Devious Followers (8 June 2019)

[Lupine00]

7 hours ago, retrev said:

Of course, just having moderate amount of gold isn't problem, but in existing setting of this mode(tweaking range of given gold) creates lots of amount of gold which is moderate.

for example, I assume that giving less than 100 gold make PC whore out and more than 4000 gold make worry about higher interest, in 100<x<4000 range, gold control function can be ignored because it's meaningless and has almost no problems.

 

So, I want to suggest that making 'distribution' setting of given gold in gold control mode, which select how much given gold can be dispersed in given range. for example, when that value is higher, given gold is almost extreme value. with lower value, amount of given gold will be moderate value.

 

2)

 

This mod is basically enslavement mod, and most important part of this mod will be deal(selling freedom), but I found that is quite linear because there is no change(just my thought although), So I want to suggest:

 

(1) How about Randomizing price of deal? Some day, 'Slut deal' is 1300 gold and removes 1000 debt, In another day, It costs 600 gold and removes 500 debt. Of course reject penalty can be applied. How about allowing PC to negotiate price such as "remove more debt!!!" or "that's too high"? but it should be limited to prevent removing its randomless.

 

Randomizing deal price is already possibly via Chaos Mode, pretty much exactly as you ask for.

 

As for gold control mode, while there certainly are many values you could set that don't work, the default values of 100 - 500 do work pretty well. Let's say the average you get is 350, but in practice any follower knock downs, and other events will reduce this. It's quite easy to get it below 100, even if you have a higher allowance in theory, and I saw zero a lot (though that may actually have been a bug).

 

If you think that 500 is too much, set it to 300, and the minimum to 0.

 

Unlike debt-per-day, which is practically impossible to balance without feeling that you're cheating yourself into slavery on purpose, gold control just needs to pivot around 100 with reasonably frequency. Less than 100 and you've got a problem, more than 100 and you're fine. As its a fixed target, it's easy to set.

 

If you use SLS tolls, that creates another expense you have to meet. If you add in Skooma Whore, Milk Addict and MME, then not paying the toll at the gate is very perilous.

[mai_hasegawa]

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

feeling that you're cheating yourself into slavery on purpose

Very well put, had the same feeling throughout.

 

What I ended up doing is setting deal buyout (after normal expiration) to zero, circumventing the approaching doom of losing money when follower gets angry.

This way all the debt, or most of it, is fully settled through deals without any money changing hands, and I can experience the content of the mod without feeling like I'm cheating myself just to do it.

 

And I also lower willpower through console to get more content.

 

Definitely not what mod author had in mind, but it works best for me.

[Reesewow]

8 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I don't think you have got what I'm saying, as I don't want it to be forgiving... Difficulty is not my complain, lack of any remaining game is my complaint. I wrote in excruciating detail about what went wrong, and exactly when it went wrong, and how, and why it was not fun, or expected, or plausible as functioning correctly, but it's pretty plain what most people read from it was simply TLDNR followed by a lot of z z Z Z Z, or they skimmed it and took stuff out of context.

I believe Lozeak's point is that Slavery mode as it stands is a failure state, and besides that is one of the oldest and least-adjusted sections of the mod, so it isn't a high priority for him for in-depth fixes or adjustments at this time.  So reports on problems and balance issues with enslavement mode are probably still welcome, but it is not something he plans on addressing any time soon.  I doubt most of the nastier interactions or effects you describe are "working as intended", but what point is there in Lozeak giving a huge response to something he's thinking he will bypass or tear out at some point anyway?

 

It sounds like he'd rather offer alternate options to "enslavement" first, and if down the road he feels like it come back around and make adjustments to the original concept.  It does take over the game pretty badly when triggered, but that is why alternatives like Endless mode have been included, so those that dislike the current version of it can avoid it without simply needing to cheat or reload a save when they hit the trigger point.

 

 

Meta content below re: what I think is a more ideal info-sharing style on forums.  Take it or leave it as you please.

 

Regarding people's responses to your posts - I think possibly you'd have better luck if you boiled your points down for readability.  "Excruciating detail" is actually likely the issue - since the venue here is a feedback/bug report forum, keeping feedback short and clear is quite important.  Most game developers that ask for written feedback make it very clear that the best way to get feedback read is to for it to be clear and concise. 

