Where Are The Cheats?

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Oh, and almost forgot, but I really want an option to Harass or Detain the jealous friend in that variant of Trouble in Paradise rather than Harassing the new friend. If I'm being a "mean girl" with an Iron Fist, that would be my preferred way of settling things, like "Stop being stupid! Go make a new friend yourself! Friendships don't last forever! Get over it or I will push YOU down a flight of steps!"

You can, actually! You just need enough evidence to suspect that she's more than just a little bit jealous before you can throw her in detention, which requires taking an action that it's probably never occurred to you to try. Harassing the jealous girl's roommate will let you know whether she's just jealous, or jealous and mean, in which case you can detain her to close the case.

Ah-ha! That just means I need to continue to hone my 'Be Mean to Everyone' strategy!

[Benazir]

So - why are you failing cases? Are there specific kinds of cases that you're having trouble with? Are your minions always failing at the tasks you set them to? Are you using all of the available actions?

I'm not falling ALL cases. But, sometimes there are too many the cases on a week, sometimes not all of the minions are available ... You could add a little more rep, for successfully completed cases (on Easy level).

[Myoukochou]

(Were you following Spiky's instructions for unlocking the 'special' content, or poking around in the source? I've nudged him to look at the pickling problem.)

Purely via poking around. (I'm a curious reverser!) Didn't actually see the bit with his post and the console! I see there are three special cases… and that one of the flags - not the one Spiky posted - looks like a gloriously creative copy-protection trap—bravo! :) Love the Strawberry Panic reference, too.

The two attributes which fail to unpickle seem to be student.metamorphosis and student.destiny, probably because they don't get scrubbed?

I can't help but feel like those functions could be ripe for reuse in some other fun prospective cases, too!—I don't know, a Mysterious Transfer Student all the girls are curious about, that may have an appetite exceeding even Althea's, hence the transfer; or in another variant, perhaps she doesn't like the attention/bullying, etc, etc. This game has got us all plotting and fangirling over here~♥

[Ariel Schnee]

If you're not going to put in an easy mode or cheats, then I am not going to buy it, games too hard.

[Darksilverhawk]

Actually, related question. Is there any kind of check in the game to ensure that, if you're already at <6 rep, the game won't give you one of the case variants where expulsion is the only answer? I don't think I've ever hit that situation, I'm just curious if you could get into an unwinnable situation.

[hanako]

If you're not going to put in an easy mode or cheats, then I am not going to buy it, games too hard.

As I said, we are still actively doing difficulty balancing. The last few patches have already made several changes, but they're still in beta for now while the art gets finished. Handing out cheats at this point would be an absolutely terrible thing to do because it would cover up problems rather than actually fixing them. There will, however, be cheats for Karma and Reputation eventually because even if I don't give them away someone's going to figure it out, it's not that hard to do. Just not now.

Right now, I really want to focus on improving the core gameplay experience. So it's much more useful if you can talk about specific cases you have trouble with and particular things that are too hard.

There may or may not be an easier mode at some point, depending on whether I come up with a plan for one that is sensible and makes things easier without completely breaking gameplay. The custom campaign options will also function as a useful training mode, once they're available.

. Is there any kind of check in the game to ensure that, if you're already at <6 rep, the game won't give you one of the case variants where expulsion is the only answer? I don't think I've ever hit that situation, I'm just curious if you could get into an unwinnable situation.

Determining unwinnability mathematically is trickier than that. Say you have one of those expulsion cases, but instead of expelling the culprit you suspend them, and when they come back to school, immediately suspend them again? You can keep juggling someone for quite a while and stop the case from resolving, during which time you MIGHT manage to regain some reputation.

Actual answer - I'm not sure if there are checks for that or not. But it's not quite as straightforward as it seems.

[Darksilverhawk]

Determining unwinnability mathematically is trickier than that. Say you have one of those expulsion cases, but instead of expelling the culprit you suspend them, and when they come back to school, immediately suspend them again? You can keep juggling someone for quite a while and stop the case from resolving, during which time you MIGHT manage to regain some reputation.

Actual answer - I'm not sure if there are checks for that or not. But it's not quite as straightforward as it seems.

That makes sense; I didn't think about the fact that you'd need to factor in effects of other cases that might not have even generated yet on reputation. I can still see a definite line between "you screwed up" and "the game screwed you" (darn bookies and their apparent ability to run gambling rings while suspended) but I suppose it can be argued that if you're at 5 reputation you've already screwed up pretty badly, and a clever or lucky player might still be able to weasel their way out of it. You can always reload a save from before the case generates, so ultimately I don't think it's a problem that really needs to be addressed.

[Ren]

Related to the difficulty of the game: I think that having a training mode available at the beginning is going to help a lot, particularly if you were to suggest somewhere that one might want to try that before going into the game as there's a few things to keep in mind.

