#the farm sim aspects of it are going to be very very simple. its mostly a visual novel. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

willing-but-not-able · 1 year

Text

So, a little while ago, I set out to find a new dating sim/otome game to play and my results weren't very fruitful.

After I read through several lists and found nothing new or anything that didn't have a currency cap, I’ve decided to make a concept for a otome/husbando collector game to make the game I'd want to play.

Taking several different games into account, I think I’ve made a decent concept that I would love to see actualized.

Despite my enthusiasm, I already know making a game isn’t a walk in the park and it’s certainly not as easy as picking up some game maker, putting assets together and selling it for ten dollars. It takes other concept writers, illustrators, developers, a whole damn team; but I’d still wanna share this in case it piques anyone’s interest or anyone's with me here.

Most games targeted towards those of us who like men are boring af. There’s only a few games that can even be considered interesting and even they have their flaws, most these games die off after a year or two.

I don’t like that.

I want to be able to see ads of objectively attractive men or I want to NOT see big boobs shoved in my face every time I get an ad for some new mobile wifu game.

The concept is simple:

A Husbando collector that’s not ‘press A to win’ or ‘pay to play’

My idea was rather simple when I first thought of it and I figured Obey Me! Would be good enough to cure my desperation for a game like this.

Despite that, Obey Me has its flaws that anyone who plays it presently is mostly aware of:

Simple and formulated events

Too many events

A huge focus on certain characters over others (which they seem to be aware of now)

P2P elements that have almost turned into the whole game at this point.

Other Otome games have much worse issues including:

A lack of actual gameplay

Terrible level curve

P2W/Paywalls

No story/uninteresting story

A lack of characters (usually there’s only four)

I could go on, but we get the point.

So, as someone who absolutely loves a good story, I also just want to have fun and look at some attractive guys. I wanted to see if I could make something that would work on both the gamer aspect and the husbando aspect.

Here’s my idea.

I’m running off an old idea I had as a kid where the player is rescued by a ninja who takes you back to your kingdom’s castle. From there, you’re pursued by the various occupants of the castle.

As for adding more characters without ignoring the old ones, I considered having various kingdoms all with their own "new character" you live through.

Once one storyline has ended—aka I’ve exhausted all ideas for that group of characters—I’d move onto another kingdom with a different problem/issue.

The default kingdom would probably be the one I made up as a kid where a prince is forced to become a king after his father dies, but he’s only 19 or so and his trusty knight does anything in his power to assist him.

Some of the other residents who come to reside in the castle are unique characters including the ninja who saved you and brought you to the castle and a young mage who hides himself in the castle’s dungeon so he can improve his skill.

Of course, this is just some half baked idea so don't take this as the end all be all.

In order to progress through the story you need two things:

Money and a high skill level.

Money

And no, I don’t mean money as in irl money, I mean those currencies these games frequently hold over our head and hide behind a wall of our paychecks (I’ll just refer to it as gold or G for now).

Gold could be earned in several ways:

Completing daily tasks

Sending some to a friend

Farming progression points (or battles)

Or, if you don’t wanna do any of that, you could just pay for it.

Gold is needed to buy certain items needed to complete a level

2. Skill Level

Levels would be requiring a specific set of items to progress through the enemy. However, there’s not a singular set at any one level that can win the battle, experiment with your well developed sets and find something that works for you!

*If I'm running off the medieval theme, these sets of items would be something like potions, spell books, knights, armor, etc… I could go into more detail, but that would extend this post even more.

Real quick, the characters would be able to use said items and gain an attribute based on whatever the item is. So say, our prince boy would benefit from fire items of any type and would gain an increase in his attack or skill based on the item he's given.

Now, here’s where I get to have a little fun with a demonstration!

I’ll be using a character from the anime Dream Festival as visual aids (it’s a pretty good anime, I would recommend it).

It’ll still be a gacha game, but without the motto of “put money in for your favorite boi.” You cannot pull from the gacha unless you’ve gotten to a certain level (I was thinking the tenth or so level). By that point, you should have enough in-game resources to pull at least ten times, if not more.

-------------------------------------------------------

*Skip to the next line break if you don't care about the gacha explanation with my shit math.*

The odds for the pulls are going to be hokey in my explanation because I'm very bad at math, don't know shit about statistics, odds and rates. I'll just apologize if this makes no sense mathematically.