 

I find when I read some of your longer posts, even when I agree with some points and disagree with others, it can be really hard to follow the thread of exactly what the suggestion is for the mod, and if I do reply I have to grab one line I think best catches the essence of the post and reply to that.  Even without changing your posting style, a TLDR bullet-point section at the end of the major points would be really helpful.  Especially since a large portion of the LL community has English as a second language.  The post I'm replying to for instance touches on:

 

• Front page warning that Slavery mode may be considered a failure state
• Issues with Skyrim's screwy cell labeling and DF's dependency on them
• Request for more warning/grace period on entering a new cell type to give the player a chance to respond
• Issue with slavery system demanding to return to town too often with no feedback
• Mention of a DF dialogue bug requiring a clean save
• Simple Slavery integration issues you had

I don't think it is that people are willfully ignoring your ideas and problems - they are just in a format that I think is probably a lot of work to pull out the major points and either reply to them or implement fixes based on them.  It gets harder when there are 2/3 posts back to back.  I think you have some good ideas for the mod and are obviously pretty passionate about it, just trying to present a way to get those ideas front and center.

[Lozeak]

8 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I don't think you have got what I'm saying, as I don't want it to be forgiving... Difficulty is not my complain, lack of any remaining game is my complaint. I wrote in excruciating detail about what went wrong, and exactly when it went wrong, and how, and why it was not fun, or expected, or plausible as functioning correctly, but it's pretty plain what most people read from it was simply TLDNR followed by a lot of z z Z Z Z, or they skimmed it and took stuff out of context.

 

But fair? What is fair in a single-player game? What did that word mean when I used it with substantial caution and hedging?

 

Well... You know it's not fair when you're screaming obscenities at the screen; when the game lies to you, or promises one behaviour then delivers something entirely different; when you realise you just wasted your entire evening on a broken save; when the unwritten pact the game makes with the player to "be a game" is broken. Dark Souls may be hard, but people hate the bugs, not the game play.

 

 

Lozeak himself said that he didn't want DF to stop you playing Skyrim, but slavery mode does that. Apparently that was by design?! OK. Now we know. Put it on the front page please. I'll just accept that slavery is basically end-of-game and make sure it doesn't happen, it's easy enough to avoid.

 

 

Relying on the vanilla cell types produces some highly unanticipated results. That's putting it diplomatically. It would be a lot of work to make a comprehensive list of alternate "override" cell types - I'm not asking for that. Still, currently the follower behaves as if they are essentially insane, deciding you're in a town when you're in a fort, or in a dungeon when you're in a field. That's not keeping the player on their toes, that's just broken. The reason I care about this is because it's a mechanic that could be used outside of slavery if it worked properly, either by warning the player, or by allowing more time after cell change, and/or by communicating to the player properly what the cell is (left corner debug messages do not cut it).

 

 

The arbitrary behaviour would be "fair" if the follower had a track record of lying about the rules, and we were used to being cheated - or if the follower made a joke about how dumb you were to believe her, after she randomly decided to bind you for no good reason - but nowhere on the front-page did I read a note saying: "Hey, in slavery mode, the follower just talks shit, breaks the rules of the deals, and punishes you at random." As that's how it feels... In the main path of DF the follower does some non-deal stuff with games, but they are temporary interludes, not persistent behaviours.

 

 

The follower says they'll let you wear anything you like in a dungeon, and what actually happens when you arrive in one is that they immediately demand to return home, and then instantly slap you in chains without even letting you agree to their demand. That doesn't feel "unforgiving" ... it feels ... broken mainly ... like it's a bug. Is this also by design? To keep the player from complacency?

 

Unlike some other recent posters, I can't retroactively convince myself that slavery was working great and perfectly as intended. The sketchy behaviour didn't make me nervous. After the first few buggy events, I was fully anticipating them. "What random kind of location does the follower think I'm in now? What random device will they equip that I have no way to ever make them remove because I can't even talk to them?" And it was a minor problem in a situation where there was one bug after another, and some much worse than the mis-assignment of cell type, followed by a totally unexpected punishment with no warning. As things went, that was pretty minor, but certainly annoying because it was so obviously avoidable if the follower communicated like a rational entity, instead of acting like a DCL trap. But DCL traps are fair, because they don't promise one behaviour then deliver a different one that is not fun. (And if the experience is fun will forgive just about anything, even a game that breaks its unwritten pact with the player).

 

The bit where the follower lost their ability to display any DF dialogs, and could never regain it, even after mod reset, unfollow, refollower, etc, etc was probably the worst. This rendered my game roadkill. In that situation I have to go back about a dozen saves and discard several hours of play - with possible threat of recurrence, or uninstall DF completely.

 

I'm guessing nobody else has had this - yet - but I'm also very suspicious that it is reproducible, and is an indirect result of enslavement via Simple Slavery. I never had any problems like that, until SS got in the mix, and the restoration of Willpower to 10 makes me think that SS enslavement isn't quite handling DF internal state as cleanly as it should.

