Community College Hero (for all post-release feedback)

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As i remember it wasn’t as much about how the characters behave in the story, but your responses on forum back then. That you commented on Hedonist behaviour as him being “just inappropriate” (or somethng similar). And in the story there wasn’t enough emphasis and option how your character could strongly respond to it.
So it was first i red in the story about him, that he behave like sexual predator and tried to rape his students and next thing you, as yourself on forum, are calling his behaviour as only inapropriate. So for me, it sure looked like you as a person think that this behaviour is “no big deal”. That was what made mine first impression of you rather negative one. Even when, as far as i remember, you said later that it was just missinterpretation of the writing, that you intended him to be just inapropriate and not be really rapist, but made few mistakes in communicating and presenting his behaviour. Something like that, it was long time ago.

Ofcourse i wasn’t condemning you for how some characters in a fictional story behave, don’t think so lowly of me :stuck_out_tongue:

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@HornHeadFan @Ponku Let’s just agree that The Hedonist is an Impeccable dresser.
Also @HornHeadFan you mentioned you were going to change the classes correct? How would that affect the play throughs that have already been saved?
Also does that mean that they’ll be a way to pass majority If not all stat checks with any class if you spec them correctly?
Are you only removing a single class or at you also adjusting the remaining 3?

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Why would he change the classes again? I feel like we have a good balance right now, even if I’m not a fan of Sharpshooter. Acrobat and Soldier are great while Detective is just downright awesome.

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@Sylfaen That’s what I’m referring to.

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So I could have sworn that I recall an option to punch Hedonist being in the game in a much earlier version. Does anyone know if that has been omitted?

Also I finished the full game last night and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun back in testing, so getting to see how it ends was fantastic. Great job @HornHeadFan!

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Just finished the game and I loved it!! I didn’t like any of the characters as romances though, but I briefly considered dirty girl. Since it doesn’t look like anyone asked this question, I’ll go ahead and do it. Who the hell is the blonde guy on the cover? The only person I can guess is Stunner (there’s no mask though) or Captain California, but he has green eyes and doesn’t seem too important.

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Ots a woman, not a guy. She is the villain Contrarian/Manipulator without the wig.

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Okay this leads me to a big question which I will put in bold (my apologies for this!)…

Everyone, please give me your thoughts on the stats for Part 1. I initially planned to tweak things sometime in 2016 to make the stats “more CoG-like”, meaning…

1) converting relationships to Fairmath,
2) converting primary stats to Fairmath
3) decreasing the number of Archetypes to the 3 @Neoheartless quoted from my previous post because I was afraid of being overwhelmed with Part 2 combat situations with 12 different possible builds to cope with (Detective Levels 1-3, Acrobat Levels 1-3, etc). Plus, with an overlap in equipment, I can’t just assume that if you have a listening device that you are a Detective, because you could also be a Soldier. It makes for writing archetype-themed content VERY hard, and that’s been one of the biggest “wishes” for improvements - to make playing a Detective more "detectivey, etc.

BUT…from reading all the reviews and responding to emails, readers seem to like the stats JUST like they are with no changes. So what should I do? I could maybe deal with coding the 12 different combinations, but if I write more “level up” opportunities in Part 2, then the number of combos becomes 16 and then maybe 20 and that’s just too much!

From posts on FB and Steam, it seems like over half the readers play as detective and many of the rest play as acrobats. I could maybe just delete Soldier from Part 1 when I roll out an update, but then I’d still have to deal with equipment overlap issues (Detective and Acrobat both have Melee equipment, Detective and Sharpshooter still have Stealth equipment, etc.).

And then regarding Fairmath - I know it looks prettier with the bars on the Stats page, and that was one of the reasons I was going to change it, but then people post on Steam that they like seeing Hedonist’s score down to -6 and that they like that there’s no “cap” on a relationship and that it doesn’t feel like a “waste of time” being nice to DG when you already have her score up really high anyway, as it would when using FairMath.

This is the single biggest issue I have going into Part 2 - the mechanics. I don’t want to mess them up or disappoint people who are already used to them the way they are.

Please chime in with feedback on this.

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Please please please don’t convert to Fair math!!

It makes it much easier to have a mediocre character in all stats but almost impossible to have a specialized character because any choice that drops a favored stat has an outsized effect. I hated it in Lords of Aswick that anything that dropped a stat with 80+ took at least 3 stats raises to make up.

