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Thinking about F95 reviews

Started by Goldo, Nov 18, 2024, 08:34 AM

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PANDA129

制作一个通用的生成器如何?这能有效减少制作女孩包的耗时以及降低门槛。就像标签工具的BK.ini自定义文件一样。在有的角色包文件夹中也能发现自定义的对话模板,先从每个角色专属的对话开始,这已经能让角色变得生动许多了。专属事件那就得考虑从可复制性强的模板做起。

至于新手教程,为什么不设计一个事件,让玩家看看GIO是如何一步一步的经营失败的呢?在中国的小游戏广告里有很多故意演示错误操作,或是搞笑操作让你血压飙升,从而激发游玩的兴趣:这也能输?我一定比他强得多! LOL

How about creating a generic generator? This would effectively reduce the time spent on making girl packs and lower the barrier to entry. Just like the BK.ini custom file for the label tool. You can also find custom dialog templates in some character pack folders, starting with each character's exclusive dialogue, which has already made the characters much more vivid. For exclusive events, it would be best to start with templates that are highly replicable.

As for the beginner's tutorial, why not design an event that lets players see how GIO's business fails step by step? In Chinese small game ads, there are many intentional demonstrations of incorrect or comedic operations that raise your blood pressure and spark your interest to play: Can this also be the case? I'm sure I'm much better than him!

Bee78

Quote from: vadi92 on Nov 21, 2024, 01:57 PMIf you consider it most of the girlpacks was made years ago. So the quality on the images was limited back then what they could use. And most likely why they not remaking it is either they dont play this game anymore or dont have the time. (Some girlpacks can take up days to make because of the amount of images)


Sure, the packs are mostly old and not good enough. Do you know why? Brothel King 0.2 published 3 years ago on F95. If Goldo would publish 0.3 these days I bet lot of new players start to play with it and some of them would make new packs and contents.

GoldoTopic starter

Well, I think something that would help would be a little curation, which was the case some time back when volunteers made the google sheet listing girl packs. But it will be better handled by the community than by me, for sure (I don't have time to play my own game, much less test girl packs through and through  :P ).

It would be nice to have a way to 'grade' girl packs online, like giving stars or something - but I don't know how we could do that.
Maker of BK. Looking for the latest patch for BK 0.2? The link doesn't change, so bookmark it!

turbotator

#18
On Girlpacks:
I was a bit on the fence on the girlpacks when I first started playing
because the quality ranges a bit from creator to creator. As well as, certain
girls having more variation compared to others. This was solved once I found
the girlpack mastersheet on this forum.

On Management:
Main reason I was interested in this game in the first place. I enjoy min-maxing
and was sick of VN games.

On Story:
IMO can't really judge this until its finished. The current way its implemented makes sense
as a way to push the player throughout the game, and to introduce systems in a way that 'fits'
in the world.

ON UI:
I wasn't playing back in 0.1, but when playing 0.2 I always had the experimental patch
which contained the some interface changes?, though it was pretty good.
I also didn't like having to move my mouse to click the buttons to move between interfaces
so i just use the shortkeys instead (also made some for myself).

Jman

#19
Wasn't the girl pack spreadsheet originally aiming to provide some curation, too? And I think it failed for the same reason as everything else - not enough people with sufficient interest and persistence. So I wouldn't hold my breath and wait for curation to just appear.


The girl pack roster is what it is, BK is a victim of its own success here. :D


The basic girl pack already is at least 80% community-made. But making original 'basic girls' is a considerably harder task.


Creating a template script for custom girl events/dialogue sounds like a good idea... until you realise just how many hints there already are in the "Writing events for BK" thread and example packs, and how many people have taken advantage of those. :'(


Asking about origin etc progresses a girl's story arc, so it's already a bit better than nothing, Deimos96's first impressions notwithstanding. :P But these story arcs aren't particularly impactful, so...


The Gio tutorial idea is funny, but I don't think many players are going to like learning through failure. IMO, a shorter game mode with extra rails and copious hints would serve better in this regard. It could also work as an alternative game mode for those looking for a quicker playthrough.