 

The half-dozen failures of SS to actually start an auction weren't great, or the bit where my follower showed up while I was in the auction house, acting like they were still my follower.

 

As things stand, I have zero trust of Simple Slavery as a gateway into DF.

 

With so many issues, I'm loathe to put any trust in this particular game/save-sequence again unless I remove both DF and SS, so I'll probably discard it completely and write the entire game off to play-testing. It would be a shame if the results of that were ignored.

 

Yes, the intent is that you can use this mod while playing Skyrim. Thing is slavery mod has to take freedoms away from the player the enslavement mode is meant to lock a lot of the game away from the player until they get free. I still think you can do a lot in enslavement mode looting and selling to get free.

 

The forcing you to go home is based on the event timer (lengthen it if you want ). I think I set it up to trigger in dungeons so I can see how you just leaving town to be told to go back could suck. ( I may change that).

 

1 hour ago, mai_hasegawa said:

And I also lower willpower through console to get more content.

 

Definitely not what mod author had in mind, but it works best for me.

 

Play the mod how you like, if you have fun that's all that matters :).

[Lozeak]

28 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

I believe Lozeak's point is that Slavery mode as it stands is a failure state, and besides that is one of the oldest and least-adjusted sections of the mod, so it isn't a high priority for him for in-depth fixes or adjustments at this time.  So reports on problems and balance issues with enslavement mode are probably still welcome, but it is not something he plans on addressing any time soon.  I doubt most of the nastier interactions or effects you describe are "working as intended", but what point is there in Lozeak giving a huge response to something he's thinking he will bypass or tear out at some point anyway?

 

It sounds like he'd rather offer alternate options to "enslavement" first, and if down the road he feels like it come back around and make adjustments to the original concept.  It does take over the game pretty badly when triggered, but that is why alternatives like Endless mode have been included, so those that dislike the current version of it can avoid it without simply needing to cheat or reload a save when they hit the trigger point.

 

 

Meta content below re: what I think is a more ideal info-sharing style on forums.  Take it or leave it as you please.

 

Regarding people's responses to your posts - I think possibly you'd have better luck if you boiled your points down for readability.  "Excruciating detail" is actually likely the issue - since the venue here is a feedback/bug report forum, keeping feedback short and clear is quite important.  Most game developers that ask for written feedback make it very clear that the best way to get feedback read is to for it to be clear and concise. 

 

I find when I read some of your longer posts, even when I agree with some points and disagree with others, it can be really hard to follow the thread of exactly what the suggestion is for the mod, and if I do reply I have to grab one line I think best catches the essence of the post and reply to that.  Even without changing your posting style, a TLDR bullet-point section at the end of the major points would be really helpful.  Especially since a large portion of the LL community has English as a second language.  The post I'm replying to for instance touches on:

 

• Front page warning that Slavery mode may be considered a failure state
• Issues with Skyrim's screwy cell labeling and DF's dependency on them
• Request for more warning/grace period on entering a new cell type to give the player a chance to respond
• Issue with slavery system demanding to return to town too often with no feedback
• Mention of a DF dialogue bug requiring a clean save
• Simple Slavery integration issues you had

I don't think it is that people are willfully ignoring your ideas and problems - they are just in a format that I think is probably a lot of work to pull out the major points and either reply to them or implement fixes based on them.  It gets harder when there are 2/3 posts back to back.  I think you have some good ideas for the mod and are obviously pretty passionate about it, just trying to present a way to get those ideas front and center.

 

I don't mind the long post, yea they can overwhelm me a little bit at the end of the day, if that's how people express themselves, that's how it is.

 

I know lupine is critical of my work and it may seem he's hating on it but the truth is he has put time into the mod, fixing dialog and playing it a lot. When I consider those things, I know he's just trying to make a mod he likes, better so I'm grateful for it ^^.

 

I'm sure people understand I don't have infinite time and struggle with writing/explaining things. That said, people, I do enjoy reading crazy ideas/requests so I'd rather people ask the impossible in a bad way than worry about. I need to say it this way, what if he doesn't get it. At the end of the day know cares, I will work on the mod and try my best, it won't be enough for everyone but it's better than it not existing :P.

[aspirine2]

THE LATEST UPDATE IS BUGGY TO USE WTH EFF ..EVEN WITH THE PATCH..

[BigOnes69]

13 hours ago, Lozeak said:

 

Yes, the intent is that you can use this mod while playing Skyrim. Thing is slavery mod has to take freedoms away from the player the enslavement mode is meant to lock a lot of the game away from the player until they get free. I still think you can do a lot in enslavement mode looting and selling to get free.

 

The forcing you to go home is based on the event timer (lengthen it if you want ). I think I set it up to trigger in dungeons so I can see how you just leaving town to be told to go back could suck. ( I may change that).

