So. . . I could understand the naughty and nice point system having any kind of control and ability to lock away scenes if the game were like "SpecialRequest" where the MC is either a slutty revolving door of sexual interactions or a good wife fighting for her innocence, "Confusion" Is not that game and the point system just seems to tell me I'm not naughty enough to interact with certain characters simply because I decided not to cum inside the previous character when they literally asked me not to, similarly I shouldn't be getting locked out of scenes with say the aunt for not being naughty enough when I am apparently naughty enough to have a threesome with the sisters just a few scenes before that, the point system either needs to change so it no longer locks away content and characters or it just needs to be outright removed, other than that this is a great game and I've enjoyed it throughly so far.
Thanks for your comments. Before getting into any of this, I want to preface my remarks by reminding you that while this is not the first story I've ever written, it
is the first interactive fiction I've ever created. And, it was initially glommed onto what was originally intended to be a kinetic VN. I would never defend any of the decisions I've made as the "right" way to do things, and I can always improve. And plan to.
I don't want to get into story particulars until more people have had a chance to play. But you're right--some choices might not make sense to you based on your
expectations of what you should be able to do at any given point. Like, where is the option for Alex to go buy a gun and just off people when she gets wronged? This is the classic problem that faces games that are supposedly "CYOA." There is no such thing, in reality, simply because of the geometric explosion of possible paths. Three simple choices at ten points in the narrative yields 59,049 possible story paths. Whether or not Alex gets decked by Kevin early on required an additional 44 background renders that I had to special case to show her black eye or not. Additional renders that took several days to retrofit. And that was *one* decision.
There are a handful of methods that devs use to focus decisions, and by definition they prune the number of paths while trying to maintain the illusion of real choice. Some common techniques are 1) convergence points, 2) state tracking, 3) delayed consequences, and 4) gating mechanisms. Confusion uses all four techniques, but mostly the last three. A decision that you make at one point of the story might not affect play until much later, and not always in ways you'd assume. The game keeps track of how many of, and what kind of decisions you make. The first half or so of the story sets the groundwork converging on the "F-it-all" vs. "not-playing-their-game" decision you make later on. You can be totally aggressive in the first half, but then decide not to F-it-all, and still have as much sex as you want. How aggressive? It's totally arbitrary. I tried tuning the "points" (I HATE that term) starting in chapter 7 which is why you had to restart because the save games were no longer valid. However, if you play things submissive enough from the start, you're naturally limited to the things you can do later on. Where is that line? Would it be the same for you and your predilictions and for mine?
I originally only showed the player the choices available to them based on their stats at that given moment. The original intention was to ask the player to just react as they would IRL and experience where it leads. But honestly, there are three main ways people play the game. 1) Be as aggressive as possible and participate in sexual activities as much as you can. 2) Play the goody-two-shoes route, never participating in conflict or random sex, and stay true to (who you eventually discover is) your actual LI. 3) Accept the sex situations but avoid any interpersonal conflict. There are paths you can only get to if you try all three, and some of them involve sex, so I listened to feedback and made the decision to show the inactive choices so you could see that there were decisions you could change to get them if you wanted to play a different path. If you didn't see inactive choices, then you wouldn't know what you were missing. But that decision to show them also triggered people who were angry that they weren't getting the choices they
thought they should have. There is only one decision that you can make, if I'm remembering properly, that ties you out of a sex scene. The rest depends on how you played the game.
One of the criticisms that I sort-of agree with, but is too late to do anything about, has to do with the pregnancy aspect. Again, without giving away spoilers, if you play a certain way you may miss out on what some people think is the most touching part of the ending. C'est la vie.
Again, thanks. I live and learn and hope to do much better next time out.
