toys Shout Like a Virgin Evolved LE

[VirginMarie]

5 hours ago, as6692170 said:

Hi, I tested validating zaz but nothing happened so I reinstalled zaz, but it still doesn't work,I use zaz 6.11

I also installed zaz 7.0 but it still doesn't work

I assume you mean you used the "Verify Zaz Working" option in MCM.

 

Have you carefully gone through each of the steps in Troubleshooting #3?

Are you starting a new game or using a save? If using a save, try as a test, a new game, then use the MCM verify option. If this works you've go a corrupt save. See the "golden rule" on the same post linked above.

[pnutz78]

one more question about the skeleton key: I have completed the quest for hircin and received a tome from nocturnal that I read in her temple next to the daedric statues, got the message "your skeleton key is now blessed" I realized that I have more daedric missions but was not sure if I could already use it: I tried to follow the instructions in the tome, but could not find a way to "equip" the key. It does not appear in my inventory under "keys" and could not locate it anywhere else. Is this a spell or do I have to first complete all the daedric missions nocturnal gives me in order to use it. Also I have not done any missions for Dibella (except for spanking one thief) hope there is no issue with the order you do things in.

 

Many thanks for your help!

[VirginMarie]

1 hour ago, pnutz78 said:

one more question about the skeleton key: I have completed the quest for hircin and received a tome from nocturnal that I read in her temple next to the daedric statues, got the message "your skeleton key is now blessed" I realized that I have more daedric missions but was not sure if I could already use it: I tried to follow the instructions in the tome, but could not find a way to "equip" the key. It does not appear in my inventory under "keys" and could not locate it anywhere else. Is this a spell or do I have to first complete all the daedric missions nocturnal gives me in order to use it. Also I have not done any missions for Dibella (except for spanking one thief) hope there is no issue with the order you do things in.

 

Many thanks for your help!

Yes you can use it now. You could have been using the non-enchanted version ever since you first met Nocturnal.

 

It's the Virgin Anal Skeleton Key, a device. Equip it like you would any other Virgin Device using the MCM Device tab... select it, then change/reset.

 

Quests can be done in any order, or in parallel, however you like. 

[kioo]

Finally, the time has come to test your mode. The work and time you have put into are AMAZING! I have created a mod organizer profile around your mode - just the stuff I need so that there are no conflicts.

 

There is something minor that I am seeing - a Virgin tattoo on the head but only when a hair is present. If my character goes bald, it disappears. I have attached a screenshot. Is this how it should be? The tattoo on the butt is there too.

[VirginMarie]

5 hours ago, kioo said:

Finally, the time has come to test your mode. The work and time you have put into are AMAZING! I have created a mod organizer profile around your mode - just the stuff I need so that there are no conflicts.

 

There is something minor that I am seeing - a Virgin tattoo on the head but only when a hair is present. If my character goes bald, it disappears. I have attached a screenshot. Is this how it should be? The tattoo on the butt is there too.

Yes I'm aware that this occurs. It's the outcome of me doing my own art/texture and not being good at it. Had to learn it just for that one need. So it was a miracle it works at all. I decided its not too bad and could be considered intended. You can turn off the tats in MCM if you like.

[kioo]

6 hours ago, VirginMarie said:

You can turn off the tats in MCM if you like.

 

Naah, tatts are good and kinda dig this one. It will stay there! 

[bicobus]

On 2/9/2018 at 6:17 PM, VirginMarie said:

Beyond that, I'm looking for feedback!

 

• New ideas
• Improvements
• Bug fixes, even just very minor I want to hear about (none currently known to me)
• What's your favourite thing that maybe I could expand on?

To be honest, I fail to think of a new kink for this to explore. Actually, I would suggest the opposite to avoid the bloatware path. The main issue I had with slav was the overwhelming quantity of stuff to do, and by extension my frustration of not being able to do everything (due to time constraints). As the ways for nocturnal and dibella to handle the player increases, the chances for the player to see a specific scenario decreases. This could make the whole mod unfocused: I'm on a spitroast, and now I'm a deer!

 

Anyhow, I didn't had time to get back to slav for quite a while now. Actually, I'm currently going through a week worth of messages posted on LL. So what I am writing may be related to an outdated experience. On a first hand there are many aspect of slav that I really like, one of them is how the mod touch nearly all the (not-gross) kinks. However, and I may have already said so, there is one point of the mod that felt weak: whenever the player goes back to nocturnal, at the end of a daedric hunt, and nocturnal does her health checkup of the player character body. In my experience, that part was always the same and became kind of boring. You'll tell me that I don't have to go back to nocturnal, probably, but you'll understand that if there is something in my quest log I need to do it. It's the same thing with the notification icon present on steam: I have to click on it. To my brain, it's like a noise in the background that I need to stop. That is my greatness weakness while playing slav, there are so much stuff to do at the same time and I need to do everything.

 

On a second hand, when I think about slav, I think first about the different kinks then about the daedric hunt. Why do we need to hunt down artifacts again? Is that an aspect of slav that you plan to flesh out? Maybe it's already explained in the mod, but I can't remember the reasons for the hunt at all. Is there a special relationship between dibella and nocturnal, or is it that nocturnal is acting as an antagonist to Dibella's plan to end Nirn through global thermosexual warfare? Joke aside, what is the story and is there an end to it?

 

Do you plan on creating a second mod (or a set of mods) which are specialized in certain kinks, while retaining the "virgin" idea? That is a simpler and less involved gameplay, more like the on-demand radiant quests of vanilla.

 

Thanks for your mod and your time, I do plan to revisit it eventually.

[VirginMarie]

6 hours ago, bicobus said:

To be honest, I fail to think of a new kink for this to explore. Actually, I would suggest the opposite to avoid the bloatware path. The main issue I had with slav was the overwhelming quantity of stuff to do, and by extension my frustration of not being able to do everything (due to time constraints). As the ways for nocturnal and dibella to handle the player increases, the chances for the player to see a specific scenario decreases. This could make the whole mod unfocused: I'm on a spitroast, and now I'm a deer!