 

 

Play the mod how you like, if you have fun that's all that matters :).

I tend to think along the lines of Roman slavery. Slaves are taught to run households, enterprise, spying, sex, training slaves, etc... oh did I say sex...oh my.. They are an integral part of Roman society. Many are skilled and educated.  I have wanted to develop a mod (but can not find the time) that would develop the slave player along those lines. It would have one master from the start and go through training of the player in the art of sex, assassination, diplomacy, and other skills to gain power and favor in Skyrim for the master. This would allow the player to play the game at the same time as having the degrading sexual action that makes sexlab interesting to so many. I am surprised no one has developed anything along those lines. 

[Krynn]

I can understand that very well!
I would have only interested in the story with the jarl in morthal and if there is also a bodymesh for caliente tools for this pet suit.
The idea itself I found very exciting! 

[Lupine00]

16 hours ago, Lozeak said:

I know lupine is critical of my work and it may seem he's hating on it but the truth is he has put time into the mod, fixing dialog and playing it a lot. When I consider those things, I know he's just trying to make a mod he likes, better so I'm grateful for it ^^.

I'm relieved that Lozeak understands that i'm not "hating" on his mod. Far from it, DF is a great mod that started good and has continually improved. With the new games and gold control, it's hitting new high points. Gold control, in particular, is a great feature for me.

 

 

I've spent the last couple of weeks aggressively testing and also proofing and re-proofing the dialog, it's been a lot of work, though I say it myself

 

 

I like to imagine that finding bugs is a help to everyone. Players know what to avoid in the short-term, and long-term Lozeak can prioritize what to fix. The playtesters for this are the community, and if people don't report them, bugs probably won't get addressed.

 

 

The main part of DF, the deals and games has always worked pretty reliably. I get the feeling that Lozeak played and tested a lot in Endless Mode, and so that flavour of the game is pretty solid.

 

 

When DF was fresh, the slavery part was not good, and hardly anything worked; the devices were not behaving at all.

 

Now, slavery is working much better, but it still has some problems with things not working, and SS had brought in a whole new range of possible problems.

Lozeak may say he hasn't focused on it, but really, a lot has been done to improve slavery, to get the crawling in, to get the mitts working mostly reliably and so on. A lot of work has gone in slavery lately, and it shows, really it does.

 

I can feel the potential there, and it's huge (well, in terms of a LL slavery mod anyway). It's really getting there, and with a bit more polish it could be one of the best parts of the mod, if not the best part.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that people play the mod to suffer the consequences of deals. There's not a lot of point playing it if you never have to make a deal with the follower.

 

The corollary of that is that (if you have it enabled) slavery isn't really a failure state for the player. I had to work pretty hard for maybe ten days of play to get a debt up to the point I got enslaved.

 

Despite some punishing Chaos Mode settings with hidden values, and DCL set to go off fairly reliably every eight hours or so, I was not getting deeper into debt. I didn't run up a significant debt until I started casually fast-travelling. From that came piercing deal level 3, and that very quickly lead to slavery. I'll talk about that balance in another post.

 

I didn't consider slavery a "failure" condition, but rather something I'd worked up to  - an achievement - basically I'd finally hit the "hard" part, and I was looking forward to the challenge.

 

Now, maybe Lozeak wants to make slavery so nasty that you'll never want to go there. I hope he doesn't because, if I wanted that, I'd play DCL "dominant follower" and spend about two days RL having to click the same dialogs to be repetitively whipped and raped, while my master robotically sandboxes in the same three rooms. That's what is nasty in Skyrim: boredom, repetition, tediousness - the absence of game, the reduction to watching a dull movie stuck on a loop. I don't think I've come across anything quite as boring as being enslaved to Leon/Leah from DCL. You have to grind for hours just to get enough standing with them to start adventuring, and then it turns out they're useless followers who can't protect a disempowered PC against even a single spider.

 

If DF wants you to work not to be enslaved, the result is you probably won't take any deals at all, because once you get over two deals, you are on the slope to enslavement. Probably. Because you set your own costs, you won't get enslaved unless you set it up to happen.

 

DF slavery certainly isn't forcing itself on you. But if you're supposed to "fear" it, probably you're not going to. It's way too interesting for that. The problem is that for it to fulfil its true potential, to be truly "great" it needs to be atmospheric and set the right mood. Alas, when the follower behaves in a silly way, the immersion bubble gets punctured. Follower behaviour, follower dialog, and looting opportunities in slavery mode need a bit more love.

