​📜​Patch Notes Hentai Heroes 2024 ​📜​

[DvDivXXX]

This was one my suggestions, or rather commentary, as it's very likely done on purpose. There was absolutely no gameplay reason to introduce 5 more in-game currencies when a single one with different costs for different girl rarities would have been more than enough, easier to keep track off, and fairer overall.

Unfortunately, it's fairly obvious there's a monetization reason for this nth multiplication of in-game currencies. And I don't think that will get changed, especially after the fact. That ship has sailed.

PS: My own opinion here (and in the previous post too), not speaking as a moderator or on behalf of Kinkoid on this, obviously.

[Master-17]

As for the epic girls, I disagree. If there are a huge number of legendary 5-star girls in HH and 3-star epics practically do not get into the top in terms of strength even during the period of their blessing, then in other games, epic girls are often present in battles even at hero levels close to 500.

[Horsting]

Not sure if I understand how skills, the way they are currently implemented, should help monetization, nor how it does further help to have them split by rarities:

• The only way how one could pay for bulbs was the limited short duration 3 bundles when it was introduced. DM and season bulb rewards are free, champion tickets can be bought with money, but they are VERY expensive (calculated as 60 kobans per ticket) for the low random rarity drop chance, so I think no one would start to buy ticket bundles or kobans for tickets just to farm bulbs from champs. Only remain is CbC, where buying resources clearly helps, but is not everything. And also here the rewards are limited. DMs and champions give much more bulbs per week than the 3 mythics or 6 legendary you can get from CbC.
• And how the different rarities would help is even less clear to me. Practically, even if there were ways to buy bulbs, one would just buy mythic and legendary ones and ignore the others. E.g. I remember the cheapest bulb bundle on introduction was just worthless because it did only contain the low rarities. Offering it just showed that the responsible people have no idea of the game. So the useless rarities are just useless as well for monetization.
• The only important thing is how rare bulbs are and which ways you have to buy them for money, directory or indirectly. If they are introduced very rare (that is currently the fact) and there are attractive ways to buy them (currently very limited and only indirectly), people will do it. Whether they will spend overall more money or just buy less other things, is a different question.

Whatever the reason was, I never give up the hope that KK can also do larger changes to newly introduced features based on constructive player feedback 🙂. At least no one can say now that we never tried.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Horsting

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, Master-17 said:

in other games, epic girls are often present in battles even at hero levels close to 500.

You mean in CxH, PsH and other HH-based variants? I'm no longer playing any of them, but I'm sure there are some where the distribution of girl rarities is different, especially the newest ones. Good for players of these games, or at least enjoy it while it lasts (it's very likely only a matter of time until the meta shifts to mostly M6s and L5s once enough are introduced that 3-stars become irrelevant).

But it doesn't change the fact that in Hentai Heroes specifically, Epic light bulbs are a waste of reward real estate. Beyond the fact that we're on the HH forum, knowing this rarity distribution fits better in some of the HH clones doesn't seem like a good reason to embrace it in HH itself, where it clearly doesn't fit.

Of course, there's the fact that implementing features exactly the same way in all Kinkoid games (HH reskins) saves time. I don't think much thought at all was given into the distribution of light bulbs for balance purposes in HH, let alone in all of the HH clones, each with their subtly unique pocket meta game. In fact, it's most likely purely by coincidence if one of the other HH-based games you play happens to be perfectly fine with the current light bulb distribution, and it will no doubt evolve out of it in a year or two.

Long term, big picture.

1 hour ago, Horsting said:

Not sure if I understand how skills, the way they are currently implemented, should help monetization, nor how it does further help to have them split by rarities

I could honestly go with a simple "if you have to ask, you'll never know", here, but I'll give you a few pointers. Pointers only, because if you sincerely don't understand how this can work or at least how someone in charge of a business might think it'll work... Well, I like you so why would I want to take that innocence away from you? ^^ Also, if I spell it out nice and proper, I'm not going to make everyone at Kinkoid happy, so what's in it for me at that point...

