WickedWare
patreon
E3 Survey Review Q&A/Suggestions Part 2/2 LONG
🕑 Added 2025-02-02 21:25:06 +0000 UTCApologies for not posting this yesterday or the day before, I had a fairly annoying week but it's ok now. Will still be posting a dev update later tonight.
Let's try and go through the remaining suggestions I want to talk about as quickly as possible (very slowly).
More Skillpoints
Also I think we should get slightly more skill points per handout (maybe 10 points more), as the system feels super constrictive as currently constructed without any ability to experiment with different trees without making new playthroughs fully dedicated to each individual tree branch.
I wouldnβt mind more skill points, even though I have no issue with the current system.
Possibly more starting skill points or an easier time getting low level perks. This would allow players to experience a little bit of everything before having to make any choices.
An overhaul to how the player can earn more DNA points.
A frequent suggestion (not just in this survey) is more skill points. As a reminder you've been given: 30 + 30 + 40 skill points in the first 3 episodes and there will be 21 in total. So let's look at the numbers:
Skill Points required for all non light/dark perks: 590
with all light perks: 760
with all dark perks: 790
So giving 40 or more points every episode would be too many. If I gave 40 every episode then by E20 you'd already have 800 and wouldn't unlock anything new in the final episode. Currently I'm planning to give you exactly 790 points in what might seem like a strange distribution (but I've also actually debated giving you less than 790 total to make the decisions more meaningful). But as things stand, here's some insight into my plan for skill point distribution in every episode:
E1/8/15: 30/30/30
E2/9/16: 30/30/30
E3/10/17: 40/40/40
E4/11/18: 30/30/30
E5/12/19: 30/30/30
E6/13/20: 40/40/50
E7/14/21: 60/60/60
This is probably a little confusing to read but essentially there's a pattern every season/7 episodes of the following:
Normal (30), Normal (30), Boost (40), Normal (30), Normal (30), Boost (40), Big Boost (60)
I want to give twice as many points in the season finales as I plan for these to be much beefier episodes than normal and want the extra points to reflect the extra content. (While they probably won't be twice as big as normal eps, they'll be at least 1.5x the size and I think double skill points will suit them best.) As 790 is a weird number you'll notice E20 is planned for 50 not 40 like 6 and 13.
All of this is not set in stone so please don't be upset if you don't get as many skill points in a particular episode as what I've listed. But this will most likely be the plan so I hope this explains why points may seem scarce - there's still a lot of Elmwood left.
Cheat Mode
Please add cheat menu for all perks
A cheat system could be added to provide the ability to test out more scenarios with the perks; maybe it's a beta feature or a Patreon tier reward
Another thing that's been suggested in various ways since Elmwood's pilot episode is a sort of 'cheat mode' - with all perks unlocked.
I'm not planning on doing this. There's a small chance that when we approach the end of Elmwood's development I may introduce a "god mode" where you start off the game with every perk (this was originally suggested by someone on Patreon ages ago) but this would require a huge amount of extra work and consideration that I can't commit the time to right now.
It might not sound like lots of extra work but to make every perk meaningful in E1 would result in involving a huge amount of extra scenes. On discord I remember joking with someone about how Earthquake would instead be Tsunami if used in the hot tub with Lydia but this is a thing that would seriously have to be accounted for. And yeah it's hilarious and awesome but it would be a lot of work to do it well with appropriate reactions and consequences from everyone afterwards. There are loads of other perks that would completely change E1 so I just need you to understand that asking for a cheat mode is way more complicated than me just coding skillpoints += 999999
I'm not saying this will never be a thing, but there's probably only a 10% chance of this ever happening and if it does it will most likely be as part of a "god mode" unlocked after completing the game.
GUI/Text Improvements
Option to change font size, placement and outlines.
About the interface/menu, I would really love if you could add more options to change the current [dialogue] font format (using the Shift+A, doesn't help/change what I want), just for you to understand my situation: I have both Myopia & Astigmatism and therefor use glasses, the current dialogue font on the game is horrible (sorry... π ) and because of my eye problems, it becomes near impossible to read it, using the Shift+A helps very little, but even so, I would prefer and be grateful if you added more options on the "preference/settings" page.
it appears part of the dialogue from that scene, and the font format on that screenshot is way more better/readable than the current one on the game.
These suggestions are very valid and they're something I'll be looking into. I think the last comment might help explain the situation. I think I've done the text in a very dumb way where the text outline is a fixed size that doesn't scale with the text. What this means is that on some resolutions/screen sizes it looks as I intended but on others it looks pretty terrible. I'll be spending some time to improve this and ideally add some additional accessibility options similar to what's been requested above.