On First Girl, I once made Sill into something like that. It was a bit clunky, and needed the Sill pack, but gave you the ability to switch her in and out of the roster at the cost of no manual cleaning and no Sill as trainer. Oh, and no sending her out on errands, either. It'd be pretty invasive as a mod, though, which is one reason I never tried redoing this for 0.3. The other big reason was that the Sill pack needed improvement, and I never got to that. Maybe I should try resurrecting this?


Oh, and finally... I'm a little worried about Goldo not playing his own game for years. Not all games that are made this way suffer, but for a passion project, it's a bit worrisome. :-\
And with strange aeons even death may die...

Kyzer

Quote from: Jman on Nov 21, 2024, 11:09 PMThe basic girl pack already is at least 80% community-made. But making original 'basic girls' is a considerably harder task.
I think i misspoke somewhere but my idea of original basic girlpack mean the girlpacks that feature on the main download page (or whoever ppl vote for idk). Not making a completely new character out of nowhere 😅. Right now there're too many pack so having like 10 main one to focus on maybe better.

Quote from: Jman on Nov 21, 2024, 11:09 PMCreating a template script for custom girl events/dialogue sounds like a good idea... until you realise just how many hints there already are in the "Writing events for BK" thread and example packs, and how many people have taken advantage of those. :'(
I tried to make event multiple times but the biggest obstacle is writing skill. Turn out writing dialogue is pretty hard 😂

Jman

What's the difference between your idea and the already existing basic girl pack? An 'expansion pack', so to speak?



Dialogue, or at least inspiration for dialogue can be outsourced to chatbots. :P
And with strange aeons even death may die...

Kyzer

Quote from: Jman on Nov 22, 2024, 11:46 AMWhat's the difference between your idea and the already existing basic girl pack? An 'expansion pack', so to speak?
Kinda i guess. It's to see what more can be done with a girlpack. But at the end of the day it's for those who want more uniqueness for each girls. But if most ppl only care about the gameplay/management aspect then it's kind of pointless 😅

Jman

Ah, so same pack size but more girls with actual events and such?


Going by the reviews that started this thread, there are certainly people who'd like to see more unique girls. The question is, can those be made with at least VN-lite quality without compromising the rest of development? And I'm a bit skeptical whether that's achievable even if Goldo was whisked away into a cellar and made to develop BK 24/7. :P

IMO, BK should focus on its strengths and not chase some 'ideal' game.
And with strange aeons even death may die...

Kyzer

Quote from: Jman on Nov 22, 2024, 12:40 PMAh, so same pack size but more girls with actual events and such?


Going by the reviews that started this thread, there are certainly people who'd like to see more unique girls. The question is, can those be made with at least VN-lite quality without compromising the rest of development? And I'm a bit skeptical whether that's achievable even if Goldo was whisked away into a cellar and made to develop BK 24/7. :P

IMO, BK should focus on its strengths and not chase some 'ideal' game.
Yeah that's why i was asking if it sound practical if it was made as a community project like the dialogue one but only choose 1-2 girls so it's more focused.
I'm not crazy enough to suggest Goldo do all of that 🤣

kite80

I've read almost every comment on F95zone in the past, my impression is that you can see them as suggestions to improve the game from personal points of view rather than criticism. What counts most is that almost every player left a 4-5 stars rating, which is a rare and amazing goal. For the rest, keep following your project as you did so far, we all think is a good path and can't wait to see the next steps.

Anyway, if you're also interested in some feedback, let me tell you what I've understood from F95zone comments so far...

One of the best slave trainer games around (for most people) is Jack o'nines Tails, so I wanna compare BK with that one since I've played both, and I suspect most of the comments on F95zone are based on such a confrontation, even if almost nobody says that openly.

JoNT doesn't have a strong VN part like BK, so even if the lore is interesting and all, it's blatantly used during gameplay; one could move it from Eternal Rome to Middle Earth or Faerun and barely see a few differences. Bk has a solid root and a narration which becomes more and more intense and interesting.

