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Follow up was this:

 

On 1/12/2019 at 6:18 PM, worik said:

We already have that -> Realistic Room Rental

I think I alluded to this being covered by DF and iNeed already, amongst others. There are several other room rental mods, RRR is one of the more elaborate of course.

Thinking about it, I think SkyTweak also does room prices.

 

For room prices, all you need to do is set a global. You don't even need a mod!

 

There are probably other features or requirements I mentioned that are done by existing mods too, but possibly not in a way that is compatible.

The beggars thing, for example. Lots of mods allow begging, some even restrict it by outfit. Hmm, doesn't SD+ do this?

 

Some mods tend to bring a lot of baggage, so it gets complicated. I think SD+, Parasites and Hormones have a lot of useful stuff for this, but some of it is not quite ideal.

Hence raising the talking point.

 

What mods can we use?

What needs to change? If anything?

 

 

I'd like to up the stakes a bit more for menial jobs. If the only thing you have is the stick of being sent to PoP it's a bit monotonous.

There's also minor fines, which RP already does.

 

But I think there needs to be more in this area - something more interesting and gameplay generating.

Also, would be nice if there were things the player can accumulate beyond simple cash and such to lose.

Partly, that's why I'm hung up on skill-rot and level-rot in PoP and SD+, as they add more risk, but if you are in a poor situation, those might have no room to drop anyway.

 

Also, how would PoP work if there is no XP to deteriorate? Does it function right?

 

Maybe needs some kind of reputation you build up that unlocks more people who will talk to you.

Could build up in areas, so a lot of begging makes them start to react to you as a beggar, a lot of whoring, they give you whore dialogues, even if you aren't "in uniform". All dialogue stuff with faction ranks I imagine. Too much menial work and it gets really hard to get people to accept you as an adventurer. But being branded a thief, pickpocket, slave, or cheat is worse... That kind of thing...

 

Starts to feed back to my concept of "legal slave" and such, but still ... needs more things you can earn, that are valuable, so you can also lose them.

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Then...

 

On 1/12/2019 at 10:14 PM, Kissinger said:

this seems like more sexlab survival's wheelhouse than pop's.  the simulationist elements esp begging are most in tune with what monoman is trying to do in survival and also his tweaked mods.  some of your suggestions are p novel but i still think they would are best served as updates to that mod.  the real issue is that there are a separate lot of mods that implement your suggestions individually but are janky together - either they are redundant or simply don't cohere due to mechanics or tone.

I'm not suggesting any of that should be in PoP, except in so far as I suggested that PoP could provide some additional "on release" options, which would be just as useful (or punitive to the player) without any of the menial jobs stuff.

 

As for simulation? I'm not sure why you would call it that, when the aim is to make menial jobs more of a game, not to build "washerwoman simulator" with realistic pre-medieval pregnancy survival rate. Monoman's SL Survival mod is a mixed bag of simulationist thinking and pure gameplay design, so it's not especially consistent internally in terms of how it plays, though the general intent is mostly coherent. Cum layers and frostfall? That's neither simulation, nor gameplay, I'm not sure what it is ... whimsy? But there is a lot in SL Survival that fits in with the general aims I'm describing here ... and a lot that doesn't.

 

If I didn't make it clear enough, there's already a mini-game in Radiant Prostitution, and it is more of a game than "tavern wench job simulator" - the design thinking is clearly not simulationist.

 

What I was suggesting is that we could do more to make that a worthwhile game by adding some balance. If the intent were simulation, there would be no need to balance it.

 

Most simulationist designs are stat focused, and numerically unstable, with self-reinforcing systems that tend to converge on one extreme outcome or another, despite intent to the contrary (SexLab Arousal for example). I wouldn't put SL Survival in that category ... or Radiant Prostitution. Simulationist mods do not attempt to deliver a fair game with meaningful choices, they attempt to simulate inevitable outcomes that you influence only indirectly.

 

So to make the game design intent more explicit...

 

I like the idea of making a difficult game, one where you don't start off as a magic Dragonborn to whom everything comes easily, and who everyone looks to as a savior, but as a nobody, with nothing, who has to claw their way out of the gutter, to climb a slippery slope that may lead to a hard and nasty fall if they aren't extremely careful. Not a street-scum simulator, but a way of extending the dynamic range of gaming experience in Skyrim, with lower lows and higher highs.

 

 

Taking Radiant Prostitution (RP), PoP and SL Adventures as core tools in this, what do we need to add? What do we need to change in existing mods? What mods would we have to replace entire?

 

Right now, there is little incentive to play the RP serving wench memory game, despite it being a "not bad game" that actually brings some gameplay to Skyrim that isn't intrinsic to vanilla.

 

 

ME tried to add game aspects to prostitution, to make it something you could play, rather than vanilla Skyrim (which is kill monsters, take loot, get rewards, level up). Slavery mods, like SD+ struggle because there isn't enough non-adventurer content in Skyrim. DF succeeds because it doesn't get in the way of vanilla Skyrim (much). Slaverun succeeds because it adds a massive amount of new quest content - though much of that content is even more grind-filled than the vanilla content.

 

Radiant Prostitution tries to bring across some of the ME ideas, and expand upon them. It doesn't bring across all the ME ideas, like the detailed postures and positions, which were "something novel to do" but not really gameplay - though they could have been a basis for gameplay, and it's clear that was the end goal, it wasn't realised.

 

 

Instead of just making the serving wench game have better rewards, we could make it an integral part of a wider game, that ties together events generated by RP, by PoP, by SL Adventures, by SD+, by Hormones, as well as needs mods, and many other kinds of mods.