Named save files
With so many different options to choose from because of the skill tree, I would REALLY REALLY like the ability to name saved files to better catalogue the different playthroughs I'm doing.
i would like to be able to name savefiles within game in order to be able to load specific savefile even if i don't necessarily remember which slot was assigned to the specific perks i want to load.
First thing I will say in case some of you missed this is that while you can't currently rename individual saves, you can rename each page. But maybe that isn't enough for some of you.
I don't like it when games force you to name every save and that's mostly why there aren't save names in Elmwood. But I do believe there is a way for me to introduce a renaming option without requesting it upon each save's creation.
I also heard a request a while ago for more save slots. There are currently 60 save slots but if some of you want more then I can hardly complain as that's honestly just quite a nice compliment.
I'm not opposed to either of these ideas. I might run a poll on Patreon and act off that.
Endings
Will every dateable LI have an ending?
Are the 11 endings mentioned on the website set in stone? Asking because the survey is looking for info on what our preferred endings are for each LI.
Yes all 18 girls will be involved in at least one of the endings. Some will have monogamous endings, some will have throuple endings, some will have harem endings. Some will be involved in more than one ending. But not every girl will have every type of ending.
So in my About section/patreon description I mention 11 endings. This is actually outdated and an underestimate. It's surprisingly difficult for me to give you the real number right now. This not because it's not planned and not because I can't count. This is because... yeah it's because I can't count and don't know how to count this properly... it's a bit complicated because I've sort of planned a bunch of different endings and some endings can be used in combination with other endings to technically create another ending but it's not really another ending... So I don't really know how to count this without lying.
But there will be a nice variety of endings. Some things might surprise you and I didn't change anything based off the survey. There might be a girl you're certain will have a monogamous ending and she won't. There might be a girl you're certain will have a harem ending but won't. But I think you'll enjoy what I've got planned.
Miscellaneous
Any love for feet, boobjobs and kinks coming up?
I think boobjobs (sex act not implants) can look great if done really well but are very easy to do terribly (actually this also applies to implants lol)
I'm not a foot fetishist but I feel somewhat similar about footjobs. They can be a great way to tease and I think I'd love to have a scene where a girl gives you a really sensual and slow footjob in the bath to precede a sex scene immediately after but foot content in Elmwood will be pretty rare.
So there will almost certainly be some boobjobs in the future, and there will most likely be a footjob or two as well. But I want scenes like this to not feel forced and be done as well as possible. I think boobjobs are somewhat overused in AVNs (maybe that's an unpopular opinion). There's one particularly busty girl who I think could have a very good scene or two like this in the future but we'll see. I want there to be uniqueness in every scene so ideas like this are certainly well suited to Elmwood in moderation.
I currently feel like the pace is too fast, there is not enough relationship building between mc & the girls. It feels like i've seen every girl about twice and already have intimate moments with some.
I can understand why it feels like this because Elmwood is more sexual than most AVNs but I would disagree with this comment. The cool thing about Elmwood is that we have an abundance of girls for you to choose from. There are 18 main girls and they're all different. And because they're different, they all see sex differently. Chelsea and Lydia see sex as fun. Ella sees sex as a competition. Saki sees sex as a mystery and an adventure. Katie sees sex as something pure between lovers. And the same goes with relationship building. Some girls will fuck you hours after meeting you. Other girls will want to wait until you're officially dating them.
I think the scenes we've had appropriately reflect each girl's views on relationships. You can probably tell that you're not close to having sex with many of the girls and these are the ones who want to build something first. This diversity is a great tool that helps make each girl feel unique while also spacing out erotic content. If every girl had the same pacing then in E1 you'd get 10 hugs, E2 you'd get 18 kisses, E3 you'd get 18 blowjobs, E4 you'd have 18 fingering scenes etc etc. If this was the game then there might as well only be 1 love interest. So every girl has different pacing. If you prefer girls with slower pacing then there are plenty of girls for you.
Fast questions:
Voice acting/ Sex SFX
Suggested in a few places are sound effects and even voice acting was suggested in this survey.
Voice acting is not feasible due to many things but mainly budget, logistics and the extra work it would entail to manage such an operation.
Sex sound effects are something I'm very keen on and would like to do. Stay tuned.
5. The MC is kind of a weenie. Scrawny. Too much. And, taking ripped should alter his physique.
Same issue I talked about regarding collaring in the previous post. I can't have perks alter appearance as this would result in an absurd amount of extra renders. The mc's physique is designed to be a sort of middle ground between being strong and average. Our protagonist is also very tall and tall people tend to hide muscle/require a much larger amount of muscle to show it.
Who is your favorite girl?
The cashier at Lenny's π₯΅
Will there be at least one male character of any age in the game besides the MC?
You'll meet an entire faction of guys in E4 that you've already heard about.
