Systems/stats - How much is too much?

[UpAfterTen]

So I've been on a binge of 3D RenPy games over the past couple of months and I've noticed a lot of difference from game to game regarding how many stats/systems there are to track. Basically I'm curious how much you think is too much on the Game-Novel spectrum. Do you like games where there are a lot of systems and stats to level up, or do you prefer games that are more akin to reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book with graphics?

Let's take two popular examples: Acting Lessons and Being a DIK.

I'm not too far into Acting Lessons, but so far it doesn't seem like there's much in the way of a stat system aside from tracking how much other characters like you based on choices. The story unfolds and you make choices, but there aren't huge numbers in your face. Maybe this gets added in later in the game and I just haven't gotten to it yet, but either way the opening is a good example of this.

On the flip side you have Being A DIK where you have to track Chick and DIK stats that unlock different options based on the personality type you go for. It's still relatively simple because you have a single spectrum you have to track, but it adds an element of requiring you to think about your choices and gamifies things in a way the straight Visual Novel doesn't.

And then I've seen Visual Novels that have multiple personality traits you have to track on top of juggling relationships. Some of those seem to be in the Chapter 1 or Chapter 2 phase of development, and it makes me wonder if it's a situation where devs don't appreciate how much complexity they're adding and eventually they simplify and burn out, or if it's a slow evolution of the Visual Novel medium towards more complexity.

So what do you prefer? Enjoy the story and make choices that affect your relationship? Or go full bore into a Dating Sim with layers of RPG mechanics?

 

[khumak]

I don't think there's a limit as long as it's fun and the game includes an easy way for the player to keep track of what's going on. I should not need to build myself a spreadsheet to keep track of what's going on. IMO, I also should not have to try and keep track of stats that are hidden. If it's a stat that matters I should be able to find out what it is in a couple of clicks in game.

IMO, Being a DIK really doesn't have hardly any stats that matter for you to track. There's really only 2. Chick vs DIK, and Affinity. I found Affinity to be a little confusing at first but it wasn't hard to see what your current affinity was. It was just a little less obvious how important it was compared to the Chick vs DIK stat. There were some other stats that were important for minigames and buying stuff but none of them were important for the relationships with the girls.

 

[Deleted member 3145675]

Hi,
Too much is when visible stats are utterly useless or pointless.
Too much is when there are invisible stats. (that are actually important)
Too much is when Paths are stat locked. (and coded in an extremely poor way most of the time)
Too much is when you can see every NPC stats in the game UI but NOT the stats for the MC.

 

[Anonimed]

My opinion:
I LOVE STATS!!!

Why? because I feel like my MC is more molded to my liking or the archetype that I want to play in that moment, it's more my story, my mc, my stats and my possibilities, it feels more personal and is more fun to know that my decisions are reflected in the world and in my future options. Also the game is more replayable (fap shouldn't be the only purpose in an adult game, gameplay and story is important too).

For example, Ravager.

I played it like an evil dragon, like a merciful dragon, like a devourer dragon, etc.

Only please do not abuse (hours of farming for one stat is not fun).

 

[woody554]

I like stats, and nothing is too much if it serves a purpose. also my tracking of them isn't that important, their real point is to simulate ghost into the machine ie creating the illusion of personality and it's change.

that said, MOST stats could be expressed in one single 'love exp' type variable, and the odds are the additional corruption, domination, horniness, mood etc serve no actual purpose. but if you feel you need them, go nuts. nothing wrong with having a bunch of extra variables you end up only using once or not at all. I see a lot of people complaining about them, but it really doesn't matter one bit what's under the hood.

but if they can't be seen it requires other type of game feedback to tell the player he's making progress and not caught in a loop bug.

 

[Marcibx]

It is hard to draw the line because it depends on the genre as well. For example, if the game has rpg elements, you need stats, but if it is just a VN, you don't necessarily. I mean, imagine a trainer game without stats. Impossible.

And besides the genre you have to consider that different people like different things. Some people like to have stats in VNs (I do) and some people don't. But in reality, unless we talk about a kinetic novel, every game has stats (each decision is a variable) they just might not be tracked visibly. So when people like decisions and don't like stats that just mean that they don't like to keep track of them and to work for them.

And that brings us to the main points: what you do with the stats and how you make the players get them:

1. The first is quite simple: If you have stats they have to affect the gameplay. People almost always like to have stats, when they are meaningful - games are all about doing something and then getting something in exchange. That is why enemies drop loot or winning a race unlocks something new. Hard work must be rewarded, so if the player gets nothing for increasing a stat then you are better off just leaving it out. (Btw, that is the challenge having many stats, because as you add more, the games complexity increases exponentially if you want to keep all the stats relevant and meaningful)

2. The second is how you increase the stats. Grind is bad, but what is it? I would say: grind is when gameplay becomes "tedious". It becomes basically work - you do work for the result and not for the sake of doing it. So you can check the checkbox of the first point and have amazing rewards for increasing the stats, players might still find the way they have to do it tedious. They will do it, but they will hate every moment of it (or in case of a visual novel, skip the scenes). So, if it takes some effort to increase a stat, then it better be a fun way to do so, otherwise don't force players to grind. (At least not a lot - some work can make the reward all the more valuable.)

[tl;dr]
Having stats is good as long as they are meaningful, and fun to manipulate

And if you want to take a more professional look at the subject, I highly recommend you to watch

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.

