How many branches do you want in a VN?

[PurpleDeep]

How many branches do you want in a VN?

Yes

 

[anne O'nymous]

In that situation I would have chosen to leave, I ain't staying in no creepy pyramid. But that wasn't what the LI I was interested in wanted to do. The game uses a point system with the LIs and you need to reach certain thresholds for certain scenes, so my choice is made for me.

Your two first sentences explain why the third one describe a bad game mechanism.

The game expect you to be a perfect lover, and for this you need to accept the imperfection of the character you love ; this is just bad. It's even worse since some points will come from actions that goes against all logic.
I don't remember having tried Sandstrom, but in Snowstorm there's a part where you've to jump from rock to rock. You've two choices.
The first one is the most logical, wait for the girl to leave the rock you've to jump to. There's water everywhere, you just enter the cave after hours in the snow. The rock is small. You don't speak the same language (so can't excuse yourself). Before finally saving you, the girl was near to kill you. If you miss your jump and make her fall, she'll surely kill you. If you miss your jump and need to grope her to not fall, she'll surely kill you. You wait before you jump. If you miss your jump and fall, you'll end in the water that you expect to be cold as fuck, there's risk that you die of cold in few days.
Well, no, to have the point you need to read dev's mind and not wait.

From the moment the game introduces the point system it invalidates all future choices, you're no longer picking between doing two actions but instead simply between two LIs.

It's not because there's some games that are doing it badly, that point systems are bad by themselves. Most of the times they are based on threshold, and works fine. This let you the possibility do be imperfect, while still forcing you to show a certain level of attention and interest for a character.

You don't want to explore the Pyramid ? Well, you'll not have the points coming from this exploration. But it's not a problem, because you only need 75% of the points to progress, what you already have. Plus you'll compensate the lost with the next series of points, since they'll correspond to something you agree to do.
In the end, thanks to this balanced system, most players have between 80% and 95% of the points with the characters that interest them. Therefore they are always in the right range, while still having full control over MC's action and the story.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

Or is it more about how you want to play it? Do you want to be a nice guy or a creepy bastard?

How about neither? I want to make choices that make sense in the context. To use an example that everyone should be familiar with, if I'm playing a Harry Potter game, and have, let's say Malfoy as protagonist, I'd be really weirded out with any genuine nice guy moves, at least initially. It can be a reformation story where an initially canonical wanker Malfoy protagonist makes his way into the good guys camp, let's say because he learns that you get into more witches' panties by being nice, not by calling them mudbloods, i.e. through reasonable self-interest.

The idea of "paths" is not contributing to fiction being better, and often pushes authors to diverge paths in entirely incomprehenmsible ways. Tea or coffee? Tea: you get a harem. Coffee: protagonist dies within 24 hours. Likewise, explicitly branding ambigous endings as "good" or "bad" is idiotic. I'm the one who judges whether an ending is a good one, not you, mr. author.

The good approach is to have several end-states for the characters, and yes, the more characters there are, the more permutations you need to work on. That is better controlled by having less characters, than less end-states per character.

 

[VMiller]

The idea of "paths" is not contributing to fiction being better, and often pushes authors to diverge paths in entirely incomprehenmsible ways. Tea or coffee? Tea: you get a harem. Coffee: protagonist dies within 24 hours. Likewise, explicitly branding ambigous endings as "good" or "bad" is idiotic. I'm the one who judges whether an ending is a good one, not you, mr. author.

A good approach when, depending on the choices in the menu, not only changes the end result of the game or the plot, but the dialogues with the characters. Immediately you get a dialogue, not a monologue.

But the best option is when the player is clearly put before a complex and equal choice of what to do in this situation. For example, the choice of which girl to go on a date with, and the second one will not forgive this and there will be no relationship with her now.

 

[jamdan]

I prefer fairly linear games for a few reasons. Fairly linear meaning 2-5 branches/paths at most.

When the game has too many branches it bogs down the development. If the developer can't manage them all at once, you'll end up getting updates focused on a single path and that means you may go a while without content for each path. Or if they do put each path in the update, you'll get very tiny progression in each path. You know those updates with 2k renders yet only 5 minutes of linear playing time.

People talk a lot about "choices that matter" but to me, that has hard limits. You can't give a choice for everything unless you want an overcomplex mess of a game. And a lot of those choices will end up being very illogical. Full of plot holes and inconsistency.

It's also about quality over quantity. To me, a few good paths & characters will always be better than a bunch of mediocre paths or a horde of LI's. "Feature creep" can happen to stories too. Keep adding stuff and before you know it, you've made a mess and can't get out.

 

[HarveyD]

People talk a lot about "choices that matter" but to me, that has hard limits. You can't give a choice for everything unless you want an overcomplex mess of a game. And a lot of those choices will end up being very illogical. Full of plot holes and inconsistency.

Whilst there certainly are limits, I don't see how significant choices would be illogical or create plot holes. Unless they're just written badly in which case there's going to be plot holes regardless of choices. Nor is anyone asking for a choice for everything.

 

[Yngling]

This is the same thing. It was the first thing I said.