 

The goal is not to simulate menial jobs, but to make a web of gameplay that leverages "sticks" like PoP, SLAdvs and SD+, and "carrots" like money => experience, so instead of earning money being a means to ... nothing really ... it becomes the core progression mechanism of the game.

 

That is why the beggar role is rock bottom (you have no money), but also a floor you can work up from - because beggars don't get arrested, or taken as slaves (they are just too repellent or something, who cares why exactly? It's to build gameplay, not simulate the vulnerability of real-world homelessness).

 

I admit the SD+ idea seems to undermine this, but I see SD+ like a PoP equivalent - it's a punishment and a prison, just one that's potentially mobile, and easier to escape from than PoP. There certainly don't seem to be any gameplay benefits to being an SD+ slave.

 

 

After you've failed, and been punished, the beggar role is a safe place you can start to build from. It's not a begging simulator, it's a restart point. You don't escape begging by begging, you escape it by moving on to something else that makes more money, but adds more risk.

 

The other jobs are choices, that in most cases need fleshing out as genuine gameplay, but the intent was for them to be games of one kind or another.

e.g. woodcutter needs to find the person who will pay most for wood, but that's not really enough, it needs more, hence the talking point post.

e.g. produce vendor needs to buy the right produce, when it's cheap, that will sell before it rots, again, needs more, just the germ of an idea.

e.g. serving wench gains pickpocket options, not as a wench simulator, but to add an option to turn a fairly safe game with low rewards into a high-risks, high-rewards game based on player choice.

e.g. flower girl takes risks with DCL harvesting flowers and ingredients, chooses to sell to alchemists or other customers, seeks best returns. How could we make it a game?

e.g. smithy worker has a memory game like serving wench, what else can we do to make it a game?

e.g. alchemy worker has a memory game like serving wench, what else can we do to make it a game?

 

The more menial jobs, like woodcutter, flower girl, or wench may overlap with begging, or prostitution, or both, how can we build gameplay out of that?

What meaningful choices can we offer the player? Can we make a web of choices rather than a binary tree?

 

RP adds progression and question to prostitution, what else can we add? Hence the kidnap mechanic from ME... It's not whore simulator, it's a game event, intended to be challenging and fun. How can we best achieve that with the minimum of effort?

 

 

It's true that a lot of it is possible with existing mods, yet not quite possible, because they clash, either in concrete ways, or simply in style. But if we don't talk about what mechanisms and styles we would prefer, it's much harder to work towards a coherent outcome.

 

I found a bunch of stuff on Nexus - with just a few minutes of searching - for menial jobs, but it's all low-risk, easy mode stuff: Jobs of Skyrim, Heljarchen Farm, Winstad Mine, Katixas Ciderhouse Restaurant (and let's not forget classics like Skooming Skyrim). There must be many more. I guess some of these things could be patched to make them a bit more hardcore. Also, most of the locations are more management games rather than grunt-work, but it's interesting to try this stuff out for a change. Things like the ciderhouse add a lot of menial jobs, and there are plenty of ideas to steal there.

 

 

I brought it up here [PoP forum], because the harshly punitive regime of PoP, and the way it (and SD Cages) are intended to increase game difficulty. They set a style guide, and fit the concept of a harder game with harsher penalties for failure. How can we extend that to make PoP genuinely part of the Skyrim game, rather than just a movie where the PC gets whipped and raped a lot? How do we really understand that style? What do we think are its defining points? It's all up for debate.

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Then, in the SL Adventures forum:

 

I posted this long rambling idea for enhancing "menial jobs" on the PoP forum.

 

Anyway, most of it is about how to use existing mods to enhance the value of menial jobs.

 

This raised a few ideas for changes in existing mods that could promote this.

SL Adventures was central to much of it.

 


I hope people will talk about how this idea can be improved.

 

Maybe we can get a lot more of it with existing mode and no changes than I first guessed.

Or maybe not?

 

 

  • SL Adventures could have a "always send to PoP" setting for crimes, so you don't have to set absurd bounties - though maybe absurd bounties are mostly OK. Just seems silly that everything is equivalent to murder.
  • SL Adventures could allow wearing armor as a crime (for females only, of course).
  • SL Adventures could have a "beggars exempt" flag for characters in beggar outfits.
  • SL Adventures could add "sleeping" and "lollygagging" as specific crimes (lollygagging => waiting, in this case, sleeping is self evident).
  • SL Adventures could optionally specifically handle woodcutter axe as allowed, if you set any weapon in inventory is a crime. Possibly some other really weak weapons that have other utility could be exempted too, or different bounties per weapon class - a dagger might actually attract a higher bounty than a battle axe, because the dagger is concealable.

 

There are a few places a PC can sleep "rough" in some towns - Riverwood for example, and it would actually be a neat little mod to add a few more.

 

Such locations would carry attendant risk.

I would imagine that the percentage chance of arrest should be handled specially, probably based on how many hours you sleep or wait, rather than the guard observation cloak. e.g. a single check based on configured chance per-hour. So if you have 10% per hour, a ten hour sleep means you are always detected. Though I guess you could cap the chance at 90% so there's always a little luck in it.

 

 

I'm not actually asking for these features in SL Adventures, they were just some things that I mooted in that post.

 

Though I have asked for armor as a crime previously, and yeah, I guess I am still asking for that, but it's sort of unrelated to this.

I just like armor as a crime, alright!

It seems so obvious (to me) that SLA should have it.

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And...

 

On 1/13/2019 at 5:56 AM, Teutonic said:

I might add the option to tolerate it outside of the city. A condition for customizable clothes / parts of equipment might also be added.

