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TD1900

#701
Game Developer
Dec 8, 2017
790
7,369
I met the game now, downloaded and looked at the videos, saw some men having sex with women, would it be possible to avoid this, leaving them only to the mc, or is it part of the story?
The above is a bit of misinformation, but as it's been said, you won't be able to avoid seeing old men dicking down prostitutes and whacking off. So I'd avoid this project if that puts you off.
 

selberdreher

Member
Dec 29, 2017
448
943
Never understood why devs add shitty free roam sections to their games; ruins the flow of the story in my opinion.
Despite your unnecessarily pejorative phrasing, I partially agree with you on this. I think they are tedious, and while they not necessarily ruin, they do hamper the flow of the story and i am always anxious i have missed something (like talk with A, then B, afterwards return to A again, to get finally to C etc).

So why do devs add them in VNs?
Possible explanations are:
  1. To show off showcase their coding proficiency: it is presumably harder to program a free-roam than just a linear storyline. I guess this can be a source of pride for a coder and perhaps even fun for them to do. So it is good for their motivation, which in turn is good for us.
  2. To intentionally break the flow of the story, in order to prevent Players to just skip through the whole content they worked their ass off for half a year in minutes, and then immediately start complaining about the next update is six months away.
  3. To please those who actually enjoy this gameplay.
  4. To give players more Agency in what order they experience the content available or if they prefer to not make a decision at all. For instance in this update i pondered if i should skip the whole Jakob/Emma/Warren issue by entirely avoiding Jakob. If you dont click on him, you dont have to commit to any of those two choices and their possible repercussions, and as a matter of fact the Velvet Room Emma scene plays out differently for those three instances.
Yes, i am not a fan of free-roam sections in a VN and i very rarely play sandbox games for this reason, but i can understand why Developers may want to insert them into their game.

Edit: changed an unintentional derogative verb to an (hopefully, damn that foreign language!) intended positive one.
 
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ename144

Engaged Member
Sep 20, 2018
3,420
14,167
Damn i was looking forward to finally read your summary, but i held back until the public release to avoid spoilers.
As always it is a invaluable Read, and i do very much appreciate your input from the "softer" side of PC players.
After catching up to the current status of this thread (still like 14+ pages to go) i would like to pick each others brains again, that is if i find something worthwhile to add, however just for now real quick:

In my Playthrough Dalia approached me with this request although i took Kathleens Birthday gift. So this doesnt seem to be the trigger.
I'm away from home at the moment so I can't do any testing, but my high Toughness run was not asked to check on Harper and Lucy, yet it was when I reloaded an earlier save and turned Kathleen's gift down (I was curious as to how it would change the dialog with Rose).

From reading the new walkthrough, it looks like the scene has a threefold trigger: turn down Kat's gift, OR have Jacob vouch for the MC to Harper, OR be on Veronica's path.

The first two make sense; as Dalia said, the house girls talk. The third implies that Dalia reads something trustworthy into the MC sucking up to Samson, which is certainly interesting.
 
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Foind

Newbie
Jan 3, 2021
16
33
Don't understand why people are so critical of sandbox and freeroams, I actually really love them and minigames, anything that increases player interactivity with the game/avn is a plus for me because it helps in making me feel like I am a part of the game instead of just someone on the outside looking in while narrative plays out.
And it isnt really bad in PC like you'd miss content if you chose x instead of y, aside from the first bar freeroam with feli/ian/mina, iirc MC is able to do everything available in the freeroam provided you don't intentionally cut it short
 

TM | Twisted Games

GDI Spec Ops
Moderator
Dec 30, 2020
434
2,063
As with all things, sandbox and freeroams are as good as the designers implementing them. I tend to prefer not to have them, but in Pale Carnations they are used to add a depth of character to the club itself, and allow you to interact with more people then you would otherwise get a chance to. In BaDIK it would be nice to have less, but they serve a function in letting you dictate what happens during set pieces, and interact with social media.

In lesser games, which I will not mention, they often are used as ways to repeat scenes to add filler to games, or to make timing puzzles, again, to artificially extend the length of a game. So, while in general I prefer a kinetic novel, it's all about the design in the end.
 

DH4444

Member
Apr 14, 2019
109
182
I no longer do business with Patreon. From the number of SubscribeStar subscribers many developers have in addition to their Patreon accounts, I'm clearly not the only one.
Maybe you could add SubscribeStar or Buy me a Coffee as other payment sources. I really like your game and want to support it. Keep up the great work.
If you could, add date & time to the saves. It would help in keeping track of various routes tried.
 