With the characters I have, I also wanted to give each of them a version of the different rarities. So, for four characters, that would be twelve cards for just a simple event.

Doing my backyard math, I figured if there's 12 cards and you have a chance of getting all of those cards repeatedly (12 as a cap) then the obtain rate should be higher since there's more for you to collect.

-------------------------------------------------------

So👏 let’s say you pull a SR card. This one perhaps of Keigo.

Once you pull this card, you’re given a task to complete. The task/job/objective would be some menial task of a varying difficulty:

SR: Complete all (0/10 instead of 5/10) of your daily tasks

SSR: Get three stars, five times in any level

UR: Complete three levels at the highest difficulty with three stars.

Once these are completed, the card is yours and you’re able to use it in your regular sets adding to your overall skill level.

Of course, there would be some kinks I’d have to work out, but this is a basic concept just to explain what I would want to see.

Pretty much, I don’t like the idea of P2W games at all as I feel they suck the fun out of playing a game, which is to get better and learn the mechanics of the game, but if I can just pay for it, then what’s the point?

I do understand some people don’t want to work to get better at a game and would prefer to pay and move on, but that shouldn't be the foundation of the game.

Some of my many ideas for this game are purely based in thirst trapping, which I am a-ok falling into as long as the game is meant to be this way and is not doing this for female characters as there are plenty of wifu simulators and wifu collectors.

Those of us who like men wanna have fun too.

1st note

Something I desperately want in a game like this is an actual interesting story that integrates all the characters involved in the story. For any characters added, it'd almost be like League of Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, Valorant, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, BIG etc… where after a story has come to an end, we have a new “season” with all new characters and their own story line.

The previous character’s story wouldn’t be abandoned until it’s actually concluded. I feel a “season” would be nearly two years worth of content with around five or so characters (give or take, I’m no developer).

2nd note

Another thing is the ability to have more than one interest. One problem I have with Obey Me is their fixation on a few characters. I often feel totally left out when Levi isn’t in an event because if I waste any amount of my resources on a card of Diavolo's, for example, I just can’t get a card for Levi unless I put real money in.

That’s not very fun and it also gets old quick.

3rd note

Events wouldn’t be just random dress up scenarios, but it would be a full fledged story (most likely lasting for a half a month or a full month) and give each of the characters three sets of SR, SSR, and UR cards, as I said before.

Usually Otome games assign characters to each level of card, but I would like to see the different rarities on all the characters, if possible. It would give me more reason to play the game rather than just getting my boi’s UR and dipping.

But, that’s all from me. I thank you if you read this far because this really is just a random idea I got at 3AM, but it’s an actual project(?) of mine that I’ve thought about for a long time. So thank you for allowing me to share my ideas.

But that's all from me. I hope your day is good and your night is well, bye-bye.

1 note · View note

dramallamadingdang · 4 years

Note

I never liked TS3, but your recent gameplay pics makes it seem so fun. How many packs do you have? Do you play with any mods? This is unrelated, but I was wondering what are your opinions on Sims 4? I am asking because I love sims, but don't enjoy anything beyond sims 2 and it is becoming increasingly difficult to play the game on modern computers. My playstyle seems to match yours, so I would like to know your thoughts.

You know, I didn’t like TS3 for years. I think it was because I really wanted it to be TS2, only better. Like, the same exact game only with better graphics, more freedom with the open world, etc. When I tried to play TS3, I was spending so much time comparing it with 2 that I couldn’t appreciate it on its own merits, as a completely different creature. Which it definitely is…

And I babbled a lot (What a surprise!), so I’ll cut the rest. I just woke up, so pardon my incoherent rambling. :)

Once I finally accepted that TS3 isn’t TS2, I started to enjoy 3 a lot more, and then I started to discover its own unique strengths. Because it does have strengths over TS2 – gardening and its tight integration with cooking, for one, plus the adventure-vacations and, oh yeah, HORSES and the other pets that, annoying routing aside, are just better than TS2’s – although there are many things that I like better in TS2, of course. Primarily building. I love building neighborhoods from the ground up in TS2. Doing that is why I got the game in the first place. In TS3? I HATE BUILDING WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS. (So I’m really thankful for the people who enjoy making custom worlds! :D ) I just want to open up a fully-built, ready-to-go, but unpopulated world -- and if it’s populated I just nuke everyone with Master Controller -- and play TS3 because its gameplay is actually really fun, IMO, once you stop expecting it to be TS2. Now, to be fair, I haven’t gotten tired of TS3’s gameplay probably because I haven’t been playing the game for a solid decade, so I haven’t done all the stuff a million times yet. But in TS2, I’m starting to find the gameplay really tiresome, even with all the mods to make it more interesting. So, I break up the tedium with building, while my “playing batteries” recharge. I can see me coming to a point where I’ll stop wanting to play it, though, and just want to build in it and make stuff needed for what I build. But I still have fun playing TS3, so...yeah.

