What are some common porn game tropes you hate?

[philip_herrup]

See title. I'm working on a new game - my first one, in fact. Without spoiling too much: Visual Novel, 2DCG (I have a pretty amazing artist, I think) somewhat """realistic""" medieval fantasy setting, extremely choice-oriented.
Although I am quite experienced from other mediums in both storytelling and programming I was thinking that I could use a "market analysis" of sorts.
I have played a lot of porn games, and obviously have my own ideas about what stupid things I hate that every game pulls, but I was wondering how much they matched with the average person's. The question is both about "story tropes" and "technical tropes" (minigames, narration flow, etc).

I'll name a few I don't like, to start:
- oversized tits (I like big tits, but too much is too much) and comically large penis (so many MCs have dicks bigger than their arms)
- useless skimpy armor (man, you need to choose between showing skin and protection)
- no consequences for cheating, ever (girls NEVER give a shit about you banging a whole harem, I think it becomes that much more immersive if you have to convince them)
- virgin whore (girl who is introduced as a "slut" conveniently becomes shy and grows a hymen back as soon as you fuck: turns out, the rumors were entirely fabricated, and there was no fire to this smoke; the only girl allowed not to be a virgin is the "quirky sexually liberated chick", but that's a different archetype). I like virgins as much as the next guy, but like everything, it doesn't work if you shove it everywhere. Japanese games are especially guilty of this one, but plenty of westerners do it too.
- the dev having a relatable character (or worse, the MC) parrot the dev's (often, but not always, liberal) political/social opinions as a total non sequitur or worse, as a way to impress a girl (because that totally works).

While I'm at it, here's another question: I kind of want my game to have many endings, at many different points of the game with the content not even remotely distributed evenly between the various routes. There may be some that cut you short right in the prologue, and some that last all the way for hours of gameplay. Do you lot think this would this become annoying? Maybe it could be mitigated by adding an autosave/warning system.

 

[Catapo]

I am glad to hear that there is a 2dcg medieval game in the works so good luck with that BUT....

There are plenty of threads dedicated to porn tropes that people dislike so please search for those instead of starting a new one.

Regarding the multiple endings... yes it would be annoying. It worked with Stanley Parable because it was a humour filled game and if I recall the game was throwing you back in after an ending. It would have been annoying if it kicked you back to the menu or to credits.

 

[philip_herrup]

I am glad to hear that there is a 2dcg medieval game in the works so good luck with that BUT....

There are plenty of threads dedicated to porn tropes that people dislike so please search for those instead of starting a new one.

Regarding the multiple endings... yes it would be annoying. It worked with Stanley Parable because it was a humour filled game and if I recall the game was throwing you back in after an ending. It would have been annoying if it kicked you back to the menu or to credits.

Hm. What if I used a warning of sort before throwing you back? Or maybe some kind of autosave. Or both.

Anyway, I did look for other threads, but I didn't see any thread dedicated to both story and technical tropes that was recent. People come and go from the community, so obviously opinions are bound to change even over the course of a few months.

 

[Derover]

Thing is, In The Stanley Parable, the going back to the start after picking a certain path. Is actually the main part of the game. The whole game/story is about choices and discovering new paths towards a certain ending. Deciding a path is 'in' the story. As made clear by the voice over.

I don't know if this would work in a porn game. Unless it is connected to the story somehow. Not only because you made a choice that leads you to ending A or B and that's it.

There is one game that comes to mind is 'Echoes of Lust' that basically uses the Groundhog Day idea and uses that 'in' the story. Not only a mechanic.

 

[philip_herrup]

Thing is, In The Stanley Parable, the going back to the start after picking a certain path. Is actually the main part of the game. The whole game/story is about choices and discovering new paths towards a certain ending. Deciding a path is 'in' the story. As made clear by the voice over.

I don't know if this would work in a porn game. Unless it is connected to the story somehow. Not only because you made a choice that leads you to ending A or B and that's it.

There is one game that comes to mind is 'Echoes of Lust' that basically uses the Groundhog Day idea and uses that 'in' the story. Not only a mechanic.

Hm, I get the feeling I expressed myself poorly. I didn't mean "like Stanley Parable", it was just the first game that came to mind with endings at any point of the game with varying amounts of content. I'll remove that from the OP.