Management: JoNT requires a lot of effort from new players, many dynamics can easy bring a sudden and early game over; but when a player masters it, the game becomes quite boring, an infinite loop of buy-train-sell. Moreover, there's a costant grinding, often on the edge of bankrupt and game over, which is the core challenge of the game but also a heavy burden for players.
BK is more varied: you can buy-train-sell a girl like in JoNT, but also keep her and make her work in your brothel, virtually forever. I never thought grinding in BK is too much, especially at the beginning when you can get a single slave with no expenses thanks to Sill, and send her to do quests instead of work and save coins since you don't have to pay guards and cleaners for that day.

Exploration: when visiting Eternal Rome, nothing happens except meeting a few npcs in specific locations, unless you go out in the mist and risk a game over if you meet literally anything non-human, even a couple of goblins can take you down if you're not well trained in combat and armed to the teeth. BK has a wide range of random encounters, some dangerous, some proficuous; all of them make Zan a dynamic and living city full of opportunities.

Girl packs: they simply don't exist on JoNT. There are standard models for all the girls, and that's it. Play enough time and you'll meet the same faces over and over again.
On BK, on the other hand, it depends on how many packs a player got for his game, but I doubt that someone plays with less that a hundred packs. I tried a few runs with the basic pack plus a dozen more girls and it took a lot of time to start feeling bored becaused of the same clones.

These are the main things I got in my mind so far; must say that I like JoNT and enjoyed the game very much, but in my opinion BK is better in many aspects.
That is not dead which can eternal lie; and with strange aeons even death may die.

MagentaTree

#26
I'll chip in with my thoughts. The reason for contradictory reviews is because people are looking for different things and have different standards. It's absolutely impossible to satisfy everyone.
I'm going to loosely break (useful) complaints into one of two categories. Those that have issues with functionality and those that have issues with design.

To me, functionality represents things such as how the UI/UX is, gameplay balance, and the implementation of mechanics.

Design encapsulates the core principles of the game, such as training girls, but also things such as the theme, mood and tone. It contains the underlying goals of our protagonist and the methods in which he can use to reach them.

The latest review, actually presents a fairly good example. I don't necessarily agree with this review, but it does raise some fair points, even if they are conveyed poorly. Because I don't like leaving only complaints I'll include my own personal suggestions to convert it to contain constructive criticism.

Quote"this wasnt bad but the game time is way longer than it should've been and quite dissatisfaying without cheats, first you have to download girlpacks to play (basic isnt playable imo) in which you have to put up a lot of time , like half of the play time and the game itself is kinda bland, it does not lack in aspects and being a manager but it does so in quality, like what use of 100+ traits if they arent worth anything %95 of the time, and free actions which you have very limited of lacks any depth ? or the girls you downloaded just doing non h work , what was the point then ? so you go and open cheats making actions infinite and give perks to girls so that they can do brothel work and normal work so that you are only able to potentially see %50 of the things you downloaded
I would very much prefer the game have been much more story focused and rewarding and for game to not rely on 3rd party image for it to be playable and features of the game had really mean something"

Quotethis wasnt bad but the game time is way longer than it should've been and quite dissatisfaying without cheats
This is a game balance issue, mainly complaining about the game being grindy or not respecting the users time. It's interesting because he specified cheats make the game better, indicating a balance issue more than a design one.

My suggestion here would be to move some quality of life features that are unlocked later to be available at the start. Some brothel upgrades from the carpenter being more easily accessible or stronger would help else the grind. Giving easier access to improvements that increase security or improve cleanliness would help the player earn more gold day on day, speeding up the early game. Also I would ensure that the carpenter isn't missable by the player, in that she should show up in any district you visit.

Another would be to make items such as gem bags, gold bags and wyvern eggs more evenly distributed throughout the game, maybe as rewards for quests, progressing through the story or even (rarely) through random events. Particularly in the early game, this can help speed up the players experience.

A final option is simply to increase the player gold gain and/or stat gain which obviously speeds along the process.

On a personal opinion, managing schedules is tedious and auto-rest should have been available at the start. This does hurt the half-shift mechanic, but I think that's a small price to pay.

