School settings.
How the MC's "best friend" almost always has to be super annoying.
Forced relationships and/or starting the game already in a relationship. I don't want to read a MC going on and on about how hot and great a character is if I couldn't care less about them.
CONSTANT inner monologues from every character.
"Big Dick Brainwashing" and then how every love interest pretty much only talks and thinks about said big cock.
Your answers are great. But you know what is worse than a school setting? When a University setting is made into a School Setting. Really, maybe it was for me, but my school and university life were really different. Just the freedom i had in uni was epic.
The annoying best friend syndrome is more because of writing. In games that have good writing you actually starts to care about these characters.
Forced relationships are something that i really hate. I think the most egregious one i've seen is in "Welcome to Free Will", where you're involved with a girl that already has a boyfriend but is jealous of you and acts like your girlfriend. It's really pathetic, and while the game is actually pretty decent, this seems like the worst hill the dev is trying to die on.
Usually i don't dislike MC inner monologue when it matters. But i hate when we enter other character's minds. We (usually) don't have psychic powers.
Out of curiosity.. I'm looking for a game where the MC (male protagonist) isn't a douchebag/scumbag/piece of shit and doesn't treat any girl like a whore seconds next of got laid.. It's a matter of roleplay, I know, it could be a way of spice things up, I know that too, but I feel tired (really tired) about all that dirty/trash talking assuming the girl is a whore/bitch/slut/whatever and that's usual (you don't usually see the way back so the girl telling 'son of a bitch' to the MC, I only remember that situation on 'College Bound' when the MC fucks Miranda and that's because I've played the game recently).. Come to mind 'AOA Academy' or 'Hillside', on this games there's no dirty crap talking but there isn't barelly any sex scene too (specially on the second one)..
Said that, the second choice I've been really tired about could be the 'slowbuuurn' pretext, many good games could die for this attempt ('Hillside' exposed before is an example), between exposing lewd scenes right from the very beginning and the other (I mean, shows nothing update after update) should be a middle term, I suppose..
I usually have problem with the opposite. In a lot of games here, the protagonist is or a "goody two shoes" or an asshole, but that is portrayed as being a little bit better than most. I prefer guys that you can shape his character a little, like the MC of being a DIK as an example, or interesting characters like the ones in "Chasing Sunsets', "Intertwined" or "Leap of Faith".
Your second point is one i agree. It seems that there's two schools nowadays. The "slowburn" or "classic" school, and the more modern "sex scene in the realease of the game (even if basically forced)" school. The first one is how it was mostly done in the past, but it's really unnatural. That's just not how shit goes down in real life.
The second one is bad when it takes away the freedom of the player. Usually being a meaningless one night stand just to show the dev can animate something, or a sex scene with the forced relationship character. "Intertwined" actually does a good job in this, since while it does have the
possibility of a sex scene right at the start, you can easily not go through with it and there's an entire route if you do.
