Team Nessassity Mods - Unveiling The Secret Plan For Finishing Veiled Realms and HAPPY NEW YEAR OF THE CATBUN! (Patreon)

Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

HAPPY NYA YARN OF THE CAT!

Oh? What's that you say? It's actually the year of the bnuyy and Princess has gotten so boring rehashing the same old joke every single year?

A-HA! Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even I can have the right of it every once in... 12 years! It IS the yarn of the nya!

...

IN VIETNAM! TAKE THAT, LUNAR CALENDAR!

...and I'm going to take any win I can get, especially since the year didn't start off on the best foot for me. If you're wondering why this MMR got delayed until February (and you aren't on our Discord), that's largely because I finally got into that... covid thingy the kids are all crazy about these days. And, of course, you know me - when I pick up a new hobby, I lock myself in my room for weeks and don't come out until I've well and truly experienced it all.

Okay, okay, that's actually only half the story. Also while I was sick, I picked up the Total War: Warhammer trilogy on a Steam sale because I needed something to pass the time, and... you know me - when I pick up a new hobby, I...

ANYWAYS, I'm out of the room now! Well, that's a lie, I'm actually afraid to leave it ever again, but that's a lasting psychological scar to rub salt into another time. For now, let's get right into making up for all the lost time!

FURTHER ADO, BEGONE!

Veiled Realms

While we do have some other things happening in the near(ish) future (particularly in the realm of PORTRAITS 2.0; watch this space!) none of them are complete enough yet to make a Monthly Mod Report of.

But that's just as well. Because I have two big announcements regarding our first major Crusader Kings 3 project - Veiled Realms.

But don't worry! I know how much you love walls of text, so rest assured, each one could fill its own dedicated MMR and... in fact, that's what I intended to do originally. I was going to make one announcement back in January and the other this month... but I guess this is just how my long-term plans go these days.

Ahem...

ANNOUNCEMENT ONE! Veiled Realms Rework

To start with, let's get some bad news out of the way - the playable beta that I was hoping to have out by October... as you can probably see, didn't happen, and rather than pick a new date for it, I decided to shelve the idea for now.

BUT, this leads us to the good news!

Back when I was still set on the beta idea, I was taking a big long look at the Veiled Realms build so far and trying to figure out how in the world I was going to turn that collection of disparate systems that required console commands to operate into a coherent whole in a matter of RIGHT NOW.

(Spoiler alert! I couldn't.)

But it did make me realise one thing: there was a reason I was finding it so hard to assemble, and probably also why I couldn't bring myself to finish any of those systems.

When I originally started the project, it was designed around thee core features: Feeding, Menace and Lifestyles.

I've already gone over all of them in previous MMRs, so I'll spare you another recap. But anyways, each of those systems was meant to be relatively simple.
The image of Veiled Realms I had in my head before CK3's release (which is when I started drafting up the plans), was quite minimalistic.

Lifestyles would unlock some passives and special interactions you could do on other characters, Menace was largely just a limiter to discourage overusing those special interactions, and Feeding was a simple interaction with a % chance of succeeding which would provide the psudo-mana you would spend to make the perk interactions stronger.

Doesn't sound like something I'd need 2+ years to put together, right?

Well... Had I stuck to the plan, it probably wouldn't have. But on the other hand, it wouldn't really have been the Veiled Realms I wanted to make. It wouldn't have been a product I'd be happy with.

Naturally, I knew that, so that's why over time, the scope of each of the systems grew and evolved, becoming not only bigger on the user-facing side but also more complex on the backend.

So, what's the problem, you might ask? Why would I suddenly come to think this was unworkable when that was exactly what I wanted?

At first, I didn't know the answer to that myself, but in my attempts to transform it from pieces of software engineering into an actual gameplay experience that players would want to interact with, it occurred to me that all that time in development, the systems evolved, but the mod did not. Or rather, I had effectively created 3 different frameworks that did not communicate efficiently, had an "API" that was covered in dust and cobwebs in favour of redundant bespoke functions, and worst of all...

Despite the massive upscaling of scope, those systems were still built on the foundations of that humble initial concept pitch.

And the best way to demonstrate the absurdity of it would be this scenario:

Imagine that you are playing Duchess Mathilda, who is a vampire, and she wants to use her hypnotic powers to make a snack of the Pope.