Quotefirst you have to download girlpacks to play (basic isnt playable imo) in which you have to put up a lot of time, like half of the play time...
This one falls into a user experience issue as well and is fair point.
Requiring players to dig through a spreadsheet and old posts looking for working links gives adds a huge upfront cost to playing the game, which I expects turns a large number of players away before even launching the game. There have been some interesting case studies about how removing a single page from the checkout flow of online stores can boost conversions by 25%. In most cases this is a single click, compared the significantly larger effort of installing the girl packs.

My suggestion for this would be to pick a selection of existing girl packs of high quality and include them either in the base game or as a single downloadable zip which users can install. Creating preset groupings from a few of the popular franchise could help users find and install what they like more easily. Obviously this requires effort but allows the game to put its best foot forwards.


Quotethe game itself is kinda bland, it does not lack in aspects and being a manager but it does so in quality, like what use of 100+ traits if they arent worth anything %95 of the time
This one presents itself as a another functional complaint, but I think the problem itself is more conceptual in nature. I'm going to focus on the issue about traits here, as complains like "bland" or "bad" don't translate into meaningful improvements.

The question I would present here is whether traits are intended to be a main mechanic or whether they are extra character fluff.
I think the game struggles to present them well in either case. To start with the later, the random generation of traits really hampers cohesion around the traits, particularly for established characters who already have natural traits. Ideally pack creators would properly include this, but reality is harsh. With that being said, having traits as fluff would benefit from some more references to them such as inside the characters dialogue. I would also recommend making them less prominent in the UI to convey that they are extra rather than a core feature of a girl

If traits are intended to be a main mechanic, then as the reviewer said, many of them don't feel impactful enough. I would note that the actual impact and perceived impact are different. Due to how information is present to the player, it is very hard or impossible to tell what impact many of the traits have. For example, the "Cute" trait boosts charm, but as a player I have no way of knowing how much this is actually doing for me. Maybe it's earning me tens of thousands of extra gold by being a waitress over a masseuse or maybe it's earning a piddling 50. In an ideal world each trait would have its own unique events and dialogue, but obviously this isn't feasible. Instead some quicker fixes would be to include info like "Gold / customer" or "Gold / (working) day" for each job on the stats page would help guide the player in the correct direction.
Another one would be to pick a few girls and pick traits from them that display at the end of the night's log. Something like "X was very cute today, earning Y extra gold" or "X was rude costing Y gold". Adding programmatic responses like this show the player what the traits are doing, making them feel more impactful, even if all they do is add 100 extra gold. I'd guess that Chatgpt would be good at taking in your trait set and generating out these kinds of responses which can significantly cut down on the work.

A more dramatic shift would be to increase the values of traits. This could be moving traits from giving +-5 per rank to +-15 per rank, making each girl seem much more distinct in what she should (and shouldn't) be doing.


Quoteand free actions which you have very limited of lacks any depth ?
A conceptual issue with the value of free actions. I think there are two issues here, one being the limited number of actions and the other being that using free actions produces the same results with little novelty each time.

The former is a game balance decision, where giving the player an extra starting action could help or it could make the game too easy.
The later is effectively complaining about lack of content around this mechanic. As I'd label player action a fundamental aspect of the game, it's not something I would lightly touch based on a few reviews, especially without concrete details on what the issue is.


Quoteor the girls you downloaded just doing non h work , what was the point then ? so you go and open cheats making actions infinite and give perks to girls so that they can do brothel work and normal work so that you are only able to potentially see %50 of the things you downloaded
I'd explain this issue as having a girl in her optimal role significantly limits the amount of art you will see from her. If a single sex action is optimal (in terms of gold income), then you might end up repeatedly seeing only 10 images out of a thousand.

My suggestion here would be to add some more settings similar to "variety over accuracy" option. Reducing the constraints (or increasing the desired tags) on which picture is fetched for a given action would help show more of the image set. Something like promoting farm images for fetish or removing the mood limitations around picture selection could help.

Another option is to let players select "random job" for a girl, for those that aren't looking to maximize money. This will help the player see all the working images without having to manually run through and change the jobs.