If possible I would like to be able to change all characters names
This is an interesting suggestion. I can see why you might want to do this if a girl has the same name as a family member/ex partner... I might run a poll on this.
I think the kiss mechanic with harem wars doesnβt make sense when multiple girls kiss you without a prompt
This is true and I don't have a good solution for this yet. This problem exists because I expected almost all players to share their first kiss with Lydia, Chelsea, Ella or Paris. But if you don't then there are kisses attached to other scenes like Chelsea kissing you before she gives you a BJ. It's an awkward situation for me because I don't want to remove that kiss. I wanted to continue the reward of gaining the card of whichever girl you have your official first kiss with but I didn't properly account for these situations. So I'm not certain what to do right now. Most sensible thing might be to change it to gaining the card of the girl who takes your virginity rather than your first kiss (and probably nerf Selina's card in the process). This isn't a major priority right now but it's one of the things I'm going to sort out before packaging E1-7 into "season 1".
I would like to be able to select the options by using the keys 1,2,3, etc
When you say options do you mean dialogue options/ in game choices? Is this something other games have? Is this something people want? Please let me know any thoughts in the comments.
Iβd like free roam events. I think it adds immersion
could there maybe be a sequence in the game where we just walk around the world of the game and explore the cities, the universities. i feel that this would make the game be more open and you could also implement a day and night setting to change the time. you could also use the whole "open world" thing to impllement some locations for the girls ex: selina would be at the library or at a random pub or a store, while tasha and ashley could both be at the gym or their rooms.
Free roam is something I've talked about before and won't be adding. While I'm aware that there are some games that do this masterfully, I've always found free roam to be somewhat annoying and this won't be a feature in Elmwood.
Will you be able to have anal with any girl in Ep 4
Kinda a spoiler but I'll answer this: No.
There will be quite a bit of anal content later in the game but not quite right now. I think what makes anal so special and fun is how intimate it is and we're not going to explore it quite yet. There could definitely be some anal content before the end of season 1 but it will be a bigger theme in seasons 2 and 3.
Will the game be translated into another language? like Spanish for example.
I do really want to do this but I don't want to slow down production at all.
Currently I'm leaning towards implementing translations when E1-7 is packaged into season 1 as I think this would make the most sense logistically.
Will there be more evil choices ?
I guess this depends on what you consider evil. You're not exactly going to have the choice to blow up Megaton lol, but there'll be more subtle choices that you might consider evil. You might consider cheating or enticing someone else to cheat to be evil and those choices will exist. I've planned some choices (unrelated to cheating) that I would personally consider very ethically bad but I don't want to spoil anything.
What determines the outcome during rock paper scissors? Pure chance?
As random as python can be when picking a random number 1-3.
Could you please list which perks effect which girl. For example, corruption effects Taki. [Saki]
I've been considering adding perk icons to girls' pages to show the perks that influence them most. I might run a poll on this.
1. Will any romance with a given girl exclude a romance with another, even if you invest in the appropriate skills? I mean, will one romance option completely exclude the other?
Depends on your ethics I suppose. Some girls will want you all to themselves. If you want to try and go behind their backs to see someone else then that's a choice you can make but your girlfriend won't be happy if she finds out.
are you working alone ?
Yes, WickedWare = just me but I often get help from others. Particularly regarding bug fixing and typos I have lots of people in discord who are extremely helpful. Also when there's something coding related that I'm a bit clueless about I get help. HaremWars was coded by someone else and I'm talking to someone about making a card collection screen to connect to it.
Comments
Liam Edwards
For selecting menu options with your numeric keys, I've only ever seen one other AVN do this and I loved it. I don't know who commented that but they probably played the same one. Essentially in menus, the "1" key would be bound to the first option, "2" to the second, and so on. A lot of people play using Enter/Space to press through the dialogue instead of a mouse click, and while you can arrow key to the options, it's faster to just press 1/2/3/etc.
Liam Edwards
Regarding the footjobs, I have one request: Make it skippable. Every AVN I've played that includes that content has is skippable.