Spoiler

If you're genuinely curious, you can read or watch any number of articles or documentaries on the dark side of micro-transactions, and if you stumble upon serious ones that did their homework, they'll have a pretty big chapter on how more and more predatory games keep increasing the number of coexisting in-game currencies, and making both their game mechanics and monetization schemes more and more artificially complex, creating artificial scarcity, adding more and more partly overlapping layers of grind over layers of grind each linked to different micro-transaction incentives.

You can also take a deep dive into the rabbit hole that is the making and prioritization of bundles and bulk purchases over single item purchases, in freemium games in general, and then wonder how it may or may not apply to Kinkoid games in particular.

You should also know that many real-money offers are targeted and what you see in the shop isn't necessarily what other players see in the shop. There's a lot more offers and bundles tailor-made for different subsets of the player base than a single player can see or even imagine. And I'd be extremely surprised if there aren't real-money offers with bundles of all the colors of light bulbs available to some big spenders right now (or recently, and soon again).

On a related note, how I approach my "budget" for this game is quite different from how you approach yours, and I don't even think either of us can truly put ourselves in a bonafide whale's shoes (but I've known enough whales in this and other games to know how they generally tend to operate). This isn't specific to Kinkoid games by any means, to be clear. Pick pretty much any timer-based freemium game at random, especially "mobile games", install it and open up the real-money shop for the first time. If you're anything like me (and most players) there will be some offers that seem so overpriced and low value even compared to other offers on the same page, you'll wonder if they're mistakes or pranks. Get to know a few whales in that game's community, and you'll understand why these bad offers are not only there, but selling well! The very simplified TL;DR is that sure, the best offer may be the monthly bundle at 50 bucks, but it can only be purchased once. So after that, if someone wants to spend even more money, the higher price, lower value deals have their backs.

Anyways. A lecture on monetization in freemium games is a bit beyond the scope of this patch notes thread. The entire discussion would probably be more at home in the Girl Skills thread. So yeah, let's leave it at that.

[Master-17]

23 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

But it doesn't change the fact that in Hentai Heroes specifically, Epic light bulbs are a waste of reward real estate.

I mean, you're talking from the point of view of a veteran player who already has a large number of 5- and 6-star girls. However, for those who don't have a lot of them, upgrading the skills of epic girls is just as important as upgrading the legendary and mythical ones.

[Horsting]

57 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

However, for those who don't have a lot of them, upgrading the skills of epic girls is just as important as upgrading the legendary and mythical ones.

Upgrading rare or epic girls was never a point at any stage of game progress. It starts with only C5, then for a very short time some L3 come into play, then first L5, then M6 start to mix inside. R3 and E3 never had any point for BDSM, and R5 and E5 are both so rare that you get some somewhere from midgame til endgame (starting with Mavin, who I still miss shards for) or individual ones when being very lucky or forcing in MP.

That the same system is used on multiple clones with different girl rarity distribution makes it even more reasonable to use a single bulb rarity only and hence have it naturally compatible with all clones.

@DvDivXXX

From all I saw and read, bundles are not tailored. Some increase in price every time you buy them, quite a reasonable tactic, some grow with level, like the PXP bundle. But especially the most attractive ones appear for all players (unless there is a bug, like it was with world bundles). I see no point in having bulb bundles only for whales, as those would be perfect to catch F2P (or season pass/monthly card only) players starting to buy bundles, like it was done with the initial 3 ones. Generally the added complexity, multiple currencies, reward and grind layers, scarcity and definitely multiple items per bundle thing all make sense. However, for GS bulbs, at least now, this simply remains unused in terms of monetisation. But I don't want to give KK ideas 😄. GG is a good example of how it makes sense: The world bundles have been adjusted to contain EqPx2 bulbs, some event bundles do, all bonus paths and reward tracks contain them, the monthly cards and season pass as well. Given that it is something everyone is short on, and at the same time hard to compare against CP/kobans or so (I do not consider the EqPx2 price a good value for comparison), it generally makes all these purchasable things (or with extra koban costs) look more attractive, and whales surely buy all of them, without the need to have different orbs/gear for different rarity girls.

Now that I said "season pass", I checked back and missed that it indeed contains bulbs as well: 10 legendary and 5 mythic ones, so not nothing.

But probably it is all a long-term strategy where individual puzzle parts do not make sense now but with another change a few months later. We'll see.

