Small disclaimer: this is not a click and fap game, it's much deeper.
Worked a bunch on character attributes that the player can swap out. The game is an RPG kinda thingy, and the attributes help and will help a lot. For example casting a spell has a higher chance of success based on your Intelligence, Wisdom, Willpower, Memory (if you remember the spell correctly or not) and some more. Patience for example plays an interesting role in which it adds to the Critical Chance, but it removes from Spell Haste, so you cast slower with high Patience but the critical chance is also higher.
Confidence makes you walk faster, walk like you mean it.
Obviously these roll over into the sexual side with Stamina making you last longer, Endurance means you won't give up easily when you receive some well deserved punishment, Agility & Flexibility help with unnatural positions, etc.
You really have to play it as an RPG.
What do you guys think about this?
Edit: the context is playing as the Vampire in our game SkyRanch.Life, an RPG Dating Sim VN in a Sci-Fi Fantasy setting.
It sounds like I walked into a conversation with no context.
I was wondering why I hadn't noticed such a game before, I do like mechanic focus games... Why is your game forum in the general discussion forms? it should have a game release forum (although maybe not, it seems more like a dev lop for game dev section instead), that's probably why it went under my radar. Very nice site you made for it. I'll have to learn more about how you implemented the mechanics to get an idea of how well or not so well attributes made sense and worked with things.
It sounds like I walked into a conversation with no context.
I was wondering why I hadn't noticed such a game before, I do like mechanic focus games... Why is your game forum in the general discussion forms? it should have a game release forum (although maybe not, it seems more like a dev lop for game dev section instead), that's probably why it went under my radar. Very nice site you made for it. I'll have to learn more about how you implemented the mechanics to get an idea of how well or not so well attributes made sense and worked with things.
Hey thanks for pointing that out. My signature has not been updated. We got the game up very recently and the dev logs were since we started working on the game, a longer time ago.
I guess I should have added a link to the game for people to understand what I'm talking about. Good idea, thank you.
You probably didn't notice it cause the new games section is going faster than my vibrator glad you like RPG game mechanics.
I was mostly talking about the idea itself and if it makes sense or not. Some attributes are implemented, others aren't yet.
Mechanics and attributes and such are all kinda cool and fun to mess with and lead to various programming challenges that are meat and potatoes for software developers.
But in my opinion they are at best a sideshow to the important part of a game: the story.
Some games use attributes as a measure of something that a player has to "put effort into" (grind) in order to pass story gates. I.e. forcing the pace of the game, forcing at least some surface-level engagement from the players before they are allowed to progress.
Having lots of player agency in the form of choosing which attributes to buff... only is useful if that has a visible/useful effect on the game outcomes. And that leads to creating lots of small parallel story parts: player used Strength to pass the test -> dialogue route 1, player used charisma to pass the test: -> dialogue route 2... etc etc.
Catering to various play styles can make a small game explode in the number of different dialogue routes you need to write - and most players will NOT even see all the routes, they only see one route per playthrough... so your efforts are spread thinner and thinner the more possibilities you add.
The bad alternative to such a design is to just not flesh-out the details of most of the possible combinations of attributes. And if that's the case, why have them at all?
It reminds me of the horrible situation of the "Deus Ex Human Revolution" game (before the content overhaul patch) - you were strongly encouraged to make different character builds - a fighting mercenary, a stealthy ninja, an intelligent hacker, etc.... but then when you hit the boss fight, OH NO only strong mercenaries can survive it. There were NO hacking options to get past the boss fight. Sucks to be a nerdy hacker character.
So what is my point...? I'm not sure. Just rambling on. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.
Mechanics and attributes and such are all kinda cool and fun to mess with and lead to various programming challenges that are meat and potatoes for software developers.
But in my opinion they are at best a sideshow to the important part of a game: the story.
Some games use attributes as a measure of something that a player has to "put effort into" (grind) in order to pass story gates. I.e. forcing the pace of the game, forcing at least some surface-level engagement from the players before they are allowed to progress.
Having lots of player agency in the form of choosing which attributes to buff... only is useful if that has a visible/useful effect on the game outcomes. And that leads to creating lots of small parallel story parts: player used Strength to pass the test -> dialogue route 1, player used charisma to pass the test: -> dialogue route 2... etc etc.
Catering to various play styles can make a small game explode in the number of different dialogue routes you need to write - and most players will NOT even see all the routes, they only see one route per playthrough... so your efforts are spread thinner and thinner the more possibilities you add.
The bad alternative to such a design is to just not flesh-out the details of most of the possible combinations of attributes. And if that's the case, why have them at all?
It reminds me of the horrible situation of the "Deus Ex Human Revolution" game (before the content overhaul patch) - you were strongly encouraged to make different character builds - a fighting mercenary, a stealthy ninja, an intelligent hacker, etc.... but then when you hit the boss fight, OH NO only strong mercenaries can survive it. There were NO hacking options to get past the boss fight. Sucks to be a nerdy hacker character.