I'd love to be able to make characters in chastity belts totally excluded from rape attempts. In some games, but not others.

 

Yes, belts block rape in some cases, but I think oral and anal (and boobsex?) attacks can still occur? Or should ... perhaps?

 

DCL lets you toggle this: its "belts block rape" toggle causes belts to override "full chastity required to prevent rape".

 

 

Also, a question...

In SL Adventures, do hobble dresses provide rape protection?

 

DD has some internal idea of what protects against what, when it applies its animation filter, and so there are various items that prevent vaginal/anal access that aren't belts, hobble-dresses being one, some harnesses another. IIRC, it also considers locked plugs. There's also the slightly fiddly issue with gags that may or may not block oral access depending on their state.

 

I notice that Kimy pretty much always puts a redundant belt on for quests that also include a hobble-dress, which adds some confusion about what she believes they do, even though it would seem the code in DD does treat them as blocking all vaginal and anal access. You could make a model that hobbles but allows access, but I don't believe there is one like that currently.

 

I asked about this on the DD forum, but as usual there ... sound of tumbleweeds blowing past.

I was writing a method to correctly calculate access to each 'hole', and wanted to get the right results so I wouldn't hit the filter in the first place.

That said, I ignored the boobsex issue completely, as I don't support it at all, or feet for that matter. I'm not aware of any boobsex rape animations anyway.

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Then this:

 

I've set up a new game to explore the extremes of play as a "weak" character.

 

Spoiler
  • Starts with zero skills, except speech and pickpocket.
  • Skills only raise through training. (Plus various other SkyTweak changes). Added some extra trainers.
  • Cannot raise levels* at all! No health/magica/stamina increase possible, and no perks. (Might change this eventually).
  • Not the dragonborn.
  • Towns exit locked down with SL survival (tolls and follower required).
  • No fast travel.
  • 400/500 septim carriage prices.
  • Realistic Room Rental.
  • Apropos2.
  • Frostfall.
  • RND (had to use this instead of iNeed because of SL Survival hard binding, bah!)
  • Radiant Prostitution.
  • SGO III
  • Devious Followers.
  • SD+ / Hormones / Parasites / Cages.
  • DCL
  • EC+
  • Devious Captures
  • DA + Defeat
  • Jobs of Skyrim.
  • FMEA
  • Wounds
  • Various crime changes/fixes.
  • Various begging related mods.
  • LAL + CCAS - start as prostitute
  • PoP, with imprisonment up to 7 days, and skill decay.
  • SL Adventures

 

I did plan to put Skooma Whore in at first, but on reflection decided to leave it out for now. The main reason to put them in is because of the SL Survival options with them, but they're both a bit ... intrusive ... and tend to take over any game they're allowed into.

I think I might swap SGOIII for Fertility Mode if I rebuild this, as it seems a better thematic fit, but I might change my mind on that.

Rather than mod the house prices to be huge, I simply decided I wouldn't even try to buy one, and would never be able to do the quests to earn the right anyway.

 

I have mods that can block access to guild quests until high skill levels, but there doesn't seem a point. SL Survival nerfs those beds - big time - and I can choose not to pursue guild quests. Saves installing a couple of mods.

 

With RP, making money is not hard, but it's time consuming and apropos inflicts a toll on the character. You have to take breaks some days, and those are days you have to pay rent and buy food, but make nothing. The inn-keeper seems the primary beneficiary of all this; she's getting half my take, and my rent and food expenses. It's like DF's enslave yourself, but with less fighting or devious devices. If you want, you can press on despite apropos being maxed out on W&T. The main problem is walking slowly, but if you need the cash, you can keep at it. Apropos wasn't designed for the extreme end of this scenario. Adding in my dev-SLD can make it so you are severely crippled though. It's given me an idea for a blackouts event too.

 

* I wanted this, but couldn't make it work. I set the cost per level and base cost to the max, so levelling is approx 10x most costly, and set the XP from skill use to 0, so skills don't level from use, but buying skills still results in getting XP. I can simply choose not to 'accept' the level-ups in the UI though. Even if I did, getting above level 10 seems unlikely... will see.

 

 

 

SL Adventures contributes a lot to make this build work...

 

  • Poverty is on, turned up to the max, and everything is a crime. Simply owning a weapon is a crime.
  • Bounties are set up to be painful, but not an instant trip to PoP.
  • Cum penalties are all on, but arousal penalties are not. If I wanted arousal penalties, I'd use SLD for them anyway :)  (In practice a prostitute character rarely has any arousal level to speak of anyway, unless she ends up stuck in a plugged belt).
  • I tuned rapes so they would only occur if restrained, collared, exhausted, injured, or drunk.
  • On top of that I set a bunch of OR conditions, for basically everything else, except Thane, which I set to NOT. So even a restrained or collared character would also need to be naked, visibly horny, or out at night, to get raped. This wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it's as close as I could get.
  • Because of the prostitution, simply being naked would be too common a trigger, and would tend to result in unwanted rapes from customers. RP already handles customer rapes internally, so I didn't want that conflict.

 

Spoiler

 

After a while working in the tavern, my character had a lot of cum on her. Just stepping outside like that would mean a hefty bounty.

No need for a locked door, or possessive inn-keeper, the cum laws alone make venturing out something you have to plan for, and of course, going out at night would be both dangerous, and illegal.

 

Right now she's stuck in Windhelm, and even if she could leave the city without freezing to death, she can't afford a carriage, or an escort so that she isn't eaten by wolves. Assuming she manages to earn enough for the fare to Riften or Whiterun, she will still need an escort for the guards to let her out, and will still need to pay the toll.

