Story or freedom?

[The Dark Moonshine]

The story.
A true sandbox would be great, but in the end, it's either a hidden story or shallow because of the complexity to manage all possible choices.

 

[anne O'nymous]

The story obviously. And preferably one that still mean something if you remove all the lewd scenes.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Why not both?

Nothing wrong with linear games, but story + freedom + good mechanics = fun!

At least in theory. Getting it all working together is, obviously, a lot more difficult...

 

[Trapitalism101]

At least in theory. Getting it all working together is, obviously, a lot more difficult...

I think the trick is to focus on your story first (whether it is the individual character or overarching story) and then you can work more freedom into it after.

 

[Stretta]

Choice. I've always found story in these games to be largely irrelevant. I don't give a shit about killing a demon king or the shitty lore behind every dumb piece of tech in the universe. Keep your exposition dumps and discount Tolkien world-building. It's not what I'm after and I'm probably going to forget about it immediately, if I bother reading it at all. Give me likable characters and ways to interact with them.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I think the trick is to focus on your story first (whether it is the individual character or overarching story) and then you can work more freedom into it after.

More than the trick, it's the mandatory way.

You'll quickly lost the track of your story if you write it location by location and step by step. But if you write the story first, you know what happen next on this arc, as well as at what location and what moment it happen. You aren't anymore trying to assemble piece of story into a biggest story, but splitting your story, putting each piece at its right place. What is obviously easier.

In top of that, it will ease the coding if you want for each arc to form something coherent. Knowing that "this" can only happen after "that", you'll use a flag, and wait for it to be true before triggering the event. This while generally when you build the story by piece, what happen in the living-room can be 10 step in advance of what happen in the kitchen ; simply because the players don't cared about the kitchen, what you haven't expected.


Edit: typos, sorry.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Choice. I've always found story in these games to be largely irrelevant. I don't give a shit about killing a demon king or the shitty lore behind every dumb piece of tech in the universe. Keep your exposition dumps and discount Tolkien world-building. It's not what I'm after and I'm probably going to forget about it immediately, if I bother reading it at all. Give me likable characters and ways to interact with them.

How do you feel about optional and passive worldbuilding done via books, notes, letters, etc.? Like how they did it back in the day with System Shock audio logs. Environmental storytelling, basically.

 

[Trapitalism101]

How do you feel about optional and passive worldbuilding done via books, notes, letters, etc.? Like how they did it back in the day with System Shock audio logs. Environmental storytelling, basically.

It's really hard to do in games that people tend to play with one hand. The best lore is the kind that almost creeps up on you. ALA the origional Corruption of Champions.

 

[Rafster]

I voted for the freedom of choice, but story must not be left aside or the game will feel like an empty shell.

 

[Stretta]

How do you feel about optional and passive worldbuilding done via books, notes, letters, etc.? Like how they did it back in the day with System Shock audio logs. Environmental storytelling, basically.

If the setting and the subject are interesting enough I may read a few. Speaking of notes, I personally really don't like letters and notes. I feel like they're an overused crutch on the same level as literal writing on the walls. Not to say that they can't be used well, but too many games abuse the damn things. I tend to prefer the sort of worldbuilding that's more observational. Like just seeing people do stuff, or watching them interact and hearing them talk about stuff. Seeing the inhabitants just trying to live their lives does a lot more for making a world feel lived-in than spraying letters and encyclopedia entries all over the continent.

 

[Doorknob22]

Story > Freedom. The state of mind I'm in when playing pr0n is completely different than the state of mind I'm in when playing, let's say Red Dead Redemption or GTA where relaxed exploration is encouraged. When playing a pr0n game I always want to know who am I going to fuck next and preferably a general direction of how to do so. I don't want to just wonder around not knowing what to do and where the next pussy is at. Hence, freedom is encouraged only as long as I know where am I going and who my next girl is. And her hot mom.

 

[Mimir's Lab]

For me, it's story all the way. It's much easier to craft a decent story than it is to craft a decent game. I also think of it in terms of opportunity cost; If I wanted to play a game, there's a shit ton of games out there that are way better than anything an indie adult game dev can do on his own (at this point in time at least) that I rather spend time on. However, porn stories are few and far between and are one of the most effective ways to get the wank out of me.

 

[anne O'nymous]

How do you feel about optional and passive worldbuilding done via books, notes, letters, etc.? Like how they did it back in the day with System Shock audio logs. Environmental storytelling, basically.

As Stretta said, it's difficult to do this right with this kind of games ; mostly because the story is rarely deep enough for this.
It works for System Shock because the MC start with no knowledge at all. He awaken from his cryogenic sleep, himself expecting to have a blurry memory of where he is and why he's here, and obviously he know absolutely nothing of what happened during his sleep.
Plus, around half the logs he found are in fact to be seen as NPC interactions. He'll encounter nothing alive, but they aren't all dead when he awaken, and leaving/sending logs are their way to communicate with him. What would feel really odd in an adult game, since he will interact directly with the NPC.

