Hiding the faces of fuckable female NPC who don't play a big role in the story. Good or bad idea?

[hakarlman]

I wanted to know what people think about this idea: Imagine you're playing an adult game where you only see the faces of the two most important female romantic interests. The rest of the women in game, who have small roles, have their faces hidden. That way the player doesn't develop an emotional attachment to them. But why? To avoid the player developing an emotional connection to a character that barely gets any updates every month. But, I'm wondering if this would backfire? What if hiding their faces inadvertently creates an aura of mystery, which then causes these small roled characters to become more interesting than the main characters?

Users: "DUDE, WE WANT TO SEE HER FACE. I LOVE THIS CHARACTER. PLEASE MAKE HER A MAJOR CHARACTER. PLEASE LET ME SEE HER FACE."

Developer: "Aww damn!!! That would create so much more work. What have I done?! Did I tease the players?!"

Hmm, so what do you guys think? Hide the faces of fuckable women characters who play a small role in the story, or show their faces, but risking the player developing a crush on them and wanting more content from them, which creates A LOT more work?

I've played a few games where I liked the minor characters more than the main characters, and every update I'd hope the minor character would get an update, but it rarely happened. I'm wondering if hiding faces could help avoid this problem?

 

[smnb]

I vote for bad idea. I hate faceless people. Body without a face, no matter how hot, is meh. For me, face is major (if not the most important) part of attractiveness. Without seeing face, I'm not sure that I even want to see the rest. I tried with some camgirls who sometimes don't show faces, and it just doesn't do the trick for me. On the other hand, the same example with camgirls shows that some people must be ok with that, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

 

[desmosome]

I vote for bad idea. I hate faceless people. Body without a face, no matter how hot, is meh. For me, face is major (if not the most important) part of attractiveness. Without seeing face, I'm not sure that I even want to see the rest. I tried with some camgirls who sometimes don't show faces, and it just doesn't do the trick for me. On the other hand, the same example with camgirls shows that some people must be ok with that, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

Yea, the face is what makes someone unique. It doesn't even have to show the face all the time. Think of doggy style. You only see that beautiful ass, but you know what she looks like in your mind.

 

[Omae wa shinda]

I think that user tend to overthinking than intended purposes developer created for them, if the npc don't have face then they don't because they might have not role or just background character. It could be influence of artist that affect the idea and thus created unintentional teasing because of unusual sexy body as this could be artist artstyles way to draw or design the character they want for the game / Vn / etc
If the feedback for reputation and reception of game in term of economy is good , the developers might reconsider to make the related character as upcoming character for next game or dlc (but that doesn't always work out don't they?)
but if developer is lazy or not in mood or just plain don't care then that it
Rather than that , some people might have fetish for people who hide their face as well

 

[smnb]

On second thought, I don't recall any game doing this, so I'm not really sure how it would feel.

It could relatively easily work in some cases, e.g. MC attends a costume party where he has random encounter with a girl wearing some face mask, so he and you as the player would only ever see her eyes. And the story would have to make it apparent that MC isn't interested in her too much, well enough to also convince player about that. Of course types of stories where something like this would fit in is limited. But actually, it's something else. The key is strong story, where player just "clicks" with MC, goes exactly where the author leads them and doesn't stray away. If author can manage that, then problem solved, and whole hiding is unnecessary.

But I'm affraid that it doesn't happen very often. Usually the story is just ok (and that's the better outcome), and I find myself freely picking favourite characters, often ending with side ones, and being disappointed, because I don't get enough of them. So exactly the problem OP wants to solve.

 

[Avaron1974]

People will develop attachments regardless. Devs just need to be firm and let players know what to expect and what will or won't happen.

The main issue and why some people get attached to side girls over main, is when the side girls are simply better characters.

It's one of the reasons I dropped BADIK after a couple of updates and haven't touched it since. I don't like any of the main girls, the ony interesting character was Quinn and she was a side bit.

Just don't make the side bits better than the main cast and it shouldn't be a problem ... she says not confident in that at all. Truth is people like different things and even hiding faces won't put everyone off.

The only way to keep side girls as side girls is for a dev to keep to their story.

 

[m00nsh1ne]

If you are trying to save time/processing power then a good idea is to make all the non essential background characters as just faceless single colored entities. It gives the impression that those people aren't important to the character and therefore don't register in his/her mind or psyche. If any attachment/engagement is going to occur then that character needs a face and a full rendered model. You want players to relate/attach to characters that leads to fans and that leads to more support and that will hopefully lead to more money coming your way.

The only way I can see having faceless characters work is if you want to portray your MC as having an actual mental, personality, or social disorder. The faceless characters will symbolize the MC's lack of empathy or caring. Then you could have a face appear on any character who breaks through that barrier and becomes someone important to the MC. Aside from that or something similar I just don't see how you can pull off the no faces idea well, but you can always try.

 

[Deleted member 3145675]

Hi,
Just blur* all the faces of every IG character - it's Porn not a "how look how cute she is, what a cute little nose and cute freckles - she's so Kawai..."

/jk (or not)

*like a strong myopia filter

 

[47Haven]

The only time I've seen this type of things is in doujins, specifically in Crimson's work when she draws some yuri scenes, which is a different case from a game since in a doujin, you really do need to portray the actions for each panels. This is also the case for mangas, like in Nagatoro, but again, same reason as above.

For game, like m00nsh1ne said, just make it single-colored entity. It'll just be too much work to draw a whole body, just to make them faceless, which could also confuses you if said sprites is reused for 'generic female npc' everywhere on your story. Players would think they're the same person, unless you make them have different hairstyle, which is more work for what essentially amounts to a few throwaway/setup lines.

 

[woody554]

players pining after your unreachable characters is a GOOD thing. it's a side character done right.

uninteresting main npc's are of course a bad thing, but these two things are not in any way related.

 

[Deleted member 2466386]

I mean normally when I'm playing I would be like "Oh this girl has face, so she's supposed to be fuckable/have some CGs". Hiding faces in this case I would assume you mean not drawing her face at all, not covering by hands or masks. If that's the case NPC without faces are normally not important and purposed made that way to lower the effort and resource.

If you draw faces for even minor character, maybe if some people like it they would ask for spin-off. So you can make another game focusing that minor character.