[Master-17]

32 minutes ago, Horsting said:

Upgrading rare or epic girls was never a point at any stage of game progress

Are you sure? Here is my current situation on CxH:

Spoiler

We can consider that this is a mid-level harem on HH. At the moment, there are about 20 5-star girls leveled up to the current level cap. And among the strongest there are at least 4 3-star epic girls. And that's without blessing of the epic girls!

Spoiler

 

[DvDivXXX]

54 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Are you sure?

Yes, we are very very sure. I never ever invested in 3-stars except for a couple of Legendaries very early on in HH. It is much more cost-efficient and more powerful to upgrade the three 5-star Starting girls first, then 5-star Commons as you get them, and in this day and age I'm fairly certain the next step would have to be directly transitioning to L5s since there are soooo many including several low-hanging fruits every month. "Back in my day" the battle system was radically different, you only needed one team of 3 girls that was pretty much evergreen, and the harem pool was like 20 or 30% of what we have now, so the first 3-star Legendary of your class was worth upgrading until you got your hands on your first L5 of your class. Even back then, investing in any kind of Rare or Epic was basically shooting one's self in the foot. These days, there's no question it would be even worse. Again, in Hentai Heroes.

54 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Here is my current situation on CxH

Yeah, but that's a radically different meta. And it WILL inevitably change as time goes by, unless for some reason Kinkoid decides to keep 5-star girls scarce compared to what they did with all the other HH reskins, and maintain a proper balance between girl rarities, which they've never done anywhere. There's no reason to expect such a wild departure from how they've developed the same game with different pictures half a dozen times by now. So there's no doubt that a year or two from now, the pretty 3-star Epics you've invested a lot of resources maxing out will only see play every other blue moon when they're double blessed.

In any case, again, this isn't HH. In HH, even for brand-new players, investing resources on anything below 5 stars is not  a good strategy. And Epics are absolutely useless in PvP except exactly the two legacy exceptions from that failed 2018 experiment (and even then, only when they're blessed).

Anyway, we're getting pretty off topic at this point. Although, to be fair, if savvy players such as us forum regulars can't even easily agree with each other on how and why Kinkoid should adjust the light bulb distribution, getting intelligible feedback to them will be quite a big ask.

Edited August 30, 2023 by DvDivXXX
updated

[Master-17]

4 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

Although, to be fair, if savvy players such as us forum regulars can't even easily agree with each other on how and why Kinkoid should adjust the light bulb distribution, getting intelligible feedback to them will be quite a big ask.

I agree that light bulbs are not distributed correctly. But I think that the idea is fundamentally wrong. There shouldn't have been different kinds of light bulbs depending on the rarity of the girl. There should have been a single currency (light bulbs), but for the development of skills, a different number of them would have been needed. For example, like this:

And then everyone would leveled the skills of those girls that they would like.

[Horsting]

2 hours ago, Master-17 said:

There should have been a single currency (light bulbs), but for the development of skills, a different number of them would have been needed.

Exactly what I am saying all the time 😃. That's the only correct way to eliminate the dead currencies. Also I like the idea to differentiate costs between tiers, so that its not two thirds of all invested bulbs without/with very small benefit for tier 1/2, before reaching the interesting, but then also more expensive tier 3/4 skills.

[DvDivXXX]

Yeah, that's what I would have preferred too, by a wide margin. However, they went with 5 currencies instead of one, which I strongly suspect was decided for monetization purposes rather than mechanical purposes, and now that it's done and they already sold plenty of real-money and koban offers with that in place, there's no hope in hell they'll backpedal. So the next best thing (or next least painful thing) is to make do with those 5 currencies instead of 1 and aim our feedback at some adjustments they might actually consider.

As I've been saying all along as well.

Simply complaining about the 5 currencies and asking them to merge them into a single one will fall on dead ears and lead us nowhere for sure. It's basically equivalent to the wave of feedback that simply said "please cancel this feature" when they introduced GG and then GS: that's not happening.

They implemented these for a (variety of) reason(s) and these features are here to stay. Only feedback that asks for minor adjustments to make the features less imbalanced and less annoying for us to deal with has at least a chance to yield positive results.

Was I not conveying this message clearly enough to you guys so far? 🚬

PS: I'm still speaking strictly as a dedicated player and invested community member, here. Not as a moderator or on behalf of Kinkoid, obviously.

