Idea for a dynamic SL money sink for Skyrim

[Egathentale]

Hey guys,

 

There is an idea that have been rumbling around my head for a while: While the awesome adult mods of the site has created some absolutely stunning content that can transform Skyrim into one of the kinkiest games on the planet, I had to realize that role-playing and immersion in most bondage-, submission- and enslavement-related content was fatally undermined by the core systems of the actual game. What do I mean by this?

 

Well, Skyrim is just too easy. Sure, you can ramp up the difficulty, but all it only makes the combat harder but not the game itself. You are still able to amass a huge wealth or break the game in other ways in an hour tops if you know what you are doing, and after that point most sexual events (aside of combat rapes) start being redundant. In other words there is just no desperation, no scraping together every gold for survival, no really threatening enemies to keep you on your toes, and unless you are specifically throwing yourself at the enemies on the highest difficulties, even combat rape stops being a threat after a while. 

Most mods deal with this by introducing contrived reasons to why the character would be engaging in some events or why the demi-god bane of dragons would let herself be raped in broad daylight by random beggars just because she happened to wear a certain piece of bondage gear. Sure, they still work once you exercise your suspension of disbelief a little, but they are not ideal from an immersion-standpoint.

 

Here is what I have in mind (and what I can't do myself due to a lack of modding skills) to fix this issue I perceived:

The solution is kind of already there in pieces. Captured Dreams already have dept slavery, we already have humiliation/sex based income mods and we already have loan sharks. Why not combine them and blow them out of the water to create a massive, dynamic gold-sink that would stick to the PC from the start? Here's the ingredients of what I propose:

 

-A new ImmerSlave starting point: Dept-slave, either to the Captured Dreams Master or a new Original NPC. The kicker is this: the amount of the dept is not set. Instead the game would calculate a large sum to be paid at regular intervals depending on the character's level and the amount of gold they accumulated. The latter would be the ideal, but I don't know how feasible that would be.

 

-In support of that, there should be some kind of value-rebalance in the game, considerably raising the prices of food, drink and shelter (for needs-mods) while considerably reducing the values of clutter, weapons and armor while also keeping the player from using ones that would be too high-level for them (could be done through a collar-type denial system) so that it would reduce the value of dungeon-loot without handing out overpowered equipment to low-level characters through merchants.

 

-A series of custom collars. Their restrictions would decrease with level and the total gold paid back. The first tier only allows clothes and iron weapons. The second tier allows steel weapons and fur/hide/leather armors, et cetera. The maximum tier of armor and weapon they should be able to wear should be Elven/Dwemer. Also, no enchanted items until the very last tier and no daedric artifacts either.

 

-Payments should always siphon away a good chunk of the player's total gold earnings (over 75%) and they would naturally increase with time and level, with random dips and spikes for fun.

 

-Extra focus on living-expenses. In particular, greatly raise the prices of inns and force the PC to use them each night or face crippling debuffs while the loan is active. This is there to discourage the low-level player from venturing far from an inn for long and to encourage them to use other ways to make money (*cough*whoring*cough*) The debuff could be tied to the same equipment-restricting collars so that higher-level characters should be able to sleep out for a few night on extended adventure before they would need to return to the inn.

-Missed or partial payments can serve as tie-ins to other SL and DD content, like S.L.U.T.S., the Captured Dreams quests or original slavery-content. The idea is this: If your character adventures too much or too inefficiently, the loan shark will send "reminders".

Early on they might only send a mercenary to lock them into some punishing but not crippling gear (collars, non-locking harnesses, etc.) that would still allow them to gather money one way or another. Further negligence would lead to further penalties (collars that block more armors/weapons, sealed magic, chastity-belts with high-grade plugs etc.) that affect the core gameplay as well. The next level would be "lending them out" to people who would pay for it, which could lead to a number of scenarios depending on the buyer (sex, bondage-sex, prostitution in inns, mini-quests (like Deviously Cursed Loot's deliveries or "get back here from the wilderness" events), public use in pillory, etc.)

 

-A quest for getting rid of the loan and actual endings (even if only textual):

-- Pay the loan: After a pre-determined amount of gold got paid (something in the millions), the PC is set free with no strings attached... thought they could take another loan if they wanted...