 

 

 

There were a couple of areas where I felt that SL Adventures wasn't delivering quite what I wanted...

 

Crimes:

 

Spoiler

 

Being able to set specific outfits, and entire classes of worn item that attract a bounty would be a huge plus.

This would allow me to set "tavern clothes" as attracting a bounty, to replicate the ME feature that gives fines for whoring out on the street.

 

I also (still) want to outlaw women (except thanes) from wearing armor of any kind - though I think there ought to be some kind of "tax" you can pay to disable this, so you just pay 500 a week, instead of getting a 200 fine every time you're seen.

 

 

I'd also like to be able to set specific outfits or types of outfit as rape conditions, so tavern clothes could either protect, or make you vulnerable to rape, or armor could prevent rape, etc.

 

Another thing that would be a neat, small change, is to split the weapon crime in two, so instead of just a toggle, carrying, and equipping weapons are totally different crimes. You could then set a big bounty for equipping a weapon, and a smaller bounty for carrying one. Or the reverse.

 

 

Rapes:

 

Spoiler

 

For this sort of game, I'd like more location types in the rape conditions, so, for example, so I could disable rapes only in inns.

Maybe SLAdv could allow the location types that already have 'indecency' configuration? Temples, shops, jarl's hall, and inns - in exactly the same way it currently has city-exterior as a condition? A 'wilderness' or 'hold environs' (for outside the city) type locations would also be neat, evolutionary extension of existing functionality.

 

The actual condition system is more than sufficient, it's just the conditions themselves that I'd like more of.

 

 

 

I still have the feel that the way SLAdv checks for crime triggers is a bit ... unimmersive ...

 

Spoiler

 

e.g.

 

You have owning weapons as a crime (400), and visible cum as a crime (350), and out at night as a crime (200).

Major crime threshold set at 1200.

 

PC is seen by a guard, at night, covered in cum, and carrying a dagger.

 

PC gets 950 bounty. Not a major crime. Guard does not pursue.

Next time the guard sees the PC, they get another 950 bounty, and now they owe 1900, which is a major crime.

The PC will likely be arrested and sent to PoP.

This might be just half an hour later.

 

It seems ... weird ... the PC really only committed one set of crimes, it was just seen twice. Possibly by the same guard, possibly without the PC or the guard ever having changed location.

 

The cheap solution is to set the check times to a much larger number, say 12, or 24 hours.

The down side is that could mask off conceptually different crimes, like carrying a dagger one time, then a sword the next, or one layer of cum one time, and ten the next.

 

And then there's the question of, how did the guard know the PC was carrying a (presumably concealed) dagger on the first observation, when they didn't stop and search?

 

 

Well, you could say it's fixating on immersive trivia, but as this is a core feature of the mod, I think it would be nice to consider allowing more options, though I'm happy to admit, the main effects function pretty-much OK, but a more nuanced system could create some gameplay alternatives.

 

It would probably matter, if more crimes were ever added, such as making carrying other classes of item a crime.

 

I'd like to see a crime for having other classes of items besides weapons, such as lockpicks, or alchemical ingredients, or necromantic ingredients, or scrolls and spell books, or other kinds of items that nords might get nervous about. But I may be in a minority on that, and I guess it's pretty far down my wish list anyway. Many of these things are sold in nord towns, but ... so are weapons ... perhaps it's fine for men to have them? :) But women can't be trusted? Most alchemists seem to be women, but that merely invites a series of quests where people accuse them of witchcraft and vampirism.

 

 

If, for example, SLAdv split crimes into two kinds: visible from a distance, and only detected on search. If a guard sees you violate a "visible" crime, he force greets immediately, and demands you pay the fine. He also performs a search - but - if you don't get searched you can commit "concealed" crimes with impunity.

 

This solves two problems:

 

Firstly, for an ongoing crime, like "covered in cum", PC gets stopped and searched, despite a low bounty for the crime, and the PC knows to hurry away and clean up. If they run into a different guard, then they might be fined again - it makes sense. In this case a short cooldown, like half an hour, is the "safe" time for you to get home, and stops a group of guards all arresting you for the same crime, each in turn, in a stupid and unfair way.

 

Secondly, it makes immersive sense of crimes that shouldn't be instantly detectable from a distance.

 

It has the additional bonus that you don't get the weird thing where you build up a huge bounty from a very minor crime you don't even realise the guards are noticing. This behaviour where the guards just add on to your bounty without doing anything until it hits the point they go aggro on you is ... a bit odd ... even if there are messages about added bounty to warn you.

 

Particularly, useful when you don't actually know what rules pertain in a given hold, because they were set "randomly", and especially so with nudity laws.

 

If you wanted you could let the player configure a visible distance for each crime, with different values for day time, and night time.

Maybe it's getting a bit anal. I guess some people would like it, and it would be sort of interesting to make it easier to hide crimes at night, without turning them off entirely.

 

But, you can always just turn them off entirely at night, so it might be overkill.

 

 

One final possibility. What if guards had a chance to "harass" repeat offenders? Much more chance to get pulled up on small bounties, and more immersion.

 

A stop and search mechanic would make this even better.

 

There is actually a fancy crime overhaul "Crime, Punishment and Redemption" that has stuff like this, but it seems so complex that I can't imagine it not conflicting like hell with everything, and I can't imagine it works with PoP at all, in any way, because it has its own weirdly anachronistic "Skyrim Central Prison". Looks like lots of interesting ideas in it, nonetheless.