Anyway, I have all the TS3 EPs, and I kind of consider all of them essential because they all add bits (or large chunks!) of gameplay that I like. I only have one of the stuff packs – High End Loft Stuff or something? – because the base game I bought had that bundled with it. I have also *ahem* acquired *ahem* all of the store worlds and the interesting-to-me store items. (Like the canning station and the gardening/greenhouse/farm stuff and the glass-blowing/jewelry-making and the bakery set and the OFB-like stuff and…Well, you get the idea. :) )

And I have many, many mods. I have more mods than anything else, when it comes to third-party content for the game. I have pretty much all of the NRAAS mods, some of which – like Master Controller, Error Trap, and Overwatch – are essential for keeping the game running smoothly, and some of which add fun stuff. Like Traveler, which makes it so that you can have Sims living in multiple worlds in a single save (sort of like a neighborhood + subhoods in TS2), and you can bounce between them. It’s probably my favorite mod of them all. Other non-NRAAS faves involve gardening/cooking, whole packs of new plants for growing new ingredients that are needed for new recipes for the game, including cuisines for different cultures. (Greek, Indian, Mexican, etc.) Still others add more abilities and interactions for children, toddlers, and babies.

And then there’s the “adult” mod, “Kinky World,” which adds realistic animated sex and various sorts of stuff for grown-ups. I have much of it disabled because I’m not interested in having things like rape and incest and bestiality in my game, but I’m OK with drug use and sex work and especially the customizable menstrual cycle that makes baby-making far more realistic, in addition to various services added to the hospital rabbithole (sterilization procedures for both sexes as well as some sex reassignment procedures), and…Well, I confess that the flashers amuse the hell out of me, specifically different Sims’s reactions to them. *laugh* The “Kinky World” mod certainly isn’t for everyone and it does throw errors and such and the admins on the NRAAS forum really poo-poo its shoddy coding, so you probably shouldn’t use it in a save that you really care about keeping around long-term, but if you’re into that sort of stuff and you’re just screwing around (pun intended :) ), it has some interesting features. I wish I could have the menstrual cycle from it all by itself because that’s mostly why I use it.

Overall, when it comes to TS3, I think you sort of have to find your bliss with it. Go into it with an open mind, explore the game unmodded for a while, try out various aspects of its gameplay, and then decide what you don’t like and look into how to fiddle with it with mods and CC and such. Like, I thought I’d hate the whole Story Progression thing – and I would hate it, in a TS2 context – but in TS3 I actually enjoy losing (some) control over my playables when I’m not playing them. It adds randomness, sort of like things like ACR does in TS2. That said, EA’s story progression sucks in various ways. Get NRAAS’s Story Progression. It’s huge and has a scary-looking learning curve but also has extensive documentation on the NRAAS site as to what everything does, and once you get used to it, it’s really cool. You can basically decide, on a very detailed level, which things you’re OK with the game deciding as opposed to you deciding, so you can get rid of the annoying things about EA’s progression while still keeping the general idea of it.

So…yeah. Play the game with an open mind, with a “I’m just testing” sort of mindset. Find out what you do and don’t like about it, on its own merits, and don’t just assume that the things you like in 3 will be the same as the things you like in 2 because they very well might not be. Then spend time exploring mods and CC (and prepare to be enraged by Adfly and such! :P ) to change how the game works and what it looks like and stuff like that.

