Royal Affairs Discussion Thread and Romance Guide (Spoilers Within)

Not intentional - I’ll take a look, thank you!

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Does anyone know how to message someone directly on here?

I don’t think you can, with a brand-new account.

I got the message, so all good :slight_smile:

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No matter what I do at the kayak part of the game, I seem to crash no matter if I try to pedal fast or avoid out of the way. Is there an error in the game that’s going on or am I missing something?

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In theory the below stat/choice pairings should work!

First choice (don’t pick “winning isn’t important”):
-“Race as fast as I can” - low Calm
-“Steer to bump someone” - high Forceful
-“Keep calm and focused” - high Calm

When you’re on the island:
-Order/tell them which branches to climb - high Authoritative
-Persuade them to climb/call encouragement - high Appealing
-Climb up yourself - high Calm
-Plan your route - high Planner

Final choice:
-Paddle faster - low Calm
-Avoid them - low Forceful
-Tip them out of the water - high Ruthless

You don’t have to succeed on all three challenges but if you fail on the first one it makes the third one harder. In the next update I’m making it easier to win as a few people have mentioned that it feels a bit too hard.

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Minor nitpick about a scene that doesn’t really change the plot of the story whatsoever.
Just bothered me a little bit on how casual and matter of fact the game was treating it and I wanted to gush out about it.

It was about when Javi challenged Asher to a sparring match. I was absolutely sure they were hinting at doing a little bit of fencing or the like. so when Javi and Asher started having a bout of fisticuffs right in front of the MC and the rest, I found it a little bit ridiculous.
Especially when they were reading fortune cards to each other prior before Javi unceremoniously barged in to issue their challenge.

That aside, why hand to hand combat specifically?
I’m not claiming to be an expert but punches leave bruises. Biting isn’t very honorable and “fair”. And I’m pretty sure a punch to the throat is most likely dangerous.
This could easily be mitigated if it were any other sport.

Second critical ramble, why Javi in particular had to be the one fighting, they have a bodyguard, shouldn’t they be the obvious choice. You can argue on them trying to prove themselves or whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish, but if that were so, shouldn’t they have challenged the MC then, not their bodyguard.

I’m a little biased cuz I absolutely loathe Javi the very second they were introduced, but I think I still have a point here.

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That all makes sense! That scene is intended to show Javi in a negative light so it being dishonourable, rude, petty etc is a fair reaction, and I wanted it to feel jarring compared to the more “sporting” situations that the school promotes, hence hand to hand rather than something more formal.

I wondered if there was anything specific that made it feel too casual? As far as I remember, the MC is given options to be annoyed about it and Asher is alarmed. I’ll have another look at how the other characters respond to the situation too.

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I’m extremely happy to hear this news! That being said, I’m greatly depressed I can’t continue the story with Maxime always there to just chill with.

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I totally understand, it’s a great compliment that people were left wanting more time with the old characters!

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Hi, I’m so excited about this. Which month do you think Royal Affair will be released?

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Hello, at the moment I’m working on the penultimate chapter. But I don’t have a sense of when it’ll be out as there will be a lot of editing and testing after the draft is completed. Glad you’re excited!

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Here’s the rest of Chapter 5! I’d love to hear what you think, and whether things are working as intended. In particular if you hit one-on-one conversations that repeat from earlier in the game, that’s important to hear about (it can be a little tricky to test and replicate).

Note: this update will most likely not work with a loaded game as I needed to make some big changes to how a bunch of variables are set in advance for the release. If you find a bug please let me know whether you’re loading a saveslot.

As ever, thank you for playing! I’m planning to get Chapter 6 up here during October.

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Joke’s on you, I had to clear cache a while ago and that erases all dash saves, so I ALREADY had to play from the beginning. :stuck_out_tongue:

stoffs

Disconnect: first paragraph sounds like I passed the check (and I’m pretty sure I have), but the ensuing paragraphs are a Javi win. Also, I only got one choice for the fight, not two. This is with the “calm” option (58% calm). “Moving in hard” (56% forceful) is working fine (see second ss):

May I suggest adding something like “though surely you’ll have plenty of opportunities to interact with everyone throughout the year in any case.” after “It’s clear that you’ll have more time with your peers in the Leadership Class that you choose”, just to make sure people don’t get the impression that they have to pick the club of their desired RO?

“gondolas”

I STILL don’t understand the tracking of Beaumont’s personality variable: for example, I don’t know why the first option raises Forward Thinking (but it’s also crap at raising affection) but the second, which is basically ALSO “talking about these things is healthy” raises nostalgic, and I definitely don’t understand why the third option (“and now for something completely different”) also raises nostalgic, as that one seems the most likely to raise FT. This is just an example, but basically every Beaumont option that shifts their personality stat has me at a loss. Maybe it’s just me, though.