MCM Presets

This is at least in part why I'm thinking of MCM preset settings to select from, that give you different intensity of events without having to learn and mess with all the individual MCM settings. (copy/pasted from my original post on this topic)

• First Time Virgin - the current defaults used, recommended when you want to see all the quests at a reasonable pace
• Virgin Rebel - events/encounters are fast and furious, and heavy bondage stays on longer! The mod owns you! Quest objectives set higher
• Innocent Virgin - all events/encounters less frequent. Quest objectives set lower. Good for playing other quest mods at the same time

I was thinking of your feedback and a few others when I planned this. What do you think?

 

6 hours ago, bicobus said:

However, and I may have already said so, there is one point of the mod that felt weak: whenever the player goes back to nocturnal, at the end of a daedric hunt, and nocturnal does her health checkup of the player character body. In my experience, that part was always the same and became kind of boring.

Report in to Nocturnal Variety

I agree. I have always intended to create some variety here. It's a good idea to focus on something here. I'm open to suggestions.

 

6 hours ago, bicobus said:

 

You'll tell me that I don't have to go back to nocturnal, probably, but you'll understand that if there is something in my quest log I need to do it.

Well actually I'd not tell you that as you do in order to progress things until later. But what I CAN say is that you could use the "press and hold spacebar" hot key to fast forward through the scene. Also you can set the number of days to report in much higher. This would be set high for the Innocent Virgin preset mentioned above.

 

6 hours ago, bicobus said:

On a second hand, when I think about slav, I think first about the different kinks then about the daedric hunt. Why do we need to hunt down artifacts again? Is that an aspect of slav that you plan to flesh out? Maybe it's already explained in the mod, but I can't remember the reasons for the hunt at all. Is there a special relationship between dibella and nocturnal, or is it that nocturnal is acting as an antagonist to Dibella's plan to end Nirn through global thermosexual warfare? Joke aside, what is the story and is there an end to it?

Nocturnal tells you that you do it to gain trust with the deadrics, such that they will help in the Virgin rebirth. Nocturnal does not have enough power to do it alone. That's why their altars end up being added in the Ritual Chamber. Also each one completed gives you a place you can worship to return home.

 

6 hours ago, bicobus said:

Do you plan on creating a second mod (or a set of mods) which are specialized in certain kinks, while retaining the "virgin" idea? That is a simpler and less involved gameplay, more like the on-demand radiant quests of vanilla.

I might be able to achieve the same result using the MCM settings presets concept. This way I don't have to maintain multiple mods and its far more efficient than having multiple little mods loaded. So for example maybe you want to run the mod only for Word Wall Love (I've had that request). So maybe there are presets for things like that. What other things would you envision where only a part of the mod is active?

[kioo]

I have a little compatibility question. I see that there is some stuff that needs disabling when having Cursed Loot. Is the Surrender on Disarm feature working with SLaV, or will I have problems if I enable it?

[VirginMarie]

3 hours ago, kioo said:

I have a little compatibility question. I see that there is some stuff that needs disabling when having Cursed Loot. Is the Surrender on Disarm feature working with SLaV, or will I have problems if I enable it?

The only conflicts you can have with Cursed Loot (copy/pasted from Tips & Tricks) are...

• Death Alternative feature - Don't enable both this Mod's Death Alternative and Cursed Loot's Combat Surrender (DCL Rape Tab). Choose to use one or the other
• Gaging me and preventing shout - No problem, disable Gags (DCL Devices Tab)
• Virgin Potions Conflict - When you consume any potion, Cursed Loot's Uncontrollable Lust (if enabled) will activate when conditions are met, and this overrides any Virgin Potion effect. This can be disabled in Cursed Loot's Consequences Tab - "Uncontrollable Lust Enabled"

In the Death Alt case, the trigger in both mods is HP reaching almost death. So can't have both mods trying to do that. But Surrender on Disarm is different so...

• you would likely be fine with, this mod's Death Alternative enabled, Cursed Loot's disabled, while using Surrender on Disarm
• this Mood's DA off, and Cursed Loot's on, using Surrender would definitely work

 It's never come up as problem. Let me know if you find otherwise.

[VirginMarie]

When is a Skyrim Special Edition version coming?

 

I've been asked this question in other places 3 times in the last day. So I've added it to the FAQs (#18). 

[kioo]

17 hours ago, VirginMarie said:

In the Death Alt case, the trigger in both mods is HP reaching almost death. So can't have both mods trying to do that. But Surrender on Disarm is different so...

• you would likely be fine with, this mod's Death Alternative enabled, Cursed Loot's disabled, while using Surrender on Disarm
• this Mood's DA off, and Cursed Loot's on, using Surrender would definitely work

 It's never come up as problem. Let me know if you find otherwise.

3

Thank you! Will enable it and let you know if there is something.

 

Do the machines in Bleak Falls Barrow Word Wall and the three stones along the path that leads from Helgen to Riverwood have collisions? I just wanted to be sure that I installed the HDT SexToy mod correctly?

[VirginMarie]

7 hours ago, kioo said:

Thank you! Will enable it and let you know if there is something.

 

Do the machines in Bleak Falls Barrow Word Wall and the three stones along the path that leads from Helgen to Riverwood have collisions? I just wanted to be sure that I installed the HDT SexToy mod correctly?

They have no collision. This is necessary since I use animations that were never intended for it and will not work with collision.

[CursedGor]

On 15.2.2018 at 5:05 PM, VirginMarie said:

Well this makes you the 2nd person to suggest dwemer deivces. See my reply here if you have not already.

 

It's an ambitious project. Doable for sure from the 3rd link above. Uncertain about the assets in the 2nd link. I'm warming up to it. Need to figure out what your unsolvable trials would be.

 

Alternatively I'm wondering if there's a way to expand on the Foot Fetish quest which is the existing quest with amputation. Any way a story could made where Hircine is in cahoots with dwemer? Or maybe after the first time the Order of the Lily repairs your feet and you lose your foot again, the Lily guys decide the last time did not go smoothly and send you into a dwemer location to find a powerful artifact to assist with the repair, but you end up in more trouble due to cursed traps.