[Master-17]

8 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

which I strongly suspect was decided for monetization purposes

In order to monetize, they must always offer packs of these bulbs for sale, and not just at the very beginning, when they were first introduced. At the moment, these bulbs can only be obtained by participating in the Cumback Contest, very rarely in Daily Missions, or with some probability knocked out from champions. None of these methods help in any way in monetizing this functionality. And at the same time, the light bulbs fall out too rarely to have any impact on the game. Developers need to add methods for obtaining this currency.

[DvDivXXX]

Agreed.

I said I think they've taken this slippery road for monetization purposes.

I didn't say they were right. ^^

[Horsting]

Not much money or kobans was even possible to invest into bulbs so far. And even if: If existing bulbs were just converted with an update, in case into multiple merged bulbs according to their rarity, no one could complain.

Of course there is no high chance to completely cancel a feature. But whether merging bulb rarities is a that much larger change than e.g. the EqP update after GG feedback, not sure. Both are quite comparable in some ways, e.g. that an existing currently was changed, and also updated within all player's storages.

1 hour ago, Master-17 said:

And at the same time, the light bulbs fall out too rarely to have any impact on the game.

I wouldn't say that. I was able to max out 3 L5 an 1 M6 and will max out the 4th L5 likely next week, without a bundle (but with season pass which is 10 legendary and 5 mythic bulbs). Since those 3 L3 share the same tier 3 trait, and I usually have overall 5-7 girls which have this attribute in teams (and usually +4% AP from the M6 trait bonus, not to forget the tier 4 bonuses), this makes a significant difference already, and will increase over time. This is absolutely not comparable with GG which indeed becomes relevant very slowly and will never be any close as strong as skills, I think .. Although, 7*6 maxed mythic GG with 0.5% AP bonus each = +21% AP + stats + ego and potentially defence ... but will take much longer than fully skilled league teams. However, this does not change something about the fact that a single bulb type is the only correct solution.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Horsting

[DvDivXXX]

You know what? I think I've just solved the puzzle. 💡

We've contemplated the dream of a single light bulb type with more of it required for higher rarity girls. I don't think Kinkoid will go for that (or they would have implemented it that way in the first place, since it's much simpler than 5 currencies).

We know we hate the current 5 light bulb types based on girl "rarity", especially with the skewed distribution that doesn't match power level or quantity of girls per so-called "rarity". I think Kinkoid hears that.

What about a third option: 8 light bulb types based on the 8 Elements we already have, just like gems?

It could be the best of both worlds: if Kinkoid is interested in multiplying the number of in-game currencies, then 8 light bulb types is even better than 5.

More importantly, since us dedicated players are interested in game balance, we would have an even playing field of the 8 types in terms of both distribution and usefulness, which is definitely better than having the completely imbalanced distribution based on girl "rarity".

One might argue that's 8 things to manage instead of 5, but since we're already used to managing those exact same 8 things through gems and blessings etc. I think it would actually be more manageable than 5 types  of which 3 have long stopped meaning anything to us.

And of course just like gems, some colors are more sought out than others, but still. Between getting more or less of this or that color and the current situation, I'd take the former any day of the week. Wouldn't you?

Edited August 31, 2023 by DvDivXXX
updated

[jpanda]

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

You know what? I think I've just solved the puzzle. 💡

We've contemplated the dream of a single light bulb type with more of it required for higher rarity girls. I don't think Kinkoid will go for that (or they would have implemented it that way in the first place, since it's much simpler than 5 currencies).

We know we hate the current 5 light bulb types based on girl "rarity", especially with the skewed distribution that doesn't match power level or quantity of girls per so-called "rarity". I think Kinkoid hears that.

What about a third option: 8 light bulb types based on the 8 Elements we already have, just like gems?

It could be the best of both worlds: if Kinkoid is interested in multiplying the number of in-game currencies, then 8 light bulb types is even better than 5.

More importantly, since us dedicated players are interested in game balance, we would have an even playing field of the 8 types in terms of both distribution and usefulness, which is definitely better than having the completely imbalanced distribution based on girl "rarity".