My reasoning is this: the game should pose to you as many relevant choices as possible. Here's a stupid example: I think that you should be able to choose that you've found your one true love and that you have no need for other girls, but then the story would end there. Some games even give you the choice, only for the narrator to dismiss it jokingly. It's kind of annoying. So, instead of not posing you the choice or dragging you along reluctantly I'd rather give you an "early ending" with that girl. Then, if you want to see what's ahead, you can not choose her, either by having her be just one in your harem or by not pursuing her at all.

Another example are "bad ends". I think that a small epilogue beats a GAME OVER screen.

 

[MissFortune]

What if I used a warning of sort before throwing you back? Or maybe some kind of autosave. Or both.

You're going to get a lot of shit if you go scorched earth and make people start over with every ending. If you do go that route, maybe give the user the option to be sent back to the previous choice that led to that ending, so they can experience all the stories and all of the endings without having to start over (which has and will piss people off.). This style largely doesn't work for an AVN. But if you want to try your hand at it, nobody's stopping you.

Although I am quite experienced from other mediums in both storytelling and programming I was thinking that I could use a "market analysis" of sorts.
I have played a lot of porn games, and obviously have my own ideas about what stupid things I hate that every game pulls, but I was wondering how much they matched with the average person's. The question is both about "story tropes" and "technical tropes" (minigames, narration flow, etc).

Tropes often exists because they work. An essential part of being a writer is being able to take those tropes and make something unique out of them.

The inherent flaw of something like this is that everyone has different likes and dislikes. Everyone is going to give you an equally biased answer. You'll see everything from a "I hate teen, pimple-faced MCs who sleep rape their mom", to "Why is he a chad? I want to self-insert, and I'm nothing like him". They're both equally valid. Not to you, not to me, but to those saying it. So, you're going to get a list of 50 things that people dislike, not include them, and thus alienating those who may like them. Therein lies the point. You aren't making a game for them. You aren't making a game for their tastes. You're making a game with content/niches/etc. you enjoy and sharing it with those of a like mind/similar taste.

 

[philip_herrup]

You're going to get a lot of shit if you go scorched earth and make people start over with every ending. If you do go that route, give the user the option to be sent back to the previous choice that led to that ending. This style largely doesn't work for an AVN. But if you want to try your hand at it, nobody's stopping you.

I didn't expect people to despise it so much, to be honest. This is precisely the reason I made this thread.

Tropes often exists because they work. An essential part of being a writer is being able to take those tropes and make something unique out of them.

Oh, believe me, I know.

The inherent flaw of something like this is that everyone has different likes and dislikes. Everyone is going to give you an equally biased answer. You'll see everything from a "I hate teen, pimple-faced MCs who sleep rape their mom", to "Why is he a chad? I want to self-insert, and I'm nothing like him". They're both equally valid. Not to you, not to me, but to those saying it. So, you're going to get a list of 50 things that people dislike, not include them, and thus alienating those who may like them. Therein lies the point. You aren't making a game for them. You aren't making a game for their tastes. You're making a game with content/niches/etc. you enjoy and sharing it with those of a like mind/similar taste.

Yes, exactly! But I said so in the OP: the reason for this thread is to confirm how much my own opinions align with others. Obviously I'll write a story that I myself like, but I can be flexible, for instance, if something I mildly dislike gets a thumbs up from everyone. For instance, the other question in the thread: I dislike it when a game gives me choices in a way that I can never fail/end the story early, but apparently, most people are fine with it. Not that I'd choose the early ending, but there being the possibility makes a difference for me.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

https://f95zone.to/threads/tropes-you-hate.137491/
https://f95zone.to/threads/porn-game-tropes-the-good-the-bad-and-the-fugly.6308/

 

[philip_herrup]

https://f95zone.to/threads/tropes-you-hate.137491/

I've seen it, it devolved into a "tags that you don't like" thread. And the OP is mostly to blame for it.

https://f95zone.to/threads/porn-game-tropes-the-good-the-bad-and-the-fugly.6308/

Good thread, but five years old. I wanted more recent opinions. As I said, people come and go at all times.

 

[nulnil]

Visual Novel

Ok maybe that isn't fair, but most visual novels would be better with a linear story where the protagonist isn't some self insert. Alot of the time, it feels like your choices don't matter in VN's because choice A and B both take you to the same destination.

 

[Jaike]

If it makes sense to have an early happy ending, then it should be fine to have one. Maybe it will feel weird if one branch is a short story and another is War and Peace but it won't make me think a game is terrible.

