Hello,

I'm finishing developing my another project called "Jordan 500".
It's one of the most complex projects I've ever made (similiar complexity to original LOP).

I want to invite you to betatests of this game - for one person it's really difficult to balance everything and find all bugs.

Link to project: http://jordan500.lessonofpassion.com/

If you want to take part in betatesting I'm particulary interested in following areas:

1. Game balance - if you find difficulity level at medium level. It will be relevant to me to present yours main stats after finishing the game. It will help me to balanace dif level and tweak some things.

2. Bugs - if you find any bugs - something that not work or work not how it supposed to work.

3. Areas of improvement - which aspects of the game can be improved to increase gameplay

4. Overall game concept - just tell me if you like it

Some informations:


a) game is not finished yet - there are no endings. I'll add them since end of this week

b) english texts are not fully verified - cpt_hook offered his help in that matter

c) I still work on it and it's possible that new updates will change some things, for instance load / save mechanism and your old stats might not work

Remember - this is a secret :)
Don't spread the word about this project until it's finished.

I would really appreciate your support. I can offer place in credits section for all users who feedback this beta :)

Thank you in advance
leonizer

Let me start by saying that it's great you decided to revisit the sim-genre, as LOP was undoubtedly your best game imo.
I think the backstory is good, it certainly offers a lot of possibilities. Now I've barely played through twice (the first run was cut short by a nasty bug), but here are some issues:

By far the most important and the most annoying aspect is driving the car. I think the manual driving barely adds something to the game and it soaks up time just going from one place to another, especially when you need to repeat it 100 days. Suggestion: make the car drive automatically and just be able to click where you want to go. Important here is that it is a quick action (e.g. not a 5 second drive). An example of this is used in a classic DOS game called Jones in the Fast Lane (let's call it a grandfather of this genre, without the sex :P): take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Y7JMIXvVw , at 1:11 the player is visible in the middle of the upper street and is moved by a simple mouseclick.

The second issue I had was more of a balance thing. For example, the IQ stat (and thus small talk) can only be improved by the intro and an expensive item. It made it very hard to get positive results even on the C customers. And after I got the item I went to 400+ on IQ at day 100.
Something similar occured with the striptease stat. While my other stats were high enough to do the B customers without any doubt, the striptease stat was low (presumably by bad luck on the C customers?) and therefore not often succesful and not increased further, which forced me to waste time on the C customers. While this time it happened for the striptease stat I could see it happening for almost any of those, there's little control in raising them. Some more events or possibly actions in places might solve this (for example, maybe add a +1 to striptease on stripping at the strip club?).

A last note is about the events. As they are now it's sort of static, the sex with the mafia boss will happen whether you want to or not, you always sleep with the guy at the gym, etc. For one I would like to see more choice in that (with the mafia boss I could think of making some agreement to come up with the money before day X, and if you do it like that you get a bonus lesbian scene with the friend as a thank you or something).
Secondly, ideally I'd want to see much more scenes like that (possibly with dependencies on eachother) to give some more control over how you want to play the game, by giving certain stats or in the bigger picture leading to a certain ending.
And thirdly, not as important but it would a nice touch: how about some interactivity in the scenes (like in your previous games, some mouse actions or something).

Finally a small list of bugs I encountered:
- The fuel fine can take you into negative money, which makes doing almost every action impossible because of "not enough money" (including the ones that MAKE money (!!!)).
- The achievement banner does not disappear automatically.
- The underground dealer has no tooltip (I didn't realize I could go there until later on).
- Many texts are in the wrong place (for example 'taking a day off' has the same descrïption as finding a customer).

Good luck with finishing the game (and hopefully expanding it with some more scenes/options).

Most of my thoughts echo TheBrain's. Striptease stat is a big problem. Half of your customers are interested in it but there does not seem to be any way to improve apart from pleasing customers. Unfortunately, most of them want a higher level even at C class customers. I had to hope that one who wanted a low enough level would appear and many, many days were wasted trying to raise it a few points. I finally just gave up on raising it. It seems very counter intuitive that working as a stripper does not raise the striptease skill.

I'm guessing that IQ is bugged since all other stats max out at 100 and IQ keeps going. I think I had 383 IQ by the end. Seems to me that since my character is the smartest person on the planet, she could find a better way to earn a living [img]smile/bluewink.gif[/img] Also, as Brain mentioned, you go from getting nowhere in raising the stat to maxing it out quickly once you buy the, very expensive, notebook. Very unbalanced.

I assume that self defense is not implemented yet or I got very lucky. I never had a problem with customers. Since there are achievements for wining/losing fights it must not be working yet. Also, I don't see much point to buying self defense weapons since going to the gym and raising self defense stat there is a much better use of money. Maybe have the stat only raisable to a certain level and require a weapon to raise the rest.