 

Hello VirginMarie,

 

first of all, sorry for the late reply, have been busy the last days.

 

About Hircine: he's more the nature guy, being the patron of beast men and lycantrophes and the like. He is more an antithesis to a dwemer patron. So from a lore point of view, I wouldn't recommend using him.

 

About the unsolvable trials: I will send you a PM with suggestions for these trials. Because if you want to use them, they shouldn't be spoiled in this discussion. However, I'm neither a good writer, nor a game developer. I hope a possible implementation of my suggestions will be within limits. Although you're right with one thing, it would be an ambitious addition to the story.

[bicobus]

On 2/21/2018 at 4:08 AM, VirginMarie said:

MCM Presets

This is at least in part why I'm thinking of MCM preset settings to select from, that give you different intensity of events without having to learn and mess with all the individual MCM settings. (copy/pasted from my original post on this topic)

• First Time Virgin - the current defaults used, recommended when you want to see all the quests at a reasonable pace
• Virgin Rebel - events/encounters are fast and furious, and heavy bondage stays on longer! The mod owns you! Quest objectives set higher
• Innocent Virgin - all events/encounters less frequent. Quest objectives set lower. Good for playing other quest mods at the same time

I was thinking of your feedback and a few others when I planned this. What do you think?

Well my point was more around being mindful of all the things that are already in the mod, not how fast the player can experience the content. These are two different topics, content and pace. That is if you are considering reducing the amount of time the player has to spend on some of your content, then maybe the presets aren't a solution. Maybe the existing content should be tweaked instead if the issue is time constraints. Overall I'm an adept of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), which means that if you can reduce complexity of a system while retaining the same amount of feature then use that path. I don't usually tweak MCM settings, because I'm lazy and I assume the default values are good enough to play around; exception is when something is so irritating, then I disable it (like the gag talk nonsense, nobody wants that).

 

From what I understand, this mod is relatively linear: the player has to do Nocturnal bidding to unlock new stuff, including Dibella. As content gets added, pace becomes an issue because of how stuff gets unlocked and experienced. Now this is fairly easy to address in a open world setting, I'll take Saints Row 2 as an example (it would help if you know of the game). In SR2 you have a main quest that the player can chose to do, alongside it you have side activities that are very silly and optional. The idea of SR2 is to have the player gain territory around town, while battling other gangs. The beauty of that game is that whatever the player does it always benefits his/her gang in some way, sure the main quest is important, but so does gaining territories and so is money. I believe the same approach could be used for shout like a virgin, to have activities not linked to either Dibella or Nocturnal quests but fitting nicely into the narrative of the two Goddesses. A bit like the waterfall of love, I guess. Anyhow having side activities, for both virgin and deflowered, would probably help more than a mcm preset.

 

On 2/21/2018 at 4:08 AM, VirginMarie said:

Report in to Nocturnal Variety

I agree. I have always intended to create some variety here. It's a good idea to focus on something here. I'm open to suggestions.

You could delegate it to other places. The player does increase Nocturnal influence around skyrim through shrine workship, why not unlock a place once a shrine has been unlocked? I don't know about the health checkup though.

 

On 2/21/2018 at 4:08 AM, VirginMarie said:

Well actually I'd not tell you that as you do in order to progress things until later. But what I CAN say is that you could use the "press and hold spacebar" hot key to fast forward through the scene. Also you can set the number of days to report in much higher. This would be set high for the Innocent Virgin preset mentioned above.

Yes, skipping dialogue is more of a patch at this point. The issue I was pointing was more about the repetitiveness in the process of reporting to nocturnal, that's been address in the previous point though.

 

On 2/21/2018 at 4:08 AM, VirginMarie said:

Nocturnal tells you that you do it to gain trust with the deadrics, such that they will help in the Virgin rebirth. Nocturnal does not have enough power to do it alone. That's why their altars end up being added in the Ritual Chamber. Also each one completed gives you a place you can worship to return home.

Yeah, but why? Why does nocturnal has to do all that? And why is Dibella doing the exact opposite? This is an area of the mod that could be expanded to tell a story, for whomever which to listen or isn't too busy fapping. It doesn't have to be serious though, naughty Goddesses do exists.

[VirginMarie]

On ‎2018‎-‎02‎-‎22 at 9:20 AM, CursedGor said:

About the unsolvable trials: I will send you a PM with suggestions for these trials. Because if you want to use them, they shouldn't be spoiled in this discussion. However, I'm neither a good writer, nor a game developer. I hope a possible implementation of my suggestions will be within limits. Although you're right with one thing, it would be an ambitious addition to the story.

Thanks I've replied to your PM.

 

13 hours ago, bicobus said:

Well my point was more around being mindful of all the things that are already in the mod, not how fast the player can experience the content. These are two different topics, content and pace. That is if you are considering reducing the amount of time the player has to spend on some of your content, then maybe the presets aren't a solution. Maybe the existing content should be tweaked instead if the issue is time constraints.

Refining and polishing existing content is exactly what my stated focus is now. We are on the same page I think.

 

Finding the very specific places the polish is needed is what I seek feedback for. You've identified the "reporting in" being repetitive and this is a good one. I need to figure out how to add variety. And I need feedback on where other specific places like this are.

 

As for pace, I'm looking to optionally slow down, or speed up (through presets), how frequent content arrives, how likely a new quest starts, and how many objectives need be completed. Example... how many bedeviled spits you must visit to complete Nocturnal's half of getting the 3rd word... this is an MCM setting like many others, and people would not need to set these individually if they don't want to be bothered, but rather just pick a preset. From your feedback many months ago, you had some frustration with too much at once, so I got this idea from you and others with similar feedback.

 

Quote

 

Overall I'm an adept of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), which means that if you can reduce complexity of a system while retaining the same amount of feature then use that path.

I have been mindful of KISS. Always try to use it. This includes the technical, and the parts exposed to the user. Any very specific places in the mod that you think need KISS applied?