 

[Venoma]

As a general whole I generally don't mind stats. Especially in relationship to more recent games that have been trying to expand that approach into more meaningful and over-arching character development aspects like BAD and College Kings did with their DIK/Chik and personality affinity. I can also acknowledge the necessary existence in a lot of development approach cases regardless if some end up have to end up feeling at least somewhat "grindy" or not.

But as far as a "how much is too much" factor goes....for me I find it in a lot of games still copycatting what at this point is essentially a very outdated, overly-simplified, and overly-tedious "answer this random aspect of conversion that to get your 1 girl point" going full overkill implantation of "trying to make choices matter".

I'll use the game Where the Heart Is as an example and which I'm playing through now. Really solid overall game that like a lot of other people I find myself enjoying...but holy heck with the constant barrage of the answer this slight variation option for a point stuff. Which as a grander scheme whole isn't really adding anything I can see to the game a majority of the time other then that surrounding absolute need I feel as a player to constantly reference a step by step walkthrough. Given the playtime I'm dumping into it is fairly extensive, and the default surface assumption pretty much everybody is going to carry into these games is that by missing points I might end up locking myself out of content I have no desire to go back and replay the game again to get back if/when I find the need to latter.

Now i know this game has a pretty strong fanboy base, but I don't see how anybody can argue on that aspect being good game design. If you want to add that constant barrage of different option answers to your games as a greater roleplaying layer element by all means have it. But condense the tedious 10+ times every conversation exchange those have a potentially game influencing impact into 1-2 tops, and at this point unless dev is trying to milk more money out of a higher patreon tier by offering a walkthrough...I really don't get why more are not just slapping some kind of "this choice matters" indicator on those condensed down 1-2 choices (which in turn lets the player who is going to end up using a walkthrough regardless know it's ok to just play through the rest without worrying about screwing themselves). Like it doesn't have to literally state +5 points or what not, but maybe just an (impactful) tag after the choice that does a fairly more straight forward and obvious framed up presentation job at suggesting what that impact will be.

 

[Uthuriel]

I don't care for stats at all.
There enough of those for me in WoW to manage.

 

[VertexDestroyer]

I love stats so much if someone found a way to make Excel erotic I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

 

[UpAfterTen]

You need to date an accountant or someone who works in finance.

 

[Rafster]

I'm a fan of sandboxes, included their grind and stat festivals. Having said that, I'm fully aware why a lot of players despise the grinding, so I try to balance that on the game I'm making.

 

[gunderson]

This topic reminds me of Loser (https://f95zone.to/threads/loser-v0-05-00-public-night-city-productions.34576/), one of my current game crushes (by Night City Productions). That game has fucking dozens of skills that you can keep track of, most of which interact with a bunch of other stats and skills, but it manages them in such a way that making progress is actually fun rather than the worst Goddamn thing in the world.

Mainly (or at least that's how I'm describing it right now), it's because aside from the life sim stats (primarily health, focus, and stamina), pretty much all the skills in the game either stay where they are or just go up, depending on what you do, and you can generally trust that improving your skills is always a good idea for at least some useful purpose no matter what the skill is (or the thing it levels up isn't implemented yet, so it's just neutral). The difference isn't so much that by making certain choices you're either succeeding or fucking yourself over, as that by making certain choices you're either making more or less progress toward some goal. That means that there can be a lot of choices, and the choices you make do matter, but none of them is so much a 'bad' choice as just a 'less optimal' choice. It's also important to note that, at least as of right now, that game doesn't have a time limit or very many ways to game over. Not to say the game is easy, because some of the goals are pretty damn tricky to achieve in anything resembling a reasonable time frame, but rather that the difficulty isn't in avoiding death or a game over. So it doesn't make me as nervous or stressed out as a traditionally intense stat-heavy game (for example, if it had a time limit), but has more of that delightful Numbers Go Up feel to it, and a lot of the fun is in the scenes you unlock and in optimization strategies.

On the other hand, I think that when a game has a strictly limited scenario or time limit, that's when more and more shit to keep track of starts to get awful. In theory, Free Cities (https://f95zone.to/threads/free-cities-v0-10-7-1-free-cities.737/) (if this game is your jam, btw, I highly recommend looking up pregmod) does a really good job of letting you manage a bunch of resources and keeping things fun. But there definitely gets to be a point in the game where, if you're not careful, you can get far enough in the game's timeline without increasing your profits/resources enough that any time an attack occurs you're completely fucked and there's no way to gain enough ground to even the playing field out, so you just reload and reload over and over and pray that RNGesus doesn't fuck you.

I don't really think there's much reason to address the Visual Novel question here. Some visual novels have few to no stats and that can be totally fine. It's not by any means all I want to play ever, but there's absolutely room for a well-designed VN in my life.

On the other hand, some people just absolutely fucking hate the idea of porn games having gameplay at all, and...well, that feels kinda crazy to me, but it's their porn. I don't think they're wrong or anything as far as what games they personally enjoy, but this idea that no porn games should ever have any gameplay of any kind seems dumb as hell. Some people like them (I should know, I'm one of them) so why shouldn't such games exist?

 

[rk-47]

BADIK is what i consider a good amount of stat systems, same goes for summertime saga and long live the princess, but i have seen crazy stat games like holiday island where the stats are key to everything and i dont prefer that