Improving the Skills System

As some of you might know, last weekend Nothing is Forever was leaked in a big pirate site. This made it so Chapter 2 was played by a big number of players for the first time. While you guys are here because you already really enjoy the game as it currently is, it is still important to pay attention on how new players interact with the game and it’s systems, and if it is an enjoyable experience for them.

Comments and reviews were generally quite positive. However, after reading all of them (and many were made by people that are subscribing to this patreon), I identified a few problems that I’d like to address while the game it’s still in its infancy. Namely:

1) There are little skills for players that want to roleplay as a good and caring guy, but aren’t submissive. They might identify with many sensitive answers, but see no benefit whatsoever in picking those because there aren’t many kinks in the Sensible tree that are attractive to them. This is, to some extent, also true for submissive players, but in reverse: they see no benefit in ever picking Manly options, ignoring those by default.

2) Some people might become too focused on the strategy side of gathering the points for their preferred kinks, and that becomes detrimental for the roleplay experience. This game is packed with flavor choices so that you can mold your MC as you like. All that work gets wasted if some pre-determine choices are automatically picked based on what points they give. Then, it’s like I’m picking the choices for you and you’re just reading a kinetic novel.

3) The Cunning personality is too much associated with a negative stigma. While it has some traits associated with “assholes”, like being egoist, “mean”, cheater, or just not caring, it wasn’t meant to be just that. It was also meant to be a charming, witty, smart, with dark humor personality. But the skills on that tree need to better reflect that.

For example, take this example adapted from a random real post on reddit.

Guy asks: “I have a strong urge to progressively corrupt my sub so that they become increasingly slutty and open to various sex acts. Communicated of course. Is there anything on this kink?” Girl answers: “I have that kink with my Dom making me a better slutty fucktoy for him. It’s great.”

This is what the Corruption skill is all about in this game, but I don't think that's what players associate with that skill's name.

In the same way, people associate Blackmail with the use of coercion to get sexual acts from someone against their will, while the Blackmail Skill is meant as a kink, as in, someone that gets turned on by the risk of being exposed. All done consensually. These misleading names are problematic both for people that aren't into that and don't pay attention to those skills, but also for people that think they will have coersive sex scenes, but won't ever find them.

I think you can see this bias against the Cunning personality even among players that like and support this game. Looking at this poll result, you can see how a majority of people preferred to use the Honorable Skill, instead of the Cunning one.

To help solving these issues, the Skill Menu is suffering some modifications. These are mostly visual and do not impact in any way the plots I have in mind for the game. It’s just changing the names of some of the skills to better reflect what they are all about, and give more options to different playstyles.

So, the skills now looks like this:

These changes are meant to:

- Make it so all playstyles require some skills from the 4 personality trees. This is meant to give more incentives to pick answers from all categories, regardless of what kinks you’re going for. These are generally the vanilla skills that will be used in plenty of situations, regardless if you’re playing a sub, dom, asshole or good guy.

- Introduce a few skills in the Sensitive path that are appealing to “caring players” that aren’t submissive.

- Introduce some skills in the Manly path that are useful to sub players, so they can also feel more compelled to pick those choices when appropriated. These are “Teasing”, for situations that required you to be a bratty sub, or challenge a girl before she gets in the mood of wanting to just crush you, or the “Power/Strength” skill that is attractive for Dommes that are into subs that are Powerfull/Strong/Muscular/Have high pain tolerance, etc.

- Change the name of a lot of skills to be less associated with abusive stuff. That was an original mistake, and it’s not what the game is going for.

- At the same time, also provide some skills for people that actually want to have fun playing the asshole.

- Eliminate some redundancy. We don’t need both “Humiliate me” and “Humiliate her” skills; “Humiliation” is enough to be used in both cases, dependently on the situation.

- Add an Info screen to give a bit more information/tips and context to the players about the whole skill system.

I think these changes will improve the game. If you have any comments/suggestions, I’m all ears. Here are the descriptions of all the skills:

None of these changes impact your save games. If you have picked the “Bull” Skill, you get to keep it for the original price, even though it is more expensive now.