I don't know how common my experience is, but I found that I restarted the game a few times because I had the feeling that I just wasn't "getting it". Some cases do seem to benefit from you understanding some sort of pattern. I was being overly-cautious with harassing people and found that that actually is counter-productive in certain situations. Learning where to focus helped, too. Being able to just play a few cases on my own without worrying about progressing the story each time I think would be a nice bonus.

I think the planned (if I understood correctly) improvements are going to do a lot of good to the game: being able to set the traitor will help people who want to get all the endings without having to worry about losing the minion they decided to pursue next, for example. The rogue-like kind of save seems like a good idea, too.

[FantasyFan]

I wouldn't want to PREVENT game overs, but I WOULD like a level where you get one new case a week instead of two. I keep failing over and over again because I'm just plain overwhelmed with cases.

[Ren]

I don't mind pulling back drugs and gambling to a little later in the year (I was already considering blocking those in the first month), but I don't want to get too limiting with early case types.

Compared to other people in this thread I have much less experience, so I don't know how useful my feedback can be (I've been kinda busy with work, you see!): if you don't want to limit the case types too much, couldn't you program in some sort of "rubber band" mechanic to the cases choices? What I mean is: say that you decide that - out of 10 possible cases- 3, 4 and 5 are hardcore, and 1 and 2 are just moderately challenging. Assume that you know that if you're with less than X points of karma or reputation after your first month you're in for a nightmare: couldn't you have the cases be all possible to be thrown at you, but if you fail too many 3, 4 and 5 are the first ones to not be attainable in the first two weeks and if you're really doing horridly 1 and 2 go as well?
So I guess that the first week could always get only easy cases, if you do really badly at those the game won't throw 3, 4 and 5 at you in the second week, but *might* give you 1 and 2. But if you do really badly next week, those would be out as well. Conversely, if you seem to do better, the game might re-introduce 1 and 2 or even 3, 4 and 5 if there's still time. Then, it should have a smooth gradient to reintroduce hard cases, if you did really badly and needed all or some of the cases to not be handed to you - it wouldn't be great to suddenly be given hard cases. It would be like going from walking with a crutch to running.

Of course, that means that people might do bad enough just so they don't get the hard cases handed to them and get to the end boss with lots of experience, so the rewards should be lower if you are being hand-held during the game and then the final boss should be as hard as it would be for anyone else (or anyone else in your difficulty setting). The idea wouldn't be to have them hit a wall with the end boss but, rather, for them to find it progressively harder and harder to go on. So, if you were to have a difficulty curve you'd have the person who's doing OK going up in a straight line, while the person who did badly would have a curve with more slack at the beginning which would get steeper the nearer it gets to the end.

Or something. I feel like musing tonight, it seems.

[hanako]

(darn bookies and their apparent ability to run gambling rings while suspended)

Can you elaborate on that?

The bookie case should not be able to fail while the bookie is suspended. It's not written to, and I've just tested and kept the bookie suspended for a month with no problem. I'm trying to figure out if you mean a different case, or if you suspended the wrong girl, or if you had the case fail after she was unsuspended because it was so near failure to begin with, or something else.

[grommile]

I wouldn't want to PREVENT game overs, but I WOULD like a level where you get one new case a week instead of two. I keep failing over and over again because I'm just plain overwhelmed with cases.

Many cases have a highly action-efficient strategy available. Some of them even have an efficient strategy that doesn't rely entirely on Rowan

[Darksilverhawk]

Can you elaborate on that?

The bookie case should not be able to fail while the bookie is suspended. It's not written to, and I've just tested and kept the bookie suspended for a month with no problem. I'm trying to figure out if you mean a different case, or if you suspended the wrong girl, or if you had the case fail after she was unsuspended because it was so near failure to begin with, or something else.

I haven't encountered it recently (because I don't suspend on that case anymore because of it), but I definitely have, in the past, had the bookie variant (the one taking bets on horse races) fail on me while the girl taking the bets was suspended. I don't remember much beyond "this happened" unfortunately. There's a possibility it could have failed on the day she came back, I suppose. But I remember it was one of the things that scared me away from suspensions early on.

[hanako]

I don't know either, unless it was an alpha bug that got fixed. It shouldn't happen.

Please do let me know if you get case results that don't make logical sense. Sometimes they're broken, and sometimes my logic is wonky!

[Darksilverhawk]

Weird case logic (posting here, but if you'd rather have it somewhere else let me know): In the Delicate Blossom variant where her friend is throwing her a party, why can't we persuade (instead of harass) the girl to not throw the party? That one took me forever to figure out. Since she wasn't explicitly doing anything that seemed wrong, I figured the party was helping! After all, you are told to make sure she's up to the task, and having support from friends seems like a positive thing.

Also, I just feel awful after I have to harass her to stop. Why can't we just gently suggest she allow her friend to study the night before and throw a party afterward?