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dolfe67

Forum Fanatic
Apr 25, 2020
5,081
14,096
Don't understand why people are so critical of sandbox and freeroams, I actually really love them and minigames, anything that increases player interactivity with the game/avn is a plus for me because it helps in making me feel like I am a part of the game instead of just someone on the outside looking in while narrative plays out.
And it isnt really bad in PC like you'd miss content if you chose x instead of y, aside from the first bar freeroam with feli/ian/mina, iirc MC is able to do everything available in the freeroam provided you don't intentionally cut it short
To each their own. Personally I'm ok with freeroam but not with "sandbox" or too many minigames. I "play"(read) those games more like novels than real games. The gameplay simply being able to choose what you want the MC to do, getting more engaged/immersed with the story.

Also it's hard to play with one hand :BootyTime:
 

selberdreher

Member
Dec 29, 2017
448
943
To each their own. Personally I'm ok with freeroam but not with "sandbox" or too many minigames. I "play"(read) those games more like novels than real games. The gameplay simply being able to choose what you want the MC to do, getting more engaged/immersed with the story.

Also it's hard to play with one hand :BootyTime:
Yes, i have a similar approach; my preferred "gameplay" in VNs is to have a lot of meaningful choices, to be able to shape my own story in the frame a creator has set up for me.
So that means kinetic novels, which i dont consider to be games, are normally off the table completely for me, and those with fake choices like [continue/game over] or "Fuck this Girl?" [yes/no] are in essential kinetic also.
I can read them if they are good enough, but i cant play them.

The only advantage of free-roams over choice-driven ones is, that a Dev is able to present a scenery without distracting, view blocking decision bars, which is a major one, given GIL3Ds talent to create those pictures.
The heavy, heavy downside of free-roams is the hunt for interactable pixels in the sceneries, which disrupts the flow of the story. In my opinion there is no real cure to this, because either one doesnt provide any visual help at all, which would be the most immersive, or outlines and/or highlights interactable objects in a certain way, which isnt gold either in terms of immersion.

I mentioned my anxiousness of missing something in free roams, which i would like to clarify: I am totally cool not to get to see all the available content, if it is based on my decisions, because that is exactly what meaningful choices are for, but i hate to miss content i could see in my current playthrough just because i failed to click on some pixels i overlooked. Which lead in my case to check in on the club owners gathering with Hana for like six times and multiple times with Warren and Jakob in the security room to be sure nothing has changed.
This is tedious and severely hampers the flow.

In my opinion there is next to nothing a free-roam can do, which cannot be achieved also by a well designed, branching and converging decision tree; and after you worked through that tree you have the peace of mind, that you did all what there was to do.
 
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ename144

Engaged Member
Sep 20, 2018
3,420
14,167
Yes, i have a similar approach; my preferred "gameplay" in VNs is to have a lot of meaningful choices, to be able to shape my own story in the frame a creator has set up for me.
So that means kinetic novels, which i dont consider to be games, are normally off the table completely for me, and those with fake choices like [continue/game over] or "Fuck this Girl?" [yes/no] are in essential kinetic also.
I can read them if they are good enough, but i cant play them.

The only advantage of free-roams over choice-driven ones is, that a Dev is able to present a scenery without distracting, view blocking decision bars, which is a major one, given GIL3Ds talent to create those pictures.
The heavy, heavy downside of free-roams is the hunt for interactable pixels in the sceneries, which disrupts the flow of the story. In my opinion there is no real cure to this, because either one doesnt provide any visual help at all, which would be the most immersive, or outlines and/or highlights interactable objects in a certain way, which isnt gold either in terms of immersion.

I mentioned my anxiousness of missing something in free roams, which i would like to clarify: I am totally cool not to get to see all the available content, if it is based on my decisions, because that is exactly what meaningful choices are for, but i hate to miss content i could see in my current playthrough just because i failed to click on some pixels i overlooked. Which lead in my case to check in on the club owners gathering with Mina for like six times and multiple times with Warren and Jakob in the security room to be sure nothing has changed.
This is tedious and severely hampers the flow.

In my opinion there is next to nothing a free-roam can do, which cannot be achieved also by a well designed, branching and converging decision tree; and after you worked through that tree you have the peace of mind, that you did all what there was to do.
I agree with you about kenetic novels, but I'm a little more forgiving of free roams. I do think they can serve a useful purpose, like shaking up the gameplay, or illustrating the size and scope of the Carnation Club more intuitively than a series of pre-scheduled talks would. They can also make it a lot easier for players who don't want to see every last detail to skip the bits they don't care about.

How to balance those advantages against the fear of accidentally missing content (for completionists) or having to track down specific interactions (for speed runners) is a tricky business. But I'd say PC does a pretty good job of it.
 
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