So what is my point...? I'm not sure. Just rambling on. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.
Yes I agree, having a lot of attributes which alter the game's mechanics is tedious and a lot of players won't bother...for now.
And the writing and branching .... ooofff... almost regretted it a few times :C
It was very hard at the beginning to implement and scale upwards, and I still have some difficulty in certain situations (for example using a new attribute that I haven't before in an encounter) but it kinda piles up on previous work and gets slightly easier with each iteration.
The Deus Ex Human Revolution situation is infuriating. My goal is to allow people to reach certain "happy" points in multiple ways (speed, seduction, strength, etc) rather than less.
We're trying to give it replay value by the player trying out different builds and thus different routes, but I guess it will make more sense once we have an update going that shows how much more of an RPG it is rather than a Dating Sim VN.
VNs dont rly have much replay for me. Once you get all the candy, I at least don't see why I'd retry it, the other developer working with me however can replay the same VN over and over. It all goes down to preference and I really want to play my own game xD
God... It's just some random table that you borrowed, and not your list of attributes, right ?
Even in the most complex table RPG I've played, and I tried a lot of small, near indie, one in the late 80's and 90's, I never seen a so dense attribute list.
Listen to osanaiko and wonder what is the point you're trying to make with such list. Because, except "hey look how good I am", I really doubt that there's one.
There's a large public for this kind of adult games, but if they were in search for this level of complexity, they would play an AAA regular game. Not an indie game that, due to this sole premise, have high chances to be either quickly abandoned, or have the longest update delay ever seen, or to be full of bugs or inconstancies, if not the three together.
And of course, the many players who have a completion syndrome would avoid your game like the plague, because it's impossible to see 100% of this game with less than a tenth playthrough ; something that no one will ever do due because they have a life. And if it's possible, then most of the stats are just totally useless.
What send back to Osanaiko's "having lots of player agency in the form of choosing which attributes to buff... only is useful if that has a visible/useful effect on the game outcomes."
If the outcomes are the same, there's no interest in the stats. And like he said, if some route make something important impossible, there's even less interest in them.
But here it's not a regular game, the goal isn't to beat the boss, it's to beat the boss and to have all the girls you want to have. What fallback to my "if they were in search for this level of complexity, they would play an AAA regular game".
Therefore the stats need to have an impact on the relation with the girls but to never be impacting. That you'll have to be more inventive, or try harder, to get the girl because you're more a mind guy than a body one, okay, but you must still be able to get the girl, and ideally you should be able to do as much as you want with her.
But in the end, this tend to defeat the interest of those stats.
They'll just serve as hidden difficulty level, making a girl be more or less easy to get, something that even people wanting challenge in their adult games will tend to strongly dislike. Or they'll serve a progression limits, what will not be better.
The only way to go would then be to propose multiple way to get the girl, each one depending on a stats, presenting a different scene or suit of scenes, and of course impacting the story with this girl, but not her lewd content. Then it would be the player's fault, and this only, if he don't succeed. It's him that should have thought a minimum, and not choose the "climb the Everest mount" option for the first date, knowing that he have no endurance.
But, of course, this mean that each time you present 22 choices to the player... Describing them with enough words for them to be explicit enough regarding what choice correspond to what stat. But not "explicit enough" to the point that you add the stats name at the end of the choice, because this is taking the players for idiots.
In the end, there's strictly no interest in so many stats.
It would complicate the player life, flooding him with choices, and living him with the constant feeling that he is missing something. And it would complicate your life because, due to the stats combination, you'll face thousands variations of the story.
All this for what ?
To prove that you can do it ? Breaking news, unless you've decades of professional experience in writing and coding (individual experience, not cumulated), you can't.
To stand out among the mass of adult games ? Breaking news, the game with the most advanced game play mechanism (Lust Hunter) do not stand out at all.
For your pleasure ? You're on a forum full of adult games, there's better way to practice onanism.
Breaking news, people rarely replay such games, especially one that would be so complex. And anyway they'll not replay it before it's completed ; what, with such stats list, will not happen before five/six years at best.
Plus, it's not the game complexity that make someone want to replay a game, it's its interest and the pleasure you get playing it. A pleasure that come either from the lewd content (and you need to really stand out), from the story (and it need to be really well wrote and really be different from a playthrough to another), or from the game mechanism.
In the end, the simpler is your game, the higher are the chance that someone wand to replay it. It's by example the case for Super Powered. You can't see all the content in a single playthrough (at least not without a mod), but you can also complete the game in one or two days, and this without effective constraints, nor need to think or time lost doing the same thing again and again, playthrough after playthrough.
by the player trying out different builds and thus different routes, but I guess it will make more sense once we have an update going that shows how much more of an RPG it is rather than a Dating Sim VN.
Tell me, how often have you replayed RPG games ?
Especially, following a route, stopping in the middle of it to starts a new one, then later coming back to the first route, and so on...
It has some interesting points, (most don't apply but that's another story) but it could have been done in a much nice way, and I'll just leave it to that.
