These options are huge waste of your resources, and your project will surely fail if you go this way. All of these options do not make any sense unless you have atleast a team of 4-5 people working on a small scale VN game.
Just go with mixed option, this will grant you plenty amount of choices to plan forward. You can't make everyone happy. Care about the community feedback, but never let them direct you away from your vision.
With each option you offer to your players, you have to cut down something else to cover the costs. Costs are varying from time to money.
For an example; let's say you gave an option to set evil faction's races: blacks, mixed, whites. Basically tripling your development costs. Then you have to move equal amount of resources from other parts of your game; maybe smaller amount of interactions, diminished storyline, palette/texture swapped characters while ignoring anatomical and cultural characteristics of races & individuals, increased time between updates or reduced content per update etc.
Always think about your resources and plan ahead before commiting completely. Also remember that, "Even the best laid plans go awry." as Duncan said.
If you still want to go for choice option, using 2D art in combination with sprites would be the wiser choice.
To give you a clear example, let me give you few examples of my own decisions. While I am developing an ambitious real time based rpg, my thought process will give you few ideas.
My Resources
Enough money to cover my own expenses for fulltime commitment for one and half year, first version will take almost a year (may2019-Jan/March20) mainly due to the assets and getting engine frameworks ready for monthly content updates. Then I have to rely on kickstarter/patreon, plus I already spent few thousand bucks for several frameworks and soundpacks, and I'll have to spend more for 2D art like original icon packs. I am also well versed in 3D modeling and I am a computer engineer who took additional classes about game design.
My vision vs Realistic Approach
12 Unique Classes. > I had to reduce it to
two/three for the initial release and I don't even have any idea how many I can implement later. Because they require additional animations, renders, 3d models, other effects.
Animated Dialogue Scenes. Unless I get nice following base within first year, I am going to rely purely on
still image based renders.
Different Type of Weapons (Naginata, Modern Arms, Shield, Dual Wield etc.).
Katana and yumi for the initial release, more will added in later releases.
Voice Acting.
No VA other than few character reactions unless I get proper funding.
Real Time Combat. I choose
square grid turn based combat system, cause of the costs and complex ai algorithms. I really want a combat system like in Dragon Age: Origins. Non combat situations will have a free movement.
Realistic (Circular) Tile Movement Calculation.
Diamond tile movement system for combat (Fire Emblem style), instead of more accurate systems like in the Divinity Original Sin, because it is way more efficient and faster to implent.
Pure C++. I use
mix of C++ and C# based Visual Scripting instead of pure C++. While C++ is superior in terms of efficiency, control and performance; visual scripting is way more easier and less time consuming to implement than a pure C++ code.
And few more.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to advertise my game, nor belittle ideas of other people. I am just here to share my experience to help and guide aspiring developers.