 

 

 

One thing is clear, when you make a game that is almost totally constrained to urban environments, the details of crime rules and rape scenarios become much more important to your game - along with your choice of solicitation mod, they pretty much define your experience.

 

You start to care about little things that wouldn't be a major part of a conventional playthrough. You aren't spending time walking through the wilderness, or looting dungeons, you're in an inn, or on the street, trying to turn a trick, or maybe pickpocket a sucker. With no home, getting raped and robbed, and maybe thrown in jail, is a disaster that will take days to recover from. It's a very different game; not Skyrim really. Makes a change though. Going back to regular play after this will feel like becoming a tiny god!

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9 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

Monoman's SL Survival mod is a mixed bag of simulationist thinking and pure gameplay design, so it's not especially consistent internally in terms of how it plays, though the general intent is mostly coherent. Cum layers and frostfall? That's neither simulation, nor gameplay, I'm not sure what it is ... whimsy?

:classic_laugh: I guess it is just a comic like exaggeration. But some underlying mechanics are good impulses.

I think the main flaw is that everyone is annoyed by the overpowered skyrim-ish game progress. (Get insanely rich and become a god-like superhero in 9 days). So they do something about it and tune some screws.

But if you sum it up and combine it, it becomes ridiculous in the opposite direction.

 

I think, SL Survival's major flaw is that it's kind of rigid and a tries to solve everything alone. It still lacks flexibility.

 

My stance is that this "Play the downtrodden anti-hero" would need  some kind of framework, where mods can fit in, as the players likes it for their own taste.

E.g.

  • DDa, DDi and DDx form the framework for mods like Laura's shop, CDS, DD helpers on top of that.
  • Campfire is the groundwork for FF and other mods on top of that

Not an easy undergoing to create something like this in 2019. Because there are many mods that already have these little tuning screws in place ... one little twist in one corner and the whole thing can easily get crazy again.

 

And we must never forget, that if we drag mod authors of existing mod into this direction, the core idea of their mods get fuzzier, more complex, less intuitive.

More so, from my reading, I get it that only few players enjoy this survival thing, so others get annoyed by "useless" features that they will switch off immediately.

 

Note to myself: this requires more thinking ?

 

 

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KISS

 

Keep

It

Simple

Stallone

 

The fuck?! You may be saying.

Calm your tits Jerry.

 

What we need is a :

 

money drain

Powerful as fuck enemies

Slavery & prostitution

Food Water and Sleep I do that shit already.

 

These are already things that Skyrim can provide given some tweaks and a few mods for the sex and slavery. If you really want to live your life as a useless snail then you can do that if you want.

What most people really want are options. Options come with power or rather what you can do with that power. I already die in one or two hits at full power thanks to mods anyway so why not take a few perks and increase a few levels? Learn some skills of the trade and enjoy your game (or hopeless Struggle)

 

Edit: Actually now that I think of it, the whole thing with being helpless is that it is an on rails experience. It is a story of powerful people dragging you a helpless person with them on their mad journey for fame, fortune or someone to tickle their pickle.

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Due to some experiments with CBBE, I now have two "helpless girl" games in play, one UUNP and one CBBE.

 

The CBBE game also has some additional mods of note: Arachnophobia, and SXP Redone, that the first (UUNP) game doesn't have.

It's my first time with SXP Redone, and I have no idea if it's going to break everything.

 

It should be understood that there are a lot of other mods I haven't mentioned, such as No Starting Spells, or Parthunax Dilemma. A lot of stuff is just inherited from my regular games, like SL Stories, SL Stories Devious, SD+, SD Cages, Hormones, Parasites, DCL, DF, Simple Slavery, Immersive Creatures, Interesting NPCs, Inconsequential NPCs, EggFactory, RDO, Increased Bounty and Guild Rewards, SexLab Shrines, Dripping When Aroused, EFF, and a load of texture and model upgrades, along with a bunch of other stuff to make everything look nice, and to deliver immersive looking interiors, dark nights and even darker dungeons, and make Caffeine ENB pop. I also have a metric ton of follower mods, though I had to remove a few for the CBBE game, as they were set up to use the player skin - or probably were - easier just to drop them than dig into it.

 

I didn't bother with a mod to fix starting skills, as I found it easier to just player.setav them exactly to my taste after game start.

 

I'm not using "Disparity", as it's gone a bit funny on me in the past, and the effects are hard to perceive in play most of the time.

 

I have my dev version of SLD, but it's not configured to do much in either of these games. Rapes hurt stamina and magicka recovery, and high arousal benefits total stamina. Large boobs benefit total magicka. It's not particularly punitive, though the rape consequences are ... non-trivial ... but they wear off completely after a week.

 

 

In the first game, I reset all skills to zero, except speech and pickpocket. In the CBBE game, I didn't do this, and counter-intuitively, it's actually better.

 

I used the DA captured for ransom start in the CBBE game, and surprisingly was able to beat the stupid key mashing game, and even more surprisingly escaped the bandits without being arrowed to death. However, this left her naked, up near Windhelm, with Frostfall enabled. Luck was in my favour again, and some Stormclock soldiers got in a fight with Reiklings, and I was able to scavenge light armor and a sword.

 

However, ust because my character was able to fight, doesn't mean she could win. She was still only level 1, with lvl 15 skills. An attack by an IC wolf pack that mixed wolves and frost wolves, plus cubs saw me defeated by the final Frost Wolf. DA played a rescue scenario, and she was ported to the inn in Winterhold - though I was next to the Windhelm wall at the time - oh well!