 

Quote

 

I don't usually tweak MCM settings, because I'm lazy and I assume the default values are good enough to play around

That's my reason for the presets idea. It's for the lazy, or the new user not yet aware of what the MCM can do. I often see people with desires for something different, not realizing they can have what they want with the settings. So I want to make this easier with presets. Maybe even tie it into the story where Nocturnal gives you choices that result in the presets (you learn of the presets through the story?).

 

Quote

 

From what I understand, this mod is relatively linear

Its mostly not. Each quest has a trigger for the earliest that it can start, plus some random delay which can adjust in MCM. Most can end up in parallel and the order will be different each play through.

 

Quote

 

I believe the same approach could be used for shout like a virgin, to have activities not linked to either Dibella or Nocturnal quests but fitting nicely into the narrative of the two Goddesses. A bit like the waterfall of love, I guess. Anyhow having side activities, for both virgin and deflowered, would probably help more than a mcm preset.

Most quests work like the Impassioned Waterfall. So what you are describing is already the way it works. Even the main storyline can have parts ending up in parallel and start in a different order.

 

Quote

 

You could delegate it to other places. The player does increase Nocturnal influence around skyrim through shrine workship, why not unlock a place once a shrine has been unlocked? I don't know about the health checkup though.

Having the punishment occur in different locations is a possibility that I have considered before. That in combination with a little variety of what the punishments are would certainly make a big difference. Maybe sometimes you get put in a cage again for example.

 

Quote

Yes, skipping dialogue is more of a patch at this point. The issue I was pointing was more about the repetitiveness in the process of reporting to nocturnal, that's been address in the previous point though.

The advance hot key does not just skip dialogue. It skips the animations/entire scenes if you press and hold. For example, you can make the "reporting in scene" reduce from 15minutes down to 1 minute. It works for every single scene/encounter.

 

I see it as a very useful feature that no other mod has implemented (other than a variant on it in sexlab). You can repeat things, or choose not to.

 

I added this to the Tips video because from some feedback it seems the mod is not making this feature apparent enough. You are told about it once during the story but not everybody is catching it or reading etc. These pop-ups that teach you as you go, are also potential candidates for the polish I seek, and wonder if people have ideas. It's difficult to balance these with KISS (too much or too little?). Need very specific suggestions to improve.

 

Quote

 

Yeah, but why? Why does nocturnal has to do all that? And why is Dibella doing the exact opposite? This is an area of the mod that could be expanded to tell a story, for whomever which to listen or isn't too busy fapping. It doesn't have to be serious though, naughty Goddesses do exists.

The background story is under the heading "Story" on the main download page. While the quest plays out, I've stayed true to that story and thought I've, without just saying it straight up, given this story in the dialogue and letters. Again, I'm looking for very specific suggestions if this has fallen short.

[DonQuiWho]

21 hours ago, VirginMarie said:

 

Quote

Yeah, but why? Why does nocturnal has to do all that? And why is Dibella doing the exact opposite? This is an area of the mod that could be expanded to tell a story, for whomever which to listen or isn't too busy fapping. It doesn't have to be serious though, naughty Goddesses do exists.

The background story is under the heading "Story" on the main download page. While the quest plays out, I've stayed true to that story and thought I've, without just saying it straight up, given this story in the dialogue and letters. Again, I'm looking for very specific suggestions if this has fallen short.

Refining and polishing existing content is exactly what my stated focus is now. We are on the same page I think.

 

 

TBH, I don't really remember reading the background story

 

Rather, I'd sort of rationalised the gameplay as the PC being a pawn in the eternal battle between excessive hedonism and ultra puritanism, with the protagonists being a whimsically inclined Mae West and a sadistic Andrea Dworkin

 

[VirginMarie]

2 hours ago, donkeywho said:

TBH, I don't really remember reading the background story

 

Rather, I'd sort of rationalised the gameplay as the PC being a pawn in the eternal battle between excessive hedonism and ultra puritanism, with the protagonists being a whimsically inclined Mae West and a sadistic Andrea Dworkin

 

lmao. Yes that's it exactly

[fellel]

I'm having clipping issues with the devices They fit smaller than the body I'm using. 

I am using the plain UNP body with HDT  and I've rebuilt bodyslide by selecting: 

 

Outfit/body: Unified UNP HDT

Preset UUNP - UNP

no group filters

Build Morphs checked. 

Then batch built everything. 

 

Although after clicking Build, it prompts me to choose output set as shown in the image.

So I chose Unified UNP HDT for all of them and built it. 

Yet harnesses, chains and devices all clip, fitting short.

Am I doing something wrong?  

 

 

[VirginMarie]

6 hours ago, fellel said:

I'm having clipping issues with the devices They fit smaller than the body I'm using. 

I am using the plain UNP body with HDT  and I've rebuilt bodyslide by selecting: 

 

Outfit/body: Unified UNP HDT

Preset UUNP - UNP

no group filters

Build Morphs checked. 

Then batch built everything. 

 

Although after clicking Build, it prompts me to choose output set as shown in the image.

So I chose Unified UNP HDT for all of them and built it. 

Yet harnesses, chains and devices all clip, fitting short.

Am I doing something wrong?  

Yes I think 2 things. Wrong body preset and need a group, but for details, carefully follow the steps in FAQ #11.

 

[Lupine00]

I've been playing a lot of SLAV recently. I really appreciate what a great piece of work it is, but I also have some reservations...

 

 

From a technical, and sheer ingenuity point of view, this has to be the best bondage themed mod around. The tricky way it insinuates itself into all the daedric quests and uses them to create its own story content, the superior use of cameras, and so many animated scenes, all add to an ambiance of technical polish. 

 

And despite the camera-work, I've never once had the awful camera-bug-of-death, where your camera mode gets flipped, so it doesn't follow rotation when you're running around and can't go into first-person... SD+ causes it reliably, when you ask to sleep, and Slaverun does it occasionally, but SLAV can get me in and out of free-cam mode without breaking my camera.

 

Much appreciated.

 

And I really liked stuff like the foot fetish quest (the first time, at least), which was funny, and interesting, and the use of graphics was well integrated into it.