-- Unable to pay the loan: After several missed payments and punishments the loan-shark outright enslaves the character and sells her. Where she would end up would depend on what kind of punishments she received beforehand (prostitute, painslut, cumdump, charming stuff like that). This would be essentially a non-standard game-over with a number of text-boxes explaining what happened to the PC before throwing the player back to the main menu. Also, they should be warned of this so that they can prepare back-up saves.

-- Getting out of bonds: An unmarked quest started by a book found in the loan shark's office leading to a scavenger-hunt all over Skyrim for the random items to unlock the magic collar keeping the PC down. Afterwards there is a chance for sweet, sweet revenge.

 

While I wrote in a lot of SL content there, the real core of the mod would be the dynamic gold-leeching of the loan shark. It would be probably pretty tricky to script it, but it high time gold finally got balanced and doing so in a LoversLab manner would be just the cherry on top. Opinions?

[nooblet123]

Sexlab STDs is a huge gold sink. Going to Slaverun sucks when somebody decides to rape you. With mods I have installed I either can't make cure disease potions or haven't found the ingredients that have 'cure disease' property, so I have to buy them for 300+ gold each.

[Egathentale]

On 11/14/2015, 2:06:10, nooblet123 said:

Sexlab STDs is a huge gold sink. Going to Slaverun sucks when somebody decides to rape you. With mods I have installed I either can't make cure disease potions or haven't found the ingredients that have 'cure disease' property, so I have to buy them for 300+ gold each.

While I admit that could potentially work for the early levels, I don't think that's a universal solution.

 

I mainly brought up this mod idea because I was thinking about just how a gold-sink could be implemented in the game without relying on the player imposing restrictions on themselves (like not going dungeoneering or not using any of the exploits the game is infamous for). The only way I can see a long-term, reliable and immersive gold-sink could be implemented is if the player would be inconvenienced more by not paying than if they do, and it is hard to do that without the threat of game over and lost progress. Involving the player in forced SL and DD quests and tribulations is the second best option, exactly because they are outside of the game's normal scope and hinder normal activities while still providing some entertainment-value in return. I mean, theoretically one could implement public service and have the dragonborn clean toilets around skyrim as punishment, but I doubt many people would install such a mod.

[43deadwood]

This is something I've been trying to simulate for quite a while and I've amassed quite a few mods which might be of interest. One main problem is that the player can carry far too much loot, and that loot is often far too light. Also the player starts at too high a level. One simple mod that I've just spotted on the Nexus is Expensive Skyrim (mod id 13374). This makes houses, horses, etc. considerably more expensive and also increases the cost of items at merchants while reducing the money paid out for items. I usually limit my character's base carry weight to no more than 5, with no increases due to stamina improvement (via console). Using Skyrealism Capacity & Carryweight (nexus 21224) equipped items are added to carryweight. Only by using bags, satchels and backpacks can carryweight be increased. There are lotsof mods that drain gold - Advanced Shrines (21349), Costly Carriages, Realistic Room Rental (25029), Simple Taxes (57239), Taxes of the Nine Holds (65519), Follower Mod (60763). Secret of Steel (14175) limits the amount of esoteric armour and weapons to either those that are looted from bodies or crafted. Tabula Rasa (59105) starts your character at skill level 0 (rather than 15) and slows progression. Weighted Items (6630) makes items a more realistic weight (eg iron ingots now weigh about 11 pounds - quite significant if you've a reduced carry weight). Hope some of this might be of interest!

[afa]

Balancing gold is probably going to be cumbersome.

There's also the issue of ease of access, quality of life, and complexity for complexity sake.

Vanilla Skyrim gold income is likely limited by merchant's gold. By mid game you are more likely to exhaust merchants' gold supplies in between the two days restock timer before running out of items to sell.

If you really want to sit down and crunch the numbers there's likely a cap on how much you can make every two days base on how many merchants you can visit and dump your goods until they restock and the loop can start over.

Amassing gold isn't difficult, but rather time consuming.

Between mods with harder enemies and setting combat rape mod to steal item/gold there should be a tentative money sink at least near the beginning.

[Veladarius]

I have been using the mod Trade and Barter to control how quickly I can earn gold as it allows quite a number of adjustments to the merchants and how they work.