 

With "Wounds" my character was left in a badly injured state, with cuts everywhere, and a broken leg. She could barely move. The innkeeper left her with no choice but to whore for food, drink and the money for a bed - and to do all the chores around the inn - while her Rockjoint infection worsened and the open wounds showed no sign of healing. The little shop in Winterhold doesn't sell any "Wounds" supplies, either by design,  or load-order :) 

 

So, despite being skilled, or perhaps because of it, the pressure was harder from the get go, with more drama, and more interesting choices. There's still a lot of radiant prostitution, but the goal of recovering and escaping the inn is far more alluring than the goal of simply raising enough skills to have a different profession, that drives the first game.

 

 

What's clear though, is that there are many mods to support this kind of play, and apart from a few minor tweaks I could wish for in SL Adventures and PoP, it really comes down to how much fun you can make a game that relies on Radiant Prostitution so much (you could use ME for the same thing). ME offers a little more variety and buttons to push, but doesn't have the quests of RP.

 

 

There are a couple of areas where I want more, beyond those already mentioned.

 

1) a blackout feature for SLD, so really high levels of apropos W&T can cause financial problems - hours blacked out are lost money making hours.

2) better begging, so you can beg for a place to stay, and possibly even get thrown out because of it, and have to take more extreme actions to be allowed back in.

3) a pay up, work, or leave rule for inns, so you can't just linger there indefinitely without paying for a room, or food and drinks, or working for the innkeeper.

4) more recognition of your actions and history from NPCs - this would benefit any kind of Skyrim game TBH.

 

I'm currently enforcing (3) by pure roleplay, but a game mechanic would be better.

 

While many mods add begging, and SL Survival mixes it up with sex for favours, there is no way to beg for a place to sleep.

This latter is a nagging omission from every begging feature around.

 

Given how hard it isn't to add dialogue and gate it off flags for past events, that clear with timers, it's odd Skyrim did so little of this in the first place, and stranger still there are so few mods that add much of it. SLSF being a notable exception, but it was/is overburdened with tedious rumor passing mechanics and underprovided with actual dialogues.

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It keeps coming back to the issue that if you take away regular Skyrim gameplay, you need something else.

 

I'm using RP for that. You could use ME. Those are pretty much the choices. Maybe you could mix TDF in there, but it seems like easy mode compared to the others, and lacks depth.

 

Some features can spice up the very limited gameplay of RP, like the blackouts I'm thinking of - to stop you just screwing endlessly, even when you should drop - or better begging, for when things go completely off the rails.

 

 

But mainly what is needed is an RP plus. Not the extra quests for RP that have been added, though those are nothing to sniff at, but various pervasive changes to the mod to make it more fluid, offer more choices at more times, and to bring more obvious risk+reward mechanics to it.

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2 hours ago, Darkpig said:

What we need is a :

 

money drain

Powerful as fuck enemies

Slavery & prostitution

Food Water and Sleep I do that shit already.

Did all that. Got bored. Moving on from it.

 

In one game, the enemies were so fricken crazy I kept getting stuck in dungeons with no way back, and only insta-death forward. Because they were killing me so completely in one hit, I wasn't even getting post defeats, I was just dead. Even if I'd turned on the DA feature where you never die, I'd still  have been left with a broken dangling quest. That was obviously not fun. If you're going to go into dungeons, you at least need a chance, or you stop going, and they're just dead content.

 

That was when I had the "Immersive Unlevelled Zones" or whatever it's called, where draugr dungeons are locked at lvl 50+ etc. and pretty much everything has a pre-determined level, rather than sliding against the player. Even starting bandits were about 10 levels above a starting player, IIRC. If anyone cares, I'll find the link for this mod?

 

DF is the ultimate cash ramora. If you can't leave down without a DF, you have to fund that greedy follower.

Difficult enemies: IC crank up to max, game difficulty at master, or turn it down for an actual chance.

Slavery and prostitution: SD+, DF, RP/ME or DCL solicitation if you are really minimalist.

 

Tons of people play this mix (give or take DF - there are other cash sinks). It's not that niche an approach. It doesn't make the PC "weak" either, it makes the enemies strong, and there's a subtle difference.

 

The various wenches mods are also a way to turn most dungeons into a horror show for the player.

I stopped using wenches, because the difficulty spikes are too arbitrary. Some of the "chain" effects can explode, turning a tomb into a bigger population centre than Whiterun.

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2 hours ago, Darkpig said:

Edit: Actually now that I think of it, the whole thing with being helpless is that it is an on rails experience. It is a story of powerful people dragging you a helpless person with them on their mad journey for fame, fortune or someone to tickle their pickle.

Is it? I mean, is that how you want it to be?

 

People do seem to want that from slavery mods. I like it in small doses, but it's not the basis for a  whole game.

 

 

The weak character game isn't necessarily that. For me, recently, it's been about a high-stakes struggle to drag yourself out of a pit with slippery sides, reaching for success, wealth and heroism, but probably sliding back down and ending up rotting in a skooma den underneath Solitude.

 

It's hard, but it's got to be winnable, or else there's no challenge.

On the way, there is defeat, humiliation, and being at the mercy of the whims of others. There's also success and victory.

 

Having escaped that pit makes the freedom that follows sweeter. The deeper, darker lows make the highs seems like real high points, not something that was handed to you.

There's a sense of achievement; of overcoming odds.

 

 

But I get that's not what everyone is looking for. I'm just not sure what they do want.

 

A slavery mod might work well with an "on rails" narrative, that tells a good story, but you'd only be able to play it a couple of times before it was worn out. I had something in mind like that with my follower mod, and I'm still interested in that. I'm not sure if it really mixes with "weak girl" characters or not. A tough dragonborn can also be enslaved, it's just different.