I did a lot of experimenting over the course of various stabs at the game over the years, trying to find something to like. I quickly discovered that the “build-a-city-esque” way I generally play in TS2 was out because I hate building in TS3, but I also discovered that, like in TS2, I’ll get bored if I only play one household all the time. So, I do still like a rotational set-up. Happily, it is pretty simple, with NRAAS’s Story Progression’s “caste” system, to do rotational play in TS3. (There’s a “how to set this up” tutorial of sorts here.) This is what I found that I like best; I’m still in the process of fiddling with the Story Progression settings for non-active playable households, to determine what level of control over them I really want. (Turns out, it’s less control than I thought I’d want, but there are still some things that I don’t want to happen without my consent.) Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is to, at first, play some “throwaway” saves in the game that you just experiment with stuff, to find worlds you like (I highly recommend My Sim Realty’s worlds because they’re CC and store-content free as well as well-constructed – no lag – and attractive) and to find out what you like in terms of gameplay. For you, it might turn out that you like nothing…or you may find that you like a lot of things. And, yes, TS3 still runs well (when modded to fix some of its inherent flaws) on modern machines. I mean, EA still sells it, after all, so it kinda has to. :)

And finally, speaking of inherent flaws… I think TS3 is the proverbial red-haired stepchild of the franchise mostly because of two things:

One, while it has grand ideas – i.e., the fully open world – it’s just not executed well. For instance, there are many construction errors in the EA worlds that cause Sims to get stuck, and when a bunch of Sims are stuck but the game still tries to make them do things, it gums up the whole works, resulting in lag, lag, lag. There are fixed EA worlds out there, though, so if you try out the game and want to play an EA world, I highly recommend finding a fixed version, so you don’t get frustrated by the world’s EA-created issues. They’re all a bit screwy in this regard, but the worst offenders are Bridgeport from Late Night and Isla Paradiso from Island Paradise. Basically, EA tried to do it all and so did most of it half-assedly. The game pretty much requires fixed worlds (if you use the EA worlds) and the error-fixing NRAAS mods in order to run smoothly. IME, custom worlds tend to run better. Not always, because some creators are just better/more experienced than others, but generally speaking. It’s probably because world creators are crafting labors of love rather than operating under pressure and a strict time-deficient production schedule. :)

Two, people were like me: They wanted TS3 to be TS2, only better, but it's not that at all. It’s a completely different game in many respects, and it seems to me that many people just couldn’t accept that. I’ve never played TS4 (so I have no opinions about it, I’m afraid), but from what I’ve seen it seems a little more 2-like, and it’s more cartoon-like (whereas TS3 was going more for realism, the pudding-Sims aside) in a way that’s more reminiscent of a “Maxis-match” TS2 game. And it’s also not the resource hog that playing a huge world in TS3 can be. So, I can see why a lot of people play TS2 and TS4 but skip TS3. I always have a tendency to zig when everyone else zags, though, and I kinda really like TS3. Go figure. *shrug*

#Anonymous #replies

38 notes · View notes

terryblount · 4 years

Text

Azur Lane: Crosswave – Review

The following review is written by guest writer (and friend of Gamer Matters) Ammar “Tohka” Aryani. You can find him stream more waifu games or soldier sims at twitch.tv/tohka_aryani

A wise person once said that Azur Lane is basically Kancolle, but better in terms of getting people to play their game. But how would the shipfus fight in a third person perspective?

That’s where Azur Lane: Crosswave comes into mind. After a great global release on their mobile counterpart, Yostar Studios announced several plans for 2020 including a multiplatform game after a horrendous disaster on their anime to the point where they would establish their own animation studio based in Japan. Is Azur Lane: Crosswave able to give the mobile player-base what they were seeking? The answer is mixed, and here’s why.

Presentation

The game was developed and published by the duo of Idea Factory (IF) & Compile Heart (CH), which is famously well-known for their flagship title games such as the Hyperdimension Neptunia series. So the art style was what I would expect coming for an established duo. (I mean, they even giving us Neptune as a shipfu for free so I ain’t complaining)

Graphic-wise, it was an overall improvement. The game was developed using the Unreal Engine 4, meaning that it gives a boost in terms of game physics.The User Interface (UI) is pretty smooth and pleases the eyes since it was simple yet easy to navigate through. I wish I could say the same for the 3D models. Some of the 3D models were lacking specific details but in return, the 2D expression from all of the characters available during cutscenes is a new sight to those who are veterans of Azur Lane. So presentation-wise, it’s looking great for the game but it comes down to the gameplay that really matters.

Gameplay

For IF’s classic RPG visual novel storyline combined with a turn-based action battle system, I’m a bit disappointed with the battle system mechanics on this game. The gameplay, on first impression, is very interesting on its own as it follows the mobile’s shoot ’em up style scrolling-screens combined with 3D graphics.