PickerPatron
About the named save files: yes, it can be implemented in the options menu. The games that have it give you the option to activate it or not and in case of having it activated is to have both options at the same time because when the window appears to write the name you can simply press enter and it will be saved without a name. About the card reward: it occurs to me that you might get a Joker card (yes, the Joker of traditional decks) smiling devilishly π€‘. Think that one of the few ways to break your logic is an MC who hasn't made out with anyone, and therefore is the savegame of madness in search of the true virgin path. About the evil choices: the vast majority of the girls seem to be good, so a bad MC path can only be justified as being bad from the beginning with certain decisions, or being corrupted by the Chinese student, who is the only girl who seemed to me to be bad and willing to do anything. You know what I would have done with the point system? I've noticed that you give them out at the end of a class in every new chapter, except for the first one, where you give them out as a kind of tutorial. I would do a test and the good student gets more points than the bad one. But in that case you should be able to finish the game without the perks because a bad student will have very few points at the end of the game π. Still, your idea of fixed points is great because it doesn't punish a bad player and allows you to relax while playing. Finally, I want to leave with a little anecdote. I know that this game is meant to work as a harem, and that if there is someone incompatible you can break the game by using the right perk to make them work in the harem, but I suddenly thought, what if they all find out at once and it ends badly? And I had to laugh because I remembered the scene in P5 during Valentine's Day that can end very badly. You can look it up on youtube by searching "Persona 5 Valentine's Day consequences", a funny way to completely screw up π.
WickedWare
Thanks for these thoughts. I replied to something similar within GuySmiley's comment and I think something you're both missing is that even if you end up with all the perks, your journey there is incredibly important. So without giving any particular examples/spoilers - there are some girls where you'll need a perk to see their content in E3/4/5. And if you don't have the relevant perk when you need it, you'll miss out on your chance to begin pursuing that girl romantically. Tiny spoiler now but you'll need the milf tree to seduce Dr Riley. Even if everyone finishes with the milf tree unlocked, only those who prioritised it enough to unlock it early enough to begin slowly seducing Dr Riley will have a chance with Dr Riley. You can't suddenly just have her in episode 17 with no prior buildup. I used to share your exact point of view but now I think the journey with perks is more important than the destination. Hard mode is an interesting idea. I think if I added this I'd want to also attach some sort of reward to it (or to completing the game with this) but I'm not sure what that could be. Thanks for this feedback
GuySmiley
Well, I always picked rock with Violet because I thought she always picked scissors lol. But in general, I guess I do tend to lead off with rock. After all, as Bart Simpson said: "Good ol' rock, nothing beats that!" Also, I figured you were joking about the Lenny's cashier girl but it would have been hilarious :-)
U.
Regarding the skill points, I'm not really a fan of having all the perks by the end of the game. Maybe you could consider making a "hard mode" when you're finalizing season 1 with the cost of all perks rebalanced. Ideally I believe in hard mode you should be able to get around 1/3 or 1/2 of all the perks by the game's end. Lv1 perks should be much cheaper than Lv2 and Lv3, so you've to think about specializing on a tree or spreading. Ngl carefully picking the best perk per episode is my favourite thing and getting them all takes the fun away, especially since some trees I'm really not interested in (like dominance).
WickedWare
Thanks for these thoughts, I'll respond to each: 1) I used to have this opinion too but the order is actually extremely important because if you don't prioritise a certain perk you might not be able to prioritise a certain girl. Also... top top secret and probably won't happen but I am considering a small secret thing in future that would also require skillpoints and if you chose to do this thing it would mean you didn't have all the perks... but shhhh 2) Having this as a perk is actually a really cool idea. I wouldn't ever have this as the sole function of a perk because I think players would just look up the results online and save their points but it could be a neat idea to include this somewhere within the Scholar or Light trees as an additional bonus to an existing perk. 3) I think you've accidentally revealed that you always pick rock ahah? Basically in your first ever HW game with Violet I've coded it so you're garuanteed to win the first rock paper scissors. But this is the only time this happens. 4) Lol, just in case anyone reading this is unaware, I am (sadly) joking and there won't be any scenes with her :(
GuySmiley
Thanks for this incredibly detailed update, WickedWare! Also, sorry to hear you had a bad week but glad to hear everything is ok now. A few initial thoughts: 1. Skill points. Ok, I feel like I may be in the minority here given all the requests for more skill points, god mode, etc. but I liked the idea of having to make choices that would shape our character's "build" (path). If we will eventually be able to buy every single talent with the exception of locking out the light or dark paths, it seems to me that the choices basically get reduced to: a) should I go light or dark, and b) what is the optimal order in which to buy everything. Also, for people who go down the light side path, having 30 points at the end with nothing to spend them on might feel kind of bad. 2. Perk icons to character pages. Honestly not a fan of this in general as I think it would remove some of the mystery and the need to get to know the LIs better. You mentioned in the last post that adding love score notifications would induce people towards relying on those rather than listening to the LIs and reading their facial expressions; adding perk icons to character pages might give rise to the same "fire and forget" thinking. (Also, Taylor should be exempt due to her Masquerade trait.) If you do want to do this, perhaps it would work better as an additional talent - maybe you can call it "Empathy" and put it in the light side tree and have it cost 30 points ... 3. Rock-Paper-Scissors. Is it just me, or does Violet always pick scissors every time you first play her? 4. Cashier girl at Lenny's. New side girl confirmed, LFG!!!!!!
