VN Free-roam or just black screen after finnishing current game update?

[SPkiller31]

Hi,

Apologies if title sounds misleading but there is something I realized after seeing few comment sections under many of the new games.

When it comes to more free-roam games, so games that have some sort of map/choice where to go, game will eventually hit end of content for current version.
To get it to main topic: Devs have basically 2 choices (apart from releasing full 1.0 game which is tiny bit hard): let player roam after last possible event so player can for example farm relation points, replay already seen events etc. or just put some kind of loop/black screen with "Thank you for playing".

I wanted to ask you guys, what style you prefer because I found enemies and enjoyers of both versions.
Some folks say that putting just hard end game after last event is easier for dev as it descreases chance of player updating game while being in game-breaking place or farming infinite points/days (thus making point/day releated events completely broken) and on the other site players often complain that it's nonsense cause if someone wants to farm million points for his waifu, he will do it anyway (just before last event) and blocking content behind point/day points is retarded anyway.

Would love to see your opinion on this and which style you prefer if dev decided it's mandatory to have free-roam/sandbox game. Or maybe it's wise to combine them? Free-roam after not that important events and just black-screen after cliffhanger if we talk about plot-heavy game.

 

[Droid Productions]

Love of Magic has a formal "end of main content" screen, with the option to load the End of Act save, and continuing playing. Once the next update releases the game will ask you if you want to go back in time to continue the story.

It's a little bug-prone, and obviously screws with balance, but overall people seem to appreciate it.

 

[anne O'nymous]

To get it to main topic: Devs have basically 2 choices (apart from releasing full 1.0 game which is tiny bit hard): let player roam after last possible event so player can for example farm relation points, replay already seen events etc. or just put some kind of loop/black screen with "Thank you for playing".

I wanted to ask you guys, what style you prefer because I found enemies and enjoyers of both versions.

The question you should ask yourself isn't what players prefer, but what is something that you can do accordingly to your capacities.

Depending of the way your game is done, the "end of update" screen can be something really complex to do.

If it's false free roaming, and all events are strongly linked together, therefore if you can't see the last event of the update without having previously seen all the events, and all in the same order, then it's easy. You put the screen at the end of this last event.
But if the events are separated, whatever by character, location, quest or whatever else, then it become something really different. You need to keep track of all series of event and not only know where the player is in them, but also where it end for this update. Then after every single event, you need to test them all, to see if you have to display the "end of update" screen, or not. And you can easily break this, by forgetting to update a value, miscounting the number of events in a series, or forgetting to add a test for the newly added series of events.
And the more complex will be the way you handle the progression in the different events series, the more complex will be the test to know if the player have seen them all.


This being said, those aren't the only options you have.

You can do this individually, having an "you've reach the temporary end for this part of the game" screen after the last event of each series of events.

You can highlight the choices that lead to unseen content. Therefore no highlighted choices mean that there's no more content to see here.

You can have a marker telling the players that there's content to see in this location, and the absence of markers everywhere mean that he reached the end.

In place of event markers, you can show the characters available in this location when there's an event for them in the said location. Here again, the absence of characters in all locations would mean that there's no more content to see in this update.

You can have a quest log, or an event log, and check/strike/hide/whatever all the step done. An empty, or all stroke, quest/event log would mean that there's no more content to see.

You can have an event gallery. If all the entries in the gallery are unlocked, then you've seen everything.


And there's possibly some options that don't crossed my mind.

 

[Cosy Creator]

I did an "afterword" screen where I said that this was the end of the update and thanked people for playing etc then let them free-roam after that. I'm probably a bad example though because my game doesn't really use the sandbox so there's no risk of stat farming or anything like that.

If you do let them free-roam just be sure to let them know that there's no more main content left in the update. If people end up wandering around confused without knowing the update is over, that will probably piss them off.

 

[SPkiller31]

If it's false free roaming, and all events are strongly linked together, therefore if you can't see the last event of the update without having previously seen all the events, and all in the same order, then it's easy. You put the screen at the end of this last event.
But if the events are separated, whatever by character, location, quest or whatever else, then it become something really different. You need to keep track of all series of event and not only know where the player is in them, but also where it end for this update. Then after every single event, you need to test them all, to see if you have to display the "end of update" screen, or not. And you can easily break this, by forgetting to update a value, miscounting the number of events in a series, or forgetting to add a test for the newly added series of events.
And the more complex will be the way you handle the progression in the different events series, the more complex will be the test to know if the player have seen them all.

Hmm, personally I already have system ready in my game and I wanted to hear people's opinion on different styles but this bit and what CosyCreator said seems most player AND dev. friendly. I guess that having some kind of "main" ending or official end of current story line and then letting people either wait for new content or visit old places sounds resonable. Obviously as you stated, more and more branching story can lead to more difficulties while having central points of story can make life little bit easier.
Thanks for your examples.

 

[SPkiller31]

Love of Magic has a formal "end of main content" screen, with the option to load the End of Act save, and continuing playing. Once the next update releases the game will ask you if you want to go back in time to continue the story.

It's a little bug-prone, and obviously screws with balance, but overall people seem to appreciate it.

Oh yeah, giving players choice to either continue or not also seems like player-friendly idea, thanks for sharing example.

 

[Meaning Less]

The only thing that matters is that you alert them they reached the end of the current update.

After that It depends on how much gameplay there is available in your freeroam experience:
-If there are no repeatable scenes in your sandbox then just end the game, no point to give false hope and make players look for stuff they missed if there is nothing left.
-But if your game allows for repetitive events then just let players wander after alerting them the current update is done, afterall they might want to repeat a few more events to release themselves before quitting or simply keep playing if the gameplay mechanics are engaging enough.

 

[Droid Productions]

Oh yeah, giving players choice to either continue or not also seems like player-friendly idea, thanks for sharing example.

In LoM's case you can still have additional content to go, since it's triggered by the end of 'daily content'. Like Persona it uses a calendar, so you have events that trigger automatically based on day/time, and there's events that are sandbox triggerable. It's pretty easy to run out of time on the calendar without having exhausted the sandbox. There's also lots of replayable content (randon dungeons, etc).

If you don't have spare content after 'end of content' it's a wash.

For Paradise Lust we do a "you have reached the end of this girl's content" instead, so you know when you've exhausted the current content for a specific girl.