I don't know how realistic you want your medieval fantasy setting to be, but you called it a "somewhat """realistic""" medieval fantasy" so I'm first giving some common medieval tropes I hate.

Castles with bare stone walls everywhere. Of course there was some variation but at the very very least a lord's living quarters would have the interior walls treated with plaster or whitewash and decorated with woodwork, wall paintings, tapestries or all of these. Outside walls could be bare stone but even these could be treated with harl, roughcast or even painted.

Everything's lit by "medieval" torches. Fiction overuses torches by a lot. Typical indoor lighting came from rush lights or candles made of tallow or bee wax and oil lamps in some regions. Outside lighting was provided by lanterns but streetlights weren't really a thing. People did use torches in the Middle Ages but not for ambient exterior lighting and they didn't look like the fantasy stereotype at all, they

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.

Everyone wears brown crappy clothes. Medieval clothes were actually pretty bright except for the poorest of the poor and for some clergy and religious orders. The cloths were usually of a uniform colour but a piece of clothing could use more than one fabric and expensive clothes were often lined with expensive materials.

Everyone and everything is covered in mud or even crap and nobody washes. Really a movie trope because film set designers are latent shit throwing monkeys, but occasionally seen in games especially the grimdark type. Obviously streets and roads weren't super clean but people did try to keep them relatively clean and you could see that paved streets were in fact paved and not covered in inches of shit. People usually washed daily and bathed or had a thorough scrub down a few times in a week because people in general like to feel clean. Royals would often receive guests while bathing. Many cities had public bath houses where also a lot of prostitution took place. Seems the myth appeals a lot to people with like a fetish for ick horror. Also a lot of Afrocentrists think that no Europeans ever washed for centuries, that this is a totally idiotic view goes without saying.

Lots of medieval witch burnings. The first witch trials of the European witch craze indeed took place in the late medieval period but they were then still very rare. The peak of the witch craze was around 1600. There was a lot of regional variation in the number of witch trials and witch executions, the majority of executions were in the Holy Roman Empire and Switzerland. The gender of supposed witches also varied, most of the people executed for witchcraft were women, but in some regions people executed as witches were overwhelmingly male. The usual form of execution for witchcraft was hanging, beheading was also common. A lot of the burnings were done after execution when the victim was already dead. The total of victims is estimated at 30000 to 50000, the old "estimate" of nine million that you see on the web is total horseshit. But accused witches could also die in jail or could be lynched but this was rare, a lot of statistics don't include these. Beware when you research this topic cause there's a shitton of crap about this online and in pulp books.

Torture fetish paradise. Attacking this trope runs into a number of problems, one is that we use "torture" with a wider meaning now and another is that it's liked and spread by horny people who get really really angry when they're shown wrong. The word "torture" was used for torment in a legal procedure to extract a confession, but forms of torment were also used in some forms of execution or to force a plea in English law. Legal torture was the result of legal reforms in the twelfth century when continental laws were modelled on Roman law. There were rules of procedure, so there had to be a certain level of evidence before torture was possible and the torture was also regulated, but it probably differed how strictly the latter rules were enforced. The most common forms of torture were strappado, the victim was actually suspended unlike in average strappado bondage and often with weights or swinging, and beatings, this was often combined with strappado. Other common methods were the rack, crushing instruments like the boot or thumbscrew, the horse of course and hot objects. "Torture pears", or as they're actually "pears of anguish", didn't exist and modern ones are hoaxes like the iron maiden and the chastity belt. This is also a subject where a lot of sites, amateur books, "authentic" dungeon rides (that got all their instruments of torture from somewhere else and showcase hoax objects as authentic) and even museums push crap.

Right of first night. It's a stupid old myth with absolutely no evidence that Hollywood still pushes sometimes.

Some of these tropes can make sense in a fantasy setting, some of them could cater to a specific fetish and some of them would be pretty stupid in any setting. So it's a matter of how realistic you want it to be.

For porn game tropes, well what MissFortune said applies, but here's my list. I guess a lot isn't relevant to your game.

Spoiler: Porn game tropes

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[HarveyD]

When the male MC has an erection so hard and painful that his own mother just HAS to give him a hand job to save his life.

 

[Deleted member 5410619]

That is one very ambitious project.
I wish you like.

