How I'm incorporating your feedback. (Patreon)

Thank you to everyone who filled out the feedback form for v0.3, I was able to collect tons of useful data and insightful commentary, and v0.4 will see some of the most significant balance adjustments since the initial few releases. Keep in mind that if your comments and feedback aren't addressed in the upcoming update, they may still be on the docket for future releases. 

In particular, I'm investigating ways to help players find out which perks they are close to unlocking and giving them hints on what to do. I'm also investigating ways to protect against repeats when selecting random events and scenes, ways to add more dynamic text to erotic content, ways for players to influence the types of events they get, improved alchemy progression, and more, but those are all much longer term projects. 

The Economy 

The economy will be adjusted to normalize player income across paying activities. In particular, selling potions has always been less lucrative than prostitution, as well as less beneficial. Ingredients need to be collected, and prostitution has the added benefit of allowing the player character to feed, sate lust, and even collect ingredients, while often paying more. Notoriety isn't a significant enough setback to actually make selling potions worth it. 

In response, the following changes are being made. 

• The bonus to uptown prostitution is being reduced. It will still be a lot more lucrative than backstreets prostitution, but it should no longer completely eclipse every other paid activity.
• Prostitution traits will be altered so that their bonuses are effected more by performance ratings. This means lower performance ratings will see a much smaller bonus from these traits, but the bonuses from higher performance ratings should remain at about the same level. I want to be careful not to make players feel "forced" to play out encounters they'd prefer to skip, but I do want players who play the encounter well to feel like it matters. Still, this will be a net nerf to prostitution traits.
• The price of some potions will be increased. In particular, lower tier potions will sell for more. Prices for higher tier potions will remain similar before and after the update, however.
• Bonuses from traits for selling potions will be reduced. A character with full investment in these traits was already able to make tons of money, so these bonuses will be reduced. Since selling will be more lucrative without perks, the net effect should be that players who have all the perks should experience only small changes on the margins, but make about the same amount of money overall.
• There will be a slight increase to pay in maid work to help keep it from becoming too much less lucrative then selling potions, since the real-world time investment is high. 

Ingredients 

Gem dust is intended to be (and is) rare. You can think of potions as existing in three levels based on the required ingredients. Potions that require only bodily fluids and some spring water or herbs are considered pretty easy to make. Potions that require ale, both spring water and herbs, or a lot of spring water and a lot of herbs are intended to require a bit more work to make and be a bit more special. Potions that require gem dust are considered to be powerful potions and the player isn't intended to have access to tons of these. 

The ingredients are meant to set different thresholds for when the player feels they are worth using. For example, using a love potion on a guard who wants to hassle the player may seem like a waste, since love potions fit in that middle level. However, to avoid arrest, that might be a reasonable use. This is the intended gameplay effect of making certain potions harder to make. 

In a sense, this is working, but players do feel that gem dust is too scarce, and I'm inclined to agree, though with some reservations. In response, the following changes are being made: 

• Purchase price for gem dust will be reduced slightly. Because prostitution prices are going down as well, this price drop may not in itself make gem dust that much easier to actually purchase. I will monitor this change and adjust it downward again in a future update or patch if necessary.
• The drop rate for gem dust from gathering will be increased. I want this increase to be noticeable to players, but not game-changing. It may take some time to get the odds right, so this may also get fine-tuned in future updates.
• The rate of spring water and herbs gained from expeditions will be increased. I have no intention to add these ingredients to the shop as that's what the expeditions are for. That's not to say the shop may not receive new merchandise in the future, though.
• I will introduce gem dust and ale as possible finds in places where the player can find G laying around. This may not make it into the November update as those tables were never intended to reward anything but G and a little refactoring will be necessary.

Other Stuff

Some other small changes are also being introduced, but I was happy to see that most players seemed to agree that perk and trait progression were pretty spot on. The rates of things like guard actions and reactions to player status were also largely seen as balanced. Things like rent pricing, expedition rewards, and barmaid payment were very scattered, with players existing all over the spectrum in whether they felt these were to high or low, so I've opted not to make changes for now.

Economies, even very simple simulated ones like this, are complicated. I don't want to change too much at once, so we'll let this package of changes settle in a bit before making any further adjustments.