 

That said, there are glitches that spoil the visuals. For some weird reason, the PC's right arm gets a sort of flickering jitter during word-wall animations, and the tallows items mostly look bad - with the "ugly" manacles giving the impression that two different meshes got munged together. Not simply ugly, more ... messy. And the ball and chain is worse. Probably.

 

 

But... And it's a big but (no not that kind of butt)... And I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but...

 

 

The core gameplay just doesn't do it for me. I stuck with it for a couple of weeks, but ultimately, there are so many changes that impact on combat, and none of them really feel balanced, or (more importantly) actually increase the fun. More often, it makes combat into an arbitrary crap-shoot, or chain sexing yourself back to life, which fails to have any real penalty if you're always in an asphyxiation collar, and Nocturnal is doing most of the work anyway.

 

This business with your armor flying off all the time craps all over melee characters, and Skyrim's core mage game just isn't well enough made to support mage play beyond the low levels without a ton of magic system revamp mods.

 

Sure, you can just shout, and stand about while Nocturnal kills everything, but as levels progress that becomes an increasingly slow and boring way to play the game, and isn't what I'd call entertaining. 

 

Sure, I can do things to mitigate the armor issues. I can remove melted virgin devices and hope I don't end up in an unexpected sex situation. While that stops melting devices blocking my armor, it feels like I defeated the point of SLAV.

 

Not wearing the devices reminds me of that mentality where people add a dozen script-heavy mods to enable sex in Skyrim, then put their character in an quest chastity belt that's almost impossible to remove. This pins your arousal at 100, which breaks any kind of arousal management game. I get that SLAV offers a lot of choices in this area, and certainly isn't doing what I just described, but I don't really get the intent of all the mechanics to remove armor vs simply removing all the devices and relying on the fact you can basically dialogue your way out of sex infallibly in SLAV.

 

What play style is supposed to work? There are so many combat changes... The dibella harness makes NPCs freeze up and cower naked so you can beat them down quick, but this doesn't work on crowds, and it doesn't work on seriously tough mobs. (And afterwards the corpses fly up to the ceiling... Why?) Stealth is undermined by anal lanterns and jingling bells, and even if these aren't explicitly coded to destroy stealth builds, they are at best unimmersive stealth-mood killers.

 

As the tallows items look so messy, I don't want to look at them, so work done to power them up is a waste of time.

 

Then all the other restraints that do nothing game-wise, just add to the visual noise, and the overall appearance is extremely cluttered.

 

 

Speaking of cluttered... there's the deer form. Unless I disable foot fetish, it seems like I get my foot removed pretty much as soon as I get turned human again. Now, maybe this is a bug, because I don't think I took that many power power hits, but that's just the start of it... Helmet with horns, plus deer horns, plus not a virgin horns ... it looks like crap ... combined with the regular restraints, and tallows, the visual mess makes my eyes bleed. I don't actually mind the deer form itself, even with the odd squinty face, and the way facial expressions can't be seen properly, but it's yet another armor blocker, that stops you wearing boots... Probably, this would look a lot better if you couldn't wear any head gear either, and it disabled the slut-horns, but losing your helmet would be yet another penalty.

 

You might be well aware, but both light and heavy armors offer substantial set bonuses, and there are about four million ways that SLAV can prevent you getting that bonus. Just killed off a chunk of my perk tree there, and nerfed armor even more.

 

 

And the humor... Well, it works at first, but the joke does tend to wear out a bit on the "repeat for X number of times set in MCM quests" mechanic this is used everywhere as content-extender. If the events happened only once, it would be great. While I get that I could set those values to low numbers in the MCM, that too feels like a cheat, but the defaults come off feeling repetitive.

 

Awkward.

Choice is good, but a meaningful and clearly defined challenge is also good.

 

 

So, absent a credible mechanic to replace "armor broken most of the time", that doesn't amount to sidestepping or avoiding the main concepts of SLAV, it gets unplayable, particularly at higher levels, unless you want to just be a gimp that lets a cheating essential follower finish every combat for you.

 

 

From a story perspective, there isn't enough coherence to identify a core narrative. It felt like the earn trust of daedra thing was the core, but then you get further in, and maybe it's more about saving maidens, or maybe it's about escaping Nocturnal completely ... but that's never presented clearly ... and it really feels like the PC has no agency, and actually not a care about what's going on. None of it feels meaningful in any way. Might some characters die? Does it matter, all they do is offer me the same few lines of dialogue, which all relate to playing an animation anyway. Not one of these characters conjures any kind of personality, or has any kind of identifiable relationship with the PC beyond pure mechanics.

 

Perhaps it's that lack of anything meaningful to strive for, a lack of engagement, that makes it not worth enduring the sabotaged combat mechanics.

 

 

It's such a pity, because at the technical level, this is an impressive mod by any measure, but it ends up being a directionless sandbox full of repeat-until-bored tasks, animations you see until you're fed up of them, and some fairly questionable changes to combat balance.

 

 

I believe, without major changes, it could remedy all those faults, but I'm not sure how, and even if I could see a way, that would be useless because it's not up to me to execute that.

 

Clearly, more character dialogue, more of a plot, and more progress in uncovering "mysteries" (just stuff the player wants to know the answer to) would fix one side of it. Given the ingenuity in slotting the existing quests, I think this could be done, if VirginMarie were motivated. There's clearly no lack of ability. I think things are the way there are now, pretty much on purpose.

 

As for combat balance, what's going on there is far harder to resolve without undermining the point of the mod, and that's the problem right now. The player can work around that stuff, but then, why play SLAV? To walk on water? I'm not even sure that's a benefit. To get fire and frost resist? They're conveniences that pale in significance next to armor.

 

The dibella harness worship mechanic is somewhat broken, and could be fixed, but it's not so much fun, as odd.

 

 

There has to be something better to replace armor, that works like armor, and uses the armor perks.

 

I can imagine some kind of progression of harnesses, that you earn through repeated questing.

I can imagine harnesses with actual armor, that do not fly off, earned through questing.

I can imagine harnesses that offer light, or heavy armor set bonus, depending on which harness the player pursues. Why not?