The most things i commonly hate:
Spying while in the shower.
Doors that arent locked.
A dead father.
Choices meaning nothing.
Visual novels.
Police being stupid.
Consensual Sex.
Game over when picking the wrong dialog.
Trigger hunting.
Mind control not having any control and just being slutification.
Mothers not stabbing you to death as you rape your daughter intfront of them because you are to stupid to not just ty them up.
Basicly i just hate the whole: People dont fight back or there is zero risk to you being blatently evil.
I shoud fear the police.
I shoud be paranoide about my plan to rape an entire household and plot out every possible detail i can come up with.
Likewise i want to play a game.
If i can just fast forward to your game i will be bored.
Likewise if the only reason i can not fast forward is because i need to hunt for whatever alian logic the dev had to continue the story.
Your just making me do busy work for no reward.

Lets take a game i lust a lot.
Lab rats 2.
Something as tiny as the dialog change's on stats puts it far about the massive amount of crap f95zone has.
Just the fact the your ingame mother folds her shirt where your sister just trows her to the ground is something that stood out to me as this person accauly had a mother.
Tiny details, Contant plotting, Corrupting people without using sex(I mean sure i can use woman to turn men into loyal allies but really giving a girl several orgasm shoudnt make her willing to betray her family for me)

It is a simple case of:
I hate it when its too easy or too hard.
Too easy and i feel like i am not doing anything.
To hard and i feel the dev is just dragging the game out.
Pacing is key to any good game.

 

[rk-47]

having tedious quests to get the love of the bitchy one

 

[zuulan]

At First, we need to stop using the term "Porn game". This term is the fault of most problems in the genre.

Porn game Insists that:

• Having adult interactions in game is chore you need work hard for.
• Whole point of game is Nail NPCs, if that is done game is over.

Instead we should use Term Adult game.

This allows us to play game do normal stuff and Adult interactions are just part of game/life.

Adult interactions shoulnd be chore in game
and They shouldn't be whole goal/point of game they should happen meanwhile. Ak some whore shouldn't be hard to get same time girl wearing purityring should be challenge, that is not point of game, but challenge that you can or cannot allow take.


There is whole lot of Tropes that annoy me, like starting game in a relationship i dont know anything.

Payback cheating where woman gives you handjob or blowjob, i never get what they got out of this deal.

Who Bs Trope is you family were rich and now you have nothing , it stupidly impossible that family loses all, Family bread earner might lose all, but you still got your fancy sport car and other expensive things that can allow you live easy life if you sell them.

 

[Sharkie94]

For what it's worth... and since you asked.

I dislike/hate
- "One-click to get five pages worth of a sex novella thrown at me..."
(Why are you making a "game" if you're not gonna allow the player to... play?

- "Too many characters..."
(More characters don't make the ones you have in there more believable/better.)

- "Trying to hit every fetish out there for the sake of being able to add the TAG".
(One meagre incest/NTR/Rape/Scat scene will not satisfy the people with said fetish, but might set others running.)

- "Treating a Taboo as vanilla sex..."
(A Taboo should be hard/-er to break and have some consequences when broken...")


I like/love
- "in depth"/"highly interactive" sex scenes...
(e.g Rogue-Like:Evolution, Degrees of Lewdity, ERAtohoTW, Lilith's Throne, TrapQuest)

- Fewer main characters that I get time to get to know...
e.g Dating my Daughter, Love & Sex: Second Base

 

[gunderson]

One of my biggest pet peeves in porn is a fetish for realism that mostly just manifests as insulting famous pieces of porn to try to make a person's amateur game sound special and cool. For example: tit size is up to the author. You don't like 'oversized tits,' whatever that means? Who cares. Make the boobs whatever size you like. You want to waste your art budget having ladies fight in full plate armor? Knock yourself out, but I don't see that being visually sexier than a chainmail bikini. Verisimilitude, i.e. making the game-world consistent, matters much more to me than it being realistic.

Deciding not to use particular porn game tropes does not itself make your game good, or bad, or anything. It just tends to mean you don't use helpful shorthands to make your game easier to write/make.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of requiring the player to replay a game that is not itself a Groundhog Day-style game to see the game's content via extended 'bad ending' epilogues. Unless I love a game, I probably play it once or twice ever. I'm not likely to maintain a bunch of playthroughs of a game because one path or another was the focus of an update this time.