You will be able to control a full fleet with 3 main ships while the other 3 will act as a support, giving you buffs during battle. Overall the gameplay feels a bit repetitive as you will repeat the battle process with mostly the same enemy units as well the long amount of cutscenes. The game does take on the RPG aspect of IF’s signature equipment slots, where you will have to farm for A points (which is used to recruit ships into your fleet) or gold coins (used for equipment upgrades/purchases). But again, you might need to grind for a specific amount of time to get enough points for the ship that you wanted. Once you get enough materials/currency, you can boost the stats on your ship or upgrade their unique skills. It’s a shame that the battles mostly lasted a mere 2-3 minutes depending on the equipment.

And finally, just like the mobile version the rank for every battle depends on an completed objective. The lower the ranking, the less loot you get. But this game, in particular, has a high amount of players that managed to complete a battle in S rank, meaning it’s easy to get the highest ranking in battle most of the time. So basically the player would watch some event cutscenes, load up a battle, defeat the enemies, go to another place for loot or battle, defeat more enemies, earn some resources, see if you can buy something new and repeat.

Oath System

Just like in the mobile game, you can marry your shipfus without having to waste IRL money to buy a wedding ring. (God knows I wasted $100 for that) Once you managed to raise your ship’s affection to max level by fighting battles, you can instantly oath a ship and gain extra stats.

Content

Content-wise, the team of Yostar and Idea Factory did an amazing job of handling the storyline very well. The story focuses on the duo of Suruga,a battleship & Shimakaze, a destroyer that is newcomers to the Sakura Empire faction.

While the storyline isn’t complex, it actually fits really well with the setting of the game itself.

The Eagle Union, Iron Blood, Royal Navy, and Sakura Empire, all based on the 4 main factions during World War II. The nations maintain a peaceful but friendly tension between them, as they face a threat from a mysterious fifth faction: The Sirens. The primary defenses against this faction are the Kan-sen, female androids wielding special weapons and channeling the spirits of historical warships. When a battle with the Sirens leaves a number of physics-defying glowing cubes scattered about Sakura Empire territory, the nations call together a “joint military operation” to collect and research the mysterious new resources.

Azur Lane: Crosswave offers 29 playable ships such as the famous Enterprise, Bismarck and Nagato with 35 ships more on support duties and not available in the primary battle group. The support ships instead give buffs to the ships during battle and generally cost less than the playables. IF and Compile Heart have announced several playable ships to be added via DLCs.

Although the Azur Lane roster has 400+ ships, not all of them make the list and while there are almost 30 playable ships in the game, some of the factions only have a few ships in their arsenal. For example, the Iron Blood faction has only 3 ships while the Sakura Empire fills ⅓ of the roster. ( Give me Zuikaku and I’ll be happy)

But what they lack in the roster list, they make up for it with full voice acting, and the outfits they practically spill out of are rendered in high resolution, which is rare for the mobile players. The expressions coming out from the characters are amazing, providing you can avoid the somewhat lewd art design.

Personal Enjoyment

I’m not gonna lie, I’m used to playing games made by Idea Factory and Azur Lane specifically so these types of games are my bread and butter. I’ve played the game for several hours and to be honest, I feel like I’m playing another Hyperdimension Neptunia series despite having Neptune in my fleet.

Game-wise, I like to grind and farm for equipment and new ships. But the gameplay can be boring after several hours after my soul has departed due to gacha exhaustion. I like the game mainly due to the character interaction. It’s not every day you get to see Bismarck and Hood chatting after what happened to Hood in the mobile game storyline.

Verdict

To be fair, I have mixed feelings about this game. This is due to the short battles and the super long cutscenes. But Azur Lane: Crosswave is overall not a bad game, but there’s nothing special about the game that appeals to the public unless if you’re an Azur Lane hardcore fan or if you have played any of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series. The game itself is a character-driven adventure with simple yet quick battles and a shallow storyline that is surprisingly dialogue-heavy. Overall, if you’re an Azur Lane fan or an experienced Nepper (a person who has played the Neptunia series) chances are you’ll enjoy Azur Lane: Crosswave.

Otherwise, others might be better off playing Doom Eternal.

Review copy purchased by the reviewer

Azur Lane: Crosswave – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

0 notes