I can imagine harnesses that come with SLAV themed drawbacks, like crawling, or making people have sex with you, or whatever, to stop them just being "boring armor".

 

So, I guess there is a route there to fix combat so it's better, and more fun, and adds more things to do, things that matter because you're earning core gear, not peripheral resistances that don't really matter.

 

Or maybe those things are all there already? But if they are, you have to do far too many rinse-repeat tasks to get to them.

[mercplatypus]

32 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

I've been playing a lot of SLAV recently. I really appreciate what a great piece of work it is, but I also have some reservations...

 

 

 

Shortened this down to reduce amount of text for people to scroll through.

 

I can definitely understand where you are coming from.  I feel that giving some of the background on why of this mod may be in order as it seems to be one of the biggest sticking points that you have pointed out.  I contributed to a great many of the ideas behind some of these developments and was a very active play tester to help ensure things were as bug free as possible, but all the design, development, and work in creating the mod goes to Virgin herself.

 

1. Direction

From the start a great many of the choices made in terms of where quests take people were mainly chosen based off of bringing people back to places they had never been to or hadn't revisited for years (Tales and Tallows questline, Conjurers Contempt, Dragon Mounds, Waterfalls etc).  A very considerable amount of time was devoted primarily to figuring out how to bring about more exploration in a play through that didn't have you sitting in a city most the time.  

 

We both also wanted there to be a great deal of flexibility to enable players to customize their experience and game to match what they most liked.  This also meant making quite a few features able to be turned off if people felt they got in the way of what they wanted (horns and halo, tattoos, alternatives to getting spit roasted, etc) and it really isn't intended to run with everything selected at once.

 

2. Combat

Fighting characters were a bit of an issue when SLAV first came out.  Harnesses took up the main torso slot leaving you naked aside from boots and gloves and it could definitely get tricky.  Most people got around it by using stealth or alteration + Restoration builds but it was still more limiting than what was desirable.  Eventually VirginMarie figured out how to stop the harness blocking armor and everything was good for a few weeks.  Then there were a great deal of players who wanted the armor forcefully removed because it added an additional challenge and we wanted to figure out a way to support those requests.  A happy accident later that led to the visual effect for melting devices and we had an answer.  Unfortunately not all devices looked decent with the method used, hence why only certain items "melt".  It was added to accommodate requests of players while not disallowing armor oriented play throughs for players that did not want to mess about with armor unequipping in the first place.  What appears to be a directionless mess was in fact the solution to accommodate the most players possible. 

 

Another solution was the Strip Shout and damage armor abilities giving you a way to level the playing field.  If you can't wear armor, why allow them to?  As far as the crap shoot for the Love Shout there needed to be a way to limit it from being an instant "I win" button against opponents that were legitimately out of your league but was still useful.  Both however could be ignored in favor of hitting some one with a length of metal, preferably sharpened.

 

3. For the people

Player request as you have already seen above has always been a core component of this mod, which is a great part of why it feels like the sandbox that it ultimately is.  It would almost, but not quite, be fair to say that user feedback is responsible for most of the inclusions inside the mod outside of the core Daedric Prince quests.  VirginMarie typically prefers solutions that you cannot find in any other mod or that can't be done just as easily with vanilla skyrim mechanics but her ear is always there waiting for a suggestion.  There's always going to be the key questions for every suggested addition:

A. Does it add anything that isn't already there?

B. Can it be implemented without causing major issues within the mod?

C. Can it be added in a fun/funny/thematic sort of way?

D. Considering most people play with other BDSM themed mods as well as SLAV, especially Deviously Cursed Loot, would the addition cause problems there?

 

Your proposal for progressing armor rating runs into it's primary problem at point D.  Most punishing slave collars in other mods shock you for wearing anything listed by keyword as clothing or armor.  Adding an armor rating to a harness automatically would change it into armor meaning if another slave collar from another mod were equipped you would likely be electrocuted to death over and over again without any means of escaping.  If a solution to that can be worked out it may be implementable.

 

At the end of the day it may just be that the mod is not a good fit for you and there's no shame in that.  I'm sure VirginMarie will be happy that you stopped to give her feedback on how it can be better rather than simply left nothing at all.

[VirginMarie]

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

For some weird reason, the PC's right arm gets a sort of flickering jitter during word-wall animations

The flaw is within the animation. I'm no animator this is from another author. It would need the animation author to fix but they are not around.

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tallows items mostly look bad - with the "ugly" manacles giving the impression that two different meshes got munged together. Not simply ugly, more ... messy. And the ball and chain is worse. Probably.

I'm also not a mesh or texture artist. These come from other authors. I think most people like their look... sort of a medieval style. I like them a lot. Your the first to give this feedback but there's not anything I could do other than remove them from the mod.

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This business with your armor flying off all the time craps all over melee characters.

You can disable in MCM such that even the melting devices don't remove your armor. Turn it off if you don't like it. The mod is intended to be very customizable.

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Sure, you can just shout, and stand about while Nocturnal kills everything, but as levels progress that becomes an increasingly slow and boring way to play the game, and isn't what I'd call entertaining.

Maybe use the shouts less? If you still want Nocturnal to show up as frequent, while shouting less, you can adjust the chance she appears in MCM.

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Sure, I can do things to mitigate the armor issues. I can remove melted virgin devices and hope I don't end up in an unexpected sex situation. While that stops melting devices blocking my armor, it feels like I defeated the point of SLAV.

Or disable the feature instead of removing the melting devices.

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What play style is supposed to work? There are so many combat changes... The dibella harness makes NPCs freeze up and cower naked so you can beat them down quick, but this doesn't work on crowds, and it doesn't work on seriously tough mobs. (And afterwards the corpses fly up to the ceiling... Why?)

The notion that this mod changes combat does not seem accurate but I know what you mean. It adds shouts to combat which you don't need to use at all other than to trigger some things. But there are no changes to combat itself. That leaves only the lack of armor. Same as with any devious devices based mod.

 

Why not reduce the vanilla Skyrim difficulty level? I do all play testing with the hardest level. At higher levels I might bring that down one notch. And I rarely end up wearing any armor as is the case with default MCM settings. I use dual wield daggers most of the time. And I use the shouts very frequently.