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4 hours ago, worik said:

I guess it is just a comic like exaggeration. But some underlying mechanics are good impulses.

I think the main flaw is that everyone is annoyed by the overpowered skyrim-ish game progress. (Get insanely rich and become a god-like superhero in 9 days). So they do something about it and tune some screws.

But if you sum it up and combine it, it becomes ridiculous in the opposite direction.

 

I think, SL Survival's major flaw is that it's kind of rigid and a tries to solve everything alone. It still lacks flexibility.

Yes. It has some very all or nothing mechanics.

 

It wrecks "sleep anywhere" to the point where it's silly, with no MCM toggle. If this feature could be configured sensibly, would be great.

It wrecks using guild beds, with no way to disable it in the MCM. See above.

The forced RND integration makes you use a very old and somewhat lacklustre needs mod.

 

The forced follower mechanic is particularly weak, in that it's just that, there's no way to overcome it immersively. It's just a switch you throw that says "must have X followers" to leave the town. Nothing stops you paying them off the moment you leave and sacking them all though. It fails. You are (to some extent) better off roleplaying it how you think it should be.

 

It's a pity that he made it and then didn't want to develop it further. It's of some value. The begging parts are quite good, and the anti-stash is not bad either, but still needs some work to handle Realistic Room Rental chests etc better. Sex warming you has saved me from hypothermia-death-by-rape on several occasions. It's a very mixed bag. If it were just developed more, it could be great.

 

There are a lot of little details in SL Survival, but the lack of configuration options and polish hold it back from being more generally useful to more people.

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2 hours ago, worik said:

My stance is that this "Play the downtrodden anti-hero" would need  some kind of framework, where mods can fit in, as the players likes it for their own taste.

E.g.

  • DDa, DDi and DDx form the framework for mods like Laura's shop, CDS, DD helpers on top of that.
  • Campfire is the groundwork for FF and other mods on top of that

Not an easy undergoing to create something like this in 2019. Because there are many mods that already have these little tuning screws in place ... one little twist in one corner and the whole thing can easily get crazy again.

 

And we must never forget, that if we drag mod authors of existing mod into this direction, the core idea of their mods get fuzzier, more complex, less intuitive.

More so, from my reading, I get it that only few players enjoy this survival thing, so others get annoyed by "useless" features that they will switch off immediately.

 

Note to myself: this requires more thinking ?

 

Funnily enough, that last line is a paraphrase of the first line of my first post, where I put the question about what we need to develop.

 

I would say, mod authors can't be dragged anywhere, anymore than you can herd cats, from a distance, over the internet. Authors are going to make the mods they want, when they want, if they want.

 

But, I can make things, and while I have a plan of things to do for SLD, I'm also looking at what I might be able to shoehorn into it, or where I might go afterwards.

 

Mainly though, I'm trying to figure out how much I can do without a single new mod or mod-change of any kind.

 

 

It's becoming more apparent (in my mind) that the prostitution mod is the hub all the spokes have to hang off. Those other mods are just there to make sure you need the prostitution mod.

 

In a game like the one I've got now, getting enslaved to a DF master is about the best thing that can happen to you, assuming the master can win fights with your help, that is.

If you want to invest in skills, its probably best to think about pick pocket, or restoration. At that point, you're adventuring at the master's expense, not your own. An SD+ master might be even better.

 

Alteration spells to buff others seem like a desirable feature too.

 

 

There is still only a very small amount of "content" for prostitution or enslavement, so in the end, you need to get back to the core of vanilla Skyrim, or add a ton of stuff. I would suggest the best path forward is where you can do both, but that's a bit of an ideal situation.

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Some mods I'm not using right now:

 

  • Bathing in Skyrim - so many patching and compatability issues - may add it if I have time.
  • Loot and Degradation - too script heavy for too little benefit. A simpler mod that did a bit of gear breakage occasionally would be just as useful (to me) and have 1% of the load.
  • Community Uncapper - already using SkyTweak, so mostly pointless. I see no need to limit skill levels when raising them is so damned hard. With SkyTweak can simply make that high level training too expensive to bear (but it's not per-skill).
  • Katixas Skill Lock Cap - this would be what I used if I wanted to cap, as it does just that. Hopefully does not conflict...
  • Trade Routes - might be interesting - but my PC can't even travel yet so ...
  • I am Your Shield - also interesting - didn't know about this before I started looking at all this stuff.

 

I think L&D is probably the fanciest, most complicated mod on this list, and its benefit in a weak character game is pretty small. With so many other limits on your combat ability, and so many other better cash sinks, broken weapons seems pointless. Even if you have a mod to stop weapon looting, this is just fiddling around with the last percentile.

 

Compared to the massive effect a mod like Wounds has, or the huge impact of cash draining compulsory DF, or removing normal XP gain mechanisms and starting with low skills ... it's just not that big a deal. I don't see bang for buck. Can anyone convince me I'm wrong?

 

 

OTOH, Jobs in Skyrim is punching above its weight. It gives you more things to do that aren't fighting. It's "content" for prostitutes that want a day off, and it works, albeit I had to fix some bugs in its ESP right off the bat. It might not be the best content, but it's something. The incomes are so low compared to prostitution that it genuinely makes that profession look like the "Make big money fast" scheme the innkeepers call it in ME. Of course, it's the innkeepers that get the best of it; you're working to pay them, and they're taking a cut too.

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2 hours ago, worik said:

I  came to the same conclusion about L&D and I am playing now https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/89035

Suits me much better.