First, you would probably want to farm up some Vampirism Lifestyle experience to unlock a few perks that would help you achieve that goal. You would either wait, or go around hunting random unimportant NPCs just to gain some EXP, classic JRPG style.

Eventually, you would have the tools you'd need to go after bigger prey, so you would right-click on the Pope... and be told that you can't do it, you have to be at the same location.
Okay, so even though the modder thought that was an AMAZING idea and was sure no one would ever be confused by that design decision, if you're a regular user who doesn't have insight into the code, it would probably take you a while to realise that in order to be at the same location, you would have to raise an army, put Mathilda as the commander, and move it over to Rome. IT'S A SOCIAL CALL, WE PROMISE!

With that hurdle out of the way, you would now finally have access to the Pope and could start working your vampy magic on him.
As you inspected the odds of success, you would notice that he was still quite a difficult target, protected by a whole lot of modifiers owing to his high status and personal attributes. But you were prepared for that (hopefully) and knew that you would have to Mesmerise him first.

But, oh no, Mesmerise is really hard to use too, so you'd have to give it a few attempts.

You try. You fail. You have to wait a few months now because an arbitrary cooldown is there to prevent power spam.

So you wait. And then you try again. You fail.

Okay, this is starting to get a bit frustrating. The Pope might actually die of old age before you accomplish anything here. So maybe let's try something different...

Suddenly, you remember a poorly documented feature whereby you could increase the success rate of a power by expending a Blood (name pending) status that you would temporarily gain by feeding. But you've not eaten in months, so the option was greyed out and you probably hadn't paid much attention to it until now.

But alright, you don't want to play dice with RNGesus for years, and the army you've raised to get to Rome is starting to cut into your economy a little bit, so let's find some minor courtier to get our pseudo-mana from!

Alright, NOW we're talking. You attempt to Mesmerise the Pope again, with the Blood Buff (name pending) enabled aaaaand... you fail. What? Why are you upset? It only said 95%; have you never played XCOM?

Annoyed, you repeat the process of hunting down a nobody to feed on just to get the Blood Buff (name pending) again, and wait out the cooldown again, and you try again. AT LAST, it succeeds!

Congratulations, you have mesmerised the Pope, making him easier to feed from and enabling the use of other mind-control powers. Now... uh... now... wait, why were you doing this again? You wanted to feed on him, but... his blood is nothing special. But you've already gone through the trouble, so might as well, right?

...you fail. You get a negative event, your Menace shoots through the roof, and now your more advanced mind-powers are even harder to use.

So, can you identify everything that's wrong with the system here?

Believe it or not, for... however long I've been slowly working on this project, I could not. Because I was so preoccupied with making sure that each of the systems was functioning as designed that I never pictured a situation where not only did they have to work together, but also, them working as designed made for a terrible end-user experience.

Putting it all in perspective now, I can pick out the following issues:

• It's fiddly. Every step of the process requires micromanagement.
• It's unintuitive. There are a lot of things like having to be at the same location as the target, knowing how to manipulate the odds of success, etc. that require detours and utilisation of obscure mechanics that I only know about because I coded them in.
• It's RNG-driven. Now, almost everything in Crusader Kings is, but when every single micro-step you take is up to a dice roll, it feels like your agency evaporates. It's hard to plan ahead and be strategic when every step of the plan might just randomly decide to go wrong, and it can get frustrating - or worse, boring - when the punishment for random failure is a compounding waste of time.
• The systems don't work together. Throughout this scenario, you are always interacting with one system at a time. The only way they seem to connect is by feeding into each other's progression systems, but not in the minute-to-minute gameplay.
• It will get old fast. Although you might think it's not the worst thing that could happen to you in an average Crusader Kings game, and in fact, might be fun to experience, the problem is that this same situation would happen repeatedly. There is variation in the narrative blurbs accompanying the process, but not in the process itself. As you go through this sequence of binary success/failure checks over and over again, you'd stop reading the text and just want to fast-forward to the next result, or simply stop engaging with the system because...
• Feeding doesn't seem very rewarding. Because why would you bother hunting down the Pope when any random courtier or prisoner in your dungeons could slake your thirst, and the only thing feeding does is offsetting the RNG of using powers, which you can attempt repeatedly anyways? With the only mechanical benefit of feeding being the reduction of arbitrary frustration, why is it such a massive ball of content with lots of narrative events, countless factors involved in the calculations and by far the most development time put into it?
  