 

You can press and hold the advance hotkey (space by default), to skip anything the mod does, including loving mid-combat to speed things up. Sometimes I watch only half of an animation then end it.

 

The Nocturnal robe has very high armor. Of course I realize this robe also gets removed temporarily. You did not mention it so throwing that in here in case.

 

I've not seen corpses fly up to the ceiling. There is a bit of a "rag doll" effect that could be in conflict with something else you have.

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Stealth is undermined by anal lanterns and jingling bells, and even if these aren't explicitly coded to destroy stealth builds, they are at best unimmersive stealth-mood killers.

The sound effects actually have no impact on stealth, only the light sources. You can choose to not use them other than the lantern during the one quest. You can also turn off the sounds (device tab in MCM).

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Unless I disable foot fetish, it seems like I get my foot removed pretty much as soon as I get turned human again. Now, maybe this is a bug, because I don't think I took that many power power hits, but that's just the start of it... Helmet with horns, plus deer horns, plus not a virgin horns ... it looks like crap ... combined with the regular restraints, and tallows, the visual mess makes my eyes bleed.

I don't think a bug but let me know if you can recreate a case where it clearly did not behave. Whipping can result in some power hits. Set the cool down and the chance higher if it's happening too soon. And of course if not liking the look then go with disabled. 

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I don't actually mind the deer form itself, even with the odd squinty face, and the way facial expressions can't be seen properly

Try turning off the "dear skin" in MCM. This removes any change to your skin (the texture). Not being the artist, this is from another author so I can't change it but do offer the option to disable.

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You might be well aware, but both light and heavy armors offer substantial set bonuses, and there are about four million ways that SLAV can prevent you getting that bonus. Just killed off a chunk of my perk tree there, and nerfed armor even more.

All Devious Devices based mods all do this to some extent. Goes with the territory of this type of mod. There's been no other feedback along these lines.

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While I get that I could set those values to low numbers in the MCM, that too feels like a cheat, but the defaults come off feeling repetitive.

It's not a cheat. Customize till your hearts content. Everyone is different so absolutely no reason to feel you should stick with my defaults. I think the #1 thing you need to do to enjoy this mod is to really customize like crazy in those MCM settings. Many people do it's how it's intended.

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Given the ingenuity in slotting the existing quests, I think this could be done, if VirginMarie were motivated. There's clearly no lack of ability. I think things are the way there are now, pretty much on purpose.

Yes everything is there on purpose. Changes to the story or the dialogue to make it clearer need very specific feedback, because for me, I have already done my best to make it clear. I cannot tell where its lacking unless people give specifics. I'm too close to it to be able to tell where it's not clear. I do seek specific feedback in this area but understand that it's time consuming for anyone to help with that.

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The dibella harness worship mechanic is somewhat broken, and could be fixed, but it's not so much fun, as odd.

Sure it's odd. I'd call it unique. The sort of thing you might get kicks from at first, but even I don't use it often. So be like me... don't use it I prefer the Nocturnal Robe.

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There has to be something better to replace armor, that works like armor, and uses the armor perks.

I could indeed make the harnesses behave like armor. I know how to eliminate the conflict Mercplatypus mentions above too. But there's been no other feedback asking for this. I don't think the majority would like the change.

 

There is a mod that adds magical armor when you are nekid (Dibella's Blessings is the name or something like that). You could use that perhaps (I can't say how well it works... I know there's a brand new mod by that name, and there's a very old one). If I do get more requests along these lines, I'd likely do something like that within this mod... a magical strengthening of your skin... good idea to consider maybe? Anybody else reading looking for that?

[mercplatypus]

Sexlab leveling, Dibella's Blessing, Dibellan Defender, and a few others if you want to go into the realm of critters spring to mind right off the hop.  The only thing I can think of to allow heavy armor to level at a good pace though is using ordinator perk overhaul as it allows you to level armor just by wearing it in combat.  I think the main thrust of the problem is xp gain for leveling/character development which would still be hindered.  The same happens with most any DD based mod I've noticed.

[Lupine00]

I appreciate the time taken to respond to my rambling commentary. Thanks very much for reading it. I know it takes time to write those responses, and I didn't really expect any. I was just saying my piece, and certainly not expecting anything to come of it.

But I do believe those points have general relevance, and that I have some experience of the theory and practice of the topics of which I write, and so my comments were not made without consideration. However, they aren't arguments, or a position, merely something to digest, or pointers to a trail that might take you somewhere fresh.

 

I appreciate that things can be adjusted in the MCM, and the player can, if they wish, turn off large parts of the mod, reduce repetitions on tasks and so on. For example, I turned off Foot Fetish after the third time, and I turned off the deer texture midway through the second. But I didn't want to turn off the deer texture, but ultimately the minor issues with it wore me down.

 

As a quest that runs and repeats, like several others, I wanted it to continue delivering more unique content and distinct events, to actually head somewhere, instead of turnint out to be a tightly bounded little joke, simply repeating itself until it eventually becomes stale. Perhaps, with these sort of things, it makes more sense that the player has to complete an additional step before they can trigger again, rather than repetition being the default?

 

If NPCs reacted to it with dialogue, and it carried a few more actual mechanics with it, I probably would have kept the quest, and the texture enabled despite the intermittent visual artifacts.

 

I know genuine unique content takes time to create. I understand why there isn't lots of content. I'm just pointing out one particular spot where SLAV worked for me, and then became a increasingly less fun, as the event repeated, and revealed itself to have no consequences or meaning. Ultimately it wore away its veneer of story or comedy, until it was nothing but a dusting of sparkles over a quest where you have to kill an animal while crawling.

 

Alas, this is SLAV in a nutshell. Nothing has consequence, everything is repeatable, and that is a mechanism for making things feel trivial. Over time, repetition diminishes even the memory of fun moments that occurred.

 

I didn't want to turn things off. Turning things off ... maybe it's ok if it's one thing ... but when it starts to cascade into another and another, it's probably a sign you installed the wrong mod.