I liked the three classes you suggested. I played as a soilder thinking it was up close combat and ended up with 3 in Pow and 9 in Zap which wasn’t what I was going for so I can see why you would wanna get rid of that class and combine it with something else.

Also as to the increasing number of combos, have people pick a theme they want from their weapons list. I mean obviously you can’t carry all the level 3 gear at once, so saying “I want to carry defensive gear” means you can write say four or five possibilities and swap out small bits of text instead of having to write multiple different ones.

(Also instead of relationship bars maybe add words like “friends” “enemies” “best friends” after the numbers to give context. I felt like some characters lower numbers still translated into being friends, and others the higher number made no difference.)

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This. I support this. Interestingly enough, we had a discussion about this in the Guns of Infinity thread and one the main points there was that having relationships with fairmath not only makes sense, but it’s also realistic.

For example, your friend forgets his wallet and you pay for dinner, that’s a good thing, but something that should be somewhat expected in a close friendship while if your nemesis is the one to forget his wallet and you pay for dinner, it would have a way more positive effect in your relationship, as that’s something that your nemesis would never expect, and would garner better results.

I don’t necessarily agree with it, but it would make sense. When you get good at something, it becomes harder to get better at that, not counting that you’l eventually reach a limit on how good you can get.

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Honestly I think the stats should get tweaking since it’s going into parts 2 and 3. I’m not familiar with chociescript too much, but the overlapping equipment could pose issues in certain regards. Such as a Soldier (combat Defense oriented) (although the poor Whoosh makes me cringe) Sharshooter being a ranged combat and Acrobat being swift melee combat and then Detective being stealthy Melee. To me it feels off not really sure how to describe it, but it’s just that I feel like some classes have next to no chance in certain situations (Detective when blocking the Hedonist. You block you basically die. (Well get a D) and you dodge you still get a bad grade) Or soldier in the beginning mock battle. If you want to win you either A. Use ranged attack (I assume this makes Origami mad with the risk of injury) or B. Fail as soldier isn’t stealthy or swift enough to do anything else.
Granted I’m not saying a MC should be able to do everything (unless it’s a power fantasy or somewhat a power fantasy game), but some situations just go poorly no matter what in some situations and several have overlapping equipment.
So I’d be in favor of tweaking the mechanics especially If it will make the coding for the next two installments easier.

Fairmath in relationships like @Jjcb said was discussed in the Guns Thread and I agree it’s realistics and make more sense.
Fairmath for skills I’m honestly iffy about it. I suppose it depends on how high certain skill checks are and how many times and how much you can increase individual stats. Trying to find a balance of realistic progression and not making a character who will fail at every stat check.

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I wonder if you could merge acrobat and detective? I kinda like the idea of an agile, stealthy character. I mostly chose detective as that game me the option of giving my character thigh high heels to go with her top and skirt.

At least you probably want Melee, Ranged, Stealth types.

As for stats, I’m not overly concerned either way as long as the rest of the coding adapts accordingly.

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I guess I’ll throw my hat in here. Putting it all under spoiler tags, though, because some of it is super spoilery.

The stats as they are feel somewhat cheap. Yay seems to have no purpose, unless it’s used in the calculations to determine whether you become the leader. I don’t like that Hmm is mostly superfluous for the classes it would be obvious you need it; you can get by in the Secrets and HELL classes by either memorizing the answers or making the right choices, with at least a B. Personally, I think the HELL tests should be 50% memorization and 50% your Hmm stat, with a perfect score on the memorization part only allowing a C if you don’t have the Hmm to answer the ‘rest of the test’ correctly. Detective and Acrobat classes don’t seem to have a way of passing the Defense midterm; the professor doesn’t let you get away with using your whoosh to defend, and you can’t get your thud high enough. Granted, you can do… something else… to get an A, but you should be able to pass with that minimum B needed without whoring yourself. Ssh doesn’t have any use, outside of the initial CTF game. Breaking seems to be either too easy or too hard to get a B, and once you’re past the point of getting a B it’s way too easy to get an A.

Since B seems to be the all-important average, then each class archetype should have a way of getting a B in two classes, and an A in one class, while being able to afford a C in one class. I didn’t get the feeling that each class archetype was able to achieve this in both the midterm and final. The final, in particular, didn’t seem fair for the Defense and Breaking classes. My poor marksman wound up getting a C in both, which with her C in Secrets made it impossible for her A in HELL to carry her to her second equipment upgrade. If there was a way, with her high Whoosh and Zap, decent Hmm and Ssh, and low Thud and Pow, for her to get any kind of decent grade, I didn’t see it.

