...I would have thought that was pretty obvious - because there's 2 female characters to romance (so 2 routes) verses the 5 male characters you can romance (5 routes), hence why you'd pay less for the female content verses the male.
First, there are already multiple romance games that allow you to pay for only the romance routes you want (and not just in the app store), if you don't want to buy the entire game or wait for all the routes to be completed. Second, none of the ones I've personally played have suffered for this; on the contrary, it often meant there was a great focus on each individual character as the devs developed it, rather than some romanceable characters getting a major focus while others became less important.
Also, I'd argue that it's already 'utterly spurious' to create a nsfw dlc with a sex scene for each character where everyone has to pay the same price despite not getting the same bang for your buck if you have a preference for one gender over another. And again, I stress this is specifically for a DLC which is purely based around that very fact, where you're literally paying for the sex scenes you want, NOT for an entire game.
I second this notion, I didn't want to throw my pony into this mix, mainly because I'm not going to pay for shit, so I'm not concerned, but I get where you're coming from. This very conundrum is what turned me into a pirate in the first place.
I've played many...
many VNs, and I notice a trend of making the LIs on a "significance" scale; I don't know what this would be called, so allow me to explain: You know games that give you a character route order (even the ones that say there's none, maybe even "recommend" one still?)? The way I play games, I only choose
literally 1 LI to play not on purpose, but because I have a...
specific type, and usually the only LI I choose is the only one that meet that requirement for me, so I always thought it was ludicrous to drop 30$$$ on a game, that's providing 7 love interest, when I'm only going to play with 1. ever.
Now, let's loop that "significance scale" back in; maybe developers don't notice they're doing it, but when they make these "route orders", they clearly feed more and better content into one character than the other. Sometimes I have been lucky, and my chosen LI have been the "most significant" LI (the one that's last in the rout order), but sometimes I have not been; this matters because in my youth (me buying VNs), I've actually tried to "play everything", and I've notice that many of the first few LIs in this "route order" was severely lacking, often creating what looked like a 10 min game, worth 5$ that I've dropped 30+$$$ on and was promised "hours".
Anyways, I'll cut this short, because my point isn't to explain my piracy triggers.
The point is, I'd support buying catered DLC of sexual content that focus not only on a specific LI, but also MC's gender/genitals(whatever this entails, in reality, I'd prefer not to go that deep into micro-transactions, I'd rather buy all content focusing on just one LI entirely, and have the erotica included in that, even if it also include a gender/sexuality I'm not into); both because I can understand how minority sexuality would severely lack in these types of thing (I'm not buying, at any price, for something that is
fairly priced to account of every character/sexuality provided, if I'm just going to play with
one part; maths don't add up, to me, hence why I pirate VNs in particular).
Of course, I get the concern, this would need several conditions to make sense; one, the content have to be worth its price, two, each scene still has to be created equally (which we know will lack in the first place, because that's just how the cookie crumbles when it comes to developer's content), and, three, how detailed was this erotic content going to be to begin with, to even require separate DLC? (If everyone is getting a "kiss-kiss, finger touch, booty slap, crinkle letter-crinkle letter maybe penetration crinkle letter-crinkle letter" scene, then is it even necessary to distinguish it from LIxF/M?). Obviously this is easy to abuse, obviously if this trends starts, it'll open the floodgate to unscrupulous developers, but is it the best way to fairly sell content...? I think so.
In a perfect world, I'd like to pay for what I play, but in reality, "deals" are lumped together to convince you to pay more (sometimes you can't sell
that one thing, not even for a penny), and customizable MCs are notoriously difficult to write erotica for; more work is needed when making multiple LIs and detailed sex scenes for them. Take into account developer's interest, and you're going to find lacking content that isn't worth the price, but you have to buy, anyways, because they lumped all their LIs into one package. I don't blame these shortcuts, I do see it as a "a least we get something!" sort of deal (isn't that what multiple LIs are for?), but in conclusion, I do wish more VNs catered to one LI at a time, and released this content separately. If they did, I just might do a Scrooge and leave the high seas for good! (Joking, fam, my heart is black, I'm too far gone~
)
