E3 Survey Review Q&A/Suggestions Part 1

Notifications for Love Up/Down

Maybe it would be useful when you give a answer to a girl you see the effect at the left top om the screen. Im now switching every time in convo's if my action have resulted in love lust points etc. The positive or negative outcame of my actions.

Basic good game design should have good feedback loop showing the impact of player decisions or stats chosen. I don't think this has been implemented as well as it could have. Furthermore, you'd need to go into the stats page every time to see it and accessing that page for each character is really clunky.

I think this has been suggested quite a bit elsewhere and maybe lots of you reading this might agree with this suggestion. Effectively asking to add a very clear indicator that shows exactly when a girl's love goes up or down. Something like a notification that pops up in the top corner to say whether a girl liked your decision or her love went up/down. But there already is an indicator. It's just not what you think...

The problem I have with this suggestion is my experience as a player when I've seen something like this in other games. For example, one avn I played had a coloured symbol next to each dialogue option (without mods) and that symbol indicated how that choice would sway your personality/stats. When I was playing this game I barely bothered to even read the option I was selecting, I just looked for the symbol of the stat I wanted to increase and just chose that option, regardless of what it said. It sort of ruined the experience for me because I wasn't really making decisions. I wasn't at all immersed in the conversation I was just making sure I ticked the right box every time.

I think this suggestion would lead to something even worse than that. Say Elmwood had notifications of "Paris liked that" and "Paris didn't like that" after you selected your choice. What I'm almost certain would happen is that you would choose an option, look at the top right of your screen, go back, choose the next option, look for the notification and repeat until you saw "Paris liked that". You wouldn't be making choices. You might not even read the options. You'd just get into a terrible habit of trial and error without thinking about your choices. You wouldn't really be invested in the conversation and you wouldn't learn about the person you were talking to, you'd just be focused on these notifications.

But, stats are of course important. I understand this. You care about your Love scores because you should. And I agree that there should be real time feedback in games, all games. In a fighting game, if you fail to dodge an attack, you might get hit with a massive club. You don't need a notification here to tell you "You should've dodged" or "You got hit by a massive club" because you can see your face get smashed by a massive club. That's your feedback, you know that if you don't dodge that attack, you'll be hit by a massive club.

So what am I ranting about? Well like I said, there already is an indicator in Elmwood to tell you if a girl's Love went up or down. It's called her face.

When Katie tells you she likes baking, you can respond and tell her that you want to bake her a creampie. She doesn't like this. But you don't need a notification to come up that says "Katie didn't like that". Maybe some other games have trained you to think that you need this, but you don't. Not in Elmwood. You don't need this because Katie's face tells you "Katie didn't like that". Her expression changes from her usual smile and she looks uncomfortable after you tell her a crude/dirty joke and that's how you know that you made a choice she doesn't like. She's dismissive of your answer and wants to change the subject. If you pay even the smallest amount of attention to her you can tell that she didn't like that without needing to check her page.

Similarly, if you tell Jordan that you don't care too much about consent, she'll give you something much more insightful than a "Jordan didn't like that" notification - she'll just slap you. And then you haven't just been told whether Jordan liked your conversation choice or not, you've been told in a strong, powerful and memorable way that also teaches you a bit about her. If you tell Saki you want to train her sexually, her eyes are wide with intrigue and she looks at you with total attention. You can tell she's fascinated.

And I want to get even better at this. I want to pay even more attention to the little details and have girls' pupils dilate just before they kiss you. I want to get even better at conveying emotions through subtle smiles and reactions. So, I'm asking you to trust me. I can do better than what you think you want. Elmwood's images can convey more information and insight than a notification. I know it's very easy to get into the habit of constantly checking Love scores and there can be a fear of missing out on content but you need to realise that this is a bad habit that takes away your own enjoyment. We need to move away from this addiction rather than accommodate it.

Social Media App

I would also consider including more cell phone use and expanding chat features and options; making that more robust could be a nice add-on. While on the cell phone apps, you could explore a social media type site for following the girls and for additional photos, something like "Elmbook" or Insta-Elm, something a little more creative, but you get the point.

