Biggest aspect lacking most in adult games?

[Segnbora]

That is to say, not all branches have to go off on their own. It's best to keep them tied in to the main plot and simply create optional content that people can play through.

Agreed. One thing I like about both DmD (look at me, saying nice things about Perv and the Potato Head) and Melody (which I enjoy) is that you can experience a brilliant playthrough with almost everything you want to see, but to see everything you want to see you might have to give something up. The loss of a single stat point so you can keep your options open with the small-breasted but horny best friend (it's convenient that I don't have to make anyone guess which game I'm talking about) means you don't get the "perfect" ending with the title character. Expand on that a bit more and you actually have a game where choices matter, but also one where you don't have to render an hour's worth of seven different games just to release a single update for one.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Player choice. Too many devs seem to think you as the player are up for anything, and that they can't go wrong as long as some kind of sex is happening on screen every little while. But personally, in trainer-style games I don't want H-scenes with anyone other than the person being trained. Dumping an unskippable, unavoidable H-scene on me as an ''appetizer'' can ruin my mood completely. E.g. Four Elements Trainer. Everything should be optional, telegraphed and skippable so you can see the content you want, at your own pace.

 

[Xalenda]

I'd love to see an RPG maker game that had more to do with RPGs - like, the party's stats actually mean something, other than being a quick reference point for the developers to insert various scenes. Far too often on far too many games, you see that the "stats" are mostly gained one at a time per person if a certain action is taken - do action A, get 1 point; do action B, 2 points, etc.

What if, instead, people used the stats of the characters alongside the event/flags within the game so that the progression seems normal instead of too rushed / too slow? For instance:

Start the game off with 10 Strength, fight a few starter battles, gain a level or two, bump that up to 15 Strength. That now allows you to move a large rock that the love interest's little brother was trapped behind. But, since you only got a +1 increase to your "Charm" stat, you don't get more than a kiss on the cheek.

Now you can merge the two halves together - in-town, in-house scenes that increase a stat like Charm or Persuasion to get to the more "adult" sections of the game; outside, dungeon scenes that increase your other stats like Strength and Defense to create a story that just so happens to have a lot of adult content within it.

There are flaws in this idea, obviously - namely, grinding up to have +20 Charm and level 40 by the time you leave the first dungeon - but I still think that this would be better than four-fifths of the simpler RPGM games on the market.

 

[rbx4]

There are flaws in this idea, obviously - namely, grinding up to have +20 Charm and level 40 by the time you leave the first dungeon - but I still think that this would be better than four-fifths of the simpler RPGM games on the market.

To me this highlights a struggle in the entire game market now, and not just one in adult games. There seems to be an idea that gamers do not want limits. So Skyrim by default gives you a character with maximum potential in all skills, where Oblivion enforced some limits. Sims 4 allows you to get max in all skills with no possibility of point, skill, or trait loss, where Sims 2 had character fears that could remove aspiration points.

Yet, in order to feel real, a character needs limits. A real-seeming character can backslide in some ways. In real life, nobody is permanently the strongest, most skilled, smartest, and most attractive all at the same time. Still, games give us this. I think really, people may listen too shallowly to what gamers want. Of course nobody wants to lose, and some gamers (see all battle royale games and in a different way, Overwatch) want simply to blame others for when they lose, instead of blaming their character's limits or their own skills.

The possibility of loss adds tension and interest into games, however. Imbalance adds tension as well. Unfairness does this as well. To me, this is why most games in general seem relatively bland lately. There is so much effort put into sparing gamers' hurt feelings when they lose, and so much effort put into avoiding inconvenience and limits of any sort, that games do not produce enough different types of tension to feel engaging.

*There is also decreasing awareness that the inconveniences of the journey are part of what of what make the reward so sweet. Emotional highs and lows are part of a connected system in the brain. The reward itself decreases in emotional appeal when it comes too easy. Compare real life: of course nobody wants to drive for 30 minutes, but getting to the fun concert feels especially great in part because of the emotional lows experienced in getting there.

 

[W65]

Let's be honest: there's usually next to no integration between the RPG character's stats and the story. The stats are just numbers that exist to make the "game" parts work, and the story kinda lives totally separate from all that.

I mean, SOMETIMES you'll get a scene where you're rushed by "impossible" numbers of bad guys, but the story changes a little if you somehow manage to beat them all. That's the exception, though. The story would often break pretty badly if your characters couldn't get captured at the critical moment, even if logically they could wipe the floor with two dozen Imperial Stormnerds.

It's like the old pen-and-paper railroading problems, except cRPGs ALL have shitty DMs that can't change the plot in the middle of the game.

Integrating the character stats too closely to the story, though, kinda robs them of some of their meaning for the "game" parts. Players of RPGs are kinda used to being able to grind up their stats, and most RPG-Maker-alikes are kinda balanced around the idea of being able to go out and do that. I guess you could do away with random combat, or create a system of sub-stats (weapon stat enhancement or something).

But that kind of thing is hard. It's much less work to just have the stats exist just for the game parts and deal with the story parts separately.

 

[Akamari]

Choices and consequences. This goes for VN's and RPG's. For me adult games are all about player interaction. If I'm not engaged with making decisions for my character I lose interest unless the story is superbly written or there is a pretty gift waiting to be opened, but even then I need to have some input. The choices themselves need to be well designed and not just the usual "peek/don't peek", "blowjob/handjob/sex/cum" or "be an asshole/no content for you wimp".