One might argue that's 8 things to manage instead of 5, but since we're already used to managing those exact same 8 things through gems and blessings etc. I think it would actually be more manageable than 5 types  of which 3 have long stopped meaning anything to us.

And of course just like gems, some colors are more sought out than others, but still. Between getting more or less of this or that color and the current situation, I'd take the former any day of the week. Wouldn't you?

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, but if not what would the 8 do?

Pick a different skill to level that makes sense per colour (gem type)?

The number 5 makes sense to me pretty much because of rarity.  As you noted it's the imbalance and irrelavence of girls which makes it not work...which is not (easily? maybe at all) fixable, which IMO is why the feature is not great.

And why I suspect sarcasm

PS EDIT: Perhaps I suck or am missing something but in HH I do use epic girls both in PoP and Champions.  I don't AIM for them but I just don't have the sheer number of leg/myth to make them 100% irrelavent.  So, I can still use all colours, just have to do it wisely, tactically or randomly

Edited August 31, 2023 by jpanda
PS edit

[DvDivXXX]

3 hours ago, jpanda said:

I suspect sarcasm

No, I'm actually serious. It would solve everything as long as they distribute the colors evenly. They could even largely mimic what they already have in place for gems.

The CbC rewards could functionally turn into a single reward (all-color bulbs, just like we have all-color gems) with different quantities per reward tier.

Champions and daily missions would have an equal chance to drop any color of bulbs. They could switch up some of the rewards on the various monthly reward tracks to either give all-color bulbs or a bit of Blue here, a bit of White there, and so on so that it's roughly even.

If we both get X amount of Blue bulbs, nothing would stop you from using them on your 3-star Epic Blues for your PvE fights, and nothing would stop me from using them on my Blue M6s or L5s instead.

That's a major improvement over you and I both getting Y amount of Epic bulbs, with nothing stopping you from using them on your 3-stars for your PvE fights, whereas they're just about as useful to me as Movie Frames. Or you and I both getting Z amount of Mythic bulbs, with me having to decide which one to prioritize whereas you've already maxed out your one or two mythic girls and these will be gathering dust in your inventory for a long long time. Don't you think?

[Master-17]

I can offer another option for issuing skill points: For the proposed idea for the development of the game - give out one light bulb 💡, the color of which corresponds to the quality of the proposed idea! 😎

[DvDivXXX]

Patch Notes for Week #36 added.

They only mention the new adventure scroll and the new PoP girl.

Important missing updates are of course:

1. The whole Mega Event concept in general, and the current Lusty Race #1 in particular. Info on this can be found in the blog article that should have been linked in the patch notes imho. As we've already started discussing it extensively in this current Mega Event's thread, please post your feedback there instead of in this here thread.
    
2. The new "Static image movement" setting, which is ON by default. It makes pose pics zoom in and out constantly, notably for your chosen Waifu image. To turn it off, you need to go to Menu -> Settings -> Static image movement -> OFF. Like so:
   

[DvDivXXX]

Patch Notes for Week #37 are up (not my upload, but thanks to the fellow mod who made it).

Some of us noticed the introduction of GS 5 a couple days ago on the Test Server. Well, it's already live in the main game now!

Similarly to last week, since discussions have already started in the dedicated thread for Girl Skills, please go there to give feedback or discuss this addition. Thanks.

[Master-17]

On 11/24/2020 at 11:53 AM, Noacc said:

Stun the opponent for X turns

• Skips the opponent’s turn
• When the turn is skipped, the girl can’t attack or any skill can’t be used on this turn

There is an error in the patch note. It says that the stun is triggered with a certain probability, and its duration is upgraded. And this is not only here, but also in the original patch note.

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, Master-17 said:

And this is not only here, but also in the original patch note.

Considering we literally copy-paste the patch notes from the blog into this thread's OP, that's not too surprising. ^^

[Horsting]

Oh right, it must be "Stun the opponent for 2 turns with a chance of X%".

[Master-17]

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

Considering we literally copy-paste the patch notes from the blog into this thread's OP, that's not too surprising.

My point is that they could have noticed the mistake and already corrected it.

[DvDivXXX]

22 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

My point is that they could have noticed the mistake and already corrected it.

In which case they would also have told mods on Discord and the thread would have been updated as well. (I didn't really have a point, though, I was just finding this funny).