This is the forum thread for the story Paladin Simulator: https://chyoa.com/chapter/Introduction.749283 This space is mostly intended for people who want to discuss game strategy or report bugs, since the normal comments system isn't great for either of those things. However, do let me know if you have feedback of the regular variety, or have features and other things you'd like to see implemented!
Heya! As I alluded to in my comments, I love this game! The structure is surprisingly fun to play, but more than that, it's just got a great sense of humor. Literally had me laughing out loud. If I had one criticism, it would be that the part right after you get your holy shield and go out to look for the baroness, you end up grinding for a bit longer than I'd like exp-wise before next level. But I'm just impatient. Looking forward to continuing reading the rest that's out in the near future!
Game Mode works great but I agree with MidbossMan, grinding take too long time. Maybe if reaction on fuck maiden/dark mercenary will progress with your level it will be more intresting. But keept going, I will read and give likes
Thanks for the comments everyone! I balanced everything in the game out of an Excel spreadsheet that I have now unfortunately lost, so feedback like "it's too grindy" is very helpful. I'll tone down the XP requirements for future levels!
I like the casual style and I appreciate the detail that goes into the game aspects, but it really does take too long to fight enemies, especially since it takes a while to load the next page. It's a real bonerkiller... My suggestions would be: 1) Streamline combat. Maybe instead of going turn-by-turn, you could go for a more Dragon's Lair style, where you pick one of several options. Or if that's not interactive enough, you could do a Final Fantasy XIII style, where you pick from a number of strategies and approaches. I really think you should try to have every fight take a maximum of three chapters... 2) Sex options. If the sex scenes need to be unlocked, give us some options to make grinding more rewarding. I feel like "technical chastity" options would really work well. Like, let you keep your status as a pure, honourable paladin by only ever fucking women up the butt. Again, I like the story, but if the interactive elements take too long and the sex scenes are too few in comparison, It's going to be an uphill struggle imo.
Regarding the long loading times (I checked those on the (2020-06-12): Page load times in this story are like super long compared to other stories. To retrieve the initial get request and see the next (any) page displayed: This story: Game Mode enabled: ~ 1,5+ seconds! Without Game Mode: ~150 ms The Freshman 15: Game Mode enabled: ~710 ms. Without Game Mode: ~150 ms Right now (2020-06-21) the loading times are even worse, it took 4-5 seconds per page in game mode. There seems to be a serious bottleneck with the way the game mode state is handled. @gene.sis / @Friedman perhaps this is something the site administration can investigate or optimize?
Quick bugs / suggestions for improvement: At the "The Maiden Thief Defeated" chapter you display Gold and XP Gain. This is missing from the "Dark Mercenary Defeated" Chapter. When you buy a Health Potion at the shop, you know how much it heals. But during the combat, both at the item selection and when you actually use it, the value is not displayed. At the "defeated" and "fucked" chapters, create a link directly to another enemy engagement, i.e. "Battle an Enemy". That would allow to save one click if you don't want to rest and battle again right away. Feedback: Nice concept! The good stuff is meeting and fucking an enemy for the first time and the level up sequences. Basically the unique content which only happens once. Now, you only take time to criticize something, if you care about it, right? So here it goes, and of course only my humble opinion I played one day until i think level 3, when you get to fight against the Dark Mercenaries. Sadly at that point i got a bit bored with all the clicking and stopped playing! I continued till level 4 / 5 to see if anything changes as you level up. The combat itself however i have to say is rather repetitive, no variation, no difficulty. As long as you rest between each fight, there is no chance that you can lose one (as far as i played). You just click over and over again without anything interesting or new happening. Right now, without any alteration to the combat, i feel that it would be better if the story itself was the focus, and the combat parts were reduced to be nice additions which happen from time to time. How to make the combat more engaging, more interactive, more enjoyable, less boring, less repetitive? Good question! Clearly there is this built in limitation with the format of chyoa.com, that all the reader can do to resolve the combat is to click the story options. Clicking the same options over and over with the same result is obviously not fun. On the other hand its not fun for the author either, to keep track of variables, conditions and chapters (already ~160 chapters for levels 1-4 and 2 enemies with the currently available content and options). Every tiny improvement / additional option probably means several or dozens more chapters, perhaps even dozens of additional chapters per level or enemy. Still in theory, what could you do as author? Different options to click... i.e. more abilities besides the basic attack. Different outcomes for the same options... i.e. different numerical results for the same options or different flavor text from time to time Unique encounters with more special abilities. (Dark Mercenary has one) Create difficulty... At the moment there is no chance to fail (as long as you start a fight with full hitpoints). Less clicking per encounter, i.e. make the encounters shorter (or perhaps a way to auto-resolve an encounter.)
I checked the loading time in my browser and it seems to be related to the loading and processing. So some things I can say about it: - The chapter content (excessive use of if-statements) is no problem. (That only makes the chapter text a little longer) - The use of many variables should be no problem. (They are stored similar to chapter text) - The day of the week is most likely related. The 12th was a Friday. Today is Sunday. I think on Sundays there is more traffic and thus longer loading times. - There are more database queries for game mode stories. (Load chapter, load story, load save game, save save game) Unfortunately, I can't say much about the actual reasons, may it be PHP or the database. (Maybe the save game table becomes too big and slows down the loading as it is shared for reading and writing. (Writing has to wait until other writing jobs are done.))
I have to say that when I last played it, there was no issue with loading times. This is probably because I live in an odd time zone.
Thanks for the great comments everyone! @Sthaana , the combat itself unfortunately cannot be streamlined - there are upcoming features that really on the multiple clicks (each page will handle several things going on), but hopefully it becomes more bearable as there are more 'features' added. That being said, I did tone down the XP requirements for levels 4 and 5 (and all future ones that aren't live yet). @dingsdongs , I've incorporated all of the quick suggestions you made. The page load times are an issue, I thought it was just a problem with my connection... not sure if there's a fix though. Now all I need to do is find the time to write up all those chapters...
To address the issue of long loading time, the respective database table has been optimized. Do you notice an improvement in loading times now?
