About Game design: Visible Locked choices on conversations

[fsap1]

You can repeat the try in the future (gonna be refused if not get better humor of her by indirect events, but if you keep failing eventually she'll just hate in this playthru beyond recovery)... But If you don't have the lewdness required and the locked option is not suggested, it's quite possible that after 2 or 3 times you visit the location and she only say that it's locked, you'll never return to it or even thing there is an event avaible (unless screenshots, trailer, forum... things that requiere an active user that wanna see the most content it can.

I understand that any player that really like the game will investigate all bend and turn, play multiple times etc.
But when designing a game you must design it for the average player, that one that if is bored in half hour will never return, etc.

So then, of course, the neverending game design wonderings... xD

I think the player should know what's available for them to do and dialogue choices shouldn't be hidden or locked out. It's just annoying to me, it feels cheap and breaks immersion.

What I like to see in a scenario like this is to keep the "advance on her" option, but create a different dialogue rejecting/flirting whatever and let the player know somehow he should come back another time and try another way, it just feels more natural.

 

[Marcibx]

I know that this is probably not relevant anymore and I haven't read previous replies - please excuse my ignorance - but in general I would say you shouldn't show locked options.

Choices are the crux of visual novels and it is extremely hard to make them, make a lot of them and then keep all relevant and aligned.

Your fist mistake is assuming that people will replay the game. I am not saying nobody will, but don't build a game only for those who will, and making missed opportunity is the opposite of that - unless you expect replay they are only there to rub it in to the players what they are missing.
Try to make most of the things available in one playthrough, because not even the best games are played twice by most of the players.

But even if you have many and good choices, I would advise against showing locked options unless your really want to build a game focused on choices and consequences. When you want to give weight to decisions. Because showing certain options based on certain criteria is "rewarding good gameplay" but showing locked options is basically "punishing bad gameplay".

But, if you insist doing it anyway, I think nobody would disagree with me saying that one of the best examples is the Mass Effect series. The choices there were very meaningful and they showed the locked options.

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What they did well is that the decisions always have clear consequences. When you have something locked you know what you miss and what you gained for it.
Also, it was a point system, so you knew why you cannot select something, but if an option would be locked because you didn't pick up an item 2 hours earlier, it would just annoy people - it would be the equivalent of getting punished without telling you why.
Lastly, with the good/evil system the devs could reliably expect people to stick with one, so going one way and missing out on the others would not be that bad for the players as they would probably stay with the options that are open, but you cannot expect it so clearly in visual novels.
(Not to mention that in erotic visual novels people often go for the evil choice for some quick H scene, but they disagree with that choice storywise - I often do that and then backtrack to select the "good" option what I would prefer for my MC.)

The least you should do is always making it clear that if they go X now, they cannot go Y later. (How you make it clear without breaking the immersion is the challenge.)