I've also seen suggestions similar to this a fair bit. Often people want a phone you can use at any time that has various apps on it. I've talked about phones a lot before but never specifically about a social media app. It's a cool suggestion and there are some games that do this really well. It can be an awesome way to get glimpses of the girls in environments you wouldn't otherwise see them in and it's a cool way to add more depth to each character and see the Elmworld through another lens.

I'm not against this idea. One of the main reasons I ditched the idea of an interactive phone was to give me control of when each text conversation happens. I think it makes more sense for many reasons including the fact that you never need to worry about missing a text if you don't check your phone and maybe you're playing the game on mute and it also allows me to space out the texting over each episode, so that you don't text for 20 mins at the start of an episode when there's new texting content and then you've completed it, as if it's some sort of chore. I like the way we have texting in Elmwood.

But I'm not totally against an interactive phone for the purpose of other apps even if I am against what I want to call freeroam texting. I do like the idea of a social media app the more I think about it. I might even do it an a similar way to the way I do texting, maybe 2-3 times an episode the mc will check this app and you'll see statuses and pics from some of the girls. It could be refreshing and fun.

I'm definitely interested in a social media app but won't be adding this in E4 or 5. Maybe I'll introduce something like this in E6, maybe in season 2 (E8) or maybe it won't be added. But it's a really cool suggestion that I do like and I'll be thinking about it a lot. I'll let you know in the future what I decide on this but for now it's a very strong maybe.

Cool but unfeasible perk suggestions:

A perk that can lead to a sex scene if activated on a girl

Extra perk under dominance tree and that will require more work on your part would be call “collared”. Pre-requisite both ownership and Milf domination. The women that submit to you fully have a scene discussing it with you then MC buys a collar for them in different styles to match the girl that is now on the character in all scenarios. Effect their Love for you overrides any lust requirement and has them willing to be in scenarios that go against their personality.

(Also other some other suggestions regarding pregnancy have the same issues)

A lot of you might immediately realise why these suggestions aren't very feasible but I want to explain in some depth because I love hearing about perk suggestions and so I want to give some insight into what is and isn't possible.

The reason these suggestions aren't possible is because in Elmwood every image and animation you see needs to be rendered by me and added to the game before you play it. This isn't a traditional video game where your own pc can generate images. So what this means is that for the first perk suggestion to be possible, I would need to add 18 sex scenes to every episode - as you could use this perk on any girl so I'd need to account for that. And while you might initially think that maybe we could recycle sex scenes and maybe launch a generic sex scene with each girl for this perk, even that wouldn't quite work as girls wear different makeup and outfits each episode. Especially if we think about E4 which will include Halloween and some girls will wear very noticeable Halloween-y makeup. I'd need to create an absurd amount of scenes for this to be possible. Lust isn't done perfectly right now but Lust perks are essentially my version of a perk that leads to sex and this gives me more control to not have the issues above.

Second perk suggestion has a similar issue. Let's say 3 girls can be collared, and there's an image with all three of these girls present. Before, I would only have to render one image to show these girls. But now, I would need to render an image for:

• None of the girls being collared

• Girl A being collared only

• Girl B being collared only

• Girl C being collared only

• Girls A and B being collared

• Girls A and C being collared

• Girls B & C being collared

• All girls collared

So what starts off as 1 image of work without this perk existing turns into requiring 8 images just to account for the different possibilities you might choose.

This idea is really well suited to a more traditional visual novel that places sprites in front of backgrounds. Some Daz based avns even do this and this would basically allow you to do that suggestion exactly as described. This is a perfect suggestion for an avn that uses sprites. However, in Elmwood we use 3D rendering and every girl is placed in 3 dimensional space for each render. So perks that need additional images are perks that add to my workload. If a perk only requires a couple of images and is really cool - then I'm keen to add it, for example Cum Drunk requires a few extra renders each bj/sex scene but never more than ~10 per episode and this was voted as your favourite perk. So perks that need extra renders are not out of the question, but they can't require additional images in basically every scene of the girl. It's the same reason I've said before about main characters and pregnancy - main characters can only fall pregnant late into the game or the scope of necessary renders to account for all possibilities would be ridiculous.

For the record - I think collaring is awesome and there will almost certainly be recurring scenes of it with some girls. But I need to be realistic with how it's implemented.

Feel free to share any thoughts on the above. Will go through some more suggestions/questions tomorrow or the day after