As for pure encyclopedia, it already is just half interesting when it's regular games. Not that by itself the idea is bad, but writers tend to over do it, thinking that, since they aren't limited by the time, they can go as deep as they want in the detail. This lead to pages full of uninteresting and boring information.
But in the same time, if you try to avoid this tendency, you tend to do the exact opposite, giving something that is also relatively useless, because too superficial.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I'm perfectly fine with a game having a minimalistic plot. I care much more about quality gameplay, being allowed to do things my way, and having my fetishes catered to.

An extreme example for me would be Corrupted Saviors, which despite being text-only, has no real plot progression - the entire game is driven by a single objective, and the game gives you a good deal of freedom in getting it done, while serving up rewards for making progress towards the goal. It's basically a proper strategy game with the fetish being a key part of the progression.

Also, I find that I can't stand reading tons of text without any meaningful input, so I only have so much patience for story-heavy games.

 

[golrim]

I'm perfectly fine with a game having a minimalistic plot. I care much more about quality gameplay, being allowed to do things my way, and having my fetishes catered to.

I agree with this, but I still believe story is better than choice. Choice is a very useful tool for a story game, but unless there a story to tell interest in the game will decline; however story doesn't always have to be whats written within the game. Story can also be told by your own play-style as a player, how you would do so when telling a story about what you experience in a game. When you play most sandbox games that gives you tools to mess around with but not enough feed back from your input you feel like something is missing. When something does give feed back from your input and even better unexpected results outside of your control it feels like an unwritten story is being unfolded and at that moment you have a desire to take action to see it though.

I find people who experience this have more to say about a game they played because they have their own story to tell and not just a written story in the game. Kenshi is a good example because that game has no real story, but by your choice your own story unfolds, both within your control and out.

 

[mgtoons]

I like story with a little bit of choice/consequences. I don't like an open world where you have to go through the motions a hundred times seeing the same little snippets while trying to figure out what combination of time and place you have to be at to get the next crumb of content. That just takes me out of my enjoyment and kills any story. Some games can do a decent job at it like Nadia's treasure and their prequel. Those were done most excellent. But so many others are more of a chore and less of a way for me to get my kicks, so to speak.

 

[DingoDeer]

if the question about black and white situation, story first and then freedom...
a game that offer a good fucking story will appeal more than a game with mindless freedom of choices...
.
also in reality, product always go to the grey area.

to make a good cocktail, you should know how to mix it well.

 

[desmosome]

I think it's really a question of freedom vs developmental resources (time, skill, planning). The story suffers when there is too much freedom because a small team just cannot support a truely sprawling narrative. There needs to be some focus and truly world altering decisions need to be carefully planned out. Things like killing off a character, joining a faction, etc can quickly turn into a compounding nightmare for the devs if they want to deliver a quality narrative. Either the consistency and flow of the story suffers, or the time for development goes through the roof. And I'm not even talking about sandbox yet. Sandbox is such a trap for these amateur devs. If there is an actual reason to make a sandbox, by all means, go for it. Those reasons include actual gameplay like battles, RPG elements, management, gotta catch em all, life sim, etc. But god damnit, if you chop up a linear incest story to make a stupid "sandbox" walk around the house simulator...

 

[Powerline75]

It depends on the tpe of adult game, actually.
Any VN piece HAS to rely completely on the storytelling aspect, and choice freedom is limited (if it exists at all), on the choice of who you want to screw first, literally, figuratively, or both.
And, that's why around 50% of the adult games are, in fact, VN, or "almost VN", based on linear, or almost linear progression.

BUT!
We have actual, very successful examples where freedom of choice, or, as it has been mentioned already, environmental storytelling, worked wonders, even on an adult, porn game, that you're expecting to play one-handed.
Games like bonetown, for example, made exploring as much fun and enjoyable as screwing the next hot chick, if not even more fun.
And, here lies the real issue with that, just like desmosome said above. Development resources.
It's much easier to create a storytelling experience, than it is to create a sandbox environment, even if both are fully animated at the player's irect input (i.e. picking the poses/animations, and scenery, speed, etcetera).
The storytelling option has fewer characters, a theme that may limit the available pose selections, and very finite choice directory trees. For example, in a femdom themed title, anything maledom is out of the question, as well as most "rough fuck" variants, and so on.
But, on a free choice scenario, everything goes with everyone, and trying to add limitations per random NPC will make the overall game even more complicated, and resource hungry than it would already be, unless a team of developers work hard to optimize everything to make it playable

 

[M$hot]

I would like a hybrid, I need SOMETHING to hold on to as motivation while running around a sandbox, not be surprised by the missions I get/conversations I have. But on the flipside, a kinetic novel or VN with faux choices, I need it slapped on the box in big bright letters, to know I don't get to choose how a story goes. But I'd rather get told some of the backstory, shown a bit of how the MC came to be where he/she is at and then kicked out of the nest like a baby bird. Carry your personality/backstory with you as you wander the sandbox.
Occasionally there's a VN with a tight story, just enough power to the choices and hot writing but most of the time the story, for a lack of a better term is 'sandbox level'. So if the writing is going to be sandbox level, I'd rather also get the benefits of at least being in a sandbox. Otherwise step up the storytelling please.