 

 

But maybe Lozeak needs to do a lot more testing on slavery, particularly playing it out from different starting points (SS, enslavement by debt) and testing how easy it is to escape large debts by various means, so that difficulties and opportunities are where he really wants them to be. It might be that there is some left-over test code still in there, messing things up, but I can't believe it's currently working exactly as intended. (And there are some serious and definite bugs, but they may not impact many people, and could be hard to reproduce).

[Lupine00]

16 hours ago, Lozeak said:

I'm sure people understand I don't have infinite time and struggle with writing/explaining things. That said, people, I do enjoy reading crazy ideas/requests so I'd rather people ask the impossible in a bad way than worry about. I need to say it this way, what if he doesn't get it. At the end of the day know cares, I will work on the mod and try my best, it won't be enough for everyone but it's better than it not existing :P.

I'm painfully aware of how long it takes to make anything in the CK, and how tedious Papyrus is to debug, when any debugging tool peturbs its behaviour. I don't expect miracles, I'm just offering what I can. I have a totally selfish interest in wanting to play the best mod possible. It's not really practical to help with coding it, so I just have to do my cheerleader dance from the sidelines, and occasionally suggest plays.

 

As Lozeak almost says, what is the worst that can come from a player suggestion? Lozeak is going to do what Lozeak is going to do. He won't go and implement stuff because people rant about it, he'll do it because he thinks it's right, or because it's fun to do. It's pretty obvious he was enjoying himself writing the dialogs for the Jarl Game, and the Tape deal.

 

 

The broader problem with DF, still, as on day one, is that it is fundamentally conflicted. On one hand you don't want to get in debt and get enslaved, on the other hand you do, or else, you're missing out on a lot of the fun parts. The more debt, the more fun, until the point where you run into a wall.

 

 

The internal conflict in player desire for DF is reflected in the issue of cost-per-day, and other costs that the follower inflicts on you to try and force you into a situation where you have to take deals.

 

The player ends up increasing these costs to the point where they can only just meet them, but then they improve their cash efficiency or earning abilities, and the goal posts move.

 

Eventually, you end up increasing the costs to the point that when some catastrophe occurs, you plunge very suddenly and deeply into debt.

 

Great, you take some deals, and the fun starts... But...

 

What happens next is that a few deals quickly turn into reduced earning ability, and a knife edge cost-earning balance quickly tips. The player takes more deals. More fun right?

 

It is, but the result is the well known Willpower curve: 10, 10 ... 10, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 2, 1, 0

 

I'm pretty sure we've all seen it.

 

And then, the level three deal... Many of the level three deals are quite hazardous. If combined with DCL, or other mods, they can quickly plunge the player into huge debt. If you don't have SL Adventures, or DCL, you probably won't have this issue. This makes the level three deals most fun, but if you've set things up to force you into that kind of debt, your chance of ever getting out of it are pretty slim because the deals are probably going to trash your earning capability.

 

The debt curve, like the Willpower curve, drops off a cliff. You often go from around six deals, perhaps one at level three, to massive problems so fast that you miss out on the chance to really explore those deals sometimes.

 

 

It would help if there were more pressures at low debt and things eased off as your debt increases. If you lack deals, there need to be mechanics to throw you for a loop. I'm pretty sure anyone could come up with ideas for fun ways to screw over the PC when you have low debt or few deals. Gold control helps here, but you would have to take it voluntarily. Some ways to be blackmailed into it would be great.

 

 

As for once the problems start... DF is designed as a fundamentally unstable system (mathematically). It has effective mechanisms to accelerate movement down the curve once you get a deal or two.

 

I believe that it will be more fun when those reinforcement mechanisms are reversed. You can do this yourself with deal values, and payoff costs, as mai_hasegawa suggested. It's a mechanism I've used in the past... But... Why aren't the defaults set up that way? And why aren't there more mechanics that balance the system rather than always pushing it in one direction?

 

If the system were more self-balancing, players would have more freedom to set large debt-per-day without discovering that it pushes them off a cliff. This would let people be in debt more often, have a moderate number of deals more often, but not find that tends towards an inescapable debt spiral.

 

It's not just Willpower that needs to spend more time in the middle range, it's also debt. My gut says the sweet spot is around four to six deals. After that you start picking up level 3 deals, and the more recent deals are more punishing than they used to be. The piercing deal alone has serious potential to blow up your debt and wreck your willpower. This is great, and very much fun, but without any balancing mechanics, you'll head into slavery or an endless mode super-debt-spiral.

 

I think a starting point would be to increase resistance as willpower drops. That would slow the drop, but wouldn't stop it, because once you're being repeatedly raped in devices, willpower is doomed no matter what.

 

I think it's worth putting it in and seeing how it plays.