More broadly, I'm a lot more impressed by hearing about what a game does have than what it doesn't. So far, it sounds like your game has 'amazing' art (with no visual example), 'realism' (whatever that means. Is putting on armor a laborious process? Is the average person in the game kinda ugly and inbred? Are sex scenes with non-prostitutes mostly limited to clumsy missionary?), 'choice' rather than gameplay, and planned hours-long failure states. Aside from being curious what's so special about that art, I find most of those 'features' to be turn-offs.

 

[Nobles]

Bad Endings - its a waste of my time and makes me even more pissed if it was a "stupid bad ending. Something out of retardvil. Especially when it goes "against" the story they have set up.

Chasing love points -- Basically games where you have to earn love points which means you have to do all the chasing and grinding. I like a game thats like give and take, you still got to do some work, but girls actually show an interest in you too. Its not just one sided. Easist way I seen this accomplished in many games is just giving girls a "level". So you get events where they come to you. So yeeh, I hate doing all the chasing.

Beta MC or the Choir boy - Unless its planned to be part of the character Development (for his growth). I basically get frustrated when the MC acts like a beta or a choir boy and will refuse sex, or even seeing a girl naked even if shes offered to show. And most of the time, they always carry on about their political morals, or how they respect wahmen as a soy boy.

The second part to this, is the MC "always" apologizing, especially when its not his fault. Makes me want to reach into my screen and slap him. These always ten to the be the betas. But its even more frustating seeing it happen to an alpha who just broke character for no reason.

Oversized Boobs - Someone mentioned it before but I can whole heartly agree. Big boobs is fine, but when oversized it becomes a turn off. There really should be a limit. You may get away with this if you have somehting like transformation in your game, which would explain breast growth. Otherwise its just not natural.

Pre existing relation, like starting with a girlfriend - Someone also mentioned this and it reminded me I also hate it. I just hating starting with a pre established girl we know nothing about and she gets in the way of meeting others. I like to see the MC developed relations. Seeing him meet people and start his story. I cant think of the perfect words to describe this. I also dont like this in manga/anime, as I like to see how things started, how everyone came together.

Missing scenes cause you didnt choose the "correct" answer - Choices should be about different results, reactions or paths./routes . But missing scenes or breaking a route cause you didnt select the correct awnser really is just dumb. Degrades the game for me. Makes you feel like your missing the bonus ecchi content. Might as well make it a no choice VN if thats what your going to do.

Only given options to choose from Ass and boobs -- Seriously, Legs are the dark horse.


Thats all I cna think of atm. /shrugs

 

[dikau]

I don't know about trope, but things that I hate on VN games:
- Narrating what's already on the screen. Like, why the fuck did you waste all those effort and resource to render or draw those amazing scene and you're just gonna repeat it again with text...
- Dialogs that not really a conversation between real peoples... like who talks like that?
- Every girls talks the same ... this is like a narrator tells you a personality of each girls, but when they talks, they all come from one personality.
- Every clothes that the girls wear is made up of the material of yoga pants.
- Did I say dialogs that didn't feel like a conversation between real peoples? Yeah I hate those!

 

[ggregger33]

Just like everyone else I and all people have different likes and dislikes. If I where to make a game I would say have a diverse group of unique individuals. (all the girls have side D boobs or worse milk jugs as I call them (way way to big)) Each person in the store should be that a person with a different personality and back story. By making choices in the game you can delve into that back story or personality. If I don't like my Mom with side Quad E breasts not make me have sex kind of think. Diversity is what I think is missing in a ton of adult games. A ton of devs are very one sided. I am not saying that is a bad thing. Devs should do what they like but if you are going to make it something you can make money from cast a wider net.
To get into what I dislike:
- All big boobs all the time going with that them large asses as well
- Forces into sex or other intimate situations with no choice
- A big one for me is NTR. Even if it is optional I will not play the game.
- No true story. Like I meet a love interest twice and she or I am jumping into bed with them.
- Very light choices. I mean its an "adult game" game meaning you play it. If you are not going to have many choices just write a kinetic novel
- If you use incest (perfectly fine for me) then it should be hard to do or you should have to work for that goal. You cant just say hay brother / sister I like you and then that is it.
- Rape / sleeping / unwanted sex or touching. It goes against every fiber of my being.
What I personally like
- Brother Sister as long as it is done as stated above
- B and small C sized breasts
- None slut virgins
- Creampies

Good luck with everything

EDIT: Also do not like sandbox / point and click. I hate trying to figure stuff out and it just takes away from the story in my opinion.