Preferred gameplay VN

[BitterSweep]

I can imagine this question being already posted, but I'll ask anyway.

Having played a lot of harem visual novels, I am questioning myself too.
Do you prefer free roaming gameplay (you click on map, triggere events, grind affection points etc)?
Or do you enjoy more a linear tradiztional visual novel straight narration (choice pop up on screen as the scenes go)?

Thank you

 

[Slothi]

I will say at general that I prefer free roam to pick a path.

When free roam is done well it allows for non linear story telling, events to surprise you in ways you generally don't see coming, and to give a better sense of geography of the game.

That said, Free roam can be super infuriating when you have things like Spend 1 hour to earn 15$, Go spend time with girl who has only 2 dialogue options which you will need to spend 30x events with her to level up, or even worse, randomly figure out when girl is available to have the event trigger.

Basically Free Roam has more room to be better, but Pick a Path has less chance to become frustrating.

 

[radohak]

I have rarely seen a good sandbox (your 1st variant) on this site. At best, bearable like in some HTML/QSP games. Most annoying part being mindless grinding, pixel hunting and just dead ends of choices. Rarely any logical connection of what & when something is expected to happen. Sandbox = bad most of the time. To me personally, it is almost an automatic skip when I see that tag.

 

[Staimh]

It depends why you are playing the game in the first place

Moving from porn scenario to porn scenario rapidly is more easily managed in a VN style.
Playing a game with a sandbox/open world style and particularly with statistics/attributes/equipment development (often leads to grinding) is going to be very frustrating for the aspiring fapper.

However if you are playing the game to enjoy the problem solving and are happy to have porn scenarios thrown in as rewards for completing certain tasks then the free roam mechanic may well be more enjoyable.
The free roam mechanic, when done well, can allow for very varied replayability as well.

 

[BitterSweep]

I am currently designing my game.
I'm torn between a free roam and a pure VN style, both styles provide different pros and cons.
The plot won't be affected by this choice but I want to provide the best experience possible and asking people taste is a good way.

I'd like to know if there is any dev here have experiences with both type of games and what does he/she think.
What difficulties did you encounter? And do you regret choosing one style over the other for your games?