To be very clear here. I was saying that devs should NOT make their choices be just about which love interest the protagonist pursues. There should be choices independent of that decision.

Sorry for misunderstanding in that case!

I feel like it falls out of your paradigm in some ways.
Each character has their own set of "routes" but if you choose one route with one character, there's a high likelihood you'd choose a similar one with another. But then again, many characters have more than one route that would appeal to the same person with a slightly different take on what a sub or dom might enjoy. So maybe it's your "as many as possible" choice but since nothing about the core story changes, it could even fit in the "only one" category.

This is what I mean when I say "paths" is just not a good way to approach what it means to have choices.

That assumes that choices you make when interacting with LI 1 will not affect your relationship with LI 2.
That sounds like lazy writing in my opinion.

The idea of "paths" is not contributing to fiction being better, and often pushes authors to diverge paths in entirely incomprehenmsible ways. Tea or coffee? Tea: you get a harem. Coffee: protagonist dies within 24 hours. Likewise, explicitly branding ambigous endings as "good" or "bad" is idiotic. I'm the one who judges whether an ending is a good one, not you, mr. author.

The good approach is to have several end-states for the characters, and yes, the more characters there are, the more permutations you need to work on. That is better controlled by having less characters, than less end-states per character.

You point out a number of issues:
1) Not every protagonist can act purely good or evil, it depends on his/her backstory => fully agreed although also bad people have a choice. Like you say, maybe there is some pay-off to being good, or maybe it's just player preference to play a bad person as "less bad" if that makes sense. Note that I am not talking about bad in the sense of a bad ending (i.e. the MC doesn't achieve his goal)
2) Incomprehensible choices leading to incomprehensible outcomes => fully agreed as well, this is really bad.
3) End states for characters => I'm not sure what you mean. I do agree that less LI's = better story.

When the game has too many branches it bogs down the development.

Not disagreeing but to me that sounds like a weak argument. There are ways to increase output, e.g. less or lower quality renders.

People talk a lot about "choices that matter" but to me, that has hard limits. You can't give a choice for everything unless you want an overcomplex mess of a game. And a lot of those choices will end up being very illogical. Full of plot holes and inconsistency.

I do disagree with this. GGGB and Red String are fantastic games in my opinion. Sure you can complain about stuff but nothing is illogical or full of plot holes. Some desired paths may be a bit hard to find but I don't think this is a major flaw.

 

[VMiller]

I do disagree with this. GGGB and Red String are fantastic games in my opinion. Sure you can complain about stuff but nothing is illogical or full of plot holes. Some desired paths may be a bit hard to find but I don't think this is a major flaw.

In my opinion, this is a big flaw in the plot. I like the explicit possibility of choice, when the player is faced with a dilemma, rather than a set of choices of random events that will lead to some result.
There are a lot of games here that you can only fully get through by reading the walkthroughs. This speaks not to the wisdom of the developers, but rather to the inability to compose a story.

 

[anne O'nymous]

In my opinion, this is a big flaw in the plot. I like the explicit possibility of choice, when the player is faced with a dilemma, rather than a set of choices of random events that will lead to some result.

Be faithful to your boyfriend or cheat. Be a cheater, a slut, or a whore. Do or don't do drugs. Around half choices in Good Girl Gone Bad are direct moral dilemma. And you can choose one or the other, you'll end with content ; way less for the faithful route for obvious reasons. What content and how dark it will be depending of your choice.
It's one of the not so rare games where there isn't a good route and where the player build the story like he want it to be.

There are a lot of games here that you can only fully get through by reading the walkthroughs. This speaks not to the wisdom of the developers, but rather to the inability to compose a story.

There's a lot of games out there that you can only fully get by reading the walkthroughs. Silly AAA studios who know nothing about game building...

While I agree that a game that absolutely need a walkthrough is clearly badly wrote, it doesn't mean that the need for a walkthrough is necessarily the proof of a bad design or bad writing.
A game like super powered could benefit from a walkthrough due to is diversity. But it's not a bad game, just a pure sandbox one where small detail can change the scene you'll see. And it's intended that way, part of the game being to find those variations. 95% of them are purely logical and you can find them by yourself if you take the time to think about it. But who want to think nowadays, especially when playing an adult game ? Clearly not you and you aren't the only one.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

3) End states for characters => I'm not sure what you mean. I do agree that less LI's = better story.

I'm talking about character arcs. Unless we are talking about a story where nothing really happens besides the protag getting laid, a story will have some character arcs happening in the meanwhile. If protagonist's choices actually matter then conclusion of these arcs will vary, and will affect the ending, even if the protagonist does not pursue these characters romantically.

Like, say you have a Princess-in-exile and her friend Priestess. If you choose to bed Priestess, whether or not Princes gets her throne back affects the ending type, even though she's not the romantic partner in the path you've chosen.

Of course that can go out of control very quickly, in the example above, assuming the Priestess has an arc of her own, you get 4 variations to the non-romantic plot, multiplied by romantic plot (3 options, 4 if threesome is permitted), so even 2 characters already give you 12 to 16 options you have to account for.