Since face stat maxes out at 100, higher level makeups seem useless. I was at 100 face before day 50 just using the +2 makeup. Maybe makeup should also add into the dress stat to make it mean more.

The car didn't bother me as much as it did TheBrain but it did seem kinda pointless. I can't see any reason I would want the spend the huge amount of money to get a better car (although maybe this is tied to an achievement).

I'm unsure how the customer satisfaction and making money is supposed to work but it seems broken to me. Say the customer has 1000 dollars. I get 75% customer satisfaction but end up making 200-300 dollars. It seems like I should be making 700-800 dollars instead. When I have 100% satisfaction I do seem to make the right amount of cash (equal to what the customer had)

As TheBrain mentioned, the 100 days of playtime seems too sparse on events. Tedium at raising stats and making money starts to set in with nothing to break up the monotony. More events, more choices and alternate ways to raise some stats through events would be a great idea.

I mostly enjoyed the game as a whole but it can be quite depressing at times. I'm interested to seem how the endings work out.

Anyway, good work on the game. Although the mechanics are similar to LOP, I found myself enjoying the interface/mechanics more. I look forward to trying the finished product.

Thank you for your feedback. It's as relevant as I expected - good job guys.

Right now I'm working over game balance and over adding some random events.

In terms of events - I'm not sure if you discovered all. There is also a scene with Katarina (The test) and some actions with movie producer (orgy). During this scenes you have possibility to chose your actions and this really has impact on the game.

I did find the producer and Katarina events (although I am unsure what actually triggered Katarina. Got it on day 97 :cry: ). I meant to mention in the earlier post how these were great examples of the types of events that there should be more of. Like the intro, it seemed like the choices mattered and things worked out differently based on your decisions.

One question about the final version, Do you have to play all the way to day 100 for the endings or can you get to some of them sooner?

Yes, you need to play 100 day to reach one of 6 endings :)

so far my main problems have been with the car and striptease,like brain and mung,but i have been annoyed by the lack of storyline choice...after the start,there are only two choices that i have come across,i have had no real goals to reach(like passing exams in lop)

however those are only minor complaints,the game is once again great,thanks for making it :D

edit: found a big bug,i pressed continue,but decided to restart because my game was goin nowhere,so i clicked on menu...
when i clicked on start a new game,chose my path went to my home,i had all of my previous household items(comfortable bed,notebook etc)
this game i get to find out the perfect character mayb?

no problems with the car...it would be nice to have other ways to increase your IQ and striptease skills(maybe a percentage chance on the pole)...would like to see some more events and a little bit more to the story line...i got 100 days and it said that i had to make a choice then give me a not ready button...i'm able to continue the game and i am wondering how much longer it needs to go before i'm ready???

so for no bugs that i've seen...am going to try again and see what is up...the new achievement tag doesn't disappear unless you go to options...

when u get to the platinum club,flirting gets you +1 iq,but that will probably be too late for most people,thanks to the bug i mentioned earlier,notebook brought me up to 300 by then...
striptease thing reeeeeally annoys me now,because the only person who can bring it up is old person or businessman,who NEVER show up annymore

Okay, I've uploaded modified version (marked as 0.901).

Implemented changes:

- bug with IQ above 100 points
- it's much easier to raise IQ and STRIPTEASE
- problem with fuel solved
- achivement info is now hidinig after a few seconds
- added random events after leaving home (a lot of it)
- added random event after leaving strip club
- fixed problem with restart - now after starting a new game all items are reset to zero
- some minor changes

Question: Do you think that adding some interactions to the sex scenes (for instance as in my previous games) would be a good idea? Please let me know what do you think about it.

Plans: till the end of this week I should add endings.

i got to day 100 again, and i got the not ready button again...do you have any ending set up yet???if so, then what am i doing wrong???i've got over 10k rep and an escort at the platinium club...even have the blue car with white strips...

some actions with some of the sex scenes wouldn't be bad, but not all...

in the beginning of the game i usually go to the party and pick up all of the sex bonuses...

Sexychild68 - NOT READY button means that endings are not ready :)
With your character is all okay - it's not her fault :)

okay...thank you for letting me know...btw i like the charity event...

i was thinking, if you survive a fight with a drunk maybe you should get a lil self-defense along with the rep...

Good idea with selfdefence bonus - I will add it in a next update.

It's not only charity - there are also other type of this events.

BTW - does anybody has problem with load / save?

yea i've noticed the other events after i wrote that...pretty damn cool...

i haven't tried the load/save yet...just did...it removed the top that i was wearing...

i just noticed the red rose top in the wardrobe...how do you get that????i don't see it in the store...

i was thinking...when you get the 100% special(+2 morale and +$50) that you should get more from the platinium members...