 

As mercplatypus suggests, maybe the mod is just not for me... But that's relative. I did spend quite a while playing it. I've explored most of the content, and there aren't too many mechanics I'd like to add to other playthroughs, or more accurately, that I think would mesh with other mods in a way that suits me.

 

Normally, I have DCL in my LO, but I didn't use it with with SLAV, and I'm quite happy I didn't. Getting my pretend shackles replaced with functioning ones probably wouldn't have increased my enjoyment, and in any case, I can have that without SLAV.

 

(For example). Adding the Dibella's stolen statue joke to just about any playthrough... Probably just makes a nonsense of accepting the quest to steal the statue, but if SLAV spotted that and made you spank yourself... well... I wish I'd tried that now, I'd be impressed if it happened. Right now, SLAV is an overpowering condiment I wouldn't want to add to many other mods.

 

DCL is useful as a general difficulty adjuster, it adds some peril to vanilla Skyrim, but it doesn't make sticking its fingers in combat mechanics one of its core missions. It's the emphasis in SLAV that I find awkward. If I start to disable the things that mess with combat, I start to disable the soul of SLAV too.

 

As for those tallow shackles, I'm just not sure they were rendering right, it really does look like it's drawing two models over the top of each other. I need to look at some of the screenshots to check. Everything else seemed to be working fine though - I stripped the LO down to the bare bones. The ball, I'm pretty sure that was working right, but Havok physics is a fragile beast, and that was also a problem with the pony tail, on several occasions. Speaking of that, the tail felt like an orphan item, despite the pony cart mode. The cart, like other things needed more plot and character to make it pop (for me, anyway). Sure, I can do a thing, but why? Practically, it's a way to travel safely while being punished, but I ended up not needing to use it much, because SLAV makes you run about so much, resorting to fast-travel starts to seem justified.

 

 

Perhaps, to some extent, I'm wishing for a different SLAV than the one that is because the front-page write up conjured up an image of a different mod. I thought that the interplay between Nocturnal and Dibella would be a quest plot in the grand style, with engaging objectives and meaningful choices - albeit in a comedy sort of setting. It isn't quite that, sort of close, but ... I already said enough about the quests and characters above. There's plenty of radiance and content extender, but a shortage of interactive experiences of plot or character.

 

 

As for my suggestions for combat. I wouldn't care about a conflict with DCL, even if it couldn't be worked around, because:

 

(1) DCL collars (or SD collars) that are supposed to punish you for wearing armor are intended to make combat ultra-perilous, so they would be functioning as intended if they stopped you wearing a harness that is armor. I always assumed the idea was that you would be defeated and captured and enslaved because you can't fight properly, and that was really the point of those things. Without combat defeat mechanics they are just a death sentence. I beg to differ that all BDSM mods tinker with combat in the way that SLAV does. Their intent is to take away options so you work to earn them back. SLAV replaces options with unevenly implemented mechanics on a permanent basis, unless you simply disable all that.

 

(2) I didn't have DCL in anyway, and don't see that it has much synergy with SLAV.

 

Whether or not "people" in general would like some actual armor that works? I don't know. I think perhaps some would like new ways to structure their play, as clearly, they would be highly optional, like just about everything else in SLAV. I'm doubtful my tastes are that obscure - combat that works like Skyrim combat. Obviously, you can't please all of the people all of the time. What matters is whether VM likes it, and clearly, the answer to that is "not so much." Which is probably why it isn't in already.

 

As for how I could have turned off some of the pesky items' pesky effects in the MCM... As I say, I don't see a point in installing features and then turning most of them off. I wouldn't install MME and then turn off the debuffs. I endure turning things off with DCL, but a lot of the time I turn on a lot of the DCL features, just some configurations I might install it just for one or two features. With SLAV, the features feel thematically strange by themselves, almost as if they are pining for the rest of the mod. I can't imagine a gritty Slaverun playthrough where I can masturbate myself back to life - though the Dibella statue foolery wouldn't be entirely out of place there. But for me, it's kinda what happens in SLAV, stays in SLAV. The whole virgin powers concept doesn't play well if you just pick one tiny part of it and ignore the rest.

 

Ironically, those locations I was supposed to explore and see afresh were mostly places I visit repeatedly. I've done those daedric quests many times, and I do them because they give me levels and loot without advancing the main quest. Similarly, the dwemer areas come up in the college questline, and aether wars, are also XP sources that don't advance the mainquest. In any given Skyrim, I will either have the mainquest disabled altogether, or tend to avoid it until very late, which means I do a lot of radiants and peripheral quests.  By no coincidence this means that most of the activities mandated by SLAV felt overly familiar. Also, you can imagine why I was looking for something that would add new quest material, which SLAV does do, in its way. It kept me busy for a while, but it's not a sandbox I can imagine playing in at much greater length.

 

Don't imagine I spent my entire time playing it and hating it. Far from it. Often I was entertained, or impressed, or at least interested. However, the things I complained of were things I had to forgive rather than enjoy.

 

SLAV's cheery demeanour can encourage you to forgive quite a lot, but there is still a limit to the number of times a person can be bothered to watch the raven perching routine before they start looking for ways to skip it or turn it off. Those can be found. But the old adage is "leave them wanting more".

 

For me, SLAV undercuts itself, and from my perspective, that's a loss, because there's so much there, and so much of it is good. It's as if there's a steely determination not to ever engage the player too deeply, or create any feeling of attachment or care. If it's done on purpose, I will likely never understand why.

 

 

When it comes to dialogue, I don't think it's very clear what you have to do. There are even explanations of why, every one of which is purposely nonsense. What is unclear is any kind of plot, or real mystery to maintain interest, these are basic writing mechanics that almost every story has, for a reason. While games are not necessarily stories, the device of story to keep you playing a game with repetitive mechanics is well known and understood, and SLAV surely does have repetitive mechanics.

 

I don't think you should consider one way or another whether there is other feedback like mine. Other people may not think as I do, but I could still be right about something even if nobody else believes it, or cares about it. You can/should really only ask one question. Does it feel true to you?

 

Clearly, some parts do not