  And if superpowers are the only part of being a vampire that the player ends up engaging with, then I have failed to create a vampirism mod - it's a bloated witchcraft mod instead.

I imagine that if the build had been beta-ready, I would have received  this kind of feedback immediately, before anyone would even start talking about bugs and unfinished features.

But, honestly, I wish I could have realised it a year ago, before I started doubling down on all these terrible design decisions by attaching lots of content (such as Community Writing events) to them...

So... what do I do now?
I'm certainly not going to release the mod in this form. Releasing a faulty product in full knowledge that it's faulty would go against my principles.
But I'm also not going to just abandon it. Veiled Realms is still very important to me, and despite my tumultuous relationship with it, I will see it finished and released. And I certainly don't want all the work - mine and others' - put into it so far to go to waste.

I think it leaves me with only one option: a holistic reboot. I need to redesign the mod from the ground up in a way that more accurately accounts for its scope, redevelop the core systems around a new, mutually and internally consistent, design philosophy, and be a lot more self-aware in the process, lest I blindly drive the project into another dead end.

And as it happens, I do actually have a plan, and have laid down some groundwork already. Although it's going to be a much bigger rework than all the ones I've announced before, I do believe that this one will at last allow me to address all the problems at their source.

The Plan is as follows:

The three core systems - Feeding*, Menace and Lifestyles - will remain, and at least Lifestyles and Menace won't require too much recoding, but...

The Feeding system is being scrapped and redone completely. Now dubbed "Hunting", it will become the central system around which the rest of the mod will revolve.

As opposed to the instant interaction with a % chance of success that Feeding was, Hunting will be a full-fledged Scheme. The reasoning and benefits of this change are as follows:

• A Scheme allows for a process targeting a specific character to be more deterministic, using choices made during mid-scheme events to increase or decrease the difficulty of a given hunt, enabling the player to exercise their agency more impactfully while also presenting them with opportunities and trade-offs along the way.
• It's more conducive to storytelling. As I mentioned in the previous point, we can now offer the player mini-events during an ongoing Hunt Scheme, and use the choices made to add modifiers to the final check. Likewise, the events themselves can be used as a medium for optional stories, rewards and even potentially tradeoffs.
  Perhaps while Mathilda was stalking her prey, she bore witness to her target's disloyal Steward in the act of treason, giving her a choice of co-opting the Steward's assets to help her in the Hunt, or blackmailing the Steward at the cost of making the Hunt a lot more difficult going forward, or turning her full attention to the Steward instead, feeding on him and ending the original Hunt.
• Because the vanilla Scheme system already has a robust plug-and-play multipart event structure, I will no longer have to maintain my own event hub just for different feeding scenarios, which might reduce development overhead going forward.
• Being able to affect the outcome of a Scheme through related events also means that I'll be able to repurpose some of the more boring Vampirism Lifestyle perks into tools that could be actively used to aid the Hunt. And to make some of them less boring, which is another issue I've been struggling with.
  For example, there's a perk called "Masquerade" whose effect currently reads "Less likely to suffer #N Severe#! consequences of Menace Events and Feeding Failures" - a rather passive, noninteractive effect that just constantly makes RNG work out in your favour. But under the new system, it instead could offer completely new ways of resolving mid-Hunt events. Choices with their own consequences that would enhance the narrative and increase the replayability of Hunt Schemes.
• Lastly, but not exhaustively, a Scheme can involve Agents, opening Hunts up to the potential of further intrigue. If I decide to include that aspect, it would allow the player to use their Thralls, Progeny or trusted confidantes to aid in the Hunt... or be used as scapegoats should the attempt go south.

And with Hunting becoming a more central activity that will be consolidating a lot of the mod's other aspects in its process, it is of course important to address one of my gripes with its current incarnation - being unrewarding.