 

If it didn't work, adding (optional?) event-gateways you have to pass through to drop willpower below certain values would definitely do the trick. (For example, you would have to experience the games to drop willpower below 6, two willpower per game). That's a bigger step, and maybe an idea Lozeak would never buy into...

 

But I think using resistance = 20 - willpower is an easy sell. Why not try it? Or let the player adjust it in the MCM somehow?

 

I also think that an option to have the follower reduce their daily cost as you add deals could help. It could be a slider called "Discount per deal" or something like that. Ideally as a percentage, rather than a fixed value.

 

Both things would be fairly trivial code changes, I hope.

[Lupine00]

Can anyone explain this option in the MCM:

 

If the gold you are carrying hits zero when recalculating, your gold will be locked off from you. (This is more of a comparability option)

 

Hits zero when recalculating what? Presumably, the gold you're allowed after a follower is knocked down, or after gold theft?

 

Why is it a comparability option? (I'm guessing it was supposed to read compatibility option? But if so, compatibility with what?)

Does it mean compatibility with other mods? If so which mods, in which cases would be impacted by this?

 

If your gold is already zero, what does having it "locked off" actually mean? Does it mean you're blocked from asking for more, even if you previously could? Or more than that?

[Lupine00]

Here's a tweaked version of the English translation file. Fixes some typos, adds some punctuation.

 

I'm testing my modified "translated" ESP with dialogue changes. Hopefully will test over weekend and post EET early next week.

DeviousFollowers_ENGLISH.TXT

[Krynn]

please write a book about it right now @Lupine... 

[darkfender666]

i ve this problem:

i run last version of devious devices but when rope armbinder from this mod doesn t seem to work properly. 

Arms are still free despite the struggle anim works

 

The identical one from DD instead works

 

Any other stuff seems to work.

any idea?

[Krynn]

1 hour ago, darkfender666 said:

i ve this problem:

i run last version of devious devices but when rope armbinder from this mod doesn t seem to work properly. 

Arms are still free despite the struggle anim works

 

The identical one from DD instead works

 

Any other stuff seems to work.

any idea?

 

I have the same problem, also already reported.
even if you enter into this deal you will not be freed afterwards.

 

 

[Lozeak]

2 hours ago, darkfender666 said:

i ve this problem:

i run last version of devious devices but when rope armbinder from this mod doesn t seem to work properly. 

Arms are still free despite the struggle anim works

 

The identical one from DD instead works

 

Any other stuff seems to work.

any idea?

No idea, can you give me a little more detail, I'll look into it either way.

 

=============================================

The only reason I've modded over the last few days is out of gratitude to all the feedback people have been giving me and trying to fix things.

 

The hope of getting an update(more content wise this week) is likely low. I will likely spend another day bug fixing/tweaking and release a more stable version though by  Tuesday by the latest.

 

The reason, mainly it's a hobby and I need to be in the mood for it.

 

The more detailed reason, I'm just distracted have fun with other stuff and discovering more about my self, which is really good for me anyway and yes SELFISH!!!! but /shrug I think the commitment/expectation can tilt some mod makers into giving up or something for me I mod when I feel like it and I want to continue this at some point, just at the moment /distracted.

 

[Darkwing241]

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I'm painfully aware of how long it takes to make anything in the CK, and how tedious Papyrus is to debug, when any debugging tool peturbs its behaviour. I don't expect miracles, I'm just offering what I can. I have a totally selfish interest in wanting to play the best mod possible. It's not really practical to help with coding it, so I just have to do my cheerleader dance from the sidelines, and occasionally suggest plays.

 

As Lozeak almost says, what is the worst that can come from a player suggestion? Lozeak is going to do what Lozeak is going to do. He won't go and implement stuff because people rant about it, he'll do it because he thinks it's right, or because it's fun to do. It's pretty obvious he was enjoying himself writing the dialogs for the Jarl Game, and the Tape deal.

 

 

The broader problem with DF, still, as on day one, is that it is fundamentally conflicted. On one hand you don't want to get in debt and get enslaved, on the other hand you do, or else, you're missing out on a lot of the fun parts. The more debt, the more fun, until the point where you run into a wall.

 

 

The internal conflict in player desire for DF is reflected in the issue of cost-per-day, and other costs that the follower inflicts on you to try and force you into a situation where you have to take deals.

 

The player ends up increasing these costs to the point where they can only just meet them, but then they improve their cash efficiency or earning abilities, and the goal posts move.

 

Eventually, you end up increasing the costs to the point that when some catastrophe occurs, you plunge very suddenly and deeply into debt.

 

Great, you take some deals, and the fun starts... But...

 

What happens next is that a few deals quickly turn into reduced earning ability, and a knife edge cost-earning balance quickly tips. The player takes more deals. More fun right?