QuoteI would very much prefer the game have been much more story focused and rewarding and for game to not rely on 3rd party image for it to be playable and features of the game had really mean something
This effectively means that the player prefers to focus on the story elements, having a more limited selection with a deeper narrative. This is another issue that touches on the core design of the game.

It's interesting because as you pointed out, players have different expectations around what the game should be like. Some are looking for something along the lines of a VN, focusing on a small cast of girls and their experiences at the brothel while others are looking for a pure trainer with no story beats whatsoever.
The general solution I've seen for games like this is the option of a free play mode which cuts all the story elements and unlocks the relevant items as you move through the chapters (gold/reputation requirements only as the later districts currently have). You actually have most of the framework for this in the NG+ menu, but allowing people to choose this option at the start of each playthrough (maybe as a page in the character creator) would allow both sides to enjoy.



Bonus:
For those interested in the case studies about checkout optimization you can find quite a few on Google, but one I would recommend is by Shopify




vadi92

#27
Quote from: MagentaTree on Nov 24, 2024, 02:25 AMThis is a game balance issue, mainly complaining about the game being grindy or not respecting the users time. It's interesting because he specified cheats make the game better, indicating a balance issue more than a design one.

There are cheats in the game. He just needs to change debug mode from False to True in bkSetting.rpy (line 58) or he can use the King's way mod.

Quote from: MagentaTree on Nov 24, 2024, 02:25 AMThis one falls into a user experience issue as well and is fair point.
Requiring players to dig through a spreadsheet and old posts looking for working links gives adds a huge upfront cost to playing the game, which I expects turns a large number of players away before even launching the game. There have been some interesting case studies about how removing a single page from the checkout flow of online stores can boost conversions by 25%. In most cases this is a single click, compared the significantly larger effort of installing the girl packs.

My suggestion for this would be to pick a selection of existing girl packs of high quality and include them either in the base game or as a single downloadable zip which users can install. Creating preset groupings from a few of the popular franchise could help users find and install what they like more easily. Obviously this requires effort but allows the game to put its best foot forwards.

The problem with this that there is nobody here with acces to it who could manage the spreedsheet. So deleting the unusable girlpacks is pretty much impossible. (The one's who have it are not lurking around here anymore)

Quote from: MagentaTree on Nov 24, 2024, 02:25 AMA conceptual issue with the value of free actions. I think there are two issues here, one being the limited number of actions and the other being that using free actions produces the same results with little novelty each time.

I agree that at the start with the limited action points are kinda hard to make do. But later on you cant even spend it off at all or dont even care about it. (My personal option)

Jman

#28
Good feedback, MagentaTree!

...but I wouldn't be Jman if I didn't push back a little on some. :P



Grinding is the core feature of the game. One can certainly make a alternative shorter play mode, but ultimately, a management game that rushes you through the management isn't.


The solution to 'too little gold' is not to frontload furniture, it's to either increase base income or give out some freebies... which still essentially boils down to a 'quick play' mode in disguise.


Getting some rarer items as quest rewards or similar is a great idea!


I disagree about schedule management and find it one of the more engaging parts of my BK day. I mean, why play a management game if it just manages itself? But some better tools for that would be appreciated. You can now save/load a bunch of schedules per girl. Perhaps we could use global templates that apply the corresponding schedule for each girl, or possibly even let it assign jobs?


Auto-rest has indeed been delayed to the point a lot of players never even encounter it. I suppose it could be available earlier, and then Gina could upgrade it further as the game progresses? Like personal autorest settings per girl, per job, medpack/tonic injections when a girl goes critical?


Quote from: MagentaTree on Nov 24, 2024, 02:25 AMMy suggestion for this would be to pick a selection of existing girl packs of high quality and include them either in the base game or as a single downloadable zip which users can install.
But that's what the basic girl pack is. Is this again a suggestion for 'expansion packs', possibly with characters from the same franchise?



I tried strong traits in Bonanza. I'm a great fan of those, but many a player couldn't really wrap their head about the fact that girls now had to specialise. Well, perhaps it was more of a side effect of early game balancing, but still...