• Feeding will no longer be just an optional way to generate buff-mana for powers. With the rework, a successful Hunt will now be a prerequisite for using powers on a given character in the first place.
• Basic ways to capitalise on feeding are no longer unlockable with perks. Now, upon every successful Hunt, the vampire will be presented with the option of Mesmerising the victim (granting a Weak Hook), turning them, or killing them (this used to be an unlockable option that could be chosen before making a Feeding attempt, increasing its difficulty, but... well... it was a very gamey balancing gimmick that felt nonsensical. If you're already at someone's throat, you shouldn't need a perk to drain it dry)
• Furthermore, in place of Mesmerize (which became a baseline post-feeding outcome), the Mastery Lifestyle Focus now unlocks a more potent way to bend mortal minds to your will - Enthrall.
  Enthrall is another Scheme (only one of two in the whole mod, don't worry; I'm trying to reduce the interaction bloat, not make it worse) that can be used on anyone you have fed on in the past. It does not have an end or mid-scheme events. It is simply an ongoing Scheme similar to Sway, which constantly generates a new resource called "Obedience".
  While the Enthrall Scheme is active, a new instant interaction called "Command" will become available on the same target. This will bring up a menu from which the player will be able to spend the target's Obedience in order to make them carry out specific actions.
  For example, you could Command the target to initiate a scheme against another character, forget one of your secrets, give you gold (or a hug, if that's what you'd prefer). The more extreme the demand, the more Obedience must be spent, and there are limits to what a subject can be Commanded to do.
  It can only compel them to do something they reasonably might, but cannot change their fundamental beliefs or bypass the red tape of courtly bureaucracy. As such, while a Command might be used to push a character towards befriending another, they cannot be made to instantly marry. Things such as converting to another religion or culture or becoming a vassal are off the table as well.
• As for the Quenched status and Blood Quality modifiers, those will remain, but their role will be diminished now that they no longer affect the success rate of powers. However, if you still wish to hunt rare blood for personal reasons - perhaps a compulsion to collect them all as proof of being the very best among one's peers - Blood Quality will no longer be just a linear progression of commonest to finest. Now, the blood of exceptional vessels will have unique flavours, and the new Connoisseur perk under the Predation Lifestyle tree will allow vampires with refined palates to take on the qualities of the beverages they sample.
• Naturally, in some situations, Hunting might be unnecessary. Feeding on one's own prisoners, for example, is still instant and relatively risk-free. Hunting among one's own courtiers, spouses, lovers, trusted friends, etc. likewise will be a much shorter and safer process than more distant and more ambitious expeditions.

ANYWAYS! I think this should paint a clear enough picture of what the rework is aiming to accomplish. Now, as for when it might happen and how much you  can trust me not to slack off on it, that leads us to our second announcement of today's Monthly Mod Report!

(Yes, we're only now getting around to the second one...)

ANNOUNCEMENT TWO! Veiled Realms Weekly Progress

I'm planning to launch a special initiative where I'll be posting my progress on the Veiled Realms rework WEEKLY on our Discord, exclusively available to our Patrons!

"But" - you might ask - "fsdhfgudfygshfdgdWHAT? You can't even pull off monthly Patreon posts, how in the world will you keep up with WEEKLY reports?"

And to that, I say...

Ehe... I have no idea! Exciting, isn't it? We're going to explore the wondrous unknown together!
(￣∇￣*)ゞ

Okay, okay, but I do actually really want to FINALLY give something back to the Patrons whom I sometimes feel I'm absolutely scamming >.< I need to fix SO many things about my Patreon management, my time management and my productivity... and, as it happens, this foolproof plan that can in no way spectacularly backfire might be just what I need to murder an entire nest of birbs with one boulder!

Now, it is not happening right now just yet. I first need to set up several things - figure out the new way Discord does connected accounts, organise my personal schedule, apologise to my therapist, etc. etc. So the initiative probably won't come into effect until late February, or possibly even next month. But, rest assured, when I'm ready to implement it, it will be its own big post, you won't miss it!

But until then, thank you so much for continuing to support us and motivate us to keep going. And particularly for making my therapist's therapist's life easier. I'm sure they appreciate it.

As always, you can hang out with Team Nessassity and our amazing community on our Discord, and occasionally get in the splash zone on my brain juices @PrincessityPLS on Twitter (admittedly, Discord has kinda rendered the Twitter account redundant, so it's not seeing as much activity as it used to, but maybe I'll find a way to revive it somehow one day).

And in this YEAR OF THE CAT (and the bun), let's have even more fun playing games and loving life! (And jumping on furniture, I guess. They do that too.)