 

It is, but the result is the well known Willpower curve: 10, 10 ... 10, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 2, 1, 0

 

I'm pretty sure we've all seen it.

 

And then, the level three deal... Many of the level three deals are quite hazardous. If combined with DCL, or other mods, they can quickly plunge the player into huge debt. If you don't have SL Adventures, or DCL, you probably won't have this issue. This makes the level three deals most fun, but if you've set things up to force you into that kind of debt, your chance of ever getting out of it are pretty slim because the deals are probably going to trash your earning capability.

 

The debt curve, like the Willpower curve, drops off a cliff. You often go from around six deals, perhaps one at level three, to massive problems so fast that you miss out on the chance to really explore those deals sometimes.

 

 

It would help if there were more pressures at low debt and things eased off as your debt increases. If you lack deals, there need to be mechanics to throw you for a loop. I'm pretty sure anyone could come up with ideas for fun ways to screw over the PC when you have low debt or few deals. Gold control helps here, but you would have to take it voluntarily. Some ways to be blackmailed into it would be great.

 

 

As for once the problems start... DF is designed as a fundamentally unstable system (mathematically). It has effective mechanisms to accelerate movement down the curve once you get a deal or two.

 

I believe that it will be more fun when those reinforcement mechanisms are reversed. You can do this yourself with deal values, and payoff costs, as mai_hasegawa suggested. It's a mechanism I've used in the past... But... Why aren't the defaults set up that way? And why aren't there more mechanics that balance the system rather than always pushing it in one direction?

 

If the system were more self-balancing, players would have more freedom to set large debt-per-day without discovering that it pushes them off a cliff. This would let people be in debt more often, have a moderate number of deals more often, but not find that tends towards an inescapable debt spiral.

 

It's not just Willpower that needs to spend more time in the middle range, it's also debt. My gut says the sweet spot is around four to six deals. After that you start picking up level 3 deals, and the more recent deals are more punishing than they used to be. The piercing deal alone has serious potential to blow up your debt and wreck your willpower. This is great, and very much fun, but without any balancing mechanics, you'll head into slavery or an endless mode super-debt-spiral.

 

I think a starting point would be to increase resistance as willpower drops. That would slow the drop, but wouldn't stop it, because once you're being repeatedly raped in devices, willpower is doomed no matter what.

 

I think it's worth putting it in and seeing how it plays.

 

If it didn't work, adding (optional?) event-gateways you have to pass through to drop willpower below certain values would definitely do the trick. (For example, you would have to experience the games to drop willpower below 6, two willpower per game). That's a bigger step, and maybe an idea Lozeak would never buy into...

 

But I think using resistance = 20 - willpower is an easy sell. Why not try it? Or let the player adjust it in the MCM somehow?

 

I also think that an option to have the follower reduce their daily cost as you add deals could help. It could be a slider called "Discount per deal" or something like that. Ideally as a percentage, rather than a fixed value.

 

Both things would be fairly trivial code changes, I hope.

I love the discount per deal idea, I think that alone would solve the knife edge problem.  It would give an inventive to take them early to avoid paying huge amounts of gold, but then if several deals stacked up you would just be paying in favors rather than gold.  It also seems like it would give willpower more to do in the game as there would still be something left for you to get strong-armed into by the time willpower gets low

[Reesewow]

1 hour ago, Lozeak said:

The reason, mainly it's a hobby and I need to be in the mood for it.

 

The more detailed reason, I'm just distracted have fun with other stuff and discovering more about my self, which is really good for me anyway and yes SELFISH!!!! but /shrug I think the commitment/expectation can tilt some mod makers into giving up or something for me I mod when I feel like it and I want to continue this at some point, just at the moment /distracted.

Hah, this is the only healthy way to approach modding IMO - as a hobby you enjoy when you feel like it.  Unless you are actually trying to make a living off of it, I think doing anything else is probably the fastest way to stop having fun modding and hit burnout.... and that isn't fun for anyone involved.

 

Have fun with your other stuff and your self discovery in the meantime!  Enjoying the mod just fine for now and looking forward to when you feel like continuing sharing your Devious Skyrim ideas with us.

 

 

Re: armbinder deal issues - I'm using CGI's V1.706 version with EFF patch and can't reproduce the armbinder animation issue reported above.  If I get the armbinder version of the deal my follower strips and equips my PC with the rope armbinder, and it animates properly after a few seconds of delay.  She does not remove the armbinder automatically if I pay off the deal while wearing it, but I can get it removed through the Device Removal dialogue options (with a payment) or remove it like any other armbinder - the follower should probably remove it at deal end however to be consistent with other deals or if a player has device helper options disabled.