That mod is great for size and all, but it doesn't recognize circlets which most armor mods now use instead of helms. Which for me only leaves it controlling 3 locations of armor. 

 

3 is not good enough. ?

 

The author seems pretty adamantly against expanding it too. ?

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44 minutes ago, Slorm said:

I've been thinking about installing that, does it work well and reliably?

With some ini tweaks it's great. 

 

Except it's just boots / gloves / body / helmet

 

It doesn't have a scrap feature so broken things are gone completely even mats. 

 

No esp really light weight. 

 

I actually run it with L&D. I have it tweaked to just handle NPCs

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41 minutes ago, Slorm said:

I've been thinking about installing that, does it work well and reliably?

It has it's limitations (circlets) but it works perfect. I use it 3-4 months in my main game, now.

Some minor UI conflicts with the widget position, but all solvable.

 

My last open issue is that I fail to get the UI widget out of my killcam screenshots. :classic_blink: Somehow I am too stupid to figure out how to switch it off.

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7 minutes ago, Corsayr said:

Except it's just boots / gloves / body / helmet

+ sword, bow, dagger, ... that's why I stumbled upon it.

The vanilla "sharpening" of a sword at the grindstone felt just stupid to me. Now, it makes sense again :classic_happy:

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29 minutes ago, Tiress said:

There is also this one, but I've never tried it.

 

That has a lot of cool features but is currently in a very raw state. Lotta bugs much tweaking needed. 

 

But it has the advantage of working for every slot, and it has a really neat system for determining outfit size so a small girl can't just pick up a suit of armor they got off a big Orc and expect to use it without alterations. 

 

Also, it gives item health based on the base material, and tempering is more like armor for the armor. 

 

So like iron armor has 100hp and tempering it protects those hps, and ebony armor would have like 600hp. (just example, numbers are not exact) 

 

but it has an alias swap system that is clunky and can get mucked up. 

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12 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

A slavery mod might work well with an "on rails" narrative, that tells a good story, but you'd only be able to play it a couple of times before it was worn out. I had something in mind like that with my follower mod, and I'm still interested in that. I'm not sure if it really mixes with "weak girl" characters or not. A tough dragonborn can also be enslaved, it's just different.

One doesn't normally watch movies over and over except for maybe the really good ones or if you are a kid who wants to watch Frozen. I get that enslaving a Dragonborn is a bit like enslaving a Dragon Demigod. Some mods do it better than others. I think Whiterun Brothel Revamped did a decent job of explaining it. I mean you are a powerful being sure but you are at the mercy of several powerful succubi in a mansion that bends to their will. Magic is the name of the game here and those who have magic definitely have more influence over people as a whole. That is why the Almeri Dominion has so much influence in the Elderscrolls Canon. I tried Slaverun but then I ran off and was never seen or heard from again just because I'm a little rascal.


To answer your earlier statement, I agree that it is boring if you don't stand a chance against your enemies. I in a way do stand a chance I'll be it my character is a bit more prepared from the get go with them starting around the low level of 81:classic_tongue:.

As for the rest:

I tried Devious Followers but I always end up killing them because they wanted to get paid for the hours they were sleeping, sleeping of all things.

I never used Wenches cause summoners and necromancers are already enough of a pain to deal with and I didn't want the extra stress on my game.

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2 hours ago, Corsayr said:

That has a lot of cool features but is currently in a very raw state. Lotta bugs much tweaking needed. 

I saw this, and I thought ... I'll try it if he keeps on fixing it ... but I'm a hard sell. I'm not really looking for an armor/weapon degradation system in the first place.

Also, it has all the laggy pain of DD, because objects in containers aren't containers, and like DD, doesn't cache instances. This is a Skyrim code pattern that probably should go away.

 

I prefer the kind of game where once you get far enough in, it's all about named unique weapons, and that sort of thing shouldn't break unless it's a story point.

Clearly, my "weak" characters won't be getting any of those, but from what's happened so far, they lose most weapons to theft already anyway.

 

I was surprised people were jumping at L&D earlier in this thread. I'm interested in why they think it's important to playing a weak character.

All I'm seeing is a minor cash sink, or possible a small random chance a combat will be lost, in an unfair way that only effects the player - am I missing something?

 

I already have enough cash constraints, and unfair random ways to lose fights.

So many weapons get stolen, due to combat defeat, or weapon drop mechanics, or post-rape theft, I think I'd be lucky to keep one long enough to break anyway. This is less of an issue with armor, but only slightly; I've lost that too.

Adding weapon or armor breakage seems like something you do more because you like the feel of it rather than it making a big change to the game.

 

What the Equipment Durability mod has going for it, is SKSE plugin only, no ESP, and no script load. I could imagine adding that, simply due to the low cost and high convenience.

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7 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

All I'm seeing is a minor cash sink, or possible a small random chance a combat will be lost, in an unfair way that only effects the player - am I missing something?

I find it prevents equipment bloat. The economic aspects, as well as the attrition sustained in prolonged engagements, adds depth, but the most important function is preventing the creation of the "uber gear set". 

 

After alchemy, enchanting is the 2nd most game breaking mechanic in Vanilla Skyrim (IMO). Giving a max armor set custom enchantments can really give you a significant advantage especially since NPCs rarely have multiple enchanted items. 

 

With L&D just because you can make a certain level of gear doesn't mean that you have a sustainable level of materials to keep it repaired and replaced. I frequently still have to use Steel grade equipment even after I have much higher skill levels, and on occasion have had to revert to Iron. 

 

L&D also has features to give NPCs tempered gear and has them actually loot things they kill reducing the occurrence of finding random dead bodies with useful stuff on them. 

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