 

[khumak]

That's the problem with developing multiple paths. Either you spread out alot of development across many characters per update, or just focus on one or two in order to progress their story in a meaningful way. So much to do, so little time to do it.

I think the key to having multiple paths without escalating your development time to unrealistic levels is to have most of your choices lead to a short term divergence from the other path and then have both of them re-converge back into the main plot again later. So you can still have choices that lead to meaningfully different outcomes without needing to develop basically 500 completely separate games for each choice.

So for instance, lets say you have a plot line for Jane that has two basic paths. On the first path she becomes a friend and is nice to you. On the other path she becomes your enemy and is not nice to you. Her part in the main story can be the same regardless which path you choose but she could have different events with the main character depending on which choice you made. Maybe on the friend path there are a combination of events that could include doing things that friends do or maybe things that friends with benefits do. On the enemy path, maybe there are scenes where she sabotages the main character in some way.

If you were to make a flowchart of the events of the game it would look sort of like a tree where the tip of every branch reconnected back to either the main trunk of the tree, or to some other branch (which then connects back to the main trunk). Sort of like what a Christmas tree looks like if you go get one from a tree farm and they tie it all up with bailing wire so you can strap it to your car.

 

[Zetsuko]

You know, I would usually go for nice plots and plots that involve some choice for the player in game, but then I remember every time I make 100 save files and savescum to get the ending I want and I get over it.

To me, considering everything, what is most lacking in adult games is variety. Some adult games do have some variety in both the kinks they touch and the scenes they do, but cept for those VERY few exceptions, I literally find myself skipping over 90% of games cause they're just same scenes, same "my parents died"(Some people call that story, I don't), with different characters, over and over.(And sometimes not even different characters)

Going a bit more into the "systems" category, I'd say a compelling RPG leveling system, where I can actually have fun with the combat and not just smash the strongest attack(Or just normal attacks) over and over. I also don't like games that stall me so I can only level up in a limited fashion to keep me under control. If you don't want me to powerlevel to oneshot, give me interesting stuff and skills along with more limited stats, instead of only stats.

And finally, I've yet to find another adult game(Besides one I'm gonna mention at the end of this) that mixes a story I want to actually follow and porn scenes properly, to the point where if I want to fap, I'll play this game, no matter if it's got a story to follow, cause it doesn't make me go zzz when I want to(like I said) fap, and at the same time I'll be thinking about what'll happen to the characters when I'm finished playing.
^^^^ In this case I'm talking about Tails of Azeroth(Whorecraft), I followed the story, fapped to the scenes, and kept being interested in the story enough to keep going after that. And that's what I think most games miss, mixing a good story with porn in a non boring way.

 

[APSabot]

For adult games: player agency and consequences. Unless it's a VN I expect to have more interaction than a hentai manga. ren'py games are particularly bad in most cases, barely surpassing the average manga while requiring far more clicking and hunting for content in the majority of "sandbox" ones.

closely related: risk and thrill. too many games boil down to "do these things, get these scenes." a good example are games with pregnancy, incest, or NTR, things that would normally have dramatic consequences yet few, if any, games introduce any risk or build any tension, around trying to steal away a lover, as in NTR, or in "playing with fire" as with pregnancy or incest. most devs seem too fixated on trying to check off as many fetishes as possible.

 

[gamersglory]

That was my initial thoughts too and expectations for my release.
But using graphtreon and looking at my own earnings compared to pretty much all the other that's around my timeline
and it shows another story.

And it's not like my writing skills are anything to brag about. Basically my first attempt of a story ever.
Just think I'm one of the first the focus so heavily on the story aspect. Once a dev comes with proper writing talent, it's going to explode in popularity. That I have no doubt about.

The key with your game hopes and a few others is that story emersion you need to get people into believing they are the Main Character and lose themselves in the game as the MC those Fuck Fest games don't put you into the story or are very poorly written in some cases both. Games only feel like a grind when they lack Depth of Story and characters devs need to work on making their own modals in games and making me as the player care about their other Characters not just the MC

 

[Based_Allah]

Stories leave much to be desired.
Dialogue is usually trash.
Needs to build a believable bond before jumping to sex scenes

I think devs would benefit from working together on games rather than so many one man shows

 

[Deleted member 1017199]

Optimization in 3D games. Looking at you Unreal Engine

 

[Avaron1974]

Optimization in 3D games. Looking at you Unreal Engine

Slightly disagree with that.

I see some people complain in unreal games from indie to AAA and most of the time there isn't an actual problem, it's people trying to play games on PC's built with potatoes and duct tape.

A lot of complaints I see on here are from people running 32 bit Windows 7. Anyone running 32 bit and trying to run games in an engine beyond Ren'py (and even the newer Ren'py has left 32 bit behind) is just deluding themselves.

You aint running Unreal on 32 bit now. It's a void OS that has been left behind and it can't handle the latest hardware meaning a 32 bit system is outdated and obsolete.

Sure there are plenty of unoptimised games but I will die on the hill that most complaints are coming from people with systems too shit to handle the game they are trying to run.