 

As for the followup, the relaxed ones are fine yeah.

Edited October 27, 2023 by oblivioner

[Taki17]

2 hours ago, El_Duderino said:

do you regard the "relaxed" version as an alternative you can live with for prolonged periods of time (as it "only" prevents running but doesn't mess with the speedmult, or at least not nearly so much)? Or is that also too restrictive for your taste and preferred way of playing the game?

Define prolonged. For the duration of one scene, or one quest? Sure. Two or more quests? Maybe. For the duration of an entire quest line/campaign or indefnitiely? That will require some forethought.

 

Its ultimate viability entirely depens on your ability to make wearing it sufficiently interesting and engaging enough. You can get away locking the player in simple restraints like collars or cuffs for long periods of time, since they don't influence any stats, limit movement and similar capabilities. This is obviously not the case with the hobble dress, since it changes the player's movement speed, takes away the ability to sprint, impacts combat and sneak, and prevents having sex. These are already major changes to the game mechanics available that need to be accounted for, so equiping one such dress will go beyond mere aesthetics.

 

Given the scope of said limitations, equipping it for merely shits and giggles is not going to be particularly engaging beyond 5 minutes. To keep it interesting, there need to be alternatives to the capabilites you hamper/take away from the player with the restraint, otherwise they will just regard getting equipped with this restraint as a fail state, reload their game and don't engage it with the content further.

 

To give you a more exact example: sending the player to clear out a randomly selected base game dungeon while wearing a hobble dress will prove to be more frustrating and annoying than completing a custom created dungeon that takes the limitations placed on the player into account. A question of "you can't do this, and you can only do this to a degree, however here's some extra stuff you can do or only do while wearing the restraint".

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Taki17

[El_Duderino]

11 hours ago, Taki17 said:

Define prolonged. For the duration of one scene, or one quest? Sure. Two or more quests? Maybe. For the duration of an entire quest line/campaign or indefnitiely? That will require some forethought.

Hi and thanks (to everybody!) who has kindly posted here. This is very valuable insight and information into other players' likes and dislikes.

 

I already strongly suspected that the answers 5 and 6 in the poll would not win the majority, but I must say I am surprised that the overall response is more negative towards the dresses than I expected.

 

I've given it some more thought last night and a plan is beginning to form. For once, I will definitely supply an option to use the "relaxed" dresses in any situations where the mod ("Ebonitium") would by default call for the "extreme" version. What I won't do, simply because it's just too much work given the 600+ lines of dialog I've already written (with frequent mention of the dresses), is to allow to opt out entirely during the part of the mod that I've already completed. However, borrowing an inspiration from Trapped in Rubber (like I so often do), I will add a choice in an upcoming part of the story where the player can decide to opt out of the hobble dress for good, or swap the extreme for the relaxed one if they didn't do so at the start.

 

Also, I would never send the player into a dungeon or even a bandit battle in a dress, or with any restricting DD for that matter. My mod is intended to be easily playable for level-1 chars, so any "dress events" will only occur indoors or in other safe environments such as walled cities with travel there and back provided by the mod.

Edited October 28, 2023 by El_Duderino

[Frayed]

13 hours ago, El_Duderino said:

I already strongly suspected that the answers 5 and 6 in the poll would not win the majority, but I must say I am surprised that the overall response is more negative towards the dresses than I expected.

 

I am too. Might just be that your poll is missing a "I like the idea / looks of them, but their current gameplay is awful" option. Would be my pick: I do really like the look of them and the animations are quite nice, but the speed multiplier stuff is just very uninteresting unless carefully designed around, as Taki already nicely phrased. Heck, on my current mod setup the extreme dresses have some interaction with another mod that does speed mult stuff, and the result is that my character literally can't move anymore when one gets equipped. It's essentially a softlock.

 

That said - slow movement speed can be made interesting, but it has to be made interesting. I suspect slowing a player's movement will, by itself, always be seen as a detriment and annoyance. Which in design terms means it's either a punishment (which you can lean into by e.g. having NPCs jeer at the player for being so slow), a fail state (which a player then has to think about how to avoid or get out of), or there has to be some benefit the player gets in return (e.g. being able to charm an NPC to do something to advance a quest).

 

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you've been working on ?