Ok, the very next choice, choosing to unstick her bumps Nostalgic, so I think I’m just going to give up on trying to understand how this particular variable works. I’m now pretty sure it’s a problem on my end.

“Fabien smoothes over the moment.”

I’m not sure how the first and last options differ. If you want to be the center of things, then it seems to follow that you want more attention than anyone, including your siblings. Fortunately, I’m picking neither, so I don’t have to caaaaaaare. :smile:

I… don’t like this choice. Or, rather, I don’t like how this choice is handled? It ties stats to unrelated political stances. E.g., I’d LIKE to pick option one, because I’m for the suffrage, but I can’t because I don’t have authoritative high enough. My best stat is eloquent, but I’m not picking the corresponding fourth option, because lol, no. Unless there’s something in particular you want to accomplish with these combinations, may I suggest breaking this into two choices? One where you pick pro, con, or don’t bother me with this, and another where you pick the attitude with which you try to make your point?

Oh, no, panic attack, my poor Laurie. :anguished:

Oh wow, the inspector is about to quiz Dominique, of all people. I’m sure I won’t have to intervene on this at all whatsoever!

Why can’t both I and Trev help Beau study? Boooo.

Trev’s pronoun is miscapitalised in the third paragraph.

Is this supposed to be “It was my boss’s call”? Because otherwise it feels odd that we don’t have the option to ask whose call it was.

Aaaaand that’s the end so far. Always a delight. :slight_smile:

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I absolutely love how you need to be inmensely careful of the stats if you want to maintain the political image of your family and how sensible is the Westerlind Government itself as by the most random action they can switch from Traditional to Progressive like nothing.

Playing is as sweet as ever,trying to keep the restricted suffrage active with Accepting citizens is a tough task,my asshole of a MC is willing to lie to anyone,be as sweet as sugar at a moment and as manipulative as Little finger the next all while retaining a good image of himself among the Royals,the Students and the average citizen.

Best of all was howyou can use the capture of the Paparazzi in your favour making Inspector Burgin write a report that basically favours only you leaving the lackluster teachers fight aside where it belongs.

Gotta congratulate you writer as you are playing on an impressive way with the Citizen Popularity and the overall stats,makes thinking your moves more crucial than ever being the save system(that I hope you carry to the official release) key for making your political interests survive.

Also being on good terms with Trevelyan when you are basically undermining on the back her whole political project/ambitions is just so funny,had lots of fun on her comeback referring to her as "Glorious Revolutionary leader,it cracks me up even now :joy:

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@eldensalkeld Thank you so much, I’m really glad you enjoyed! I don’t think the saveslots will be there in the release as it’s not something that usually happens in released games, but I’m going to be looking very carefully at the stats when I’ve got the full draft done and testing for difficulty balance as well as clarity in the option text.

@JBento really helpful as always! I’ll have those small-scale things changed in the next update and probably the Hearthlight politics choice as well (which is a little bigger to sort out). I just realised you mentioned the Hearthlight choice upthread and I had been putting it off till now - so I’m going to sort it out once and for all!

I’m going to have one choice set that’s similar to the current “I like suffrage”, “I don’t want to talk politics”, “I don’t want people gossiping about me”, “I don’t like suffrage” but the pro- and anti-suffrage stances won’t be based on stats and then you’ll have a second set of choices with more nuance about how you express it. Basically implementing the solution you suggested - you’re right that it’s not fair to make an opinion a stat test!

Re what you mentioned about the character opposed stats, that’s very helpful too - If it’s causing confusion that means it’s not working as intended! I’ve got it in my notes of “things to look at once I’ve got the full draft down” - as well as clarifying it, I need to see whether it’s equally easy to push characters in one direction or another and that’ll be good to do when I’ve got a sense of the big picture.

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…and I got that Chapter 4 political-question update quicker than expected, so I’ve updated today - along with various small corrections and tweaks.

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Hey, been loving the development of this and am excited to see each update.

Not sure if this was brought up, there seems to be a glitch. While playing a female MC and imputing what happened in the first book, at the beginning of the cafeteria scene after i checked the stats page it sent me back to the begining of chapter one but i still had all the stat progress i had up until the glitch

This sounds like you were playing when HPS pushed an update. All updates send you to the start of the chapter.

If this was a one-time thing, that’s probably what it was.

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Seems like it becaus, i just tried to get it to do it a second time and it works fine now. Thought i would bring it up just in case

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