And traits are perhaps the main thing that makes girls actually disctinct from each other. If these are moved to 'fluff', what else is there short of visuals, the rare virgin, or personality (which is kind of hidden right now)?

Adding trait-specific dialogue to even one part of the game is a Sisyphean task, though.

The solution to trait cohesion problems the packmaker didn't address is the Headhunter :), or the official alternative when that becomes a thing.

Charm boosting is actually an example where at least the biggest effect is relatively easy to notice: 50 points of charm gives you an extra waitress customer per night. It's even pointed out in the UI now. But there are lots of smaller effects, many of which are not very clear-cut and aren't amenable to smacking the player over the head with a "this is what it does" message. There are also blurbs about customers liking charming girls if that's what they're into during sex acts, which is the other relatively strong effect. So, I suggest it's at least halfway a problem of player inattentiveness, and in a game with as many moving parts as this, it's not possible to 'solve' a checked-out player.

'Gold per customer/day' isn't really important for this discussion, since all you really care about here is your final income. It'd be useful once you're actually trying to optimise your customer base or scheduling, but that's far from the level of attention to detail we're talking about here. And that final income nicely is tracked in the stats page.

"X was very cute today, earning Y extra gold" would be hard to actually quantify like that. A flavour message without X, perhaps, but then you start going down a deep rabbit hole.

All in all, I'm a big advocate for strong traits, but Goldo has his reasons (there's some measure of balance in the game right now, and a relevant enough change to traits will mean rebalancing everything).



What are 'free actions', anyway? The master bedroom? Personal training is one of the more interactive and well-liked parts of the game, so in that case I don't really understand where the "lacks any depth" comment is coming from.

Increasing base actions has been done by various people: Kite80 (just lots more of them), OhWee (base went from 2 to 5, I think?), myself (free boots as part of an 'easy' difficulty option). Not sure any of these should be in vanilla.

I think there was an idea for 'free morning stroll' at some point, but it got shot down. Anyone remembers why?

And I agree with vadi that eventually, you have lots and lots of AP and a player who just wants to click through the game won't really use them all.

I once had auto-night-training, which I guess was mechanically different from manual training. Not sure anybody really liked it, and it was kinda fragile.



Personally, I want to only see relevant pictures, so a waitress randomly giving out blowjobs while serving is a no-go. Alpha&Omega had a mod with random jobs each night, I think? And neronero's Fran pack had something similar. Group sex/bisexual sorta go through different image pools as well. Although both are kinda restricted. So, yeah, for people who want to see a lot of different pictures, 'random jobs' could be a way to do it.



Free play mode is its own thing now, isn't it? NG+ adds a bunch of extra options, but a new player really shouldn't be messing with core game mechanics if he only wants to cut out the story.



Oh, and I don't think the checkout comparison is really relevant, except as a rather abstract example of how small improvements in UI can have a big impact. BK is orders of magnitude more complex, and lacks the cutthroat competition even the dingiest e-store has to survive.
And with strange aeons even death may die...

vadi92

#29
QuoteMy suggestion for this would be to pick a selection of existing girl packs of high quality and include them either in the base game or as a single downloadable zip which users can install.
Quote from: Jman on Nov 24, 2024, 10:13 AMBut that's what the basic girl pack is. Is this again a suggestion for 'expansion packs', possibly with characters from the same franchise?

Or maybe they could try make the "preffered" basic girlpacks on they hands. Maybe they will be done with it in couple of weeks or month before even starting the game. (I know that was a bit of sarcasm). As i said in earlier comment most of them are pretty old so the qualitty can be bad.

Edit: And what's the quallity they find good can change from person to person too. Like with how someone preffer girlpacks with real girls or western style and so on so on.
Edit2: Another problem with the quality packs that there are only a few of them. And creating new one's can be a hassle. Either there are to many pic's from older franchise characters (have more then 10k  pic's with a ton duplicates and garbage images). On the other hand with the newer characters have way to few images (around 100~1000) and most of them again either duplicates and garbage and you end up with only 100 to 200 pic's what you find good but dont even know where you can tag it. And in the end you get a girlpack with less then 100 images.