 

[M$hot]

I guess I prefer the truckers lay-by? There's not really branching so much as there's small detours aside. Like a Sandbox, the story is the story, but if you do or don't visit a character, do a quest, fuck them or not, is up to you. So while the impact on the story is minimal, it does very much impact the play session.

The reason I would like branching in a VN is to avoid a LI I don't like. In simple terms, I want a buffet, not a mukbang. You pick the plates (story) and what you put on the plates (characters) but please let me choose what I want to consume. Quite a few games where I had to basically rush through content with 1 character because the choices were 'go through or quit the game'.

I do like the 'good/bad/neutral' idea, but I'd prefer it on a case by case basis rather than a 'build'. Same with submissive and dominant, I can want to dominate one lady but let another dominate me, I can want to be sweet and gentle to one woman and hatefuck the next one.

To be honest, if there's attractive ladies my lizard brain is pretty much satisfied, so it's not that deep for me. But basically, I like choice, to share or not, to be kind or not and to deal with a character or not, and even better if it's a case by case basis rather than resultant of a choice I made 20 minutes ago. What if 20 minutes ago I decided to be kind to 1 character, should that lock me out of hatefucking the nasty bitch that I met 5 minutes ago?

Honestly, no idea if this was at all a useful answer to your question.

 

[hakarlman]

Thank you for making this poll. It's one of the polls I also wanted to make. The nice thing about you making it, is I won't have to deal with upsetting people for making too many posts.

My god man, the information in this thread is so helpful, I'm talking mega helpful. I'm going to link to this post in my signature to drive traffic to it.

 

[qwsaq]

That assumes that choices you make when interacting with LI 1 will not affect your relationship with LI 2.
That sounds like lazy writing in my opinion.

I'm not trying to pitch this particular game to you, but they don't really live in a vacuum. Some interactions between other characters do change depending on how you have progressed with them respectively. Also note that this is a game where you covertly dose people with a mind control drug. Some lack of awareness of what you're up to on the part of other characters is implied.
You assume that I assume; but your assumption is wrong.

It seems to me that you're conflating all VN's with dating sims. If that's the case then your paradigm makes some sense. Those just don't appeal to me though.

 

[VMiller]

There's a lot of games out there that you can only fully get by reading the walkthroughs. Silly AAA studios who know nothing about game building...

In the first Residen Evil games, the player freely moves around the location and explores it, interacts with various objects. But quests are not AAA games, their era is long gone.

 

[Guntag]

Basically the reason why I personally prefer VN's / games over real porn and erotica is that in a VN we can make choices which impact the story, shaping it to our liking.

If you want a game that has a lot impactful choices on the story I suggest you try College Daze ! I haven't found an other game with so many ways to play the game !

 

[anne O'nymous]

In the first Residen Evil games, the player freely moves around the location and explores it, interacts with various objects. But quests are not AAA games, their era is long gone.

Well, I'm sure that Bethesda and CD Projekt, among many others, would be glad to learn that they don't release AAA games.

 

[LovePlayFantasy]

Persona 4 is a good example of having the same ending route, but at the same time of multiple endings. All route lead to 1 specific event, and then you get to make your final choice.
This final choice affects the ending of the game.

Most of it, isn't about the ending, it's about what characters survived and made it to the ending based on your choices.

 

[VMiller]

Well, I'm sure that Bethesda and CD Projekt, among many others, would be glad to learn that they don't release AAA games.

Can you name a choice in these games that would cause the plot to branch out?

In many of these games actually linear plot, side quests in general do not affect anything globally. The apogee of this was the ending of Mass Effect 3, the mass dissatisfaction of players who were deceived by the promise that every choice is important.

But at the moment we are discussing visual novels. From it I expect first of all an interesting story and characters, you can't surprise me with any sexual scenes.

But here it's important to keep a compromise between the freedom of choice of the player and the story. The limitation is the development time. If my game has many branches, players will get a few minutes of gameplay with each update, that's not good. A linear plot gives the opportunity to develop the story in the right direction and give the player significant progress in the game each update, but then the player becomes a passive observer.

 

[Meaning Less]

The apogee of this was the ending of Mass Effect 3, the mass dissatisfaction of players who were deceived by the promise that every choice is important.

We are talking about branching paths here, not multiple endings.

You can have a very detailed and branched story like mass effect 3 that still ultimately leads to a single ending (or 3 similar ones). But that's irrelevant because what matters is what happens DURING the game and not just at the ending...

 

[VMiller]

My opinion. It makes no sense to give the player the illusion of choice.

Example. The MC has a choice to spy on his mother or sister as she washes in the shower or not to do so. I'm sure 100% of players will spy.

If the MC is spotted and kicked out of the house as a pervert, the player will load the save and try to act like a high moral person and not sin voyeuristic, but the player will be voyeuristic without consequences because the consequences can be avoided by cheating. There really is no choice.

Much better another option. No tragic consequences immediately after spying. But later, for example already lying in bed with him, his mother or sister will admit to the MC that she noticed him.