Honestly, I’d give the stats needed to pass each class another look. Obviously, I haven’t been able to uncover all the options and thresholds for being able to pass each class, but right now it seems like you have to be overly careful in your study choices if you want to be able to pass both midterm and final with a high enough average to get both equipment upgrades.

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I’ll continue to listen to suggestions and ponder. I have to figure this out before I get deeper into Part 2.

I’d say my default at this point is “leave it alone” so I don’t upset readers who already love their MCs. It would obviously make coding Part 2 more complex, but it would keep me from rewriting all the mechanics in Part 1, which would take a least a month or two by itself.

And perhaps I can write a scene where MCs are given all the top-shelf stuff early in Part 2 (MCs who already had everything would get access to a special scene like a party or something). That would greatly simplify coding if there were really only 4 possibilties to write.

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That could work. Like an scene rewarding the MC for holding out against such a strong opponent in the Hospital.

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Hey there! Steam user just making an account but have played most of CoG’s free demos. This is the first game here I’ve actually bought. Just putting a few of my thoughts down:

Personally, I feel that not using Fairmath to show relationships is definitely a plus. I would have to agree that it feels nice not having a cap and having your relationships reach a max or a min. When it comes to stats though I honestly don’t think I have a preference. I think the system is fine as is though, as it once again has no max and it means there’s more room for upgrading down the line instead of updating as the story goes. (Different bar limits for different maxes for per issue).

The archetype question though: I’m not sure I can help you there. Moving forward, I want my character to be a detective, and would appreciate some more flavor/emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. It would be nice if you could use each of archetypes’ skills to succeed (obviously, there needs to be a line drawn so there are limits). But while I’m all for the changes to archetype stats, I have no idea how you should proceed with equipment and builds. That is all up to you, I suppose.

Just know that it’s your story and creation, and I support what you decide. I’m looking forward to updates!

Also: maybe start a new topic on the Steam discussion page regarding this? I’m not sure how visible it would be in the current thread.

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Yeah my thoughts exactly. That would allow everyone to get to Level 3. I’d have at least one combat scene early in the story though before that happens, so the readers who really earned Level 3 in Part 1 would get a chance to use the fancy stuff before everyone else got it a bit later. And the people who managed to "somewhat’ hurt the Contrarian (hopefully using their strongest Level 3 stat) in the climax are rewarded with a few special scenes while the other MCs “catch up” through training/groveling/whatever it takes with Dean Tolly to get the other upgrades.

The plan though is that the Levels become a bit less important by the VERY end of Part 2 when the player has finished one of the three distinct paths in Part 2 and “business picks up.”

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I agree that the stats need some tweaking. If I’m playing a detective and have to be able to get a GPA of at least 3 for the final exam I am forced to give up my secrets to Captain California. Something my MC would not have done normally because she likes Nil and the situation was very suspicious. But I can literally not afford to get a D in secrets, since my only options for defense/breaking is either C in defense B in breaking or get an A in defense and D in breaking. All because either(or both) my Whoosh and Thud weren’t high enough. And so far I haven’t been able to raise them enough.

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@HornHeadFan First of all awesome game.

Regarding the stats, i think i like the fairmath better but that is just me.
I believe that cutting the archetypes down to 3 is no big deal.

What i would like to see is the option to use your equipment more often.
Like the scene where you fight downfall everyone is using their powers
but you get 0 option to use any of your equipment. Why doesn’t my MC not
use the night vision
goggles before entering the shed to see where is everyone located like
at the church
or the smoke grenades when facing downfall.

And regarding @Ponku i have no idea what rape he is talking about, i
didn’t see anything like that in the game,
mild sexual harassment maybe, rape definitely not.

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I really liked the idea of compressing the four archetypes into three. Why? I wanted to play a character with no direct offensive capabilities, who was both sneaky and thoughtful - so a detective with Hmm and Shh would be great. I found when I played the game that Detective really felt like a slightly less useful version of Soldier to me. And Sharpshooter/Acrobat also felt very similar. Replays, at least to my mind, look more appealing without the overlapping combinations. I do like the idea of keeping the ‘tank’ build - Brawler, you said you might call it? - and I wonder if more people might choose it if the ability for Detective to be part Brawler were lost.

I don’t mind fairmath or not, either way - but stats are not usually the things I enjoy most about choicescript games.