 

 

A few other minor issues to report for your bug-hunt efforts:

 

MCM menu bug - The deal menu doesn't correctly save my level 3 settings for the slut deal - I can choose both options or "non-binding" only just fine.  However, selecting only the armbinder level 3 and de-selecting non-binding does not save properly - instead when I leave the menu and re-open it the options will be reversed with binding disabled and non-binding enabled.

 

Mod Pause and Reset interactions with deals - If I have deals active, pause the mod, then reset the mod deals will not properly be reset.  Instead, the next time I take a deal all my previous deals will show up as active.  Resetting the mod without pausing it first seems to work properly, and cleared out the bugged deals just fine.  Possibly an unintended consequence of pause being fixed to not reset deals when used. 

 

Gold bug - In testing the above I was given another good example of the gold theft bug - I gave my PC 100,000 gold so I could buy out of the SLUT deal if I got the wrong version for testing armbinders.  In the time it took to get the correct level 3 deal started, travel to Whiterun and wait for the follower to strip and bind my PC my gold value was set to 0.  I have Gold Control mode active as an option, but my PC has never had it trigger yet (she's been a good girl on payments) and I do have gold theft active with 40% max.  My willpower was 10 and I only had 5 or so deals active, and this was directly after a reset of the mod. 

[aspirine2]

IS THIS MOD TRULY COMPATIBLE WITH SLSURVIVAL ...cause the mod dialogue lines isn't appearing after installed survival ??

[Karnac]

Is this available for special edition?

 

[Lupine00]

5 hours ago, aspirine2 said:

IS THIS MOD TRULY COMPATIBLE WITH SLSURVIVAL ...cause the mod dialogue lines isn't appearing after installed survival ??

It worked with SL Survival for me. However, I started a new game with both SLS and DF in it.

 

I had an issue with DF dialog options vanishing after a lot of play, and going through Simple Slavery, but it's unclear whether that had anything to do with SLS, because the game worked fine with SLS for some time prior to the emergence of that issue (which couldn't be fixed without going back to before Simple Slavery enslavement occurred), and the problem occurred very shortly after Simple Slavery enslavement - makes me think SS was to blame, not SLS.

 

I believe SLS is designed to support DF, up to a point, so they ought to work together.

[aspirine2]

fine ....then it could be that then...that makes me happy...and waiting for the mod to be stable ...

[darkfender666]

15 hours ago, Lozeak said:

No idea, can you give me a little more detail, I'll look into it either way.

 

=============================================

The only reason I've modded over the last few days is out of gratitude to all the feedback people have been giving me and trying to fix things.

 

The hope of getting an update(more content wise this week) is likely low. I will likely spend another day bug fixing/tweaking and release a more stable version though by  Tuesday by the latest.

 

The reason, mainly it's a hobby and I need to be in the mood for it.

 

The more detailed reason, I'm just distracted have fun with other stuff and discovering more about my self, which is really good for me anyway and yes SELFISH!!!! but /shrug I think the commitment/expectation can tilt some mod makers into giving up or something for me I mod when I feel like it and I want to continue this at some point, just at the moment /distracted.

 

One is with rope armbinder from devious devices the other is with rope arminder from devious follower.

 

I could edit the item ID with tes5edit but i never did that so i dunno if it could cause problems to the mod.

 

Also how is the armbinder removed in the mod? will entering a dungeon have the follower remove it or i need to remove it with other means?

ScreenShot9.bmp

ScreenShot10.bmp

[tuxagent7]

6 hours ago, Karnac said:

Is this available for special edition?

 

no

[Nazzzgul666]

17 hours ago, Lozeak said:

No idea, can you give me a little more detail, I'll look into it either way.

 

=============================================

The only reason I've modded over the last few days is out of gratitude to all the feedback people have been giving me and trying to fix things.

 

The hope of getting an update(more content wise this week) is likely low. I will likely spend another day bug fixing/tweaking and release a more stable version though by  Tuesday by the latest.

 

The reason, mainly it's a hobby and I need to be in the mood for it.

 

The more detailed reason, I'm just distracted have fun with other stuff and discovering more about my self, which is really good for me anyway and yes SELFISH!!!! but /shrug I think the commitment/expectation can tilt some mod makers into giving up or something for me I mod when I feel like it and I want to continue this at some point, just at the moment /distracted.

 

I appretiate not only that mod but also your attitude a lot.

Imho it's much better to have a stable mod lacking some features it might potentially have than one with great ideas which are only semi working. And that includes taking care of yourself and enjoying what you do. In my experience happy modders not only keep modding but also release better mods, so thanks for both your work and taking care of yourself.